Tag: tips

10 tips to save you from dying in DOTA2

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DOTA 2 has been around for less than a year, but the gaming community has been fast adopting to this game. This community is mostly made of people who have been playing League of Legends, or Heroes of Newerth … and also the successful predecessor DOTA. What this means, that sometimes this community can be unforgiving for newbies.

There is a reason for that as well … when you die unnecessarily, the enemy hero gains money and experience

I have not seen a Pub game wherein the newbie does not get flamed for unnecessarily dying and feeding the opposition. To survive this onslaught, you just need to follow these steps … and people will stop calling you a n00b!

Tips to increase your survival

  1. Always carry a Tango at the start. That will help you stay in the lanes longer.
  2. Do NOT auto-attack. It’s tempting to do so … yes I know … even I used to do this. But it works out better if you don’t. When you auto-attack, you end up pushing the creep wave towards the enemy tower making ganks and one-on-ones all the more difficult. As it is, the only thing that matters is getting last hits. If you can get 100+ last hits in a game, you should be good.
  3. Keep a tab on the mini-map. You can tell by looking at the mini-map where are the other enemy heroes. Tracking them is useful since this can help you avoid possible ganks on you.
  4. Before you commit to any fight, ask yourself this question – Can I survive, are my team mates around to push/defend if I die?
  5. Farm happily, but stay away of towers. Some of the best farmers out there do not farm if they do not see the enemy heroes on the mini-map.
  6. Know your hero’s build. All the hero’s are meant to be used in a certain way. Practice with them before hand to know the best way to use them.
  7. To stay longer in a lane, learn how to use a courier to fetch items for you.
  8. Do not initiate a fight wherein you are going against multiple enemies. If your lane partner is not around, stay back and focus on getting last hits.
  9. If you are running low on health and do not have a courier at your disposal, go back to the base. The loss in XP for not being around action is lesser than the loss in XP when you die.
  10. If you are saving up gold for a particular item, remember that most items are made up of composite items. These composite items can be seen in your Quick Buy panel (Shift + Click on the item for this). If you know you are going to die, then just go ahead and buy as many composites as possible. That way at least the money is put to good use.
  11. (Bonus) Relics are good, but if you cannot farm, then getting intermediate items work better. Consider Power Treads for their versatility.

Practice on these tips and you should be safe enough!!

Resume Gaffes

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A couple of years back I had posted about some of the idiotic things that people write in their CVs. Lessons were not learnt it seems … till date we see thousands of such resumes with grammatical mistakes.

If you have a grammar nazi for an HR team (and yes, we do) … then your resume will not get shortlisted … here’s a list of #facepalms which we have seen over the months. Instead of just posting them here and making fun of these excerpts, I’ve decided to be more constructive and give feedback on how to avoid these errors

Using Long Motherhood Statements

Seeking position for an organization that will utilize my skills, talent and Management aptitude, so that I may propel it’s growth and development, while also contributing to my personal and professional fulfillment.

Looking for a position where talent, sense of responsibility, commitment and output of work is required for personal along with professional growth.

Stuff such as too many clauses, long generic statements are a complete turn-off. This is a matter of personal opinion, but I think putting such things in your CV is a waste of time. The only reason I would want to read these lines is to ridicule them. If you are applying for a job, then your objective should be just that … and no need to put that down on paper, since the reason you sent that paper across is to get a job.

Why beat around the bush, just directly get down to it … it will save the recruiter’s time and that is appreciated.

Grammatical Errors and Typos

Although I am a recent post graduate, my technical knowledge, my practical experience and eagerness to learn and be a part of  your organization will surely make an additional assistance.

I would like to express my interest in a position as HR Executive in your establishing organization.

When you are done framing your resume for the first time, be sure to get it reviewed by at least 2-3 different people. Try to look for a grammar nazi … between the lot of you, errors will come out. Make a note of these and be sure to correct them! Send the updated document across to everyone at the end of this exercise. You will be surprised with the improvement in your document.

Connecting MySQL to Excel using ODBC Connector

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We use vTiger CRM for capturing leads and general workflow management at Pristine. vTiger is by far one of the most feature rich and economical CRM solutions that are available in the market today. It lacks one thing though, a strong Reporting backbone, especially for the marketing department. So if you are running multiple campaigns across different mediums and capturing all these leads in vTiger using Webforms, then there are very few useful reports to find things such as Return on Investment (ROI) of all my marketing campaigns, or to find which campaign is working out on a day to day basis.

This is where we generally use Excel! I had written about one such report that we use to evaluate our daily and weekly campaign performance using Subtotals in Excel. You can of course pull data from vTiger in the form of a .CSV file and then run reports on it. However, if you have a local replica of the MySQL database of your CRM, then you can easily connect MySQL to Excel using Data Connections and MySQL ODBC Connector. Here are the steps on how you go about it –

  1. Obtain the MySQL ODBC Connector setup, select the appropriate version for you and install it
  2. Add an ODBC Driver – You can find this in Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Data Sources (ODBC). Here you will find all the existing ODBC Drivers listed, if you do not see any MySQL drivers listed, click on the Add button on the right hand side. In this list you will find the MySQL ODBC Driver that you had installed from Step 1

    Add ODBC Driver
    Add ODBC Driver
  3. On selecting the MySQL driver, you will be prompted to enter the database details that you wish to connect to. These are your MySQL Database details that you are maintaining on your local network (Pro Tip: Check for connectivity from your machine to the MySQL Server first! I have seen many a programmer waste endless hours trying to connect in vain.)

    Fill MySQL Details
    Fill MySQL Details
  4. Now you can import one single table from your target DB or you can choose to execute a query and fetch its results. I always prefer the later since then I can retrieve all the data I require in one Data Connection.

    Connecting to a table
    Connecting to a table
  5. Click on Save and Finish. Your ODBC Connection is ready to be used in Excel!

    Finish Connection
    Finish Connection
  6. Now open Microsoft Excel and switch to the Data Tab  and click on Connections to see all the data connections already present in the workbook. If it’s an empty workbook, then there will not be any data connections. Click on Add.

    Connection files on this Computer
    Connection files on this Computer
  7. Now your Connections are available in ODBC, so you need to click on Browse and click on the New Source to go to the ODBC Prompt.

    Connect to a new datasource
    Connect to a new datasource
  8. Choose your ODBC Connection and you are done!
  9. Now when you save the connection, Excel will pull the data and display it in your current worksheet! The only thing you need is mad ninja dashboarding skills to make your Excel look awesome!

Typically you would use this system if your dashboard or excel report is pretty much set and the data comes from a database which changes frequently (transaction based database). The only pitfall that I see of this method is that the size of the excel file can really shoot up if you are pulling in a lot of data. Stuff such as pivot tables also work a lot in increasing the excel file size. So try to be frugal in their use when you create a dashboard! The screenshots that I am including are from me connecting our Excel report to our CRM database.

 

PS – A word of advice, do not directly connect your live database to the Excel file. ALWAYS use a mirror!

Starters guide to SEO

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One part of my role at Pristine is building up the site traffic, be it via Paid Advertising, Referral traffic or via Search Engines.

Anyone who has indulged in Paid Advertising would know how expensive it can turn out to be if you do not know what you are doing. It can be very effective in the short term, however for long term and more sustainable results, relying on non-paid search results is far better. Hence SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

The problem with SEO is that almost everyone who has a website think that they should do SEO, and SEO is playing around with meta tags. Seems simplistic no? In the past month or so, the amount of people whom I have talked to regarding to SEO has shown how less people know about the workings. Add to it the complexity of the ever-changing algorithm of search engines such as Google, Bing, etc.

The idea behind SEO is to target specific keywords for specific pages on your site, so that when your target audience searches for those keywords, your site shows up in the search results.

Here are some tips which I would have appreciated when I started off. Please do keep in mind, that I am no self-professed expert in SEO, just that like all of us around here, even I am learning, and this post is one such humble attempt to share whatever that I have learned, and what I know works to get results. Having said that, I know it would help all of us if you could point out any errors that i have made, or make suggestions and provide additional tips!

  • Read up on your meta tags, some of them are useful. Make a note of the description and author tags, you would be working with description the most.
  • Do not target more than 2-3 keywords per page, since you have to use that keyword in all the different important sections of the page viz., description tag, title tag, h1 tag, main content, etc. you cannot really target 1-2 keywords without damaging the copy of your page.
  • If you are working with a tight budget, then use a free tool such as Traffic Travis, the demo version is free. If you have a decent sized budget, then I would highly recommend Pro SEO MOz, it not only has a very comprehensive SEO tool, but also it has an extensive knowledge base on SEO
  • Search Engine’s maintain the authority of websites, this is generally a factor of how well you write, and how many sites are linking to your content. Google especially is one search engine which rewards regular content creation, in fact the current search algo (don’t know why its called the panda update) also favors freshness of content. So the same page would rank higher if it were regularly updated.
  • Always look at the different search terms via which people are coming to your site. Those are essentially content creation triggers!
  • Many people swear by backlinking, citing different open directories to publish your site links. However, I am skeptical about this approach. The one thing I use this approach for is to check where are my competitors linking, and get my presence their as well. I think if you can create good quality content, then it will automatically fetch the backlinks that you require.
  • Search engines are also influenced by social behavior, so typically the search results shown in Google would be influenced with what your friends are sharing on your social networks. E.g- If I share this post on say Twitter and if you are following me on Twitter, then you would definitely see this as a search result!
  • SEO is a long drawn game, and it requires patience, practice and discipline. Do not expect magic to happen, it’s a slow and gradual process and does not happen over night. To hope for such miracles, either you need to be Larry Page or Steve Ballmer.

Crawl tips

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Earlier this year, I had blogged about a new Rogue-like game by the name of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup. Better known as Crawl.

The appeal to this game, is that it’s not a simple grind-based game and it is definitely not meant for n00bs. To them, I would suggest World of Warcraft, which has a simple learning curve, and is currently loosing support due to the ever increasing nerfs to the game dynamics.

The game is not easy, and a n00b can easily die if not cautious. Here are some tips for beginners –

  1. Do your research on the races – It helps if you are aware of each races pros and cons. Pick one which suits your style, for e.g – if you are a melee type of person who likes to be at the fore front of a battle, then it would be foolish to select a magic affine race such as Deep Elf, or a stealthy race such as Spriggan.
  2. Know your classes – The race + class combination is absolutely essential. Certain classes work well with certain races. A Spriggan berserker is asking for trouble, is it not? Even more disastrous would be a Troll Wizard.
  3. Know your skills – There are certain skills which you will be better suited for with your race + class combination. Exercise more of those skills, and become better at them. It helps your attack power and can help you down the largest of the lot.
  4. Worship the Gods – There are lots of Gods to be worshipped in Crawl. Select your God wisely, since there are melee-based gods and magic-based gods. You do not want to be a caster and worship Trogg for example, he prevents magic use. Similarly, you do not want to be a necromancer and worship the Shining One who forbids the use of necromancery.

A list for beginners is here.

I personally favor Melee-based characters, but have done good with casters as well. What about you?

Microsoft Livechat on Ubuntu

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If you are just starting out on Ubuntu, then the forums are a good place to search for your doubts. You are not the first person stuck with some problem or glitch. Millions of people out there have faced them, and overcome them. The forums are the intrepid user’s best friend.

I have completely shifted bases to Ubuntu for my home system, one of the teething problems I had was using a Microsoft Livechat headset with Ubuntu. The headset is USB based, and Ubuntu does require some tweaking to start using the headset.

This is what you need to do –

  1. Open a terminal, and type

    sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

  2. At the bottom of the file, make an entry

    blacklist snd_hda_intel

That’s it! Now simply restart your machine so all the modules get reloaded, the headset will now work.

About the blacklist.conf file

The blacklist.conf file is used to indicate to the system of which modules to ignore. Sometimes, multiple modules are addressing the same device, and that ensures that the device will not work. So, the blacklist file is used to indicate which module to be ignored.

WoW on Wine

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No, I don’t drink and raid :)

I recently have taken a lot to playing World of Warcraft during my free time (I think this also reflects pretty well on the blog :-)). I also have bought a good powerhouse of a desktop, and had dual booted it with WinXP and Win7. The problem with Win7 is that I have the 64-bit trial distribution and it hangs a lot, it has driver issues. The problem with WinXP is that its WinXP :-)

I am not that much of an operating system nazi, but the machine slows, down, the wireless network card that I am using is not fully utilized (WinXP sucks when it comes to driving the wireless interface!!). All in all, when it comes to playing an Online RPG, the environment does not deliver it’s 100%. Thus, I tried to give Ubuntu a try.

  • I already had the 11.04 distro with me, so the first thing I did was update all the repositories, include the third party repositories, and install Wine. Wine stands for WINdows Emulator. You can read more about Wine here.
  • After Wine, I went for installing Winetricks, which is a third party software. It’s used to easily streamline commands via a wizard which otherwise I would have been forced to use the console.
  • Somehow the Wine commands that get integrated into the shell (the right click menu of your explorer) are a bit different from the wine that got installed. So at first the program refused to run giving some obscure access management errors.
  • So, refusing to be let down, I went and searched for third party alternatives. You can skip this step, and definitely do not install the Crossover Games application because its just a trial, however, the PlayOnLinux (POL) application is recommended here, since after installing that, at least the icons of the .exe files will be visible
  • However, when I ran the Launcher.exe of World of Warcraft via the custom command console (by right clicking on it and selecting Open with Other Application, and then simply typing wine in the command box)
  • That’s it. Now the World of Warcraft launcher will run, and the game runs seamlessly

Since the game does not use the latest DirectX drivers, instead it replaces them with its own set, the textures and the games will be slightly different. I noticed a different texture for the water in WoW for example. But otherwise, the game is perfect for running. The network card works better, so I get a faster ping rate.