In general, my biggest flaw when staring anything (sims ‘hoods, writing project etc.) is either that I a) have too many plans that I want to work on all at once or b) that I don’t have detailed enough plans for the things I AM doing.

I am trying to keep myself at bay this time, but it’s easy to see a farm at MTS2 and go “oooh, I really want to start with farmers”, you know?

Thing is; I already have my families planned out, heck, I’ve created all of them and they’re in the family bin! All eight of them! (families that is, not sims) And I won’t go adding people until I’ve gotten these guys settled (and moved in) because my “to-do” list will just grow, and grow and grow! And I’ll never get anywhere.

I’ll be posting quick intros (family picture, name, ages, quick backstory maybe (if I have any)) now and then as I move people in and build things, I’ll also post neighbourhood shots for that matter, but only as I actually have houses down etc.

Until then however, my farmers, my working class, my lower classes and my poor will have to wait. Why? Because I usually start going from the bottom to the top, this time I’m going from the middle. Sure, some of these guys are lower middle class or lower class even, but there’s aristocrats, nouveau rich families and several middle class families.

This doesn’t mean that I’m a) ignoring the working man or b) being unrealistic. It just means I wanted to have these kind of families in the ‘hood before I began playing. From here on (except if a ROS happens) anyone else (townies, npcs etc) will be lower-middle class or lower. This also goes for townies that fall in love and so forth.

I just know that if I HAD to start with say, 3-5 working families and almost no middle class families I’d go nuts. I like my middle class, they’re comfortable enough to do things, but not so comfortable that they can afford to sit still for too long.

This (somehow) also reminds me that I do need to create some ROS scenarios regarding aristocrats and their wealth, after all in the 19th century these families (if not all, several conservative families at least) were losing money and finding themselves with money issue as industry grew. Which in turn moved several new families up the ranks and established the middle class, lower-middle class and the working class further.

The second thing (which I’m not quite sure how to do) is to add a few ROS’ regarding gambling, particularly horse races (flat races and national hunt) as this was something they did in their freetime (”they” being the men).

On the topic of men, I do think there might be a suffragette popping up now and then, not one I’ve created but I think it might be a ROS (or basically, where Laura has her ROS about people moving to Flordia, mine will focus on girls that are teens or adults and will basically involve them getting involved in the movements and moving to the city). They’ll still live, but as suffragettes weren’t exactly treated nicely, I’ll have to roll some “danger” ROS’ now and then regarding whether or not they’ve been imprisoned, died, gotten sick, lives on the street etc. etc.

As for the city, I’m planning on creating that as well, as it’s where my lower-middle class – royals will be having their seasons, balls, not to mention that the house of lords and house of commons would be there as well (speaking about that, I’ll likely go with a bastardisation of the houses opposed to having to deal with actual parliaments, at least at first (I only have eight families after all!)). So the suffragettes will have somewhere to be, as will any farmers who escaped to the city to work in factories etc.

However, the city will wait a bit as I need to get everything else settled first!

See, this is what I mean by having too many plans! XD

I’m really not the most focused person in the world, or, I am but most of the time I have 300+ things all trying to get my attention which results in me paying nothing attention at all. Currently there’s quite a few victims to that curse, my uni-reading being the most stressful one, writing being the second and simning being the last if only because it doesn’t really leave my mind the way the other stuff does.

I haven’t a clue when the “new” project will be up, as it is I’m taking my time and trying to figure out what I want to do and such before I go ahead with anything. I do like it though, it very much suits my general needs though exactly how often I’ll play and update I’ve no idea (which reminds me, I really should cut back on work or something <_< Blergh.) but I’ll figure it out as I go I guess.

Anyhow, I wanted to give a quick update just to keep myself in the “mode” I guess, even if there’s no pictures or anything else I do like rambling about sims anyhow <_< Even if only for my own enjoyment.

But yeah, right now everything is stretched between uni and work, both which take up a lot of time and make me very tired (I really need to cut back, working 3 days one week which adds up to 18,5 hours is just too much for me. I can deal wit 5-10 hours, but not 18,5! I don’t have many lectures, but I have 300+ pages to read for each lecture and I’m already behind /rant)

*Cough* Back to sims, current project is humming along. It’s Victorian based (not in London though, I prefer to keep things fictional, less pressure to be exact about the streets etc.) and I already know (and have created) how many families I have etc. what I need most is houses, community centres etc. I’m trying to be good and building first, but I really really hate it so we’ll see how many houses I build before I cave!

The second, very much on the backburner, is present-day Victorian ‘hood, that is Rotham (the name of the Victorian based ‘hood) in our time, with the descendants of the families from Victorian-Rotham and such. However I need to finish and play (but not finish playing the ‘hood, that’d take ages!) the Victorian ‘hood first, but I’m kinda-sorta working on the modern ‘hood now and then too.

As for how it’ll work, I’ve basically decided that the Victorian ‘hood will only impact modern ‘hood up until a certain point (thinking  up to 1900-1910) after that I’ll likely just let the Victorian ‘hood move through time without anything really impacting the modern ‘hood. But as I’m starting in 1830 this isn’t really something I have to be dead certain about just yet.

A part of me did wonder about letting the ‘hood move through time naturally, but a) that’d be a lot of CC to download as time went by, not to mention removing some of the older CC as it would no longer be used and such without making entire houses go blue and b) I’m an impatient creature who’d like to play in the modern age without having to play my way up until the modern age.

We’ll see how it goes as the Victorian ‘hood falls more into place, everything else is still up in the air I guess.

I know I’ve been pretty absent for awhile (not just from here but from a lot of blogs), partly this is due to the computer crash I had a few months ago (didn’t have access to sims and I felt kinda gloomy looking at what everyone else was doing), as well as starting uni agan, and getting my first job and trying to figure out how to structure it all (still working on that) so I won’t fail or get fired etc.

Yeah, I really do like biting over more than I can chew it seems. Still, I should be able to work things out.

Harrington however, is gone. I got my computer back, but with a whole new hard-drive so none of my old content is there anymore. I could’ve asked them to try and get it back, but it would’ve been 100+$ which I didn’t really have at the time (poor student, that is me).

So yeah… Second time in a pretty short timespan that it’s happened. Beginning to wonder if perhaps this is a sign and that I should stop blogging about sims I’d have preferred less… Bothering ways of getting hints, like the game disk not working compared to having to get a whole new hard-drive (even if it was for free).

I haven’t started the big re-install-a-thon (anyone who’s ever re-installed sims 2 knows it’s a pain in the neck, I have 8 EPs and 8 SPs to install… I suppose I’ll be getting my uni-reading done in-between at least) just yet, but I’ll get to it later this evening and hopefully get it done before tomorrow (which is my big read-a-thon-so-we-can-get-back-on-track-with-studies day) and then we’ll see.

I do have an idea, or two, but I’ll have to look at schedule/studies etc. and see how I can work around it all without driving myself up the wall. An idea Laura offered back when Vivienne went bottoms up popped into my head, albeit somewhat differently, so I’m going to attempt to work that out and hopefully that’ll be my new project.

Until then this blog will likely remain as quiet until I decide where to go from here.

That said, I have sim-blogs to catch up on and eventually a whole lot (not just sims) stuff to re-install. Oh joy.

I’ve added a couple of new pages;

Regulations – a page with the general rules for Harrington as far as marriage, tax, university etc. goes, it’s still in development so I might shift things around as I try them out. Its content is heavily based on Lakeside Heights and Sullivan Sims (especially the latter), with some influences from the Build a City Challenge and me.

Stats – a page for well, stats, it’s horribly barren right now but that’s partly because I couldn’t come up with much to add and partly because Harrington is still a small hood. I’ll change as I go I guess

Custom Content – you probably figured that one out, but yeah, links to some of the custom content I use, it’s pretty much ripped from Vivienne Hamlet, but I’ll update it sometime soon (it’s still pretty darned accurate in some aspects)

Hacks – this too, is ripped from Vivienne Hamlet, though it’s pretty much exactly the same hack cocktail that I have now save a few newbies that I’ll get around to adding

You may, or may not, see a few pages dedicated to the various Households and their stats popping up soon, I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to do it. (If I do, it’d sort of be like Sullivan Sims’ sim profiles, only it’ll be separated by households as I doubt I’ll like the thought of maintaining individual sim pages).

I am however going to implement the season system that Sullivan uses, it’s easy enough for me to do without getting too detailed. It also allows me to keep track of birthdays if I want to. I won’t be able to put this into motion until I’m done playing this round though. If you’re curious these are the households I have left to play for this round: Enthycia-Gale, Eldon-Sweet and Mungo. I’ll hopefully get some playing done tonight and/or get the Aspen-Garnet update up.  Either way, it’s only three households and shouldn’t take me too long, after that Harrington will officially have a sensible season-centered system.

Horrible, horrible title I know, don’t sue me, please?

So, I’ve been gone/dead/away for awhile, I went into part “goodness I am sick of sims” and part “oh god, university, oh god” moods which is a good recipe for “nothing gets done” as far as I’m concerned. University is going fine, exams soon *stress* and some second-thoughts I’m not sure what to do with. Hence, I returned to simming because between that, roleplaying and general writing I should be able to have some retreats and have some things that’ll function as carrots in order to make me read and such.

Photobucket chewed on my pictures and made them ewww, but I’ve uploaded them to my domain and replaced them so they should be back to normal now. Let me know if they aren’t though! Updates are (believe it or not, coming) I missed my simmies and have been wondering about them since I took a break. Sims 3 just isn’t for me, so, Harrington is perfectly safe.

Now I’m going to eat my late-at-night dinner, re-read some things and then things should get back to, er, whatever the state was before “long ass hiatus of d00m” <_<

I’m also getting back onto the blog wagon, might take awhile to catch up with some guys since I’ve been semi-reading, but then I love catch-up reading (yes, I’m odd, I know) so I’ll be enjoying it anyhow XD

See you!

I’m terribly sorry that there has been no word from me for awhile, last week I was in Rome and the week before that I was getting sucked into the vortex that is Sims 3 as well as reading far too much. Either way, I’m fairly certain that you’ll begin to see updates again this week, I just need to play a bit first (and catch up on blogs, my RSS feed is bursting!)

At any rate, I’m not gone nor dead or anything else, and updates will be coming soon! I’m quite excited, I’ll get to play Arthur, Celia, Raiden, Geraint (you’ll learn more about him) and Socrates, it’ll be fun!

Ahh… So we (who’s we? A very good question) are finally open for business, about time too considering the estimate I gave myself as to when I’d start blogging again. Ah well, all is well that ends well? (Or something, idioms are not my strong point)

So what exactly is this blog? Well, most of you who come here know that this is a Sims 2 blog (at least I hope you do) and some of you might know who I am from comments to your blog or maybe even Vivienne Hamlet. Some of you are probably also noticing the lack of sim links in the sidebar… Never fear, this is well on its way to being changed I’ve just been so busy I haven’t gotten around to it (read: I totally forgot until I sat down and typed this!)

Either way, I never wrote something like this for Vivienne, but I figured I’d do so for Harrington, just because it felt right somehow.

My playstyle is generally quite prosperity-like in its approach, I don’t play with rounds (something about even naming it rounds makes me want to run off in the opposite direction) and my sim days are years instead of days. (Credit goes to Lakeside Heights for that)

I don’t have a particular economic system in place, though this ‘hood (along with its dead sister hood Vivienne) has its roots in the Build a City Challenge. However instead of using population scores I simply use money and have a poor smuck… I mean fortunate sim sitting in a shed house gathering money and other shiny trinkets much like a dragon. In more simplified terms; he’s the government funds. Beyond that though, there’s currently 2 community shops in Harrington, one grocery and one school (I’d forgotten how fun schools are).

There are presently two families in play (though I will add more when I go back to play, more on this in the actual sim-play-related posts) one is made by me and was started by Clary Savage (who is, despite the wording, very much alive and quite young) and the second are the townie family Gale-Enthycia (credit for the names goes to the name hack by Bitsy over at Somnium) it consists of two females Poppy and Pomona, both whom you’ll have the pleasure of meeting and seeing a bit later.

There isn’t any custom content links page up, so if there’s something that catches your fancy don’t hesitate to ask (heck, do so even when the page is up) I’m not the worlds most organized individual (proven by the fact that my excel spreadsheets are dumped everywhere) but I should be able to figure it out anyway.

That’s pretty much all I can think to write right now, I am going to write an “about” page and all that. It’s coming, but it’ll take the time that it takes (obvious much?).

As for me, I’m an 18-year-old female living in Norway with my dad. I’m just finishing up (small graduation party at 6p.m. today! Gah, I’m finished!) high school and looking forward to summer break (where a lot of time will be spent simming since I’m “only” going to Rome as far as I know (summer job you say? Well, I don’t like the short-term commitment of that so the official job-search starts at the same time as university does since I’d rather have a horrible job that I go to continously for a long time than a job that lasts me 3 weeks). After all this, if nothing goes horribly awry (*knock on wood, crossing fingers*) I’ll be studying history at the university of Oslo in the autumn

There, I’m aaalll done