personal
Travian – online strategy game.
Dec 23rd
I recently started exploring Travian. Its a online strategy game, or one could only version of Age of empires and Caesar. Though it is not as graphical or musical as the desktop versions but it has all the other features like the resources, buildings, army, wars. Begin an online portal, there can be hundreds if not more player playing at the same time.
In travian the player start as a chief of a village. Almost all the villages are same, they have some resource where you can extract wood, clay, iron and crop. The village center has some building area where we can build new buildings like, granary, barracks, palace etc Typical strategy game stuff. In the travian world you have neighboring villages which is owned by fellow players. You can interact with these players and trade resources. One can also form alliances. And the feature list goes on and on.
Travian is served in many sub domains so that the no of players can be distributed. They also have different servers for different countries. Eg. s1.travian.com, s2.travian.com , s1.travian.us, s1.travian.ca etc.
My village is in s2.travian.com. Its called NicoBar (The land of Nicos.). My nickname kmanicka.
The story of square wattermellons
Mar 15th
One of my friends recently sent me a email forward about the Square Japanese watermelon. You can read the full story here. That is creativity at its best. The farmers have thought about a problem and solved it so nicely.
Lets take the story from another angle. Lets say we are the watermelon and the society is the farmer. The society has created certain rules and regulation. We follow those rules for the greater benefit of the society. Sometimes it can be uncomfortable. (Think of the watermelon). But then to gain something we need to lose something.
What do you collect?
Mar 15th
Recently read a book by David Baldacci called “The Collectors”. Really a superb book. The story is very intriguing and one can’t keep the book down before completing it.
Some good things I learned from this book. In story all the characters’ are collecting something. Some collecting book, some cars, other money (something we all do). That makes one think. Are we all collecting something. Like the smiles of our friends, blessings of our elders, love of our beloved. Some of us collect praises of others and there are others who collect goodwill.
Can we somehow classify all these things one is collecting. A simple classification from my perspective. Things that give us happiness and things that give us sorrow. One should always try to collect the first and avoid the second. But first we have to identify which of the things we are collecting gives us what.
I think the same thing holds good for folks like us writing the blogs. We are also collecting something. What am I trying to collect right now… comment from the readers of this blog. Ha ha ha.
I have been reading lot of books recently, and wanted to keep track of which once I have completed and which I wanted to read. So I added a Facebook application called “iRead”. In this application one can write reviews about the books and share them with friends. Good to go through what our friends have to say rather than ending up with a lousy book.
I don't have words
Mar 13th
Read this post by Jeffrey Walker recently.
http://radiowalker.wordpress.com/2007/08/27/cancer-20-the-killer-app/
Don’t have any words to explain what am thinking right now.
Making a framework or finding one
Mar 7th
I used to work in Oracle Corporation India for a product called Enterprise Manager. I was very new to the industry and didn’t know much. It was a hard time during the initial days. The product was huge. There was so much code some in java, some in plsql others in perl and god know what else. When I was given a bug (a software defect) to be solved i used to take ages to find what’s wrong leave alone solving it 
.
Then one day I asked my manager to help. He solved them in minutes. I mean just like that. One thing I noted was that he was using lots of scripts and shortcuts which he had developed earlier. Thats when it hit me. I left all my work and started making my own framework of scripts. It took me about a week to create the skeleton. Then about a month or so to fine tune it. But once it was ready I was on booster. Give me any damn bug I was able to solve it. Later I was able to take up enhancements and projects also. It was great fun.
Though the framework was doing good but it required frequent changes. With my work load increasing I was not able to keep up. So I started searching again. This time I found that there are lots of open-source frameworks for solving these problems. Some of these frameworks were so SIMPLE, i felt foolish. Why didn’t I find them earlier. And wasted so much time creating one. I tried these frameworks. They were good. But by the time I could put them to proper use I moved out of oracle. Another company another framework.
I noted something else too during my stay at oracle. There were some bugs which were really not solvable. I tried all possible permutations and combinations but no use. 
… They caused me ample frustration. Some of these bug were lying in my queue for about 6–7 months. At last I decided to leave them and work on other which I could at least solve at that time. But these problems always stayed in my head. Probably the guy who replaced me would solved them.
Do you use any framework in your daily life?
Did you make them yourself or did you use an existing one?
Can your framework solve all the problems in the field?
If not how did you cope up with the unsolvable ones?
Reality Check the 5 questions
Feb 29th
I have registered Dr Mani’s mailing list who blog at http://guydz.com/moneypowerwisdom/
His blogs and mailing list are a great source of wisdom and inspiration.
In one of his recent emails Dr. Mani suggested 5 questions we can ask ourselves when we feel low or frustrated. I tried them and it really worked. These are the 5 questions, hope it works for you too.
* What do I want to achieve with my work?
* How much money do I need for this?
* Do I need big numbers to reach this target?
* Is what I’m doing taking me towards my goal?
* Am I happy doing what I now do?
My answers ..
1) that, that and that.. (its a secret)
2) not much.. a million will do.
3) I guess 1 followed by 3 zeros in the box which says readers at the top right.
4) am not sure of that yet
5) but ya am happy really happy. I think thats what matters most.
It’s The Journey That’s Important… By John McLeod
Blogging is addictive
Feb 27th
Blogging is addictive.. So Don’t start blogging if you are not planing to stay long.
Not much to write so thought of writing what i do best. making websites ha ha ha..
Next few post will be related to websites and Internet services I used to make my first serious website.. http://cricketmadi.googlepages.com/index.html
You might have seen that i am adding this link again and again. . I have a feeling that this might increase my page ranking in google.
If you start chasing it.. it will start chasing you.
Not my cup of tea
Feb 25th
The blogging market is really overcrowded these days. Tried hard but not able to do much. Its not my cup of Tea I guess. I will concentrate on what I know best.. Making websites .
Check this out… http://cricketmadi.googlepages.com/index.html
Cricket in college TV room
Feb 24th
Australia v India 2007/08 season
Played at Sydney Cricket Ground on 24 February 2008 – day/night (50-over match)
Result Australia won by 18 runs
Today we were watching this cricket match online. India tried hard but lost the match.
I remember when in college we used to watch the match in our hostel tv rooms. There used to be 100 guys in front of the a small tv. Every ball was scrutinized. Run rates analyzed, Expert comments given on all aspects of game. Event the umpire was not spared
Thought of putting together a small webpage with a cricket widget and a chat widget to create the same atmosphere.
you can check it out here.
I have created a chat room called college_ka_tv_room. Join me during the next match.
Next Match: India v Sri Lanka at Hobart – Feb 26, 2008
Match scheduled to begin at 10:00 local time (23:00 GMT)