I have been working for a client who is an Open Source company. Over the last few weeks, I’ve learnt a lot about Open Source. The most remarkable thing is that open source software is often made by people working at home. Yet, open source products are gradually eating into traditional software giants like Microsoft and Sun. This is just like a home-made aircraft shooting down an F-18. Companies spend crores to build office buildings for a single purpose: to be a place to work. And yet people working in their own homes, which aren't even designed to be workplaces, end up being more productive.

This proves something a lot of us have suspected. The average office is a miserable place to get work done. And a lot of what makes offices bad are the very qualities we associate with professionalism. The sterility of offices is supposed to suggest efficiency. But suggesting efficiency is a different thing from actually being efficient. The atmosphere of the average workplace is to productivity what flames painted on the side of a car are to speed. Superficial and utterly useless

Things are different in a startup. Often as not a startup begins in an apartment. Instead of matching cubicles, they have an assortment of furniture they bought used. They work odd hours, wearing the most casual of clothing. They look at whatever they want online without worrying whether it's "work safe." And you know what? The company at this stage is probably the most productive it's ever going to be.

The most demoralizing aspect of a traditional office is that you're supposed to be there at certain times. In reality, only a few people in a company who really have to be physically present in the office. Most employees work fixed hours just because the company can't measure their productivity. The basic idea behind office hours is that if you can't make people work, you can at least prevent them from having fun. If employees have to be in the building a certain number of hours a day, and are forbidden to do non-work things while there, then they must be working. In reality, they spend a lot of their time in a no-man's land, where they're neither working nor having fun.

The ideal would be if the company tells its employees that, “This is what you have to do. Do it whenever you like, wherever you like. If your work requires you to talk to other people in the company, then you may need to be here a certain amount. Otherwise we don't care.”

The problem for me is not just that it's demoralizing, but that the people pretending to work interrupt the ones actually working. The problem with pretend work is that it often looks better than real work. When I'm writing, I spend as much time just thinking as I do actually typing. Half the time I'm sitting drinking a cup of coffee, smoking or walking around. This is a critical phase-- this is where ideas come from-- and yet I'd feel guilty doing this in most offices, with everyone else looking busy.

Till there are corporate reforms, I guess we all are stuck with this fixed time menace.

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Farmville is quite a rage. People who used to look down at my voracious hunger for online games are getting hooked to it left right and center. Not that they are just playing it, but are blogging about it too! My whole facebook homepage is infested by questions like How do I earn more coin/cash, what is the best crop etc etc.

So, I’ve decided to put down whatever I have picked up by playing the game for over a month now. Frankly speaking, I find the game tad boring as there are not too many things to do or pit your wits against your opponent like in Travian or even Evony. But when friends plants four hour blueberries/blackberries and climb up the levels, the competitive spirit does kicks in.

Anyways, I am not here to review the game because I know, if you are reading this, in all probability you are hooked to the whole damn thing…just like I am. So, here are a few things that I have picked up over the last one month of Farmville madness.

Time your crop

The basic point of the whole game. After you’ve harvested your crop, plant something that gets ready for harvest at the same time when you log in next. Supposedly, you have harvested your crop at nine in the morning and will not be checking it again for the next 10 hours. Plant something which takes 8-10 hours to ripen. Pretty simple huh?

Remember, a crop will wither after double the time of its ripening. A tomato crop gets ready in eight hours but after another eight hours (16 hours in total) it will start to wither away.

Diversify

Age old corporate mantra – holds true for Farmville too. Instead of planting one type of crop in your entire area and then go “click click click” for one hour HPP (Harvest, plough, plant), the better idea is to plant different crops in small blocks so that they are ready in different time.

There are three distinct advantages.

1. If you are using Tractor/Harvester/seeder, then different timings of crops will replenish your oil automatically which otherwise you’ll have to buy using FV cash.
2. Planting a small part of your farm doesn’t take too much time. This makes it easier to quickly tend to your farm between classes, client meetings, love making sessions - take your pick!
3. Err…I am still working on the third one.

Block the farmer

I know it looks cute when your animated avatar goes from block to block harvesting and collecting fruits and animal products – but it takes a hell lot of time. Capture the farmer in a closed fence so that he/she cannot come out of it. Just make a square using fence/haybale, keep one side open so that the farmer can come in. Once the farmer is in, close the opened section and he is captured. Try doing HPP then and you’ll find that it is much faster that ways.

(Edit: Check out Vivek's comment (#1) for a better solution)

Don’t buy trees/animals

No point buying stuff which you’ll get from friends as gifts anyway. If your friends are not as good as mine, then go ahead buy a few trees and animals. Don’t buy cows – they take a lot of space and their milk sells for just 6 coins!

Help out friends

I am sure you already know it that when you help your neighbours to rake up leaves/scare away crows, you get 20 coins and 5 exp. Do it. However, after helping a certain number of friends in a single day, the incentive becomes 5 coins and 1 exp.

Ribbons

Try to earn all your ribbons – you get both coins and experience when you earn them. Click on the Ribbon Tab on Farmville (next to the Market Tab) to check the requirements to earn Ribbons. And when you earn them, don’t forget to share your wealth with your friends!

...this is what I've been able to do so far. Still a long way to go!

Happy Farming

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Lot of people are bumping into the blog looking for playing tips and tricks of Travian. As a continuation of my last blog on Travian strategy, I am sharing with you all a few more insights to help both new and old players alike.

This post is dedicated to the Travian Hero – a special unit that you can create in your Hero’s Mansion.

Troop type

The first step is to decide which type of troop you want to select to be your Hero?
In my opinion, only the best unit of a particular tribe (Teutonic Knight, Haeduan or Equites Caesaris) should be trained as a Hero. Researching the premium troop types need a lot of time and resource at the initial stage - Stable level 10 and Academy Level 15 (level 5 for Romans). If you do not want to wait for so long to train your hero, you can at least make sure that your hero is a Cavalry Unit. They are stronger than infantry and thus has a better chance of surviving the initial stages. Moreover, a slow hero will be useless for a quick strike – making you lose out on the entire offense bonus that you would have got.

Skill point distribution

When you first create a Hero, you are given 5 skill points that you can distribute between offense, defense, offense bonus, defense bonus and regeneration. You can redistribute the points till your Hero is at Level 0. As your Hero kills troops, he gains experience. Once the experience becomes 100, the Hero’s level is increased and you have 5 more skill points to distribute among offense, defense, offense bonus, defense bonus and regeneration.

Offense indicates the total offense strength of your hero alone. Similarly, Defense shows the total defense of your Hero. The two numbers in form X/Y means your Hero’s defense against Infantry is X and defense against cavalry is Y.

Offense/defense bonus indicates the percentage bonus given to your army when their Hero fights with them. For example, your Hero’s offense bonus is 10%. If you send 100 soldiers with your Hero, then they’ll have the offense power of 110 soldiers. Same is with defense. Though initially this do not seem like it make much of a difference, but imagine how much a Hero with 15-20% Off bonus will effect an endgame hammer which is anything between 10 to 50 thousand infantry plus another few thousand Cavalry, Ram and Catapults!!!

The Regeneration value determines how quickly your hero gets healed and back to 100% health. It is indicated by the number of health points regenerated per day. This is very important at the beginning as the Hero keeps on losing his health when he goes of battle. If you do not allot any Regeneration points, he will eventually die of all the battle wounds. You may revive him in your hero’s mansion but it will cost you a lot of resource and time. Save the heartache, give him some Regeneration points initially.

Capturing Oasis

This is another primary reason to train a Hero – to annex Oasis near your villages to boost your resource production. To capture an oasis, there are a few pre requisite.

Firstly, the oasis you want to capture should be within the 7x7 of your village
Secondly, you need to get the Hero’s mansion to level 10 to annex one oasis, level 15 for two oasis and level 20 for three.

Once these two conditions are fulfilled, all you have to do is kill all the animals in the oasis with your Hero (and some army) and the oasis is yours.

Good to know about your Hero

Travian Hero is not from Hollywood. So don’t send him out alone even to small villages, unless of course you want him dead!

When your hero dies, he is frozen in your hero’s mansion. It is always better to revive the hero with maximum experience levels. But you can neglect this at the initial stage of the game if you are choosing a stronger unit to be hero.

Try to kill as many troops as possible with your Hero as it increases his experience and thereby his value.


Keep your eyes open for this space. Next time I'll share what I know about developing end game Hammers/Anvils as well as Chiefs/Senator/Chieftain.

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Today while cleaning up my room, I just happened to open my big junk carton. There I found the sad remains of what once used to be my cassette collection. I distinctly remember putting in one hundred sixty something cassettes when I first came to Delhi. But those, and another shipment of around hundred more are now reduced to about twenty odd ones by the “borrow and never return” human nature. Now that I have them and then some more in my hard drive, I am not mortally depressed about my losses.

I managed to trace my once best friend, the Walkman that I bought with my first real salary in the same carton. Poor guy, how he has fallen from grace! I jacked my old mate to my comp’s speakers and I am all ready to be sixteen all over again. There weren’t too many choices, but I managed to find “Big Hits…” by Twisted Sisters among the twenty odd survivors.

As my room exploded with the bass heavy analogue tapes (unlike their clearer sounding digital counterparts), it brought back memories obscured by the rust of time. I remember buying that cassette when one of my friends told me that they were banned in the US. “We’re not gonna take it” – an anthem of sort for teenage kids against their parents did not go well with some moral watchdog and was made a part of the “Filthy Fifteen.”

Last heard, Californian governor Arnold Schwarzenegger used that same song as his campaign soundtrack. So much so, that the band themselves came to play live on one of Schwarzenegger’s fund raiser. Times, they sure are changing!

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There has been an overdose of Cricket since the last couple of months and I am growing sick of it. Quite a bold statement for an Indian. The types that can get you loads of hate mails and even get you in the wrong side of a PIL. But what the heck, this way I might get a little publicity. After all, one thing that I’ve learn during my stint at the YMCA learning "Ad and Marketing" that no publicity is bad publicity (Somebody tell Shiney Ahuja about it)

Coming back to the issue at hand – Cricket – let me clarify that I am not a Cricket hater. Many of us from the North Eastern part of the country prefer football to cricket. But I grew up in a community where boys play football during summer and cricket during the winter. The idea of an India-Pakistan match is as interesting to me as anyone else in the country. Even then, the overdose of cricket, its blatant commercialism in the name of “popularizing the game” have made me cringe.

Those who followed the IPL matches were subjected to 10 minutes of uninterrupted TV commercial in the name of Strategic Breaks, camera following Mr. Lalit Modi signing autographs and some member of the audience reading (rather pretending to read) the T20 cricket magazine while commentators giving hint after hint to "go buy it while it is still at the stands." To top it all, we have Mandira Bedi who just manages to scream and make weird faces to be more exciting and bring some oomph (humph?!). I think it is lame, irritating and embarrassing more often than not. If things remain such, I might be on my way to confirm to the stereotype that North Easterners do not like cricket.

Despite all the cribs I continue to watch the World T20 championship and to be honest, I am quite happy with the results so far. Here’s why:

Australia going out of the tournament from the first round

I have nothing personal against the Aussies nor the above comment is a backlash for all the racial attacks on Indian students in Australia. A dialogue from the movie Dark Knight seem to sum up the reason quite well. “You die a hero or live long enough to be the villain.” Australia has been the number one cricket team for many many years and I was starting to get sick of it.

India being knocked out of the tournament

The immediate effect of it is pull out of the stupid ad campaign “Yeh cup kahin nehin jayega” (This cup will not go anywhere)…and it’s a great relief. The ouster also showed the technical weakness of the Indian batsmen, toothless pace attack (apart from a few exceptions). When faced with real opponents like West Indies, England and South Africa, the Indian team was quickly put to their place. Too much cricket and too much money – serves us Indians right for worshiping a bunch of technically challenged players who can flourish only on small grounds with a flat pitches.

South Africa losing in the Semis

Boy! Don’t we love it when someone confirms to whatever “tag” they are given? South Africa managed to keep their choker tag intact after losing in the semi finals of yet another major tournament. Thank God I am not a South African or I’d have felt even worse.

Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the finals

Yes, being an Asian, I supported these two teams after the MIGHTY (mind the bold and italics) Indian team lost. Whoever wins the title, I hope the title of World T20 Champions will bring some happiness to the two countries torn apart from war and killings.

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Today morning I was in for a rude shock when I opened up my Delhi Times to see those dreadful words printed across the front page.

Guys are SCUM (with even bigger fonts)

Then they went on to explain that “Girls would agree – that’s even more true now. SCUM is a neologism that means Self-Centered Urban Male.” This little explanation made it look even worse because it is claiming it to be true! I honestly expected it to be some kind of a joke, just a good headline to get people excited. If there is a joke in there, I fail to notice.

Or maybe the writer expected us guys to behave the way we almost always do. Being a guy I should have laughed at it without giving it a second thought instead of getting offended. But what the heck…I don’t want to join the PIL bandwagon and demand an official apology (read 15 minutes of fame). I don’t want any “pangaa” with the largest news feeder of the country. But I can’t help but wonder, since when an urban male became a Scum? And what if there is a neologism for a Self-Centered Urban Female is something as demeaning as scum, say WHORE. I bet not one in the country have the balls to even think of putting out something like that.

I am an urban guy. I don’t know any of my urban guy friends beat up their girlfriends. Instead they wait patiently for their partners to get ready in just five minutes. When a guy waits for his girlfriend, it is chivalry. Make a girl wait for actually five minutes (exactly 300 seconds; not to be confused with the female version), you get the tag of being “rude” and “bad dating/husband material.” A poor guy goes through salsa classes, peppy chick flicks, PMS tantrums, and a host of difficult questions like “Am I looking fat?” only to be named Scum? That’s unfair.

It is even unfair that we are supposed to put down the toilet seat after use. Can’t the girl simply pull the seat down instead of complaining in rims and rims of cheap newspaper?

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I am a big fan of the online browser game Travian and have been playing it for quite some time now. It is a war game where a player chooses among three tribes – Roman, Gaul or Teuton and start building his/her village and troops. One has to build different civilian and military buildings as well as resource fields (Wheat, Wood, Clay and Iron). The manual gives all the information one needs and the starting training quests are quite helpful too in learning to play the game as well as earning some extra resources as well as 35 Gold. So, I won’t delve much about the basic but share a few war strategies that I’ve picked up.

High level Cranny/Wall/Residence:
To any veteran players, this will seem as too trivial to mention but then many players miss this basic point. Players end up as farms because the raiders get away with precious resources. If you are playing a defensive game, it is better to build two crannies to start with (one for Gaul as their cranny capacity is twice than that of Roman and Teuton). The idea is to be able to hide as much resource as your warehouse and granary can hold. One start with 1200 unit storage capacity, so to hide it from raiding armies, your cranny should be able to hide about 1600 units. This will take care of Teuton’s ability to see 1/3rd resources hidden in crannies.

As you grow and upgrade your warehouse and granary capacity, I reckon you upgrade/build new crannies. Along with it, build city wall and residence/palace. Higher level palace/residence and wall gives decent defense. When your raider gets nothing for their raids and end up losing one or two soldiers every time, he will eventually leave you alone.


Dodging:
For those playing an aggressive game (esp Teuton) and raid other villages for resources, their army is their bread and butter. When someone attacks you, it is always better to dodge their attacks rather than defending them (unless you’ve grown fond of the rat given by the Quest Master). Send your army out to raid someone else when you see an attack coming. Make sure that you don’t give away any resource to your raider. Use up any extra resources that your cranny is unable to hide. Remember, the raider is going to use the resources to build his/her army and eventually use it against you.

Before going offline, send your army to raid someone who is weak and is far away from you. Supposedly, you are going to be offline for eight hours, send out your armies to raid some village who is about four hours from you. That ways, by the time you get back online, you’ll have your army at your disposal and don’t have to wait for them to come back. I prefer small Teuton villages for this purpose because their initial defenses sucks – big time!

Counterattack
So, the raider is getting onto your nerves and you want to retaliate. In almost all cases its the Teutons raiding Romans & Gauls. Teutons' initial army unit - the clubbie sucks big time defense-wise. An experienced Teuton will generally dodge your one off attack. The best way to get his army pants down is to counterattack. This takes some active playing and a fast internet connection because seconds matter in this move.

Say Mr. X from village Y has launched an attack against you. First, check out how much time does your army takes to reach village Y. Then check out how much time would Mr. X’s army will take to get back to his village. You can use many tools to calculate the timings. Plan your attack after one second of when Mr. X’s army reaches back to his village.

This works best when your army’s speed is less than that of the attacker so you can send your army well before the attacking party reaches your village. Things can be a bit tricky if both your and Mr. X’s army takes the same time. If you are to send your army after some time of the attack on you, your army will have to withstand the attack…right? But there’s a way around it too.

Supposedly it takes 30 minutes for Mr. X’s army to reach you and vice versa. Send your army to attack before 29 seconds of Mr. X’s attack on your village. Call them back after 15 seconds. That way, your army will take a total of 30 seconds to go some distance and come back (15 to go and 15 while coming back) and will be back to your village 1 second after the attack of Mr. X. All you have to do now is send your army hot in wheels of Mr. X’s giving him no more than 2-3 seconds of response time.
(I don't know if it makes any sense to you at all :-\)

Attacking with rams and catapults:
At a later stage of your game, when you have rams and catapults, you have the power of razing somebody’s village to ground. I have many friends who choose to attack random target until the village population becomes zero. But this is a long process as Catas take a hell lot of time to travel. It happened with me once when I was being attacked by some big player with Catas. But soon after the attacks, I’d build back everything. The guy got impatient that he had to send army with his catas which he otherwise would have used to farm other villages (he got absolutely no resources from me). After 2 days he got careless and started sending only Catas. All I had to do is ask for my friend’s little help to take down his defenseless Catas.

There are many other ways of carrying out fatal assault on a village. I am sharing the one strategy that worked for me. In the first wave, I send my first wave with 80% infantry, 25% of my cavalry and all my Rams. Second wave of attack is with cavalry that land in a few seconds after the first wave. Try to send the Catas with a few infantry after a few seconds of sending the first wave (as Catas takes almost the same time to travel as Rams). That ways, the defender will have minimum chances of dodging the first two waves and defend the Cata attacks. Target his/her Main building, Rally point and Market first time around. Then target his crop production – Granary, Bakery and Grain mill. After that, target his croplands – this way, he can not create new troops (lack of crop), buy it from the market or rebuild his infrastructure immediately (Low main building level means his progress will be slow). Keep raiding him as frequently as possible. He will soon be frustrated and delete his account…if not, you have a new farm!

This post has already become awfully long. You can find some more insight here

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Here I am sitting in my office
Thinking hard about life
How it changed from a maverick college life to strict professional life…...

How tiny pocket money changed to huge monthly paychecks
but then why it gives lesss happiness….

How a few local denim jeans changed to new branded wardrobe
but then why there are less people to use them

How a single plate of samosa changed to a full Pizza or burger
But then why there is less hunger…..

How a bike always in reserve changed to bike always on
but then why there are less places to go on……

How a small coffee shop changed to cafe coffee day
but then why its feels like shop is far away…..

How a limited prepaid card changed to postpaid package
but then why there are less calls & more messages……

How a general class journey changed to Flight journey
But then why there are less vacations for enjoyment….

How a old assembled desktop changed to new branded laptop
but then why there is less time to put it on……….

How a small bunch of friends changed to office mate
But then why we always feel lonely n miss those college frnz.….

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