Blog

  • The Sims 4 Not Starting: How to Fix

    The Sims 4 Not Starting: How to Fix

    I’m told The Sims 4 is a great game. I don’t play it myself, but my daughter has more hours on it than she’s probably spent doing homework. No, not probably. Definitely. And I’ve probably spent nearly as much time fixing the damn thing.

    You see, if you play The Sims 4 on PC or Mac, you can add third party content, known as “mods”, “scripts” or “custom content” (CC). This is (or rather should be – long story, but let’s just say it’s a heated debate in the Sims community) free and, let’s say, my daughter has a few of them (15,000 at the last count, each of them being a separate file. Urgh).

    EA doesn’t guarantee that their updates won’t break due to someone else’s mod, so often that’s exactly what happens. And you’re then left hunting the thing down.

    This week, though, no update occurred but, none-the-less, her game stopped working. Rather than something in the game break, the game itself just refused to load. I fixed it after about 2 hours of work and I have no idea even now what the cause was or, in fact, how I did fix it. None-the-less, I thought I’d share some useful resources and ideas on what others can do. Particularly stressed parents in the same situation.

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  • Using IPv6 with TP-Link routers and Zen Internet

    Using IPv6 with TP-Link routers and Zen Internet

    So, after quite a lot of time of trial and error, I’ve finally managed to get my TP-Link Deco routers working with an IPv6 connection to my ISP, Zen Internet.

    Zen’s instructions on it are vague, and really only tell you anything relevant for their own-provided router (although, even those instructions appear to have now gone from their site).

    I’m going to share what I did here, as it may help others, even if your configuration is not the same as mine (so, settings it up for Zen on another router, or setting up another ISP on a Deco router).

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  • Wireless CarPlay Adapter Options

    Wireless CarPlay Adapter Options

    Last year I reviewed a cheap Wireless CarPlay Adapter. It’s still going strong and in another car to what I started with.

    One of the lesser explored options is that you can access a web panel, via it’s own Wi-Fi signal, where you can find assorted settings and even a firmware update feature.

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  • WordPress plugin development: Solution to “Malformed tag detected” error

    WordPress plugin development: Solution to “Malformed tag detected” error

    Look, day-to-day, I do not use SVN. It’s not a tool of choice, so I make my life easier by using the excellent app Versions to manage my WordPress.org SVN access for my WordPress plugins. I drag and drop the changes and all is good.

    However, i recently started getting this message when trying to create my tags folder…

    Subversion error occurred

    Commit blocked by pre-commit hook (exit code 1) with output:

    Malformed tag detected, It looks like you’re creating a tag without a readme file present.

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  • Goodbye Launchpad: Improving the MacOS Tahoe Apps Panel

    Goodbye Launchpad: Improving the MacOS Tahoe Apps Panel

    With MacOS Tahoe, Launchpad has gone. In its place is an Apps panel that shows all your applications, in alphabetical order. No way of grouping. No way of moving apps around. If you’ve forgotten the name of an app, you’ll find yourself slowly scrolling the list until you find it (as I’ve had to do a number of times since installing Tahoe just a few days ago).

    Of all the changes made this, for me, is the biggest retrograde step. For anyone with Neurodiversities, there’ a good chance this new method if going to be a lot harder to use.

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