I could bore you know with some figures about up to 30% of the Romanian labor force being “employed” in the agricultural sector (contributing some nothing to the local GDP btw and leaving a gap of basic commodities to be filled by imports waaaaaayy higher than domestic production). Those are serious topics and we could and should reflect a lot about them. We could also talk about Romanian’s strong commitment to religion, which in other cities than the capital will manifest itself by phenomena such as people – including emo subculture guys – making their cross at every church they come along (oh, boy, they are plenty!). This might seem strange, if not akward, but no, I have something much better for you. Being internet marketer myself I was very excited about the following email, sent to a friend of mine and owner of one (or actually more) ecommerce-shop(s):

“I am priest Florin, a monk from the city of Iasi (Jassy) and represent an orthodox parish in Jassy. We support several social programs and would like to earn a buck. If possible, we would like to promote your business or to advertise it in Jassy, may it be brochures, magazines, by me, our family or our partners. We can advertise you also in archbishop-ship seats, Parishs, Monasteries, via the Internet using affiliate programs or via email to thousands of friends. We have a tax number, a bank account [not something necessarily common in Romania, in 2008 just 50% of the population maintained relationships with banks; S.H.]. Regarding advertising, we can also display banner ads in our Parishs. We also have the possibility to print brochures and flyers at convenient production prices.”

This sounds like a bargain not to refuse but to make things clear an alternative translation would be like this:

“While my fucking peasant buddies still plow their land using utilities unchanged for some hundreds of years and which might not even be locally produced due to a lack of know-how [scythe imported from Western Europe e.g.] and their horse (or wife – according to possibilities) we, the cool dudes from the church – are way ahead: We offer you display advertising, affiliate and email marketing (high open rate guaranteed) for both popular online and offline channels. At your request we can even be a complete agency with production capabilities at reseller prices. We even do not refrain from sending unsolicited mail aka spam for customer acquisitions, because we know, that in our case, the target population will highly appreciate it. That’s basically why we are able to build one new church after the other even though the whole construction sector is crushed.”

Well then, good to know that technology and century old traditions can live this well together. Not that the loudspeakers transmitting the church service in the very heart of Bucharest wouldn’t have remind me often enough. But it’s really as contradictory as this: while the peasant are cropping their land with century old plows and cutting the grass with scythes, our friends in the monastery might even operate their church bells conveniently by the push o a button and remote: by SMS – they might be even wearing a swarovski powered robe.

I always knew, Romania can do it. Hallelujah.

Bonus for fans: A Romanian Pries blessing a car. No fake. Source unknown, author shall contact me for credits.

]]> http://www.steffen-heringhaus.com/legio-mortis-around-the-world-la-la-la-la/feed 0 http://www.steffen-heringhaus.com/farmville-extend-my-farm http://www.steffen-heringhaus.com/farmville-extend-my-farm#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:23:07 +0000 Steffen http://www.steffen-heringhaus.com/?p=625 Farmville on Facebook keeps changing and has new features. However, I badly want to extend my farm, but the function is still locked for the mighty plantage. Maybe because Farmville got 11 million users now (per day), what is great on the other hand. Though it slowed the server obviously down. It has obviously outdriven FarmTown and the farmville community on facebook is growing. There are also some really good new posts on the game, personally I liked a lot the posts on Farmville Economics by Adam Nash.

 

On the other hand, I got somewhat upset with farmville in the last time. This is because of many things:


New Harvester:
The new harvester is an awesome machine I wanted to have for a long time and it is doing a great job. Harvest as fast as you plow with a tractor. However, you do not get extra fuel for it and it will take the same fuel as the tractor. As I expanded my farm to 20×20 already some time ago, even the tractor has not enough fuel to plow the whole field. So, I divided my farm in three parts, all planted with sunflowers, which ripen at different times so the fuel can be refilled meanwhile. However, it is still not enough to plow and harvest all the subfields with the machines, and however was not quite the idea when I bought them.

My farm is running out of space. I added a lot of friends dedicated to farmville and receive a bunch of gifts every day. I also built some stuff like Tool Shed, the rest tent, a cottage and a grain silo (though I am not into grain tarde, hehe) in order to get more experience and to reach level 25 (sunflowers ). Well, the result is my farm running out of space and the extension to 22×22 is locked, though I have enough friends.

Well, currently I still manage my farm life but it is getting somewhat boring without opportunities for significant development in the game (unlock the big ole plantation and the mighty plantation zynga dudes!). Furthermore I want to employ staff as I am going to holidays on friday and I will not visit my farm for a week then. Somebody should do the work there?!

The super berries disappered as quick as the came. What a pitty, they have been quick cash, but as my farm is running out of space I cannot invest more money right now whatsoever.

Here a small gallery of my farm.

Last but not least I recommend the posts of Adam Nash about Farmville Economics:

• Farville Economics Part IFarmville Economics Part II

I liked these posts a lot, hope you do, too and now have fun with farming

Farmville changed a lot this week. Black sheep appeared everywhere and populate my farm now, but their wool seems as good as of the white sheep. So I would say they are good to adopt. Obviously I am not the only one who has gone crazy about that game as I noticed a significant increase in traffic on this blog. Some people even subscribed! All people seem to search for this game ))
As I a have no time for staying all the day on Facebook, I planted pepper which has a profit margin (ROI) of some 560 coins. They have to be harvested only once a day, and so they fit my target pretty well. Next target however, will be sunflowers, they are to be harvested once a day, too but will bring you up to 1,200 coins a week. That is money, isn’t it? Unfortunately I don’t have level 24, yet

Then I noticed the just recently introduced tractor. That is really a cool feature as it let you plow your farm much faster. It’s a pity that fuel is not enough for my farm and buying fuel is too expensive. On the other hand, once could divide the farm in two parts where plants ripe with some 12 hours delay. Harvest, plow, seed the first half of your farm, then wait, let the tractor recharge and go for the next part. Why pay for fuel?
Funny thing about the tractor: the horn function. Click on it and it will make some noise. Nothing useful, but maybe fancy for some people. Oh, and there is also a pink tractor available now, I guess it is for the girls. For all those who thought of buying two tractors: it seems like it will not increase your productivity, as you do not get another load of fuel with the second tractor

Pretty much the same was introduced for animals on Farmville. You may have noticed that they have a pet function now. Activate the sound, pet them and they will make some noise, too. The rabbits don’t. Prolly because the developers didn’t know how a rabbit sounds like, neither do I. Some say to pet the animals will make them more productive and increase their yield. I did not observe such a thing, yet.

I extended my farm twice, and I will do so again. If you need more neighbors on Farmville, there is a useful group on Facebook just dedicated to this very objective of finding Farmville neighbors (Farmville Neighbor Finder). Extending your farm is fine, but a lot of work. As I am lazy I try to keep things simple without moving all plants and animals all the time around. To it’s a good idea to keep plants at the upper margins of your farm, the animals likewise as the farm extends at the lower margins. It will make harvesting also a lot easier. But prolly you noticed already. I did actually somewhat late and the first moving was a pain in the ass.

And now the super berries: they are a really good way to make money, but they will give you no experience. Well, that’s the trade off. But if you would play Farmville all the day (and night) their weekly profit margin or ROI would be well above 6000 coins! That is 6 times more than sunflowers…

And last, but not least, the award for creative planting goes to Vlad, just take a look at the pictures. Cheers mate!

Well, gotta turn back to work now
Have a nice weekend.

FarmVille is a browser game based on Flash on Facebook, developed by Zynga. As far as I know the game is available for MySpace, too. Obviously, Farmville was inspired by Farm Town. However, the main idea is simple: get yourself signed-up, start by creating an avatar, open up your farm and grow it. This for you can do what all farmers do: Plug and plow your ground, seeding, let plants grow, harvest them and sell them afterwards on the market. Reinvest the money and a new Farmville cycle is about to start. Responsible for me to spent my time with that stuff is Alexandra ))

But Farmville is much more than this. It is a social browser game you can play with all your Facebook friends. Get your friends beeing your neighbors, support each other by sending free gifts for your farms, help each other out with work, gain experience and social reputation etc. You can even leave each other messages on your farms…

Farmville offers you plenty of assetts to invest in: among plants there are grain, rice, strawberries and soyabeans and some kinda trees. Animals are also available. The problem is: first, you need to plow and to seed, then let the plants grow. Likewise the animals need time to produce their assetts: the cow milk, the chicken eggs etc. That is kinda time consuming, especially if your farm is growing big. If ya are the kinda guy who still has to work sometimes in the (more or less) real world you might be interested in a resonable seeding-harvest cycle with an acceptable return on investment. Actually, strawberries have a great ROI, but heck, you have to harvest them already after 4 hours, if you wait too much they will wither and your investment turns out being a loss. Thus, I am currently fine with soyabeans, their ROI is not excellling but ok, and they need to be harvested/re-seeded only once a day.

Here are some eaxmples:

Plant Time until ripe Max weekly profit

Strawberry 4 hours 420
Soybeans 1 Day 231
Squash 2 days 231
Wheat 3 days ~ 150
Rice 12 hours 504
Blueberries 4 hours 1092

Currently I want to extend my farm and have to add some neighbours this for. I think I will go for rice then. 12 hours is acceptable.

Meda wrote her answers on her blog. Well, now it’s my turn:

• ba, esti? [eh, are you there?]
• [emoticon for smoking on skype, its Mihai calling me] I ought to answer with , too, even if we are sitting next to each other
• vreau si eu un referat. Cum il descarc? [How can I download a referat?] oh yeah, let me use this occasion to clarify that I don’t care as the respective site is not mine and the affiliation ceased over 4 month ago!
• www.youtube.com/blablablaetcsamd
• hihi [yep, hihi]
• [of course, work is not all about fun and sucks sometimes]
• bre, vii la supporter? [bro, r ya comin to Supporter?]
• ai auzit ca s-a certat cu…? [so where are the news? ]
• Hi! I was just browsing your site and wondered if you would not like to link to my site about … [Nope]
• Was haben wir diese Woche für AdWords bezahlt? [How much did we pay for AdWords this week?]
• Gebrüüüüüüüüüüüüüüder, du meldest dich aba auch nicht, oda?! [Eh bro, you don't give a sign, are ya?]
• ce faci? [how are you?]
• cati useri avem? da-mi un semn cand intri. iti multumesc. [How many users do we have? Give me a sign when you are online. Thank you]
• Cand vii la office? [When are you going to come to office?]
• Cate linkuri vrei sa adaug pe zi? [How many links I shall add per day?]
• Steeeeeeeeeeef
• ti-am dat leapsa pe blog [I invited you to join this funny game on my blog]

Well, here we are
Nothing spectacular, actually a lot of boring day to day stuff in between, but not only. And actually, I like it. And beside of the ones mentioned above: this and this would probably be among the another messages. Again from the room next door (are we geeks?). A good reason for still being here…

Or for going together to the vacations

Who’s next?
Alexandra, Alex, Mihai?

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