akbear

You have to admire the synergy, they keep changing the plugs and someone else thwarts them by making an adaptor. I think the last technological advancement that truly impressed me was aerosol cheese, but now I wish they still sold squeez-a-snak.

it was easy for me since my vizio has an RGB port, so for me it was just a matter of getting a pci to vga adapter so that I could run the television as a second monitor as I only have one vga port and a pci off the graphics card and deciding in the settings if I wanted an extended desktop or duplicate EDIT: make that a dvi to vga adapter

I think this is more of an issue of an industry gauging itself solely upon units sold but ignoring other factors such as the economy, people being sick of the throw-away society (did they really think they'd push me off office 97 by adding an x to the file names?), and maybe most importantly the baby boom evolving into the retirement cascade. Sure, the young generation is still motivated by having the latest gadgets, and to some degree this also overlaps with those facing the ever shrinking purchasing power of money or not having extra to spend on frivolities as it's often a pay on time plan where the cost of many mobile devices are worked into the monthly fees, but that does still leave out two very important demographics. People sick of the merry-go-round. In the early days we all took to the upgrade mania as so much was changing and evolving, there's a world of difference from a commodore PET to an 8088 or an x86, along with storage media, communication capabilities and such, but what ground breaking or earth shattering advances have been made lately that eliminates all past machines from still being able to function and interact with others? (I'll likely be one of those attempting the conversion to a unix based operating system when XP support ends). Did the blu-ray and dvr kill off the dvd as planned? An aging population. Yes, smart phones and tablets are all the rage, but somewhat limited in what can be done with them, and perhaps the biggest downside to them is going to be the size. As people get older it gets harder and harder to deal with small things and tiny text. I myself, even though I haven't quite hit 50, rely more and more with using my 32 inch television as a monitor instead of the 19 inch (which was a great improvement over the 15 inch that was so much bigger than it's predecessor) . While I can deal with boosting the font and 4 times the scrolling on a kindle fire, I certainly wouldn't want to use it for web browsing, and let's face it, I'm not a thumb typer nor do I have miniature thumbs. All in all I think a lot of people, though, are waking up to the fact that we are moving dangerously close to we own nothing but merely rent society, which is the real declining consumer (stop the world I want to get off). On the surface it looks like people are simply dropping things like landlines, cable and satellite television, newspapers, new cars and such to move to devices of greater efficiency, mobility and consolidation, but there really is a growing population of people fed up with having things shoved up their noses and given little to no choice electing to instead select none of the above. If it comes to a point where my only option is a handheld unit that I have to cycle through charges and discharges of a battery that loses capacity over time or may set itself on fire, be restricted to only the apps that the service allows to be put on their system, and not being able to print things on paper when needed or personally store what I wish, I will likely be one of those spending my time in the garden or something worthwhile.

Have you ever considered ending it in an avenue roundabout? Here's an example of one with just a 1x2 avenue stub (drag the avenue off the roundabout and then move back towards the roundabout until it's as small as possible before releasing or bulldoze until it's only a small loop off the roundabout) and then draw the ground highway into it. or with one ways: Now I'd like to know where those walled viaduct pieces in the video came from, as this: or this has been about the best I could come up with and still nowhere as compact as I'd like:

I would imagine several could be found on this list http://history1900s.about.com/od/people/tp/famousafricanamericans.htm or this one http://www.factmonster.com/spot/afroambios.html

it's really very sad (or hilarious) that people will get all bent out of shape that others might be cheating on a single player, no prize, no winner, modded game. In the same light I also find it astounding how many people will complain that something isn't safe or too tiny to be real. But my reality is that I did grow up in a world where whatever was needed was squeezed in, and if that meant a highway ramp was so tight that it required a 15 or 20 mph speed suggestion, that's what was built to serve the need, and conversely I am just stymied by some of the modern safety designs that have created bigger bottlenecks and number of accidents when for example cars are lined up for 2 miles for a common right hand exit which encourages at least a third of the drivers to bypass the entire line and force their way into the exit queue at the last possible moment. I'd have to venture a guess that nearly everyone that plays this does so because they enjoy it, and that's what it's about, being able to enjoy making our own creations in our own way (and the rules we choose to place upon ourselves)

that may well be a good option, I was certainly sad to blow up the one based on independence hall that seemed to fit well but apparently turned out to be permanently closed due to contamination (I think a school group ditched tunafish sandwiches behind loose bricks). To me it never did make sense when someone would spend hours making a nice station, but then choke it down to such an unrealistic level that the sims simply stopped bothering trying to use a station that likely would be closed by the time they got there. I guess it goes without saying, I would imagine we all are on tenterhooks and making big plans for when 31.1 makes it's debut, and I can certainly say that for those of us (and those that came after) that have been playing this game (sequels and it's spin-offs) for nearly a quarter of a century, that we greatly appreciate the time and effort at making improvements and providing variety.

train stations certainly are fussy, some will block the other type of train from going through if you don't put them on a siding loop, and I have yet to find a terminal station that works right and doesn't dwarf the planet jupiter in size (I guess the little sims just can't seem to carry those heavy engines to the other end of the train since they lost the ability of travelling backwards during a nuclear meltdown long ago). The best solution I have found is that when you find a station that works well, and you like the looks and size of it, use one of the available modding tools to adjust the capacity to suit your needs and re-plop them

I have had that happen a few times, I just chalked it up to either being related to the scrolling or zooming bug (which to me seems like a mass of commands at one time causing utter confusion as many times when I use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom it does the opposite thing at first so I keep having to remind myself to use the zoom buttons), or that maybe whatever I was working on at the moment caused a transit hover glitch either through responding to the advisor pop-up or the subsequent map move. What ever the case, I just got in the habit of ignoring him and search for the problem later myself if I was so inclined to do so.

thanks, think I figured out how to do that without invoking the wrath of a double or repeated post.

it's also possible that they never got installed. I ran into this problem yesterday with VDK trams. The installer allowed for a selection of one skin or all skins (as extras) but I found that selecting the 'all' option did everything but actually transferring the files, only running the installer over and over to select a single skin or extra skin had any effect.

GLR gridlock. My sims are so in love with the system that it can get to be one solid conga line of trains blocking intersections and at times trains dying and withering away if they can't continue on to their destination. The perfect solution would be a two to three car tram either by mod of the cars themselves or a limit to the possible length (I know at one time there was a radical mod that could adjust the length of passenger rail trains). The VDK short car versions do help, but not enough and I'm not exactly partial to them. Switching to streetcars seems to be my only viable solution at this time (one car units) but that brings up a station issue as they always stop well ahead of stations as if more cars still followed. Can a 1x1 station be made with a total lack of props (or perhaps a fancy light pole with directional signs) so that it would look natural for a streetcar to stop (as well as being in the same relative vicinity of where an opposing streetcar would also stop)? Edit: a simple mockup of what elements I'd envision for a light pole for between the tracks

Even more contemporary than that in the early 70s the CTA (Chicago) reconfigured the Evanston Shuttle to third rail to eliminate older running stock from the system (the Skokie Swift ran a dual on the fly changeover system 'til much later on). Their solution was to enclose the rails with chain link fence and gates which swung open over intersections that also then provided a secondary barrier at the crossings. The cars would experience an inturruption of power and coast across the intersections for further safety rather than a few possible ways to were certainly available to prevent that. Much later the chain link gates were replaced by something along the lines of elaborate cattle guards

if you like an all over look try in addition to the other suggestions. I'm pretty sure that's the one responsible for turning most of my stations to sandstone or brick, of course along with the sidewalks. it's quite customisable once you figure it out. So far the only standout seems to be the tulep slip lanes. if that doesn't give you the desired effect there are other sandstone,brick and sidewalk mods that might (or a combination if they are compatible) and you'll just have to try different things to get the effect you are searching for (or at least as close to it as you can with what is available)

Edit II: Looking for a 1 tile GLR station, posted in a different thread but suggested by a moderator that it might do better in this one. Details on the original post 04APR13 Edit: Never mind, I seemed to have fixed it. I found the SMP sidewalk replacement mod was not needed as a prerequisite for paeng's sandstone mod, and was the source of the override to the 'no-dirt' mod, and then simply removing the sw_rural from paeng's restored both the ag area and railway to grass. now if I could just figure out how to get those tulep slip lane sidewalks to turn into sandstone or brick..... Texture replacement. One of the sandstone replacement mods that I recently installed has overridden the Peg/Swamper no dirt mod 205 in my cities resulting in horrid displays of zig-zag dirt on diagonal rails in zoned areas and on roads in agricultural zones. Even adding Zs to the no_dirt file or putting it in a Zed folder has no effect. While I can solve the agricultural issue by adding a residential tile or a seasonal tree tile (albeit much too regularly placed for aesthetics), this same trick exacerbates the issue with railroads. My thought is, regardless of the source of the issue, the holds an easily implemented solution since it has a rural (ag) texture that overlays the default dirt. If someone could come up with an add-on to that mod that replaces the ag texture with a grass texture it would seem the issue could be solved without resorting to cosmetic lots that only widen the dirt area. (I'm assuming here that a transparent texture wouldn't work in this case since the default dirt would simply return, which is the same as removing the rural overlay from the sidewalk mod). While not a perfect solution, the grass will almost always be slightly different from the surroundings, perhaps some sort of compromise between a dirt and a grass somehow softened around the edges might work. Or am I barking up the wrong tree with that idea and a complete rural sidewalk mod that is minimally visual be the solution? (though that still leaves the railroad issue unanswered as the only mod I could find for that says it conflicts with sidewalk mods)

I believe the rest of the full upgrade is the nightlight patch https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?page=14, the level you are up to allows you to use contemporary custom content (like NAM) if I understand it completely.

The instructions aren't exactly clear in that the update patch is not regionally dependent upon where you live, but rather the game version. The copy I bought off amazon turned out to be a European LHD version, so mine had to be updated with the SKU 2 and if I'm not mistaken the 1.1.613 usually does have to be patched with SKU2. Also as a note, when you are successful, yours will top out at 1.1.640 (not 641) as it's a cd version.