Farm Simulator 19 – Waiting for Seasons

Farm Simulator 19 appears to be getting more stable now and I am running a couple of maps in “From Scratch” mode, Glen Isla and Mercury Farms. Now I feel comfortable the basics of the game I am really missing the Seasons Mod.

There are a couple of mods I am using to modify the game play, Growthcontrol which allows me to extend the growth phases of crops and Finer Timescale Adjustment which gives a time setting of zero, not quite pause but the clock is running very slowly.

By using these I can increase the difficulty/manage the time better but it is a long way from the proper environment created by Seasons in Farm Simulator 17, that is really the icing on the cake for Farm Simulator.

Let’s hope the FS19 implementation of Seasons is coming soon

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Farewell to Warcraft

After having played Warcraft since the beginning I have finally stopped.

It was an interesting time but in the last few months I have found it less and less interesting and really have not played in earnest for over six months.

Now I am returning to my original passion of Simulation Games. Starting with flight simulator and ending with MS Train Simulator. While creating the Glasgow Carlisle route for MSTS, simulations stopped being fun and became a chore.

Currently Farming Simulator is taking my time. The base game is somewhat arcade style but mods currently being developed such as Seasons will make this a challenging and absorbing game.

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Two weeks using a Chromebook

For some time I have been considering a Chromebook.

So a couple of weeks ago I took the plunge with a Lenovo N22 at around £100. At a price point less than many android tablets it seemed good time to try it out.

The intention was to use it for my personal use, not as a business tool and the comments below are based on that intent.

First Impressions

First impression out of the box was that it was smaller and lighter than my current laptop, not too surprising as I was going from a 17 inch screen to 11.6. The next major difference is the keyboard, no function keys and no caps lock key!  The function keys are replaced by browser controls, brightness and volume controls, caps lock is a combination of alt + search key.

On startup it was a straightforward process to set up the wireless connection and Google account.

After the initial setup the Chrome browser had synched and was ready to go,

Not surprisingly the majority of my day to day activities were now up an running with no fuss, gmail, Google docs, Office365, Evernote web.

First priority was setting up access to Dropbox. So the first app installed was File System for Dropbox which mounts your dropbox files as a file system in the Chromebook file manager.

Useful applications

Secure Shell :- Terminal Emulator and SSH client.  Still in Beta but works for what I need which is connecting to Raspberry Pi.

Teamviewer :- Limited to outgoing connections only but still useful to connect to a variety of other systems such as laptop running Linux, Desktop on Windows 10 and the Raspberry Pi.

Anyfile Notepad :- Similar to Notepad++ with syntax highlighting.

Working offline 

To be honest I have not had a lot of need to work offline but I have enabled offline working for gmail and Google docs which works well, I have also installed Google Keep which can be useful for taking notes offline.

Biggest plus

The chromebook is portable, light, plenty fast enough and, for me, a better option than a tablet.

Biggest downside

Not a show stopper but the lack of Java has sent me looking for alternatives to some old favourite applications.  So far this has been successful and I don’t foresee any big issues in the future.

Overall impression

I am a convert to chromebook, experience, to date, has been positive.  Would I discard my laptop and desktop?  In a word no.  They all serve a purpose for me but the chromebook is the one that, for the moment, will be my companion most of the time.

 

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Kubuntu 16.04

The latest long term support release for Kubuntu, 16.04, is due for release 21st April.

I am planning on a clean install as I have so much stuff installed on my current image that I have been trying out or just playing with.

This seems like the ideal time for some serious housekeeping.

Data is backed up and backup tested so good to go when the OS is released.

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