• Lesson 1 for newbie me: Battle Points don’t accumulate between matches – so spend them!
• Don’t waste Battle Points. Ok I just said spend them, but don’t waste them on crap. Try to make a profit on every purchase (e.g. buy a parrot and tag more than 10 people).
• Phosphorous bombs are average for taking out a few people, but cluster bombs will take out vehicles too – with a slightly smaller blast radius. Use these when an enemy is taking capture points.
• Spawn heavy tanks to capture Ground Control points – they take a serious beating before they’re destroyed.
• Parrot drones are very effective. I have a whole post / tutorial about them. They’ve been nerfed a bit in a patch but they’re still good.
• Neither of the RPG style weapons lock on to vehicles. The proximity version is useful for shooting at aircraft and at tanks hiding behind walls.
• Unlike Blackops, you can briefly leave a Ground Control capture zone and come back again to resume capture. If an enemy steps onto the zone in that time then the capture progress resets.
• You can run forever, even while reloading.
• Neither sniper rifle offers a one-shot kill anywhere except the head. Double-tap the trigger on the semi-automatic is the easiest way to kill.
• Night vision goggles, unlocked at level 49, let you see all those snipers hiding in the bushes. I’ve not personally tested if they work in conjunction with a sniper rifle.

Vehicle stuff:

• Press A (on Xbox) to activate missile defence when in vehicles while under attack. It only lasts a few seconds and takes a while to recharge. Vehicles can also “sprint” / boost.
• Hold X to exit vehicles. You can also exit drones and re-enter them later. Very useful for Parrot and Rhino drones.
• Rhino Drone is probably the most effective tool for taking out enemy air support. It does lock on, and only costs 400 BP.
• The only other lock-on weapon is the light tank’s secondary fire. I don’t think this can lock on to enemy drones though.
• Maintain an anti-vehicle class. I use LMG, EMP nades, Boomer perk, RPGs, Proximity rockets, quick reload, quick ADS.
• Rifles with EMP launcher attachments can be used to disrupt helicopters – it sends them into an uncontrolled spin for a couple of seconds.
• You can shoot down the circling aircraft that launch air strikes, sometimes before the controlling player has launched – wasting their 1000+ BP. One or two hits with the Rhino.
• Vehicles take different damage when hit in different spots. Aim for the body, or C4 underneath. If your tank is under fire – turn sideways to reduce the amount of exposed body. Your tracks are not a weak spot.
• You can shoot the exposed gunner on a Humvee – especially from behind or above. Shooting the driver is a bit harder, and an RPG is much easier.
• How many RPG’s to take out a Sherman heavy tank? Quite a lot. About 6 or more – all hitting one side!
• Hide your damaged vehicle regions by turning them away from the enemy. This is most effective in tanks.

General team player tips:

• Play the objectives. Snipers that stay at the back of the map are the worst kind of player.
• Prioritise taking down enemy air support.
• Communicate with your team. Be that guy that encourages a team of strangers to call out enemy positions and activity. Tell them where you’re pushing, what you’re attacking, where you’re moving your vehicles and need more support.
• When you die and you see the whole map overview, look where the enemy are. Does it reveal a capture point that is unprotected?
• Don’t ignore or run away from enemy vehicles dominating your spawn and leave it for someone else to deal with.
• Is the round about to finish? Get to the next capture points early.
• Is there a mountain between you and the next capture point? Suicide with a grenade to spawn closer.

If you have any more Homefront multiplayer tips then add a comment and I’ll add them to this list :)

In Homefront multiplayer, knowing where your enemy is coming from is a huge advantage. That’s where the Parrot drone comes in – a remote controlled mini UAV that highlights enemy players by just looking at them.

Most of my Homefront XP  has come from using Parrot drones very effectively. I can often earn multiple Apache helicopters and tanks simply from using the Parrot. The leaderboard screen says I earn 1000 XP per minute, so they can’t be that bad to use. Here’s some general tips:

Parrot Drone Setup:

• Create a specific class with drone perks.
• Speed is more valuable than health.
• Penny Pincher perk reduces the cost of the drone from 250 BP to 200 BP.
• My second purchasable is usually a Rhino Drone, since I like to take down enemy aircraft and drones.
• Hide your player. In a building, out of sight, out of the way. Walls are good, a roof is better.
• Avoid lying down in your spawn point, make at least some effort to hide or move a bit. People like attacking spawns in this game.
• My favourite perk setup is: speed, battery, and “Grizzled” for the XP boost.
• The “Crater-to-Order” self-destruct perk turns your drone into a remote control bomb – which can discourage people from blowing it up. You get the usual 130 BP for killing someone using this.

How to use a Parrot Drone:

• Mark players (duh) – it’s worth 30 BP 20 BP each time.
• Mark players again! When their red marker is flashing, it’s time to earn another 30 BP 20 BP.
• Vehicles start flashing much sooner than players. Following and marking a single vehicle can be very profitable.
• Mark people you know your team are going to kill. A kill assist earns you another 40 BP. Enemy snipers on sniping maps, people at capture points, people near your team, and mark as much as possible near your team’s vehicles – especially for helicopters that can have a much harder time seeing individual enemies.
• Mark people in their spawn points. Dangerous, but quick points.
• The higher your drone is, the harder it is to see targets you can mark.
• Fly evasively, especially under fire – zig zags, various heights, spirals, etc. When being shot at I will usually go into an upward or downward spin.
• Hide your drone in trees. Sometimes works :)
• You can hold X to stop using your Parrot and run around on foot again.
• After exiting your Parrot (or other) drone, you can re-enter it by calling it up again.
• Avoid getting your own drone marked – I personally do this by tending to fly higher up than other drones.
• If you mark a drone, the controlling player also gets marked.
• You can mark all sorts of vehicles, including drones and helicopters, as long as you’re in range.

Taking down Parrot drones:

• Shoot it! They only take a few hits, or a couple more if they’re using the health perk. The LMG’s are the best weapon type for taking out vehicles.
• Rhino Drone. It’s one of the few things in the game that actually locks on two vehicles.
• Proximity RPGs, whatever they’re called – one hit and boom. Don’t even try to use a regular RPG – it’s funny how many people try!
• Kill the owner. Getting killed while controlling a drone will destroy it.

If you have any more tips, let me know and I’ll add them up here :)

For instance, clearly private sexual fantasies are not ideal dinner talk. But where should the line be drawn?

Salary is a strange one for me. Does knowing a colleague’s salary introduce odd office politics? What happens when someone decides to say their salary?

The whole idea reminds me of a book “The Light Of Other Days” by, hmm, Greg Bear maybe? I think it was co-authored. It was sci-fi anyway, and in that story a technology was invented that made personal privacy a thing of the past. No one had any privacy, ever, and it led to odd things like people having sex in public. Well why not? If everyone can see anyway then why not do it outside?

I wonder how the world would really cope if that sort of technology became possible.

1. Download the Aldiko base app from Android Market
2. Still in the market, buy as many O’Reilly ebooks as you fancy
3. Open each O’Reilly book and press Menu > Export
4. Refund all the O’Reilly books (within 24 hours of install)
5. Move the exported EPUB files from the root of your sdcard folder to sdcard/ebooks/import folder using your favourite file managing tool (e.g. ASTRO).
6. Open Aldiko, Menu > Import

I now have 20 O’Reilly ebooks available on my phone, for free!

Before you make any judgements about me being a thief or a pirate, please read how I view the situation:

After I’ve read the books, and if they’re any good, I’ll consider paying for them again. For example, I have a purchased copy of “Making Things Happen”, as I feel that it’s a very good read. I also purchased Aldiko Premium, since I want to support the developer for his great work.

I only managed three fairly simple tasks though:

1. Mowing the lawn.
2. Repotting some herbs that were being absolutely smothered by their neighbours.
3. Digging up the grass along the right hand side and adding some lawn edging.

It’s not much, but it’s progress.

1. Only one index is used per table per query.
   Meaning that if you run a query like
   SELECT * FROM customers WHERE forename='David' AND surname='Carrington'
and have two separate indexes on forename and surname, then MySQL will only use one of those indexes. The solution could be to create a compound index which encompasses both columns, but check out the second point I learned…
2. A compound index is only used if the first column in the index is required in the query.
   Meaning that if I had created a compound index (forename, surname) then tried to do a query based on surname only, the compound index would not be used! It would only get used if the index had been created the other way around.

Generally the MySQL I write doesn’t encounter these issues but I did find them both interesting, mostly because I’d never come across them before. There’s a few chapters I skipped in the book because I don’t (currently) need to know too much about them:

• Load balancing – I leave that to our capable hardware team.
• Replication - I know enough to get our implementation working.
• Security – I think it’s fairly safe to assume that our existing infrastructure is quite secure, and I already have a basic understanding of permissions within MySQL enough to manipulate them using phpMyAdmin.

Overall, a very good read and highly recommended for those using MySQL.

I also have a digital copy of MySQL High Availability to read at some point, although I may focus on another area first.

It reminds me of the Sims. Frequently through the game, your Sims have ideas about what they want to do, like reading a particular book. By reading that book you earn points, and then with those points you can magically reward your Sim with bizarre things like the ability not to require showering quite as often.

Today I think I earned quite a few points:

My chilli seeds sprouted. 100 Points	I read a chapter of a book and learnt something new. 150 Points
I mowed the lawn and built a plant rack doohickey. 300 Points	I sorted out my gas and electric bills. 100 Points
I baked bread. 100 Points	I took a cut of my coriander for drying. 100 Points

Now then, where are the magic rewards in real life?

So, starting with an empty patch of grass 5m x 8.5m and a few paving slabs, I’m planning to make myself an awesome garden that looks a little like this (although hopefully a lot less blocky):

I’m already growing various herbs that get chopped and added into my cooking every so often. I’d love to grow a lot more with the help of the 2 raised beds at the back of the garden design.

I bought myself an allotment book from Amazon, and I imagine the site Eat Seasonably will come in very useful too. Bring on the good weather so I can start building it all!

1. September 2008: I won a Sagem MY721X “So Ice” for emailing Ben Smith “Ben Smith is the best presenter on Mobile Industry Review”.
2. December 2008: I won a Dell Mini 9 netbook from Mobile Industry Review’s Christmas Presents competition.
3. June 2009: I won a Nokia N97 from The Really Mobile Project’s WeekOfWin competition.
4. November 2009: I won a Sonim XP3 Land Rover phone from Mobile Industry Review.
5. June 2010: I won an HTC HD2 as part of a team entering Microsoft’s MyKindOfPhone competition.
6. Yesterday (July 2010): I won a Sony Ericsson X10 Mini Pro from SE’s “insiders” competition.

So please, forward me any phone competitions you hear about because I really like entering them!

Funnily enough. Even though I win so many phones, it doesn’t stop me buying another every time my contract runs out:

• 2005: HTC BlueAngel
• 2007: HTC Touch
• 2008: HTC Diamond
• 2009: HTC Dream
• 2010: HTC Desire

I really ought to sell one or two of these!