The Sims Freeplay: Building a Factory to Generate Cash, Experience and LP's

I've recently got onto The Sims and tried my hand at playing it. It seems like conventional wisdom in life, like getting a job, career advancement, and improving your skills in your chosen profession don't work effectively in this game. Instead, being unemployed (which frees up your time) and working on your garden is the best way to generate cash, experience and lifestyle points! Allow me to direct your attention to the following video which really helped explain this anomaly of Sim economics:

A huge "thank you" to Make2, the wonderful couple who are a huge inspiration for all things Sims-related.

Here's a suggested "factory" layout to maximise the use of your Sims' time and energy. I took the liberty to make the factory look nicer by using the first house as its template, hence the blue flooring and a dedicated toilet.

Meeting Your Sims' Needs

To recap what the video tutorial said, your Sims have a few basic needs that the factory meets:

• Food: Use the fridges to provide sustenance.
• Sleep: They don't necessarily have to sleep, so use the coffee machines to keep them up indefinitely.
• Toilet: Well, it seems the Sims don't mind being in a unisex, uncovered toilet.
• Cleanliness: Kitchen sinks have the advantage of being able to keep your Sims clean (they don't necessarily have to bathe) and being the place they can clean up plates (in cooking to generate LP's).

The only critique I have for the factory is the lack of socialising, which I suppose we could spend some time with the Sims making conversations to fill that up.

Generating Cash and Experience

Gardening is the quickest way to earn cash and experience depending on the plant. Some plants have shorter growth cycles, such as corn which takes 20 minutes, while others can take up to a whole day. Pumpkins generate the most amount of experience, so it will really depend on your immediate needs.

Generating Lifestyle Points

The cooking hobby allows for all Sims to participate in chalking up hobby items. Once all hobby items are complete, you'll earn experience and prizes. Completing the hobby items consecutively earns you LP's, so get those Sims to make lots of cheese on toast, the quickest cooking task, and one which only requires a basic stove.

You will, however, need to exploit a bug in the game. Get one more countertop, place it in the corner, and buy a toaster. You will need to make the toaster face outwards, away from the "correct" orientation. For cheese on toast, the Sim will usually cook on a stove then head over to a toaster to finish off. However, with the toaster inaccessible, this last animation is totally bypassed. The kitchen sink is especially useful because it will allow your Sim to wash up the plates right there and then, instead of wasting time walking out to the trash.

Read More

Viewing iCloud Calendar Events in Google Calendar

I wrote a short how-to for ministry members to view iCloud calendar events on their Google calendar spaces because some people just don't have iCloud access (being Android phone users). This is a short post, but I hope it helps you out as much as it helped me!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ucwY4RHrkpr6GU1JIS-yxZBDilq1D7-0cssAjGEPey0/edit?usp=sharing

Read More

Using Instagram as a Gear-a-holic

I was never one to use Instagram until I started following Matthews Effects and Pedal Projects. These guys post regularly on Instagram as one of their main communication streams to update customers (and fans like me) on their recent work, news, developments, and general updates. They are able to get instant notifications on comments and can respond very quickly to specific posts. I think it's a novel way to use social media to keep in touch with your clientele, especially since guitarists are naturally tech-savvy people!

How does it work?

Like other social media sites, the @ and # tags are integral to the use of Instagram. @ tags are for users, and adding them into both your caption and your comment section will push them a notification that they've been tagged (depending on how they've set up their notifications on their smart devices). This is useful for starting conversations or to "forward" a post to a friend who might be interested in it.

For example, I post a picture of my rig just before a gig:

And if Friend A wants to let Friend B in on the photo, he'll post in the comment like:

"@FriendB check out this guy's EHX LPB-1 and Mooer Shimverb!" (Ok, terrible example, but you get the picture)

Hash tags (#) are to include topics in a post, which will make it searchable by other users. Gear communities like @Gearaholic, @Knowyourtone and @Toneheaven encourage users to # them, which effectively shares the post with the wider community. # can also be used in both captions and comments. Here's a list that I currently use, and feel free to use them in your own posts!

#geartalk
#pedalboardfrenzy
#gottone
#gearaholics
#knowyourtone
#worship
#tonefordays
#toneheaven
#gearwire
#thisismypedaltrain
#globalworship

I see Instagram as a great way to:

1. Get pedalboard ideas

I got quite a few build ideas with my Pedaltrain PT-3 from searching up other users. This can go horribly wrong because it may stir up the GAS in you, so ogle with caution! 

2. Meet other guitarists/pedal makers/manufacturers

I love my country, but it's so small that the gear market only carries "mainstream" stuff. With Instagram, I'm able to contact the makers directly, and they're such a joy to talk to! Notably, Rick Matthews from @MatthewsEffects and Asgeir Helgi from @PedalProjects are great people.

3. Posting/hearing gear demos

@GearDemoGram and @PedalProjects are good examples of how the short video function in Instagram can be used to demonstrate gear, using the iPhone audio as a gauge. I know, it's not the best of audio, but it's decent enough to hear 75% of the pedal's "vibe". It's inspiring me to make use of this medium to 

4. Participate in competitions, give-aways, sales

Boutique pedal makers and mainstream manufacturers make use of the holiday season (or when they're in a good mood) to promote their wares. Most of them require the simple procedure of # the relevant topic, like #trexgiveaway, and tagging other users as a shout-out.

So, if you're a guitarist and want to tap into social media, why not give Instagram a spin? Find me @justicepao (it's the nickname I used when I played DOTA back in my uni days)

For further reading:

Using hashtags to promote your brand

Read More

Jailbreak Adventures: How to Sync Plants Versus Zombies 2 Across Multiple Devices

Picture from pixelvolt.com

Christine introduced PvZ to me a while ago, and it wasn't long before I got hooked on the mission to defend my brains from being eaten by the horde of not-so-scary zombies. It's a really fun game!

So, when PvZ 2 came out this month, I was very pleasantly surprised that it came out as a free download for iOs. Of course, this means that Pop Cap has gone the route of in-app purchases, and there are a ton of IAP's--plants, power-ups, new locations--just to name a few of the possible areas to pour your cash into. That being said, PvZ 2 is a game that you can fully enjoy free; everything in it is attainable through hard work, persistence, and the occasional stroke of luck.

The only problem I've had with PvZ 2 so far is that I couldn't sync the game across my iPad and iPhone. I spent a lot more time on PvZ 2 on the iPad than on my phone, so obviously my progress was a lot further on one device than the other. I found a solution that requires iFunBox to access the raw file system:

1. Open iFunBox and connect the device that has the further progress.
2. Locate the following folder: /var/mobile/Applications//Library/Preferences
3. Locate the following files: (1) com.apple.PeoplePicker.plist, (2) com.popcap.ios.PvZ2.plist
4. Copy these files from the device onto your desktop.
5. Connect your second device, locate the PvZ2 folder as above, and paste the files from your desktop onto your second device.
6. This should sync your devices together with the same player ID.

Read More

Jailbreak Woes: Removing Siriport from iPhone

No sooner had I started to jailbreak iOS 6.1 did I encounter numerous problems. Well, it's mostly my fault. You see, in my zeal to squeeze the most out of my device, I end up trusting questionable sources. For a long time, I wanted to have Siri on my iPhone 4. In case you don't know why iPhone 4 doesn't have Siri, that's due to the fact that Apple's A4 chip doesn't have noise-cancellation. This was only implemented with the A5 chip, which was introduced in the iPhone 4s. That makes sense, as you need Siri to understand what you're saying amidst background noise.

So I went and searched for a way to get Siri onto my iPhone 4. There are workarounds, but I wanted the real deal, and hence settled for Siriport. What I didn't know was that Siriport was a pirated version of the official Siri (there's a lengthy article on the specifics behind Siriport's architecture and how it works, but that's beyond the scope of this post). I followed the instructions to get Siriport, resprung my phone, and I managed to get my phone into an infinite boot loop. This is where the apple never moves!

Of course, I panicked. But there is always a solution to get a phone out of the infinite boot loop. The problem was that there was no way to access the phone's file system while the phone is essentially a brick...or was there?

Enter iFunBox. This third party desktop software helps to install .ipa packages onto the iPhone, and it still can connect to a phone that's in an infinite boot loop. The only problem I faced was that when I connected the phone with a USB cable, iFunBox would sometimes either lose connection or not connect at all. If you are experiencing this, be patient; you are trying to fix a (temporarily) spoilt phone.

Removing Siriport and Breaking Out of Infinite Boot Loop

What you need: iFunBox and a USB cable.

Step 1: Connect the phone to your computer with the USB cable. Run iFunBox.

Step 2: Find the Raw File System folder, and go to the /System/Library/LaunchDaemons folder.

Step 3: Open the com.apple.SpringBoard.plist in Wordpad.

Step 4: Remove the following

EnvironmentVariables

        DYLD_SHARED_CACHE_DIR 

                 /var/siriport.ru/Cache4SDYLD_SHARED_CACHE_DONT_VALIDATE

1 DYLD_SHARED_REGION private

Remember to save!

Step 5: Go to the root folder (Raw File System), do a search for Siri, and delete the files and folders that are associated with Siri.ru. There should be 14 items of files and folders to delete.

Step 6: Disconnect your phone, and do a hard reset (hold the home and power button, release when the Apple logo comes up). Your phone should be back. If not, repeat the whole process again--I had to try this 3 times, and the hard reset took roughly 2 minutes.

Lesson learnt: Never trust dodgy sources!

Resources

Download iFunBox

Read More