Sim City 3000 kicked this trend and by the time Sim City 4 came around I had finally mastered the game.

Sim City 4 is now five years old and the genre is in dire need of an update.

Cities XL is the best hope to fill that spot. Unfortunately Cities ZL has already been released. This is unforunate because Cities XL has two critical flaws which stop it from ever taking the crown.

1. Somehow Monte Cristo managed to make Cities XL linear through overly restriction population requirements. You don’t so much as plan a city as you grow it and this lack of control kills re-playability.
2. Effectively no custom content. There is a massive community producing new buildings and concepts for Sim City 4, Monte Cristo’s “We’ll make new content ourselves and sell it to you” strategy is foolish in comparison.

Monte Cristo says that the ability to make custom assets, modding, is on the to-do list. Fallout 3 also had delayed modding tools, fans had to wait three months for the Fallout tools while it has already been four months since Cities Xl’s release.

I had all but given up on Cities XL, until recently.

Two weeks ago Monte Cristo released some news, they were going to close the online portion of Cities Xl, a service they called ‘The Planet Offer’ and marketed as an MMO.  They cited lower than expected subscription rates.

The news could well be a sign of financial trouble for a company that invested somewhere in the range of ten million dollars to bring their passion to the market. At least a portion of that funding would have been based off of the possibility to create an MMO niche devoid of competition.

For what ever finacle harm it may cause the silver lining better be that they get their act together. They plan on releasing ‘Cities XL 2011′ which if they have taken the correct lesson to heart should focus on the single player experience as well as offer modification abilities. It is after all what their target market demands.

The differences can be summed up as such; that Chinese is heavy and messy, that Korean looks alien like and that Japanese is lighter, sometimes much lighter, than Chinese.

You’d be forgiven if you thought that ‘alien like’ and ‘lighter’ are too subjective to be useful.  My use of these terms is by no means scientific nor standard, but it is descriptive, and likely a bit derogatory. Fear not, a more complete and useful description is provided later, but first I should explain to more depth.

Since Chinese is the basis from which Korean and Japanese have evolved it would be logical to start with it.

范丽青：前两天已经公布过一个两岸新增航点以及春节增加航班班次的新闻。尽管春运期间空运资源异常紧张，而且京沪穗深的机场也异常繁忙，但是大陆民航业务主管部门还是想方设法来尽量满足两岸同胞春节期间往返两岸走亲访友和旅游休闲对航空的需求。 Courtesy of  news.workercn.cn

Notice how ‘cluttered’ or ‘dense the text is. Beyond that there is not anything discernable about Chinese other than it is not Japanese or Korean. Someone with an understanding of the characters would of course take issue with my description since a more accurate term would be ‘detailed’.

Now compare the density of Chinese with the light, less dense, text of Japanese.

通常必殺技をはるかに上回る威力を持つ、スーパーコンボ。これよりも強力な超必殺技が、”ウルトラコンボ”だ！　今回入手した写真は、リュウのウルトラコンボ。ド派手な演出からくり出される波動拳の強化版といったところだろうか。体力ゲージが一気に半分くらい減っている点も見逃せない！ Courtesy of Famitsu.com

The important factor is that Japanese uses both the Chinese characters and the かな, whiten in the Roman alphabet as ‘kana’.  The kana are extreme simplifications of certain Chinese characters and instead of carrying meanings as the Chinese characters do, they represent sounds, much like the English Alphabet. They are used for Japanese invented words and words from for foreign languages such as English. The kana are thin and comparable to the English alphabet in density. A general rule of thumb for telling Japanese apart from Chinese is to look for areas of high density, the Chinese characters, followed by areas of light density, the kana.  To achieve a better understanding you will likely have to study the kana, it is not hard to learn them but it is a bit pointless unless you are also studying Japanese as a whole.

Finally last and the easiest, Korean.

복수노조 허용 및 전임자 임금지급 금지 등 노조법을 두고 30일 국회 환경노동위원회에서는 고성이 오가는 등 몸싸움이 벌어졌다.  Courtesy of chosun.com

Notice how alien like it is? Okay so you’ll likely want something a bit more concrete, that’s perfect, because such a thing exists. Written Korean contains circles. If you can remember that then you are set. Neither Chinese nor Japanese texts will ever contain circles. In fact the closest thing Chinese and Japanese have for circles, are squares. This is caused by stroke rules which do not allow the curves needed to make a circle. Convenient eh?

So perhaps a more complicated yet more useful general rule would be that Japanese has periods of density followed by less dense areas, that Korean contains circles and that Chinese is neither Japanese nor Korean.

Download afterRead | zip

What do you show the reader after they have read your content? Do you show them an empty comment box? A small unrelated block of automated text?
Instead use afterRead to present an active post footer driving visitors back into the site, don’t waste a prime opportunity.  Presently afterRead’s options are focused on driving visitors back into other related articles, but afterRead is capable of much more so expect to see new innovative Suggestions.

Features;
* Add Previous and Next post links to the bottom of posts.  These links can potentially be to any post, to only posts in the same category, or even only to posts with a matching tag. By default there are three styles to choose from, these styles integrate well with most themes.
* Suggestions can be anything from a donate button to a subscribe button to anything you can imagine.
* afterRead is modular and made of two primary parts, the afterRead core, and afterRead suggestions.
This allows for updates that do not revert changes and for easy custom extension of functionality.
* You can easily add new suggestions by simply pasting code into a text box in the afterRead settings page

== Installation ==

1. Upload `afterread’ folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
1. Navigate to the afterRead settings page found under the “Settings” menu
1. Select a different suggestion or use the default

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= What is a Suggestion? =

A Suggestion is anything you want to encourage the reader to do once they have finished reading, commonly a link to other posts. A Suggestion file is a php file which afterRead core uses to generate a Suggestion.

= Do I need PHP or HTML knowledge to use afterRead? =

No, I have attempted to make afterRead extremely usable for anyone with limited knowledge or no knowledge of HTML and PHP. If there is a feature you’re confused about just tell me so that I can improve the documentation.

= I have an idea for a new Suggestion =

Perfect, the more Suggestions the better. If you get me an image of what you would like it to look like then I can see about coding it, I can’t promise I will be able to add it but I will certainly consider it.

= When using tag based Suggestions the links seem random =

This is quite confusing to see, but it’s actually logical. To illustrate this say we have a post, this post was made on the 20th and has a ‘cooking’ tag. Say there is then another post made on the 18th that had the ‘cooking’ tag and a ‘book’ tag, this will cause the 20th’s post to link to the 18th’s, now pretend that there was a post made on the 19th that only had the book tag, this will cause the 18th’s post to link to the 19th’s post and not the post made on the 20th.

= When using category based Suggestions the links seem random =

The same thing can happen for categories as happens with tags in the above question, it is less common because it is rather rare to add a post in two categories.

== Screenshots ==

1. Dynamic style 1 in a number of different styles displaying the Suggestion’s versatility

2. The backend as of 0.7.1.

No more! Now any the 3GB Enabler will work with any program. In fact it is not even limited to “.exe”s. With that said I have no clue what will happen if you edit a none exe. Read on for the readme and the download.

README:

Later Edited by Warll.Dressler to add arbitrary program selection, changed many minor portions of text to clarify and improve readibility
Editted by Chimera for Oblivian
Originally by unknown source for S.T.A.L.K.E.R CTD issues.

****** VERY IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE USING AN x64 OPERATING SYSTEM:
****** SKIP THE “DIRECTIONS” SECTION.

Introduction:

This is for intermediate to advanced Windows users.
Follow the instructions carefully…the risk is minimal, as long as you backup a copy of your original executable, aka “program” aka file ending in “.exe”.

This will enable an executable, aka “program” aka file ending in .exe, to use over 2GB of memory in the application space.
It uses conventional tools using a batch file so everyone can see nothing suspicious goes on.
This tool will automatically set the header in said .exe so that it can address more than 2GB memory.
Normally XP will only address up to 2GB memory for applications and 2Gb for the kernel.
If we add a boot.ini switch /3GB, then XP is allowed to address up to 3GB for applications.
But unfortunately only applications that are enabled with “IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE” header can utilize more than 2GB of the space.

I highly recommend you look at some official information here at microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

______________________________________________

Directions:

First you need to tell XP/Vista that it can use more than 2GB of RAM for applications.
Manually edit your boot.ini file by adding ” /3GB /Userva=2900″ to your boot.ini (no quotes).
Your boot.ini is normally read only and you will need to change that temporarily while you edit it.
To do this, right-click the file and untick “Read Only”. After editing the file, restore the Read-only status.
To Edit it manually you can find it on the root of your system drive or
go to system properties/advanced tab, settings under ’startup and recovery’ section, then hit edit.

Mine looks like:  multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Windows XP Professional” /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /3GB /Userva=2900

Yours maybe different, the only thing you should change is add ” /3GB /Userva=2900″.

______________________________________________

Instructions for using the 3GB Enabler tool:

*** Important: First make a backup of the original “.exe”. there are any number of ways to do this, the simpliest is to make a copy of the “.exe” and store said copy some place safe or to keep a copy in the same folder under a diferent name. ***
*** Without a backup of the original “.exe” you might have troubles updating the program in the future due to copy protection schemes ***

The tool will add the “LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE” header for you to your executable.
Make sure a copy of the program is located in the same folder that the batch file is going to be ran from.
Doubleclick startme.bat then the menu walks you through.
1) Type the full name of the program including the “.exe” portion
2) Press Enter
3) Hit the A key to add the large address header.
4) Press any key to continue.
5) When back at main menu hit ‘V’ to output the headers in text so you can see the values.
6) Now you can check to see if it is enabled.  Scroll to the top and look for section “FILE HEADER VALUES”. Look for a line in that section that says “Application can handle large (>2GB) addresses”.  It’s the tenth line down in that section.  If you see that line then the executable is now enabled for >2GB, you are done.
7) Copy the enabled “.exe” back to the correct folder.
8) To avoid any strange issues with future patches, I suggest you rename your 3GB capable “.exe” to something else like “Fubar3GB.exe”, then make a shortcut to it on your desktop.  In the meanwhile, keep the original where it belongs and you will avoid any possible patching or online issues.

At anytime if you want to remove the large address header then you can restore you original backed up exe or use the app and use the Remove function and it will remove the header.  Once you run (R) to remove the header you have the original exe back, the MD5 hashes will match.

No strange side effects have been witnessed, but gladly I can play some big games now.

DOWNLOAD:

3GB_Enabler_1.2.zip

[/update]

Of out of all the websites that qualify as Works of Art I can think of few that were not Japanese in origin. Perhaps it is the writing system and the subsequent dexterity? Could it be their religious dirty-phobia that keeps their designs minimal? Or could it be their suicidal work ethic? If these reasoning sound weak it is because they are. The Japanese just happen to produce some very beautiful websites.  One such produces of beauty are at mono-lab. They produced monochrome, the free wordpress theme I have now started using here, and I simply love it.

I love it so much I wanted to thank them. Now first I should explain the beginning of the story. Imagine me, bored, perhaps I’ll reskin the blog. Normally I skip the absolutely most popular themes, the internet does not need yet another aero themed blog. I’ve often fared well searching in the, popular, yet not near first page popular range. This time I found monochrome, I want to fill the blog if only to do the theme justice.

Now as an amateur programmer the first thing I did was inspect the template’s source files.  I noticed to odd things, first there is no license, and there is a file called “japanese.css”.  So now that I am curious what is it I see when I view the author’s site? They are giving out the psd, and no sight of a license. This solidly puts them in my FOSS section of gratitude. Due to these facts plus the large presence of beautify Japanese typography  I am now very excited.  So I had the perfect idea, I’ll thank them, in japanese.  A simple task I think, I can watch whole TV shows what is a little complement compared to that?

ありがとう、これはさいこTheme!

Thank you, this is the oldest theme!

Wait? “The oldest”? Yup, thats not what I intended to say.  In fact it is closer to a word for ‘Last, end, conclusion’ than the word “best” I was trying to say. So I can at least edit it right? Oh no, all the buttons are in japanese! Ok don’t panic, look at the target URL, ok so one of the links leads to a URL containing “reply” in it, it must be the other one. Ah, it appears to work. Fix my mistake and submitted. Wait! Now there are two comments! A dictionary look up later and I find that the button I had pressed meant “quote”.  So I’ll make one more post, maybe they will not ban me.

I’m so sorry, I thought that was the edit button, I didn’t mean to say that the theme was “さいご” I meant “セっこう. ORZ

So in the end I, insulted them, and spammed them. No regrets though, I’m sure they’ll understand and I still came out plus one awesome theme.

I ended up making three point one games. Of which the point one game was the most successful.

Note that it actually works! Oh sure, “works” is a bit realitive, but the flash player does not crash, so it works.  It got ~300 plays. It got some complements about the art style.

My justification for this was it is “art”, a psychological test if you will. But you of course say, “Wait, didn’t you say this was the most successful one?” Well it turns out I wasn’t the only one who thought that it was interesting, a large Finnish flash site homepaged the game, and soon one of its competitors also hosted it. In total it got 25K plays, pretty good for half a mornings work.  Sadly I think this gave me an inaccurate impression of what people will play, after all if a really bad game gets 300 plays and a slightly better bad game gets 25K then imagine a slightly good game?

By the end of making this one I was really enjoying playing it. Sadly it was either not a slightly good game or I had miss estimated. ~500 plays, although it was fun to learn blitting.

This one was actually developed at the same time as Kuroi, it too meet the same result ~1000 plays. Many commented that it was too short, which does leave me the option of expanding it in the future, I don’t think I will.

On a final note I did “earn” about 12 dollars, spread across about 3 sites, which means I’ll never actually get the money due to being far below payout. But eh, that’s more than I’ve ever earned on the internet before, of course if I did this to earn money, I would have been disappointed.

What is it you ask?

Well it is only the best use of desktop space there is,

Three RSS feeds from three major Japanese newspapers, http://mainichi.jp http://www.hokkaido-np.co.jp and http://www.asahi.com/

Two gaming related RSS feeds from http://www.kotaku.jp/ and http://www.famitsu.com/

A timer for time boxing, my email plus the AJATT twitter feed.

Oh and a clock and computer resource monitor.

The benefit is simple, rather than staring that the same image I’ve seen hundreds of times I get the latest real world and gaming news plus Japanese practice all without changing any of my habits.  Even if you cannot read it all simply having it there will mean that you will have yet another place in your environment where immersion is inevitable.

Oh and the best part was how easy it was easy to do it by using the open source and pure awesome windows program RainMeter. It shouldn’t take more than an hour to set everything up. Of course if you have time to get lost in it Rainmeter also has a ton of potential for customisation.  Either way http://www.customize.org/rainmeter/skins is the perfect place to start once you have basic Rainmeter installed.

Ugh, this reads way too much like a peice of marketing, msut go to show how awesome the program is right?

In websites I got two more done, Cameroncreekmining.ca and Japanesesimple.com. Cameroncreekmining is my father’s hobby company’s website and was a fun project. Not only did I get to impress my father but I also got to try out a new CMS, Concrete5, all while getting him away from his old website which had been built using some shovelware website builder. The neat thing about concrete5 is that it uses a in browser editor so that he can now edit the site anywhere he is without touching any html. Hopefully this will acutally get him to do so every so often. Japanesesimple.com is my personal project, I’m learning japanese and finding interesting things along the way so I thought I might as well share with others. In truth though I just really wanted to make another website and do so in a field I am interested in.My thought is to keep the subject matter simple and basic, allowing me an actual finish date.

Another area I have spent some time playing in is adwords, since my father has products to sell it would be silly for him not to advertise them. Another excellent excuse to do something fun and interesting.