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Monday, March 24, 2014

Tales Runner – fun racing MMO with MMORPG elements

Site: http://talesrunner.gpotato.com

Tales Runner is unique, fast-paced MMO racing game where you can compete with your friends. The game is created by the Korean company Rhaon Entertainment and published by Gala-Net Inc.

Tales Runner is a racing multiplayer game, where you can compete by running, skiing, climbing and so on in a fantasy, 3D world.

Every time you participate in a race you receive experience points, TR (in-game currency) Alchemy Cards and other items. Alchemy Cards are used to upgrade the equipment. Each map has a set of cards and each card from the set has a percent probability to be obtained. Also during the race you can obtain power-ups and some of them can be used for attacking the other competitors.

The game has multiple game modes – single player race, basic race, survival races and more.

Trailers:

Sunday, March 23, 2014

Civilization 5 LAN fix

As you can probably tell from the lack of live updates, I am enjoying Civilization 5. Posts coming soon about things I liked and dont like. However, in this post I am going to explain what I had to do to get LAN play working with one copy of the game licensed to one Steam account. My copy was from Amazon but I believe this will work with Steam versions as well.

I am not sure if this counts as piracy but I dont think anyone would buy more than one copy of the game to play the occasional game at a LAN party so it isnt costing anyone any sales...

The problems I had were:

Game not showing up in the LAN screen
Game stopping on the "Retrieving Host Information" screen

Solution: To solve the first problem, make sure Civ is allowed through all of your firewalls (no special ports, just add an exception.

If you are having the second problem, each computer needs the Steam account to have a different nick name (read below for details)

First you need to choose a host computer and put your steam account on this computer in to offline mode. Then with each extra computer do the following

In Steam, open up the friends window and change your nickname to a unique name/name of the player on that computer
Switch Steam in to offline mode (Steam>Go offline...)
Start Civilization and go to LAN (in Multiplayer)
Hopefully at this point, Windows will ask you if you want to allow Civilization 5 through the firewall, click allow (this should resolve the first issue). If it doesnt prompt you, just add the exception through the Windows Firewall exceptions list

Do this for each computer setting them to a different name each time. Now go online on the host computer and change the nickname to another name. Open Civ, add Civ to the exceptions list and host the game. All players should now be able to join.

Nb, there doesnt appear to be a save option in LAN at the moment. Fortunately the game appears to auto-save every turn so just make sure you end your turn before quitting. I am assuming this is a mistake and will be patched.

Thursday, March 20, 2014

Gundam Fanarts Gundam Build Fighter Miss Sazabi

Gundam Fanarts: Gundam Build Fighter - Miss Sazabi

Images via ねんち　コミトレ４号ソ１７ｂ

Gundam Build Fighter - Miss Sazabi (Chars Red Color)

Gundam Build Fighter - Miss Sazabi (Sinanju Stein Color)

Conservative Thinktank says that it is cheaper than ever to raise a child in Canada – unfortunately they are idiots …

From this article:

First comes this quote:

The Fraser Institute says its never been easier financially to raise a child in Canada, with the annual cost much lower than many believe.
The conservative think-tank says it is possible to raise a child on about $3,000-$4,000 a year, and even less if parents only include necessary expenses and are careful with their dollars.

And later this one …

Very few frills are included in the Fraser total, including no allowance for daycare or lost income if one parent decides to stay home to take care of the children.

Gulp … no allowance for daycare or the lost income that comes from not having daycare? What moron thought that the people who need daycare had suddenly become independently wealthy?

This is the kind of writing that reminds me of this paragon to critical thinking on how to make 10 million dollars in 10 years:

Every year, you put 1 million dollars in the bank and in 10 years you will have 10 million dollars.

In a world where conservative governments fully support the kind of deregulation and related policies that have efficiently destroyed our economies, it is just another case of idiocy to assume that the people most affected are not in fact affected and thus do not have any need for daycare since one job is still enough to raise a family. Perhaps the conservative “think tank” in this case decided that parents could raise children cheaply through the use of magic.

Read the whole article here …

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2013/08/22/child-care-costs-fraser-institute.html?cmp=rss

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Dan on Frugality

This question is part of FAQ Friday. If you have a question you would like me to address, please add it to the FAQ section.

Question

Does your husband support all of your penny pinching endeavors?

Answer

Dan and I have very different takes on frugality, actually. Although they are different, they compliment each other well. His frugality could be summed up in no debt and dont spend money. I like that and add in penny pinching.

Passive Frugality

Passive frugality is stuff we had to do once and are still benefiting from. I shopped around for auto insurance and got the least expensive apartment we could fit into. Those two items save us over $100 per month. We got a nice used car in good shape and havent needed many repairs on it. Choosing a good car didnt take too long, but we have reaped many rewards from that good choice. Dan has given me the task of researching these and has been pleased by what I can do.

Active Frugality

Active frugality is what we do now, today to pinch our pennies. This is divided into how to spend and how to not spend.

There are some things we must spend on, food, gas, and clothes. Dan loves my cooking. His one complaint is that he wants more snack foods, like cookies, crackers and chips. My take on snack foods is that making them feels like trying to fill a bottomless pit. They cost money, provide little nourishment and are eaten too quickly, so I do it by request. I count on him forgetting to ask for them and he does.

Not spending money on stuff like new shoes or DVDs is pretty easy for both of us. For example, I won a $25 gift card to Marshalls from We Are THAT Family in December and Ive only used $7 so far. Ill write about what I get when I use it all. Dan would have spent the whole gift card within a week, but not been tempted once it was gone. So, we have different styles of not spending money, but the same outcome.

Future Frugality

Future frugality is, in many ways, up in the air. We talk of pursuing a pastorate the most, but really we dont know exactly what it is God has for us. We have both at times felt we might be called to the mission field, yet God continues to direct our step toward a pastorate in Maine. Whatever we may do, financial discipline now is great training.

So, future frugality is in many ways hard to pin down, but it is in some ways wrapped up in housing. Weve talked about where we might want to live once he graduates and have discussed ad nauseum housing options. He wants something a little more traditional than a yurt or tipi, but is still open-minded. Hes all for a small home as long as it doesnt mean we have to get rid of all of his stuff. Hes generally okay with me gradually putting more of his stuff into storage.

Authority

Finances are something Dan gave me general authority over when we first got married. We run our family kind of like a government, but with less paperwork. He is the President/Prime Minister and Secretary of Defense. I am the Chief of Staff, Minister of Finance, and Secretary of Agriculture. He lets me handle most of the financial decisions, but he holds the red veto pen.

You might want to check out my new comment policy .
Copyright Under $1000 Per Month, 2009-2010

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Good Sets for Parts 5

60017 Flatbed Truck, $19.99 for 212 pieces. Maroon and orange pieces, and considering how poorly priced the latest crop of City sets are, this is a godsend.

10662 Lego Creative Bucket, $29.99 for 606 pieces. A nice range of colors with a decent amount of SNOT and Technic bricks.

10657 My First Lego Set, $14.99 for 148 pieces. For a "first" set there are a fair amount of the fiddly bits that we love in here. You can even build on the box lid!

700000 Razcals Glider, $11.99 for 109 pieces. The price point might be a little off -- $0.11-- but there are a ton of little fiddly bits, and a new piece, that are great for building mechs with. If you can grab it on sale, do.

21013 Big Ben, $29.99 for 346 pieces. Heres a first, an Architecture set being recommended for parts. The secret? It has nine Travis bricks, three 1x1 w/2 Stud bricks, five "new headlight" bricks, and a ton of tan plates and bricks.

76004 Spider-Man: Spider-Cycle Chase, $19.99 for 237 pieces. Two new Technic pieces, Cheese Slopes, Travis bricks, some nice green pieces, some tan, and a PpP of $0.08 for a licensed set? Deal!

60018 Cement Mixer, $19.99 for 221 pieces. A large amount of hinges, clip plates, plates w/handles, brackets, and other fun bits make this another good city set.

70003 Eris Eagle Interceptor, $34.99 for 348 pieces. Right on the $0.10 Price per piece sweet spot, this one is a little larger than I generally recommend. There are a lot of great parts in neat colors, and it looks like a ship from the old Buck Rogers tv show. Sold!