Cyber Monday Deals

[deanwebb]

Meanwhile, I gots my new laptop. Time to start copying music files to it, already got my games on it.

[config t]

dark cars are hot, dark interiors are hot.  dark cars with dark interiors are hotter.  If you live in one of those climates.

You speak the tru tru.

Land Rovers are sweet but last I recall only the high end and luxury models are available to the US market. Therefore $$$

One of my co-workers bought the new Ford Ranger XLT through Military Autosource and had it imported duty free to Bahrain. It's the only US-spec Ford Ranger on the island. Pretty cool.

Meanwhile, I gots my new laptop. Time to start copying music files to it, already got my games on it.

I wants new puter too.

This is the build I am eyeballing for my "lab machine/Vidya-game destroyer" https://pcpartpicker.com/list/fygqsk

My year end goal is to have everything together to start building my lab in January. Super excited about that. I need a desk and monitors too.. and a keyboard.. all of this is going to add up. "It's an investment"

[Dieselboy]

dark cars are hot, dark interiors are hot.  dark cars with dark interiors are hotter.  If you live in one of those climates.

It was over 40c in Perth last week/this week (104F). Some guy put some meat in the car wrapped in foil and cooked it. It looked nasty but was cooked  He had an oven thermostat and it was getting pretty hot. He tried with 2 cars, blue one and black one. Black was mucho scorchio

Car situation  - confirmed building one in January and I'll get a loan car until I pick it up in February. But he said it's coming with red accented bucket seats (compared with all black bucket seats). Not sure if I like them, they're an optional extra

[deanwebb]

Yeah, this PC I got is for my lab only in the sense that it's another Windows endpoint for me to manage.

It plays Cities:Skylines at a nice, high frame rate, which is what I want it to do.

[dlots]

Ended up getting a LE Plus highlander V6 AWD, trailer hitch, luggage rack with cross bars 0 down 0% interest for ~$35K

[deanwebb]

Ended up getting a LE Plus highlander V6 AWD, trailer hitch, luggage rack with cross bars 0 down 0% interest for ~$35K

Sounds nice, but what color is it?

[dlots]

Black inside and out.  I didn't want it cause it gets so hot... but it was what they had.

[deanwebb]

Black inside and out.  I didn't want it cause it gets so hot... but it was what they had.

Just move to Northern Canada. Perfect car for that climate.

[Dieselboy]

Ended up getting a LE Plus highlander V6 AWD, trailer hitch, luggage rack with cross bars 0 down 0% interest for ~$35K

Nice! Black on black also nice. Does it have car play? If not - the dealer may be able to install it. The Toyota I bought comes with it, but only since a few months ago - all the reviews I watched were giving negatives about not having car play, but Toyota will retrofit in the previous models for a few hundred.

It plays Cities:Skylines at a nice, high frame rate, which is what I want it to do.

I want to play this game, but I havent tried it because I think it's one of those games that I would need to pour in many 10's of hours of frustration before it got good - how is it for you?

[deanwebb]

Cities:Skylines is major fun for me. I've been playing it now for 2 years and it's a game I keep going back to because I can play it like a "city painter" with pretty buildings from the Workshop, unlimited cash, and just doing stuff that I like to do with cities. The heart of the game is in transportation and distribution chains, so those are lots of fun to figure out and fine-tune for the city I work on.

The learning curve was pretty much playing tutorials, watching YouTube how-tos and reading guides in the Workshop. Then, a lot of practice. When I start on a map, I may quit around 100K people because I just don't like where the city is headed. But if I break through that barrier with a sound city plan, then I can go for it and build out a really nice looking town. The good news is that the game itself is experimental and open-ended, so you can choose your own victory conditions. Mine is usually, "I want it to look pretty, but I also want it to work properly." So I make sure that the traffic flows well around my tall buildings and historic landmarks.

The best part is the modding community. Loads of assets and mods that really make the game. Once you get started, you can load up some really cool stuff. For traffic, there's a mod that allows you to change the default lane assignments so you can do proper freeway merges, urban roundabouts, and things like that. I look at it as specialized local programming for all the AI-driven cars in the game - and this also gives me some insight into how all-AI cars might operate as I watch them tailgate and shift 2 or 3 lanes all at once on a freeway.

It's definitely a great game for the road, as some times you're too tired to think and you just want to load up the first-person view mod and walk around your town as a virtual tourist. Very relaxing because you're looking over stuff you made. I also get a kick out of adding buildings in the game from places I've been to as a sort of memoir. It's worth investing the time in it, and I'm happy to help. Technically, the roads in the game *are* a network, so they'd be on-topic for this board.

[Dieselboy]

Nice - it sounds like art.
Some time back I watched some videos on youtube about the game. It prompted me to get an old copy of sim city and play that for a bit but maybe I should have gone all-in to your game. I had "sim earth" on an old pentium 1 laptop years ago where I used to play old old games - Sierra made some cool games where you were a cop called Sonny and you had to type what you wanted. Was really difficult

[deanwebb]

C:S definitely has the edge on SimCity, no question in my mind. There are some die-hard SC people out there that will protest otherwise, but I have so much more flexibility with my city in C:S, I'm hooked for life. I've got all the DLC for the game and over 2300 different workshop assets, so... yeah... it's pretty awesome fun.

[config t]

C:S definitely has the edge on SimCity, no question in my mind. There are some die-hard SC people out there that will protest otherwise, but I have so much more flexibility with my city in C:S, I'm hooked for life. I've got all the DLC for the game and over 2300 different workshop assets, so... yeah... it's pretty awesome fun.

Last time I played it there were issues with the traffic algorithm. Cars would not utilize expanded roads and jam traffic into one or two lanes.

[Otanx]

C:S patch notes: Increased the "max-paths" value in OSPF to route traffic over all links.

Only half joking. The underlying Dijkstra Algorithm is actually used for lots of stuff like that. UPS uses it in their hubs to route packages on conveyor belts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dijkstra%27s_algorithm

[deanwebb]

This is why I'm using TM:PE, or Traffic Manager: President Edition. I can specify where traffic can't change lanes, keep it from changing more than one lane (this makes me dread AI cars that decide to cross 3 lanes of traffic all in one go because the algo says it's time to get out of the speed lane and take that exit), and also specify turn only and thru lanes. This can also prevent cars taking the freeway exit just to take the onramp to the SAME DAMN FREEWAY!!! AGGGGH!!! or from using a street interchange instead of a freeway interchange to change direction on the highway. It also helps a lot with controlling merging traffic from onramps or freeway interchanges.