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29 Jan was that jinxed day that I ended up at laptop world getting myself a hp dv 6137 for 63, 000 INR. The battery back up had gone down to 30 minutes in 5 months!!! The comforting part is, Aman who had bought the same model with me the very same day was only getting 10 minutes !!!! 8 of us had bought the model that day and 6 of us were facing the same battery backup problem. No problem, we have one year warranty!!! (that’s what I thought then ). 6 of us went to Somajiguda Hp customer service center on the 11th of July with our laptops. We filled the forms , and as I was also having some problems with the speakers and headphone sockets, so I reported them also. All of us were told to leave our laptops. Half of us got their lappy back in 3-4 days.The other half (including me ) called the hpcs on 18th of July and were told that the laptops were ready except mine. k, may be i’ll collect it later. When? Sir, we are expecting the required part to reach us anytime today. We will call you as soon as you laptop is ready. Okay!! I’ll wait. It’s 2 days now. Maybe I should give them a call… Sir, we are expecting the required component to reach anytime around 3p.m today (Maybe, you expect too much). Mam, can you please hurry!! Sure sir, we understand your problem. We will give you a call when it’s fixed. Today is 21 and here I am , in the UG-2 lab moving from laptop to laptop, using any idle laptops. What enrages me is the fact that today Harry Potter 7 has been released, and the pdf is available on sharing. Everyone is reading that, I had waited so much for this day and now, when the moment comes, I don’t have my laptop!!! If there had been a fire detector here, I bet the alarms would have gone off. And now I am writing this blog to vent my spleen(and I think it is working )!!

PS 0 : Now Aman is getting a back up of 1 hr 30 min. though the consistency of it is seriously dubious. (Bagaria had had a battery replaced, it’s performance degraded to 60% in 10 days, now he has had his second battery replaced too)

PS 1 : In the case you are wondering what the title means, hpcs is hp customer service and all the things you can’t make sense of symbolize my anger

PS 2 : My discovery of the day : Writing blogs abt people – “who frustrate you and you can’t do anything abt them” is a good way to vent your spleen.

PS 3 : What’s adds to my misery is Dell cs. We hp users used to tease the Dell users in the hostel with the slogan : “With Dell, life is Hell“. Amit(who is having dell) for some problem called Dell cs and the next day a man was at his room along with the replacement .

PS 4 : We should see the good points in everything. Hey guys, it’s better to be w/o lappy. You become more social, you go out more. You don’t waste Sundays reading Deathly Hallows for which you had waited so long. You help minimizing the idle time of laptops in the lab and the hostel. You become more beautiful as the mosquitoes marks gained while sitting in the OBH – D lobby for wireless start dimnishing….. blah blah blah …….

It was afternoon, I and Gaurav were playing Age of Mythology at my room. The door was open and we saw two white men approaching. We welcomed them, one was Brian, other Cavin. Brian told us he had come for studying Indian Culture and Cavin, who has been in India for a long time was showing him some colleges where he could start on. We chatted for about an hour and they left saying they would be back next week with a questionnaire to help them understand India. No problem with that .

They were back the next week. After abt half an hour chatting, Brian gave us the questionnaire. Really, I didn’t understand how that could help him understand Indian culture. All it asked was your name, religion and your religious beliefs. When we told us about our religious belief, he asked us if we would like to know his. Okay. Then he produced a paper – pencil and started explaining about Jesus and we sinners and all the stuff. It was fine till this point. It was actually nice to hear their ideas and all the stuff. Then he pointed out that the first sin according to Bible was to believe in anyone else than Jesus. That’s okay. You do not have respect for other beliefs, we understand. After a bit more explaining and talk, he asked in a very diplomatic language if we would like to take Jesus as our Lord. No. Was that what it was all about ?? What about studying Indian culture ?? We were taken by surprise. Neways, he handed us his bible, and told us to read some chapter in it. Well, that was it. Can’t believe still this stuff is going on. I don’t think that my religion would have had much effect on my daily life. Even today people are bring sent for this missionary work. And that too in college hostels. This is beyond me. Neways, I don’t think even a single student would convert even if they tried all the year round.

PS 1 : Writing gaming blogs is a tedious task … phew ….. Will write about other games later.

PS 2 : Collegedays at last . Was really bored sitting here in the holidays.

PS 3 : Seems like UT is going to be more popular than CS in our batch , I like CS more.

This is one of the most popular and a very addictive strategy game. There is simply no limit to its multiplayer play. All you need is some good mates . What I will tell you here will be a lot useful for newbies to give them at least a theoretical understanding. A better understanding will come with practice. And we can also have some discussion on the game. Every player in this game has his/her unique style and strategy. Mine itself varies time to time.

The key factor in this game is plan. You must have in mind what are you going to do next. You cannot just start the game without thinking what are you going to do. The main concept of the game is : You have got buildings, units and resources. You have to utilize 3 of them in an optimal manner to minimize the survival time of your enemy (ew… sounds like a IIIT research topic). => In the dark age, your TC (Town Center) must never be idle. You can interpret this like this : Your buildings, units and resources must not sit idle, for what good they are when you are not using them, unless you have some better plans for them in the future. None of your villager must be idle.

When you start the game in dark age, the key resource that you need is food. I have seen one of my friend, who started playing the game with me, and after 3-4 months, he still started with one villager on the gold mine, one on the lumberjack, and one as builder . Food from sheep is much faster than that from the berry. So, it is better to keep at least 5 villager on the sheep in the dark age. They will fetch you enough food to keep your TC busy. Loom is an important research, it increases your villager’s hit points to 40(4m 25) so they can atleast fight wolves. Wild boars will help you collect 500 food for advancing to feudal. If you are playing on Normal game speed, it is better to make 3-4 farms in the dark age itself. Else wait for horsecollar research at the mill. Exploration is an important aspect of this game. Remember to explore as much as you can. Do not let your scout be idle for a single second. Basically, in the dark age, you must have explored your both gold mines, both stone mines and both wild boars, and deer, wood and the enemy TC. As you will play keeping these points in mind, you will develop your own style of play. The game till the feudal age is more or less the same for most of the players.

With advancement to the feudal age, the game becomes more flexible. Many possibilities arise. You can make towers to defend your city or do a tower attack. Or you can start making skirmishers, spearman or scouts. In feudal age, we concentrate on making farms, and mostly a lot of action starts from the feudal age. After this, it is your game. You have to respond to the conditions and whatever the enemy is doing. Try to make atleast 650 stone(You will do with 488 if you are Franks) till castle age so that you can make atleast one castle as soon as you are in the Castle Age. Try to make as many TC as you can in the castle age, it speeds up your production of villagers, the more villagers you have, the more they gather, the faster you advance. Also, if it is a team game, do not forget to start making trade carts. Trade carts are indispensable in long games.

While preparing your army, keep in mind what are the advantages of your and the enemy civilizations, what are the units that the enemy would be making at bulk. In Age, it gravely matters which units are you storming against which ones. It is a disaster to storm Palladins against Halberdiers. You can roughly categorize military units into Infantry, Cavalry, Archery and Siege. Among them are those which are attacking, like knights, archers (they usually take gold) and anti-units like skirmishers, pikeman, hussar- which are cheap(don’t take gold usually) and good for confronting enemy attacking units. Before going attacking, explore the map from a scout to see what’s ahead. When you go for attack, make sure you have some Trebuchets or Siege rams with you for demolishing buildings.

If you’ll ask me which is the best civilization, I’ll say there is no best civilization. Every civilization has its benefits, its disadvantages, everyone is unique and different. And it depends on the player which civilization suits him the most. For some, who often forget making houses, Huns is the best. Some like the idea of fast army and like Goths. When it is a short game, it really doesn’t matter what your civilization is. But if the game goes too long, and you get the time to develop fully to the post-imperial age (aka imperial age and all the important techs researched), then Koreans, Turks and Persians become invincible.

Koreans is my personal favourite – It has all the units you would want(except the most common favourite – Palladins). But, the invincibility comes from the combination of full researched Elite War Wagons and 12 ranged Siege Onagers. If you know how to use Siege Onagers (yeah!! that is a great art, they must be used wisely and maually controlled) no one can even come near them as they eliminate their enemies at a distance. It is good at navy too with Elite Turtle ships at your disposal(Though when it comes to navy, Spanish is better, followed by vikings).

If you are turks, you cannot breathe without gold. That is it’s major disadvantage. It is the only civilization with not even a pikeman!!!! (OMG! You cannot do anything if you have no gold and are up against cavalry). You not even get elite skirmishers!! What you have is the combination of Elite Janissary with 14 ranged Bombard Cannons, Hussars storming the front and 13 ranged Bombard Towers guarding the back.

Do I have to say anything about the Persians . The TCs work so fast that you are well ahead in economy. You have to do extensive farming. All you have to do is make Elite War Elephants and some Hand Cannoneers or Heavy Scorpions(again, there is an art to use them too) to confront Halberdiers and Heavy Camels. When it is a 4 on 4 team game, and you get the time to develop, you can make a lot of war elephants and at least 2 of the opposing team members are forced to make just Halberdiers and Heavy Camels .

At IIIT, the most popular civilization is Mongols. If given a choice , all play with Mongols. Here, the most popular unit is Elite Mangudai. Well, if you ask me, I don’t adore Mangudai much. They are cavalry archers, and the largest drawback of being a cavalry archer is that they have weakness to both : halberdiers(and ofcourse, heavy camel) as well as skirmishers. War Wagon is a cavalry archer too, but it is much more stronger, has more attack and range. I like Mongols. But for a different reason. I like it for the Siege, for the fast moving Onages backed up with fast moving Scorpions.

Ways to fool the computer : In Age, bot is as dumb as it can go. You can easily use some tricks on it to defeat 3-4 hardest bots on the same team. Some of the tricks I use are listed here. As you play, soon you will form your own methods and strategies to fool the computer.

1) Suppose you are playing 1 on 4 against 4 hardest bots in the oasis map. Now, what each of them will do is to send its army along the oasis to your TC. And the better part is, the first time its army goes, it does not care if you finish the army on the way. So, you can build a wall on one side, back it up with towers of castle (remember to build a gate and some military buildings on the other side of the wall, so you can destroy trebuchets) and go attacking on the other side, fortifying the enemy town along the oasis.

2) Suppose Com’s army is attaking one of your TC or Castle. And it will be destroyed but you don’t have enough army to save it. All you have to do is bring a scout. Com gives preference to slaying enemy army. So, all the Com’s army is running behind your Scout and your Scout is circling your TC or the Castle. Soon, Com’s army is finished by the arrows from the TC/Castle .

3) Here is the best trick : Suppose you explore Com’s area and you see it has not yet finished it’s walling. And you are able to get there. Bingo!!! You have hit a jackpot. Com is very desperate to complete it’s wall. If you can occupy that area and build a castle or a tower in the way, Com will keep on sending one villager to complete that wall, sacrificing it.

4) The most crucial thing for a computer is its villagers, TCs and Castles. It is important to kill its villagers.

5) Tower attacks are very successful on Com. You can even make a hardest bot resign when you are in feudal age and are playing your normal game so that you have enough resources to confront those left.

Some funny tp things we discovered in the game :

1) Have you ever tried to destroy a relic. I mean ofcourse not by using siege onager to attack ground it. Try putting it on a transport ship and then deleting the transport ship in the middle of the sea. If anyone finds a way to destroy it , please inform me.

2) A good trick is to cover the tower on the four sides with a block of wall on each. Funny thing is, villagers can still garrison in it and get out.

3) Another trick that can be used against Com is : if it has made a barrack in your area, you can cover it tightly with palisade wall. Now, when the com trains troops in that barrack, they don’t get any space to get out. So, they are stuck and can’t even attack your wall to break free .

4) If your scout discovers enemy mill where there are sheep, it can slay all the sheep and the enemy will be deprived of their food. Similarly, if you scout and find that enemy has just given the order of a farm, you can attack it before villager starts building it and all the 60 wood is gone .

err…. What have I forgotten ??? Remind me anything else to talk about in the comments.

PS 1 : You can look for the descriptions, strengths and weaknesses of units, team charecterstics and bonuses at the technology tree.

PS 2 : In the game, control groups help a lot. You can form a control group by selecting some units, then pressing Ctrl+(a number). That group has been assigned to the number you pressed. Next time you press that number, the very same group will be selected.

PS 3 : Initially, you can garrison you military units in the same building in which they are trained. If you select a stable, and rightclick on the same, the rally point will be set inside and all the units you train from that stable will be garrisoned in the stable itself. However, once you take them out, you can not garrison them again(castles and towers can).

PS 4 : No matter where you are, pressing H will take you to your TC. Pressing it again and again will cycle you through the available TCs.

PS 5 : First you deselect anything you have selected by clicking on the ground. Then if you press Ctrl + (hotkey of a building) , it will take to that building. e.g pressing Ctrl + L will take you to the stable. It is a good technique to keep the pointer on the respective icon, and then pressing the hotkey again and again while holding down the ctrl key to cycle through the military buildings of that type and placing your order in them by clicking the icon.

PS 6 : Wisely use the stances during the combat for better results. e.g. if you march your cavalry against siege(be it heavy scorpions or siege onagers) it is much more wise to go in staggered formation(that can be done by selecting all of them and pressing E) than line.

PS 7 : To wisely use Siege Onagers, use attack ground instead(Be careful, they affect your own units also). Use Heavy Scorpions, archers in stand ground instance.

PS 8 : Siege Onagers can clear forests for you.

Hey, when the holidays would be over, I am sure these questions would arise : How did you spend your holidays? Did you feel any change in yourself? Did your family tell you that they sense a change in you? Honestly, these holidays have been spent watching a lot of movies and learning some new games . I was pretty bored by  fps (first person shooter)  games. So, these holidays I took to all the popular strategy AOE like games. The list includes Age of Mythology, Rise of Nations, Warcraft 3. Now, some of my friends have asked me for tips and tricks in Age, and some have asked in Condition Zero. So, I thought of posting some of those tips and tricks on my blog, but as there are many games and each one would take a lot of space, I thought not to do so in one blog. So, next some blogs will be tips and tricks of some games, you can read the game you are interested in, and the blog is open for discussion on any game and if you have any questions, ask me.

This is not about  the original copy. This post was written after reading a fake copy written by a HP fan much before the release of the original one. 

It was friday afternoon and I was surfing orkut. There, a friend told me he had read Harry Potter & the deathly hallows. I said, hows that possible. He told me he had found a leaked version on the net and he read that and kinda liked that. Immidiately I was off searching google for a leaked copy. I found one and downloaded and started reading for I was already excited with all the suspense. It was written by some fan. I was up that whole night reading that, and another night and a day, to finish it . Reading from a pdf can be very slow, as the letters are so big that you read only one or two at a time.

The writing style was not at all near to that of J.K.R. . The writing lacked descriptions and a good layout. It was as if I was reading a love story of Harry Potter and Ginny and in between there were some brief moments of activities, which the writer had just rushed through. But still, the facts were right and there were some speculations drawn by the facts of the first 6 parts.

Some points in the story I’d like to tell :

1) Dudley is a wizard : Lately, things are getting weird around him when he is upset – just like it was with Harry. Aunt Petunia tells Harry that she had made a deal with Dumbledore to block Dudley’s magic, and she would raise Harry as her own child. This explained why she took Harry in. It also explained Dumbledore’s previous interactions with Aunt Petunia.

2) Fleur and Bill get married. At their wedding, Harry and Ginny patch up. Just then, there is an attack at the Burrow by Death Eaters and Harry saves the day.

3) Draco and Narcissa Malfoy have aligned with the order for the fear of their deaths. They hide at the Grimmauld Place itself.

4) Harry Potter is the seventh Horcrux. That’s how Harry has a part of Voldemort’s soul in him. He was made a horcurx accidentally, Voldemort realizes it later. That’s why he is left alive in the attack at Hogwarts.

5) R.A.B is Regulus Alphard Black, Sirius’s brother, a death eater.

6) As Voldemort takes over the Ministry, Remus and Tonks are killed while protecting Harry.

7) Harry finds the original locket, destroys it. He finds the other two Horcruxes also and destroys them. Finally, he faces Voldemort and kills him with Avada Kedavra, splitting the part of Voldemort’s soul from his one like in making a horcrux. Thus all is well, and the bad man dies:).

Snape had actually turned against Dumbledore. Dumbledore had actually died. That was no kind of a plan or something. Snape is caught by Harry and is sent to Azkaban, which is no longer guarded by Dementors.

9) Harry marries Ginny, and Ron marries Hermione, all’s well.

That were some points. All over, it was a read-and-forget type time pass. I am looking forward at the release of the genuine copy. It will be great to read the original one.

PS 1 : This is my first blog.

PS 2 : so, if u post comments, that wd be nice(even if u haven’t read a single part of HP..lol..) ….

PS 3 : That’s all 4 now …..

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