Saturday, February 15, 2003

The Tiger is Growling

The tiger is now growling at me from its cage... (due to the EffexorXR withdrawal).

posted by Wuphon's at 9:46 PM

EffexorXR +72 Hours

Doing okay so far, withdrawal pangs aren't too bad today - either they're getting better, or the few Tylenol I've taken so far today are taking the edge off of it. Right now, it feels like the tiger is pacing its cage at the moment, but it's not roaring at me yet.

posted by Wuphon's at 6:08 PM

Friday, February 14, 2003

EffexorXR

Zilch plus 33 hours since my last 75mg dose. I think I'm going to go ahead and push myself to not take a pill until Sunday night since it's almost the weekend (let the effects hit me on Saturday/Sunday when I don't have to get any work done... plus Monday is a holiday). If it works, that'll be a 5-day stretch between 75mg pills, which may be enough to break the cycle.

posted by Wuphon's at 6:06 AM

Thursday, February 13, 2003

Sony DRU-500A Coasters

Ha! Success! (Well, my first one that seems to be clean... so far). Burned a Verbatim DataLifePlus DVD-RW (v1.1 spec) as a DVD with about 1Gb of data and so far I'm not seeing any errors reading it back on the Sony DRU-500A drive (using CDCheck). Now, unlike last time, this time I set the drive for the slowest recording speed (1.0x? instead of 2.4x? forgot to look). Now to figure out whether I've got ahold of a thread to a fix for this problem or not.... (I'm still on firmware 1.0e - but slightly afraid that if I upgrade, Roxio's Easy CD Creator will stop recognizing the drive... I've heard rumors that this is the case and Roxio doesn't have a new patch yet for 1.0f or 1.0g.)

Bonus is that the DVD-RW platter was readable in my laptop's DVD drive without any errors.

Now I'm going to try a DVD+RW disc from Maxell (fushia colored packaging), but instead of recording at 2.4x like last time, I'll set it to 2.0x and see how it does (it was the only other option, no 1x option). Bleh - coaster. It bugs me that Roxio's software (doing a test and burn style) doesn't catch these errors during the validation post-burn.

(While trying to record a DVD-R, I saw the 8Mb buffer drop below 75%, even when recording at 1x speed... so it's possible that my main HD is too full and needs to be emptied and defragged some more.)

posted by Wuphon's at 9:22 PM

Strategy

One of my favorite phrases from the Miles Vorkosigan books:

The key to victory is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to victory. - L M Bujold

(source)

posted by Wuphon's at 10:48 AM

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

EffexorXR Cold-Turkey

BTW... when I quite smoking 5 or 6 years ago, I did that cold-turkey, using the nicotene gum only when I absolutely couldn't stand it and was about to go nutz on someone (I think I used 1/2 of the box... when the prescribed regimen is something like 3 or 4 boxes over 2 months). So yeah, I've been there done that with regards to cold-turkey.

That, of course, is not to say that it's a fun walk in the park... anything but that. (Which is why I'm getting my refill tomorrow - mostly as mental assurance, hopefully not to need to take the medicine.) And I still have a week or so supply of the sleeping pills (which I'm about to take soon - I only got 5 hours of sleep last night).

Again, the goal of this is to see whether I can function without the medications. If so, I'm good to go and off and running, if not, it's back to the doctors to re-evalulate and try another medication.

I don't expect to ever sink as low as I did last May. The big reason is that I no longer fear therapy. My biggest fear last spring was that they were going to lock me up in the padded cell and that I'd then have a mess of a time trying to explain to my co-workers where I had been for the last few days/weeks. However, I passed the initial screening questions (where my PCP checked for plans to do immediate harm to myself or others) and was allowed to go home, EffexorXR in hand. I was scared to death on that drive over to see my PCP - felt like an emotional pinata at the time. However, by the time I had to go see the pharmacologist and the therapist - it was more of a social anxiety fear (what if someone sees me walking into a mental health clinic, they're gonna think I'm nutz!). (chuckle) that last thought fits in with Dr. Burn's list where he defines 10 aspects of the cognitive disorder.

Back to the point - as I put it to my therapist - the idea of going for treatment is now a known quantity. I know what to expect, I know who the players are and what parts they play in my treatment. (Pity my therapist who had to defend her job to me in our first session as I was very skeptical about the efficiacy of mental therapy.) So the wall / barrier for me to obtain further treatment is much lower then it was. I now know how to get from being sick, to feeling better, instead of having to suffer the depression, feeling like there is no hope and that I'm not going to get better. (Granted, I hope that I can remember that with some clarity in the bottom of the next episode and not toss it aside as a "but if it worked, why am I depressed again".)

Where was I...?

Oh yes, in additon to knowing the path to treatment (I was in such a daze during the first go-round), I also have some flag conditions and self-tests that I can use to determine whether I'm well or sick. (The big test is the Burn's Depression Checklist - that 25 question survey that I scored something like an 85 on last May, which is really bad, and only a 10-15 when I took it again this past December.) When I'm well, I'm creative, bright, curious.

Curiosity - ah, that's what I missed the most this past year or two. To give you a concrete example, it took me 4 months of visits to the clinic before I noticed that there was a rather large rose bush in the large grass area off to the side of the entrance. Prior to that I had tunnel vision, unable to take in more then the minimum amount of environmental input. I constantly felt like I was being overwhelmed by the environment, too much going on for me to keep track of - I was doing all I could just to move from point to point during those initial doctor visits. That's one of the markers that I used to tell myself that I was truly getting better - when I started looking around and noticing details that I had missed before.

Bleh, lost another thought... maybe it'll surface tomorrow... oh wait, here it is rounding the bend again....

Remember that on my drive over to the PCP, I was concerned about what co-workers would think of me if they knew I was seeing a shrink? (Now there's a telling turn-of-phrase... using the word "shrink" is typically diminuative as opposed to saying the more neutral "therapist" or "doctor".) Again, it's another bit in cogntive therapy (mind-reading, labeling). Well, part of my healing was being brutally honest with my closest co-worker and then slowly working my way outward. My group knows what I was going through, why I took 4 weeks off last August, why I was sometimes not dependable last year. So I short-circuited the issue of feeling that I had to keep my visits to the mental health clinic a secret or risk people thinking bad things about me. Not sure if it was a conscous tactic or not - but I had to clue my business partner in about my condition so that he could adjust schedules and demands. From there (that was a difficult first step), I've gradually become more and more open about the fact that I suffered from depression-the-disease and that I was undergoing treatment. Heck, a quick glance back through the 2002 archives will show that pattern... I didn't even write about it here (where I use a pen-name) until a few months after I had started treatment.

Now I would have to say that I'm almost the opposite of shy when it comes to discussing the topic if it comes up. Which is a good thing, it means I've integrated the experience and it's now a part of who I am, whether the other person likes it or not (sticks out tongue). Ah, but the strategic value is probably the best - I've now "walked a mile in those shoes". I know more about the disease then I did before (and I read a lot about depression in high school) and I can see the footprints from my battles with it over the past 20 years (hind-sight is 20-20, ne?).... but having been on the inside, it's much easier to identify the markers in other people when I interact with them. Which lets me tailor my interaction to them (establish rapport).

Life hands you a joker... it's up to you to figure out how to play it (or when or in what situations).

posted by Wuphon's at 11:17 PM

EffexorXR and Me

Okay, most folks will want to just skip this one... it's a full train-of-thought note set, which means lots of random stuff and links while I'm trying to find information on EffexorXR side-effects and tapering.

Words I never really wanted to know... (some are potential side-effects of EffexorXR, others are possibly associated with serotonin syndrome. Mostly, I'm just trying to piece together the exact terminology for the side-effects (probably from EffexorXR) that I'm experiencing. The falling-asleep twitches are the most troublesome and the hardest to get a label for (so far). The other side-effects either never bothered me or were ones I can live with (even ones like nausea which I only had when I started the medication last June at 75mg/day).

myoclonus - A sudden twitching of muscles or parts of muscles, without any rhythm or pattern, occurring in various brain disorders.

hypomania - A mild state of mania, especially as a phase of a manic-depressive cycle.

Other stuff that I've found (lots of random links here to EffexorXR, etc.):

Serotonin Syndrome - Mon 30th Sep 2002 - Associate Professor Chris Alderman - quote: An excellent reference to "Serotonin States" in Therapeutic Guidelines Psychotropic 2000 lists the distinguishing features between SSRI discontinuation syndrome, adverse effects, depression symptoms and serotonin syndrome.

Other possible words to add to the search are limb, ticking (as one person described it). "Limb" is probably a good one.

Huge message base at Dr. Bob.org (Anyone had success on Effexor XR?) about EffexorXR, about three and a half years of messages. (This is also where I'm getting ideas for search terms, seeing what other folks have felt.)

I found that sudden lateral eye movements would accentuate the feelings - in a posting about the "withdrawal" feelings (the ringing in the brain sensation). Same thing that I'm experiencing, after a sudden eye movement, it's like someone turned the knobs up to 11 for an instant. brain whoosh - yeah, that sounds familiar, LOL. Ah, here we go, Intercostal tension (muscle pains in my chest muscles), another good term to search on.

At this point, I'm pretty much down to a 75mg tablet every other day (just took my last one). While the withdrawal symtoms are less then they were last week, I'm definitely going to get my refill tomorrow (giving me 90 more 75mg capsules) which will give me some breathing room. My next visit with the pharmacologist (heck, I think that's the term) is Tuesday, at which point we'll be able to discuss tapering in more detail (perhaps supplementing with another medication to complete the taper process).

Still trying to figure out what "brain shivers" are... oh and LONDON (Reuters) - Humans make an attractive meal for all lions and not, as had traditionally been believed, just old and infirm animals unable to catch faster-moving meals. (today's favorite news quote).

Oh wait, here we go Brain Shivers at the ol' standby about.com. laugh the best quote of the bunch so far:

but if you really want to know what it is like, spin around and around real fast for a minute or two, then stop and try to stand up. for added effect, taste a 9-volt battery or touch the chassis of an mproperly-grounded appliance as soon as you stop spinning.

A recommendation that EffexorXR not be a primary line of treatment. quote: This would tend to indicate, in our opinion, that venlafaxine should be considered as a second line antidepressant for resistant depression.

(shrug) I was started on the medication by my primary care physician, mostly as a stop-gap measure until I could get in and see the pharmacologist / care-coordinator (dunno what else to call him, he's the one that sets the dosage, provided me with sleeping pills for when I had insomnia and setup the initial appointment with the therapist). IIRC, he chose to keep me on EffexorXR since I had already pretty much acclimated to the 75mg/day dosage (it was 2-3 weeks after I saw my PCP until I could get my first appointment with him). At that point in time, I was definitely not up to making good decisions so I deferred to his expertise (cold-blooded says that it's what I'm paying him for, ne?). He bumped me up to 150 mg/day and then we upped the dosage to 225 mg/day (I think in Sep/Oct/Nov).

One person said that their withdrawal symtoms got better after 6 days cold-turkey, although that was with lots of fluids and exercise (one of the articles that I saw mentioned IV as a treatment - which is essential fluids for when your system won't/can't take fluids in AFAIK). More things to talk about with the pharmacologist on Tuesday.

ICFDA Survivor Story - "My Journey Through the Effexor Nightmare
" - Physically I am dizzy, have blurred vision, brain zaps, electrical shocks in all parts of my body, extremely tired, nauseous, gastro, and night sweats. - long article... gonna link to a bunch more in case I don't stay awake long enough to read all of these (here's the link to the ICFDA index). btw, ICFDA is "The International Coalition for Drug Awareness" - their slant is to keep track of and publicize adverse reactions in medications that have been introduced in the recent past. (BTW, even though I'm linking to this stuff doesn't mean that I'm 100% convinced of the bona-fides of the various authors, the truth of the stories that they tell, so read everything with the mind of a skeptic).

Effexor Withdrawal Syndrome Hell

As you can see, when I do web searches, it's a very scattered process. From all of this information, I begin to discern patterns in the deluge - common themes, what seems out of place, or out of whack, or doesn't fit the curve. I try not to sieze on the first article that fits my pre-concieved ideas (or that feels like it fits the situation). Instead, I file it mentally under "feels like truth" category and press on. The goal is to hit as many discrete information sources as possible, looking for the "spin" that each one puts on the issue. (Some are going to be pro-EffexorXR, others anti-EffexorXR, some will be neutral, others will use scare tactics or power-selling tactics.) The more "spin" that I detect from an informational source, the less likely it is to be true or close to reality (meaning a balanced view of the pro's and con's).

Now, I do all of that informational sorting in my head (on a good day) - it's how I learn about things (reading voraciously, as many articles even remotely touching on a subject as possible within a few hour timespan). The big benefit of going for a large dose of informational input like this is that even though I can't conciously remember it all - I may remember in a few months or years from now that I saw an article about an idea (which gives me a jump start on researching). Okay, that's a bad explanation (it's late and I'm tired) - but for those who have ever wondered how I can pull information, solutions, concepts, etc. seemingly "out of the hat" - it's because of this method.

The key to learning in a web of information is not to focus solely on your goal (meaning don't just read articles that are specific to the information that you want), but instead learn to wander as you search. The second key is to not read everything - I know, sounds backwards but it works. Try to skim the source material, reading only the first sentence of each paragraph unless that sentence pulls you in. (Well written paragraphs start off with a summary statement or clue about what information the paragraph contains.) If it looks like you'll need to read the full article, bookmark it or print it and keep searching for more articles. Which brings me to the third key - don't let yourself get bogged down during the search for sources. That's pretty much how you do information triage - don't focus on comprehension during the search, pull it in and sort it out later.

Ah, another search term wildly violent hypnologic jerks as I was falling asleep. hypnologic - well, dictionary.com came up with a blank on the term - but it's related to hypnosis, sometimes refered as the "hypnologic state" which is halfway between awake and asleep. Actually, I think that search term is going to be a wild herring - most of the articles that I'm hitting have to do with "hypnologic halluciantions" (hmmm... time to try google). Well, that's not much better, although only 73 results to search through, although none of which seem to indicate that hyponologic is a medical term. (chuckle) The author was only taking 75mg/day? (chuckle) Try 225mg/day and miss a dosage (I went 2 or 3 days over Thanksgiving weekend by procrastinating running to the store to pick up my refil) -- at least from that goof I knew what was coming down the pike for now (as I try to taper off).

Hmmm, this statement ... and when the savage withdrawal symptoms appeared, I knew the drug was evil and I had to get off of it immediately. strikes me as un-truth (for those who have read the book Dune, you'll have some idea of what a truth-teller is, while a work of fiction, there is a grain of reality in the idea that some people can sense truth). Drugs aren't evil (hyperbole) just because they have nasty side-effects or you undergo withdrawal symptoms when you miss a dosage. (sigh) Just because something is difficult, doesn't make it bad / wrong /etc. Yes, I want off the EffexorXR now that the cure is worse then the cause (I've recovered enough from my disease that I feel the desire / want to try and do without the medication) - but, had I not taken the medication (or undergone psychotherapy, or allowed time to work its magic, or whatever - there was no single cure to the episode), I would probably not be here today. Drugs are a tool - evil resides in the hand that wields the tool.

Ah, here's another good quote It was helpful to know that others had experienced what I was going through and found it thoroughly UNACCEPTABLE! . (rummages for my copy of Feeling Good - I swear I'm seeing one of the patterns in the book here in this writing.) Oh, the injustice of it all, that the medical establishment would dare to prescribe a drug that is addictive. Now if you want to make the case that doctors are prescribing EffexorXR based on the drug manufacturer's sales material, you may have a good argument. But to say that it's unacceptable in this context indicates to me a blind rage, an inability to see more then one side of an issue (thus blinding yourself - and perhaps resulting in believing in the wrong thing). Well, there's more to the article - I'm not going to say that I find truth in 100% of what she wrote about - but it is her experiences, the experience was real even if I don't agree with her conclusions about some of the causes of those experiences.

posted by Wuphon's at 9:24 PM

SC4 Power Plant Decay Rates

(copy of what I posted on the Maxis' BBS)

Well, I did some testing and it's interesting - sometimes a power plant (only tested coal-gas-oil) lasted for 70 years before hitting the 50% efficiency level, the second time I ran the series it only lasted ~45 years before hitting 50% efficiency. I'm going to say that it's related to the overall percent usage of the power system - because all of the gas-coal-oil power plants decayed at exactly the same rate (in fact all 6 blew up at the same instant when they wore out halfway through year 54). Higher utilization levels results in power plants wearing out faster.
Efficiency also impacts the monthly cost that you're paying for the power plant. A plant at 50% efficiency costs an extra 50% to maintain, which means the cost per MWh is 300% more then a brand new power plant.

Here are the decay values for a coal power plant where the percent utilization of all plants was always greater then 95% (selling off the excess power to the neighboring cities).

year $/mo $/MWh MWhCapacity PercentEfficiency
+00 $250 $0.0417 6000 100%
+10 $253 $0.0431 5868 97%
+20 $256 $0.0447 5729 95%
+30 $271 $0.0509 5326 88%
+40 $320 $0.0760 4213 70%
+45 $375 $0.1203 3118 51%
+50 $518 $0.3124 1658 27%
+51 $573 $0.4569 1254 20%
+52 $616 $0.6505 947 15%
+53 $664 $1.1160 595 9%
+54 $719 $3.7254 193 3%

In my test city, I went from making +$3k per month to losing $3k per month within a 10 year span as the (6) test power plants (2 each of coal-gas-oil) hit the end of their lifecycle. So there is a serious cost impact once you let your power plants get below ~75% efficiency (that gets exponentially worse).

On a side note - Wind Power plants seem to last a lot longer then coal-gas-oil plants, so their intial $/MWh of $0.20 may not be as high as it seems (Coal plants start at $0.04/MWh.) I'm not sure if Wind Power plants ever wear out (have not tested this yet).

If you replace your power plants at year 40 (70% utilization), using the above decay rate, here are approximate costs per MWh for coal-gas-oil (anyone have the proper calculations for this? these are back-of-envelope figures and are probably 5% high):

Coal - $10k to build
produces 211,360 MWh over 40 years
maint costs are $11k over 40 years
($10,000 + $11,000) / 211,360 = $0.0994 $/MWh

Gas - $9k to build
produces 106,000 MWh over 40 years
maint costs are $17,600 over 40 years
($17,600 + $9,000) / 106,000 = $0.2509 $/MWh

Oil - $17k to build
produces 246,590 MWh over 40 years
maint costs are $26,420 over 40 years
($26,420 + $17,000) / 246,590 = $0.1761 $/MWh

Summary:

Coal still seems like a very cheap power source... If you're going be selling your excess power, make sure you're getting at least $0.10/MWh if you want to make money doing the deal (most deals I've had are $0.10 to $0.14 for selling power to a neighbor).

posted by Wuphon's at 5:56 PM

SC4 Utilities Lifespan (Test 2)

Interesting, I ran the tests again.... and this time my power plants (gas, coal, oil) hit the 50% mark around +45 years instead of +70 years. Now, this time around, I fully utilized the power plants from the beginning, which may have contributed to their wear and tear values. That, or the pollution levels were higher, or something else. But I'm seeing a difference of 25 years in the lifespan of these plants, so there's definitely something else affecting the equations. (The particulars though for a given efficiency value were identical - a coal plant at 50% costs $375 and only outputs 3000MWh, regardless of the age of the plant.)

posted by Wuphon's at 5:06 PM

Stupid News

Or rather, why today's "Breaking News" e-mail alert was a waste of bandwidth. Here's the body of the e-mail alert from CNN:

North Korea has untested ballistic missile capable of reaching the U.S. West Coast, CIA director George Tenet says.

Okay... so that means I should do what at this very hour? Um, nothing different then I've been doing for the past week. It doesn't matter if I receive information like that this very hour, or if I learn about it 3 days from now. It's a nebulous threat about something bad that might happen on some uknown date in the future - therefore it doesn't qualify as "breaking news" in my book. Breaking news worth of an e-mail alert is stuff like North Korea launched an ICBM aimed at the U.S. West Coast.

... then there are news stories which fail to ask the critical questions, or answer the "impact" question.

posted by Wuphon's at 4:26 PM

SC4 Utility Lifespans

Testing out how long power plants and water facilites last. So far power plants (coal, gas, oil) start showing 90% effectiveness around 50 years after being built (although Wind Power plants were only at 95% after 50 years) Water facilties were only down to 97% at 50 years. Waste to Energy plant was down to 92% after only 30 years (86% after 40 years).

60 years in, and the 3 basic power plants are all at 78-79% condition (a drop of 11-12% in only 10 years). Wind power plant is still at 91% condition, Water plants are at 95% condition. Around year 65 and you'll start getting messages about "Power Plant No Spring Chicken". Worse, is the fact that your costs per month to maintain the facility go up as the efficiency (condition) gets worse.

70 years - oil/gas/coal are all at 50% condition (meaning they only generate half of what they're supposed to), but costs per month have risen to $908 (oil, 3562MWh, $0.26), $605 (gas, 1528MWh, $0.40), $378 (coal, 3054MWh, $0.12). Looks like the condition drops at an exponential rate the older the plant gets (year 50-60 they lost 11-12% efficiency, year 60-70 they lost 28-29%). Wind power plant is at 83% still ($56/mo, 166MWh, $0.34). Waste to Energy is at 68% (but is only 50 years old) with monthly cost of $1296 to produce 1157MWh ($1.12). Water plants are at 95% condition still with standard monthly costs of $350 (water pump, 19066 cu m, $0.02), and $50 (water tower, 2316 cu m, $0.02).

Things of course, get worse and worse as it goes along (see my SimCity 4 Power Plants page for the rest of the tables).

75 years - coal/oil/gas down to 39% efficiency. Wind Power plant is holding at 80% ($58/mo for 161MWh). Water plants are at 95% still (but usage is only 25%, which may mean that they wear out slower.... maybe there's a calculation that says a facility can only produce quantity X before it degrades?). The Waste to Energy plant (which is only 55 years old) is $1403/mo for 1085MWh.

80 years - at this point, the advisors are screaming about the power plants getting ready to go boom. Coal/gas/oil are down to 17% efficiency. Wind Power is down to 75% ($61 for 151MWh). Waste to Energy (only 60 years old) is at 46% ($1561 for 830MWh). Water facilities same as they were at +75 (95%). Good chance that there's a different rule set for water plants.

84 years 11 months - boom. Well, one of the coal/oil/gas plants exploded and took the other 2 with it (I had all 3 types of plants sitting next to each other). The destruction radius was limited to only 1-5 blocks around the plant (took out the federal jail, caught a few surrounding buildings on fire). Waste to Energy plant is now down to 34% efficiency ($1872/mo for 593MWh).

I'll have to set this test up again in another zone (or start over in this one).

posted by Wuphon's at 1:57 PM

SC4 Neighbor Deals

Taking a closer look at the cost of doing business with the neighboring cities (just like I did with looking at Kirkenes' neighbor deals). This time, I'm gonna do a quick survey of some sell-side deals (which bring in income to a city).

North Bend
Power/South Bend - 6012 @ $611 ($0.102)
Water/South Bend - 20664 @ $762 ($0.037)
Water/Eaton Gorge - 20555 @ $721 ($0.035)

Montessa
Power/Greenleaf - 1000 @ $142 ($0.142)
Power/Faven - 1000 @ $140 ($0.140)

Blye
Power/Scelle - 3000 @ $335 ($0.112)
Power/Patrilii - 6000 @ $671 ($0.112)
Power/Oyster Bay - 21888 @ $2491 ($0.114)
Garbage/Weestview - 452 @ $1159 ($2.564)
Garbage/Scelle - 379 @ $1092 ($2.881)
Garbage/Patrilii - 268 @ $781 ($2.914)
Garbage/Oyster Bay - 799 @ $2323 ($2.907)

Scelle
Water/Oyster Bay - 63750 @ $1764 ($0.028)
Water/Patrilii - 120492 @ $2957 ($0.024)
Water/Blye - 49080 @ $1184 ($0.024)

Hmmm, I confess I don't see the pattern yet as to why some deals are worth more per unit then others... (too small of a sample set so far, and I don't know what the key elements in the equation are yet).

posted by Wuphon's at 12:51 PM

SC4 Fractal Regions

From the Maxis BBS:

Author: Region1
Date: Feb-11-03 10:43 AM PST
Subject: Re: Just bought SC4 - no random terrain?

I sure miss the days when EA was still going by EOA. Lords of Conquest! Racing Destruction Set! The games were pretty simple but they were usually *great*! :sigh: Now we get games that more often than not require a patch in order to work properly.
Anyway, I've started using Fractint (available from http://spanky.triumf.ca/http://www/fractint/getting.html ) to create random regions. Here's how:

*Open Fractint.
*Change fractal type to Plasma.
*Optional: change color map to a monocrhome one. The grey map works best.
*Save your fractal.
*Open your favorite photo editor.
*Load the fractal you just saved.
*Resize picture to 1025 1025, which is the default region size.
*Change image mode to Greyscale if you didn't load the grey map (see above). Black areas will be water and white areas will be mountains.
*Optional: darken picture.
*Save picture as BMP.
*Optional: close both Fractint and your photo editor so SC4 will run smoother.
*Open SC4.
*Start new region.
*Press alt-control-shift-r to load your greyscale fractal bitmap. SC4 will tell you if your bitmap is the wrong size. If so, you'll need your photo editor again to set it to the correct size.
*Wait for the new information to be processed.

posted by Wuphon's at 9:29 AM

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

SC4 Buying and Selling

Just jotting some notes and prices down, to see if I can figure out how neighbor deals are calculated. Numbers in parents are cost per unit purchased or sold.

Kirkenes has the following income deals:

Bayview - Water - 1000/mo @ $30 ($0.030)
Westview - Water - 165976/mo @ $5113 ($0.031)
Jenza - Water - 35737/mo @ $1107 ($0.031)

and the following expense deals:

Jenza - Power - 33255/mo @ $3754 ($0.113)
Jenza - Garbage - 774/mo @ $2114 ($2.731)

Now, production of water costs me - $0.021 from a water tower or $0.0175 from a water pump - so to sell water is very profitable.

posted by Wuphon's at 11:33 PM

Super Server

LOL, okay, so I have expensive tastes... I priced out a Dell PowerEdge 1600SC server to replace one of my home servers.

dual-Xeon 2.4Ghz CPUs
1Gb DDR SDRAM (2x512Mb)
(4) 73Gb 10kRPM Ultra320 68pin SCSI HDs
RAID-5 controller (~210Gb storage)
$6200

Hmmm, I think that would be over-kill for what I need, ne? I only upgrade my home servers about once every 3-4 years, and the poor K6-2 450Mhz system is really struggling to stay in the race anymore. A cheaper option is of course to home-brew one (plus I get to re-use parts that I already have):

$500 dual-Xeon 2.4Ghz CPUs
$500 motherboard (SuperMicro X5DAE)
$300 1Gb ECC DDR266 (2x512Mb)
$200 Promise FastTrak SX4000 RAID5 ATA/100
$400 (4) 80Gb IBM DeskStar 120GXP ATA/100
$500 misc parts
--------
$2400 + software for a 240Gb server, and I possibly can shave some of the costs, although it's pretty much all rock bottom at the moment.

posted by Wuphon's at 8:36 AM

SC4 832k Population

Broke the 800k population mark last night in my Wuphons Reach region. Montessa was the heavy hitter last night, growing to 70k population. Demand is still through the roof, so I suspect I'll be able to grow it to 100k easily (lots of space left on the 4x4 km tile). Kebsun, a new city that I started this weekend grew obnoxiously fast - it's a trashily (hastily) designed city that already has 50k population (not bad for a 2x2km tile).

posted by Wuphon's at 7:40 AM

Monday, February 10, 2003

System Performance

So I'm currently drooling / dreaming about upgrading my slower game system and looking at the performance numbers that I got vs what's folks have posted at PCMark2002's online database. At the moment, it looks like the following are average, top-of-the-line (but not over-clocked) scores:

CPU: ~6000 MEM: ~4500 HDD: ~600-900

Looking at my scores:

AthlonXP 1800+
512Mb PC2100 DDR
mirrored 7200rpm IBM DeskStar ATA/100 HDs
CPU: 4500 MEM: 3000 HDD: 550

Athlon 1Ghz
768Mb PC133
mirrored 7200rpm IBM DeskStar ATA/100 HDs
CPU: 2500 MEM: 2000 HDD: 575

So, upgrading the Athlon 1Ghz system would see a significant performance boost (easily doubled), but the AthlonXP 1800+ system would only be a marginal upgrade (33 percent or so). Decisions, decisions...

posted by Wuphon's at 3:52 PM

DVD Coasters

Two coasters so far while attempting to record with Verbatim DataLifePlus DVD-R 2x media... at this point I'm not sure if it's the media, bad luck, the DVD recorder, the firmware, or what. At least, they seem to be coasters because they won't read on the other 2 DVD drives that I have. I've not had any problems using DirectCD and DVD+RW platters so far, so my next trick is to record a DVD+RW as a regular DVD and see if I can read it on my other 2 systems.

Update: Hmm, writing to the DVD+RW using Roxio's CD Creator software produced a coaster as well (lots and lots and lots of CRC32 errors and corrupted/invalid directories... only 2.9Gb of the 3.94Gb was readable).

posted by Wuphon's at 8:20 AM

SC4 Item Impact

Enjoy... still missing data for the Rotes Rathaus landmark (not listed here). I took the (areacovered x effectvalue) / (costpermonth) to get a score that indicates how effecient a particular building is at raising demand of the surrounding area. Anything in bold in the following list calculated out at the top of the scores. (Some items were only rated based on their total power = areacovered x effectvalue, since I haven't gone through and plugged all of the monthly costs in yet.) I'll try to finish up this list in the next few weeks.

FacilityName,Type,CommEffect,CommRadius,ResEffect,ResRadius
Advanced Research Center,RWD,50,22,-50,22
Alamo,LM,40,20,0,0
Alcatraz,LM,10,24,0,0
Amalienborg,LM,30,18,0,0
Army Base,RWD,25,9,-90,30
Bank of America,LM,80,28,0,0
Bank of China Tower,LM,100,48,0,0
Basketball Court,PARK,0,0,30,30
Beach,PARK,50,10,80,10
Big Ben,LM,40,20,0,0
Branch Library,EDU,,,,
Bureau of Bureaucracy,RWD,25,17,-50,22
CN Tower,LM,80,28,0,0
California Plaza,LM,30,18,0,0
Casino,RWD,50,22,-65,25
Cemeteries,RWD,0,0,40,20
Chrysler Building,LM,100,48,0,0
City Hall,RWD,50,22,0,0
City Zoo,RWD,50,14,25,17
Coit Tower,LM,30,18,0,0
Colossal Mayors Statue,RWD,100,48,100,48
Community Garden,PARK,0,0,40,35
Convention Center,RWD,100,32,-50,22
Country Club,RWD,0,0,75,27
Courthouse,RWD,70,26,0,0
Disease Research Lab,RWD,40,20,0,0
Empire State Building,LM,100,48,0,0
Faneuil Hall,LM,20,16,0,0
Farmer's Market,RWD,50,22,75,27
Federal Prison,RWD,-70,26,-90,30
Fernsehturn,LM,50,22,0,0
Gateway Arch,LM,50,22,0,0
Gazebo,PARK,20,10,40,40
Great Pyramid,LM,70,26,0,0
Guggenheim Museum,LM,70,26,0,0
Hagia Sofia,LM,40,20,0,0
Hollywood Sign,LM,20,16,0,0
House of Worship,RWD,0,0,80,28
Impressive Mayors Statue,RWD,50,14,50,22
Independance Hall,LM,30,18,0,0
Jefferson Memorial,LM,50,22,0,0
John Hancock Center,LM,90,30,0,0
Landfill,ZONE,-100,32,-100,32
Large Flower Garden,PARK,35,10,85,45
Large Park Green,PARK,30,15,75,45
Large Plaza,PARK,80,15,35,30
Lincoln Memorial,LM,50,22,0,0
Living Mall,LM,80,20,0,0
Magnificent Mayor's Statue,RWD,75,27,75,27
Main Library,RWD,50,22,50,22
Major Art Museum,RWD,70,26,50,22
Major League Stadium,RWD,75,27,-50,20
Mayor's House,RWD,100,48,100,48
Mayor's Statue,RWD,25,17,25,17
Medium Flower Garden,PARK,20,10,70,30
Medium Park Green,PARK,20,15,60,30
Medium Playground,PARK,0,0,75,25
Medium Plaza,PARK,60,15,25,25
Minor League Stadium,RWD,50,22,-20,16
Missle Range,RWD,-50,22,-100,48
Movie Studio,RWD,50,14,0,0
Open Grass Area,PARK,20,10,30,15
Open Paved Area,PARK,30,10,10,10
Opera House,RWD,50,22,0,0
Palace of Fine Arts,LM,30,18,0,0
Palacio Real,LM,30,18,0,0
Playground,PARK,0,0,60,15
Private School,RWD,0,0,60,24
Radio Station,RWD,25,17,0,0
Ranger Station,PARK,0,0,20,80
Resort Hotel,RWD,25,17,0,0
Rotes Rathaus,RWD,30,18,0,0
Skateboard Park,PARK,0,0,30,60
Small Flower Garden,PARK,20,10,60,15
Small Park Green,PARK,30,15,50,15
Small Plaza,PARK,50,15,25,15
Smith Tower,LM,40,20,0,0
Soccer Field,PARK,20,5,30,50
Softball Field,PARK,20,5,30,50
Sphinx,LM,20,16,0,0
St. Basil's,LM,60,24,0,0
State Fair,RWD,50,14,-25,17
Statue of Liberty,LM,60,24,0,0
Stock Exchange,RWD,70,26,0,0
Taj Mahal,LM,60,24,0,0
Televison Studio,RWD,50,22,-25,17
Tennis Court,PARK,0,0,30,30
Tokyo Tower,LM,80,28,0,0
Tourist Trap,RWD,50,36,-25,17
Tower of London,LM,30,18,0,0
Toxic Waste Dump,RWD,-60,24,-100,48
U.S. Capital Building,LM,80,28,0,0
University,RWD,50,22,50,22
Washington Monument,LM,40,20,0,0
White House,LM,40,20,0,0

posted by Wuphon's at 1:55 AM

Sunday, February 09, 2003

Northeast Ho

On a somewhat happier note, my cousin (and her family) who lives in North Carolina at the moment are planning on moving back to the Northeast US to be closer to their relatives. That is, if he can find a job up in this part of the country... (at least he's not out of work, so there's no urgency to the job search).

posted by Wuphon's at 11:22 PM

SC4 (More Cheats)

Have to dig and find out if these are valid cheat codes or not for SC4...

effect
barstuck
watchmemove
rp
flora
renderprop

posted by Wuphon's at 10:59 PM

Bye Bye EffexorXR

I'll be very happy when I'm tapered off of the EffexorXR, the side-effects are driving me nutz. Basically, I've gotten well enough for the past 2 months that my last visit to the therapist resulted in the decision that I've undergone enough treatment/meds and that I'm ready to try doing without. (I feel good, I'm content, I have goals and plans - and I have my mental checklists to determine whether I'm doing okay or if I would need to restart treatment.) You can look at that decision as one that is a result of my choosing to "take back control" of the healing process (for the majority of the 8 months, I was very much just following doctor's orders). The funny thing about the disease is that choosing to take back control like that, to say, "hey, I don't want to be taking more medicines, I want to be taking less" is in itself a sign of recovery. (The pharmacologist was getting ready to put me on lithium to attempt to correct what he perceives to be a minor case of bi-polar disorder. At the time of the visit I was okay with the idea, but within a few days I had re-thought the strategic direction that I wanted to go with my therapy.)

So, at the moment, I'm attempting to fast-taper off of the EffexorXR, going from 225mg per day down to zero in a bit under 2 weeks. I've only taken 75mg/day now for the past 3 days (previously I was taking 150mg/day for about a week) and I have 2 pills left. While not as intense as they were a week ago, I'm still having withdrawal in the evenings (I normally take my meds at 9pm). Hopefully, 2 more days of 75mg/day and I'll be through the worst of that as well. If not, I still have one more refill left of (90) 75mg capsules which would let me stretch out the tapering time a bit more.

Oh, and the side-effect that bugs the heck out of me? Those darned falling-asleep twitches when my body attempts to put the muscles into a relaxed state. Basically, it's drift off, twitch (amplified into a full-body or full-limb twitch) awake, drift off, twitch awake, drift off, twitch awake. In certain positions or conditions I can even get into a cycling twitching where it's less then a second between. All of this would be rather scary, except that i can exert conscious control over it (stopping it, sometimes I'm even able to "excite" the phenomena) - which is dandy that I can, except that I'm trying to pass off control to my sub-conscious so that I can sleep! Fortunately, I still have 10 or 20 of the prescription sleeping pills to get me through rough nights when my mind gets worked up over the twitching and I end up staring at the ceiling. (I try not to get upset... but some nights it's just darn annoying, especially if I know I need to get up early the next day). Of course, the downside to the sleeping pills is that I'm a zombie for 8-12 hours (even if I get up at the 8 hour mark).

posted by Wuphon's at 9:55 PM

Website Peeves

Nothing bugs me more still then a poorly designed website... just because folks have 1024x768 (or 1280x1024 or 1440x1050, or 1600x1200 -- yes, I run at all of those resolutions on various systems)... doesn't mean that we like to browse with the IE/Netscape window maximized. (In fact, I would say my web browser is currently sized at about 900x600 on the laptop.) Some of us like to see more then one thing on the screen at a time. So sites that ask / require me to size my browser window much more then 900pix wide come across as user-hostile.

The big downfalls that I've seen in website designs are:

- sites that require browser width to something more then 1000 pixels wide (anything more then 800 is pushing it, and text areas should normally be < 600pix wide so that the eye can follow and track normally sized text... and that's real rough rule of thumb).

- sites that specify point sizes on fonts (ever seen 6pt type on a 1600x1200 resolution 19" screen?) stick to "medium" "x-small", "xx-small", etc... in your style sheets -- this lets those who need text larger/smaller to use the View->Text Size menu command in IEv6.

- designs that don't "flex" when then user changes the size of the browser window. Leave expansion space in the horizontal plane so that the site still looks reasonable at 600pix wide or 1200pix wide. Personally, I shoot for 800-900pix wide, but try to keep it so it scales down to 600-700pix wide without mangling itself too badly.

- sites that require javascript be turned on in order to display properly... or permanent cookies... the only sites that I allow those privleges are those that I'm going to purchase something from

Not saying I haven't broken any/all of those rules on websites that I've been involved with... (this site's CSS file is still a work in progress).

posted by Wuphon's at 9:42 PM

USB Hard Drive Performance

I did some testing using PCMark2002 on my laptop's hard drive, the USB 1.1 hard drive hooked up to the laptop, the hard drive in my video editing machine, and a USB 2.0 hard drive hooked up to my video editing machine. The USB 1.1 hard drive was dirt-slow as I expected, but the USB 2.0 hard drive was almost as fast as the hard drive in my Toshiba Tecra 9200. On my video editing machine, I'm using a mirrored ATA/100 drive set (using the Promise FastTrak100 PCI card).

USB 1.1 HD: 29
0.9MB/s read 0.9MB/s write

USB 2.0 HD: 214
3.3-3.7MB/s write 11.3-11.7 MB/s read

Toshiba Tecra 9200 HD: 249
6.8-8.0MB/s write 7.9-12.2MB/s read

Mirrored 7200rpm HD: 546
9.0-10.5 MB/s write 17.0-32.4 MB/s read

posted by Wuphon's at 1:07 PM

SC4 700k Population

My region now has 700k+ population. I've only gotten (3) of the cities above 100k so far, most of the others are stuck at mid-30k (or lower).

On a side note, I installed the Feb 3rd patch, and I'm really not seeing any more skyscrapers then I had before in Oyster Bay. Maybe my region isn't big enough yet, or 100k population is still too small.

posted by Wuphon's at 12:50 PM

Data Security 3

Well, I've reconsidered the idea of placing a PGP or SecureDisk container file on the DVD+RW platter. The problem with the concept is that the DVD+RW media can only be re-written ~1000 times, after which Windows will see that the file contains a bad sector and will toss the entire file. Which, of course, means that you'd lose the entire container file (ick!).

So, DVD+RW media is more targeted at lots of small files that don't change often (e.g. collections of stuff that you're going to sort out later), or for backups of large files (such as the container files). Keep your container files on the hard-drive, and just make sure that you copy them to the DVD+RW platter occasionally. (Doing it this way, you should use the DVD+RW media as a DVD-R media and create a standard DVD that can be read on other PCs. At least you'll be able to cycle 2 or 3 platters to get child, parent, grandparent backups - without getting stuck with a stack of DVD-Rs that contain out-dated information.

posted by Wuphon's at 12:47 PM