From this week’s Economist.

Mr Guriev suggests that the reason Russia has failed to modernise is that its ruling class can pocket rents from things as they are. Serious modernisation threatens them because it would require stronger institutions that would make this harder. This rent-seeking psychology is transmitted right down the bureaucratic chain, with each man taking a slice for himself.

As a rather compulsive note-taker, I go through a lot of pens. These Japanese pens – to me, as close to perfection as a disposable writing tool can get – came to me via eBay in the US. They’re one of the joys of globalization.

Finally, on writing here: this is my first post written with the iPhone WordPress app.

The only thing I hate about Thanksgiving is the turkey massacre. Tofurkey for the win!

Peace, love and vegetarianism to you all.

But after a long time, I’m on the verge of changing my mind and going Mac. But not quite. Not quite.

Key to my loyalty has been a very effective Dell laptop that has never let me down. Never let me down. (Ok. Once. Service Pack 3. Lesson learnt.) Ever since I bought it in January 2006 it has been a reliable, lightweight, versatile and frankly indestructible machine. It’s been punished. Travelled everywhere I’ve been. It does what I want it to do admirably (which is predominantly writing and net use although increasingly I’m meddling with photos, videos and sound files) and it has so far proved to be unbelievable value. It’s the third or fourth (via a few work PCs) in a succession of very reliable machines from Dell that takes me back to 1997 when I first took a laptop for University.

I bought my latest machine in April this year and in terms of sturdiness the new Dell machine isn’t as good. Vista has also been an absolute disaster. I’ve actually gone back to using the immortal XP machine. God I love her.

In the past months, confronted with Vista and the new machine, I’ve thought about making the switch to a Mac. You know me. I do my research. My major concerns relate to the fact that I deal professionally with organisations who uses old Windows machines and I need Word and PowerPoint docs etc to reach people with formatting intact.

I’ve asked Mac users: trust me, I know plenty. Many of whom who have been useful but many have not. I have an iPod. I understand that Apple make beautiful things. But it’s astonishing that so many Macists rely on evangelical statements that even your average fundamentalist Christian would shy away from because they’re so unsubstantial. When I ask why I should swap to a Mac, and whether this or that will work and whether wotsit and the other can be done, I’m not interested in answers that start with: “As Steve Jobs said…” I am as uninterested in the Book of Jobs as I am with the Bill is Right brigade.

The thing is, remember, my PCs have served me well. They’re not the crap ‘Mac Wankers’ keep telling me they are. Of course, I don’t code, or graphic design or game on any serious level. This two or one click mouse thing bothers me not. Taskbars and brushed stainless steel. Meh. Snow Leopard? I have no tangible idea what that practically means. But Macists tell me “it’s amazing”. I kind of accept that Macs are indeed better. But is one Mac, in particular, going to be better for me? That’s the answer I want. It’s certainly not going to be cheaper, after all.

I must have been into Apple Stores a dozen times in London and Brighton looking for the answers I need. On one occasion I wandered in, started meddling with a Macbook and got asked to move along because other people wanted to “experience” it. I’d been there about two minutes.

Apple Stores represent an unusually pointless experience for the uninitiated. I visit them like I visit Churches. I just look at things and admire them and watch people who know what they’re doing, doing what they want to do. As a non-believer, I just amble around respectfully, appreciate, nod, show respect and leave. It’s a pleasing pastime but not necessarily very illuminating. I’ve visited hundreds of Churches and never found faith. It’s rather the same with Apple Stores.

On my two appointments at the genius bar to get the skinny, one was excellent and most informative (and 90% got me there). The other was nonsense and, to continue my Church simile, was like taking confession whilst the priest tried to find the “Fuck Off” App on his iPhone. To the smiley unlistening, uber-euro, seemingly non-gender specific Appleton with trendy specs, an asymmetric, pedantically scruffy fringe and a faraway look suggesting a night before enhanced by hallucinogenic drugs: there’s no such Windows program as Metebelis 3. I made it up (or rather stole the name of a planet in Doctor Who). That’s why I scoffed at your claim that not only will Metebelis 3 work on a Mac, but it will work even better.

My current inclination, mostly because having bought one computer in the past 6 months I’m not inclined towards the expense of buying another, is to get Vista off my new PC and live with it for a few months and spend a bit more time learning about Macs. A few snatched minutes in Apple Store hasn’t been enough for me but now I’m back at Uni, it’s good to note they have Macs for use there. Maybe experience will tip the balance. But as I look at the latest raft of Mac and Windows ads slagging each other, I’ve got to say: if those guys could focus on details and facts, I’d find that a great deal more useful.

Labour List: on why I think Gordon Brown should go to Wooton Bassett.

The rest is all eBay related and predominantly related to the launch of the new edition of my book, Make Serious Money on eBay UK.

I was happy to talk to my old chums at Tamebay.com: eBay is a Sphinx. Be warned the piece comes replete with a video of me jabbering on.

There was a fun piece in the Argus and interestingly that piqued the interest of the BBC's Working Lunch.

Check out SupersavvyMe too, where I've also been talking eBay.

Last night the Tories chose their new candidate. David Bull dropped out to spend more time with his improbable excuse for withdrawing from the race. So, after the success of an Open Primary in Totnes, Brighton Pavilion Conservatives decided to have an open primary too. Except they didn't. I agree with Cllr Jason Kitkat and call it a caucus: the Tories called a meeting at the Grand Hotel and all Brighton Pavilion voters were invited to attend.

But it all went a bit wrong. I called the published number several times and it rang out. I then emailed the published email address twice and that bounced twice. In the end, I got through and I was confirmed as eligible as an attendee. I chuckled: I'm a member of the Labour Party after all. I'm never going to vote for the Conservative candidate in the only ballot that counts.

In attending the caucus, my intention was to vote for the least attractive candidate. But yesterday afternoon I started to wonder why I wanted to go to a Tory meeting at all: don't I have better things to do? Can't I expect Conservative minded voters to make their mistakes all on their own? I suggested to the friend I was going to go with that we might as well just enjoy a libation or two down the boozer and she readily agreed. When we learnt that the 6:30pm meeting went on till nearly 10 we felt justifiably smug that we'd had the better evening.

What does this Tory exercise prove? I've written before that I can see some situations where a primary might be attractive. But I agree with most critics that primaries and caucuses do little to improve engagement with the electoral process and don't address issues of diversity. This shambolic process with a meeting doesn't even compare particularly favourably with a well attended selection held by a political party. The Argus reports 80 attendees. Nancy Platts ‘s selection had more than 200.

The Brighton Pavilion Tory experiment is truly the worst of every world and the worst possible advertisement for "open primaries". A badly organised, poorly publicised meeting has selected a candidate who has neither the merit of being solely the local party's choice nor an interesting and remarkable figure who appealed to a broad swathe of local people. It feels like an unauspicious start for the new candidate, Charlotte Vere.

Roll on the general election: we now know all the runners and riders. The only thing we can say with any certainty is: the next MP for Brighton Pavilion will be a woman. That's good news. And more importantly, it’s all up for grabs. It's gonna be a helluva general election down here in the City-by-the-Sea.

The traffic to my blog from my first Fishville post has been staggering. How can I resist? That’s right, it’s time for Yet Another Fishville Post (YAFP). Come on, you know you want to read more…

I’ve been a little surprised to see how few accurate blog posts exist out on the web that break down the profit & experience for Fishville. Based on comments to my original post, I made some mistakes. As a result, I’m posting this follow up to help address the most common concerns:

• What about Level 5 (and 6 and 7…). I classify my charts based on the completion of levels, which is a little confusing because in Fishville, your fish is “Level 1″ until it completes the level, and then it is Level 2, etc. As a result, you don’t get the “Level 1″ experience until your fish reaches Level 2. Confusing. Even more confusing, after completing Level 4, your fish can continue to go up levels… it just won’t be worth anything more. As a result, I ignore all levels above 4.
• Why doesn’t my experience number match yours? It’s because I’m including the experience you get from dropping the egg in the tank, not just the experience you get from harvesting.
• Level 4 doesn’t take the same time as the other levels. Oops. This is correct. I still don’t have accurate info on whether the “Level 4″ time is the same for all fish (2 days) or different. For this post, I use the 2 day number, which changes the economics considerably. (Hint: It’s not worth your time to ever let this happen)
• Can you post a Google Doc of all your tables & charts? See the end of this post. First time for everything.

To recap, here are the assumptions for my tables & charts:

1. I assume harvesting & buying fish is instantaneous. Yes, I know its not. Fodder for a future post.
2. All profits are calculated per fish. Same with experience
3. Total Experience = Experience from dropping egg + Experience from the level(s) of growth
4. Total Profit = Revenue from harvesting the fist – Cost of the egg

In my last post, I described how your “profit per minute” increases with levels, but your “experience per minute” falls with levels. A lot of people didn’t understand this, so I decided to try some charts to illustrate.

Here is a chart I made in Google Docs showing the effect of increasing levels on Profit / Minute. Because there is a fixed cost to buying a new fish, the linear increase in profit per level helps your profit / minute. Of course, it falls off a cliff once you hit Level 4, and it takes up to 2 days to complete.

This means that, from a profit per minute perspective, it’s better to let your fish grow to complete Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3 before harvesting.

But there is a catch. Because you get XP every time to buy an egg, the effect on experience points per minute is the opposite. Every level you go, your experience points per minute drops! See this chart to visualize:

Based on the comments to my original blog post, it’s very obvious that most players continue to ignore the experience points you get for dropping an egg in your tank – choosing instead to focus only on the experience points you get when you harvest the fish. Big mistake, because this leads you to keep fish around too long.

Since my last post, I’ve also been able to complete my tables for all current fish.

Here is the profit table for Level 1 profits:

Here is the experience table for Level 1 experience. Note that I included the experience you get for dropping the egg, as well as the total experience you get for completing level 1. Remember, Total = Dropping Egg + Level XP:

As promised, here is a link to the Google Doc with all my tables and charts. Please post additional info, corrections, or data in the comments below.

“Praia e vento”, beach and wind, says this flag-decorated surfboard, instead of “Ordem e progresso”.

I just thought it was another brilliant iconographic choice by this week’s Economist, even better than the cover image with the rocket-fueled Cristo Redentor.

By the way, here’s where you can buy this picture and others with the same model and surfboard!

My Zynga addiction clearly knows no bounds. Last week, Zynga launched a new game called Fishville, and clearly at this point I have no ability to resist any new Zynga game.

Fishville has a deceptively simple frame: you have a fish tank, and you buy fish eggs for it. The fish hatch, you feed them, and then when they are fully grown, you sell them for profit.

What I’ve found most interesting about the game is the new dimensions they are exploring in the economics of the game. Fishville adds a couple distinguishing twists versus Farmville or Café World:

1. Multiple Tanks. How many people wish they had more than one farm in Farmville? In Fishville, Zynga has two types of expansion – the ability to put more fish in a single tank and the ability to buy new tanks. This may not seem relevant from a structural standpoint – after all whether you add 20 fish to one tank or 10 to 2 tanks shouldn’t matter – but it should create a new dynamic around buying virtual goods to decorate different tanks.
2. Harvest Levels. This is the real twist to the economics. Fish grow up in stages, up to four levels. The revenue in coins and the experience you get goes up linearly with each level. So if you have a 4 hour fish, you can harvest them at 4 hours at Level 1, or 16 hours at Level 4. You still have to feed them or they die (similar to withering crops in Farmville), but you don’t need to “replant”.

The Harvest Levels have the most impact on the game economics. In financial terms, each fish now has a fixed cost and a variable cost, as well as a fixed experience pay-off and variable experience pay-off.

For example, let’s take the Mini Dart Goby, the first fish.

The Goby costs 7 coins for an egg. That’s a fixed cost. If you grow it to Level 1, you’ll get 18 coins, for a profit of 11 coins. Easy, right? Hold on. If you wait until Level 4, you’ll get 72 coins over that same 7 coin cost, for a profit of 65 coins.

The fixed cost means that your “profitability” or “profit / minute” goes up the longer you wait to harvest.

Seems like a no-brainer to wait until Level 4? Not so fast.

With Experience Points, the math works in reverse.

The Mini Dart Goby gives you 2 XP for dropping the egg. At Level 1, you’ll get 8 XP, for a total of 10 XP. But if you wait until Level 4, you’ll get 32 XP, for a total of 34 XP of the time period. In this case, your “XP / Minute” goes down the longer you wait to harvest.

It gets even harder.

You can harvest a fish in-between levels… but you don’t get any credit for the time between levels. So if you are half-way between levels, your “profit / minute” and “experience / minute” will be terrible. In fact, the math says you need to harvest at level boundaries pretty closely. (I think in a future blog post, I’ll graph this.)

For now, here are some tables I’ve made for the fish I have data on. Unfortunately, this game is so new, I can’t find any guides online with data for all fish. Special thanks to Erin Hoffmann, who serves as both data provider and my toughest competitor in Fishville.

The most interesting aspect to these tables is that while the profitability / minute rises for each level, Zynga has kept the fixed costs proportional enough that the ranking of the fish does not change significantly between 1 level or 4 levels.

Here is the profitability of different fish at Level 1:

Here is the profitability of different fish at Level 4:

Here is the experience productivity of different fish at Level 1:

Here is the experience productivity of different fish at Level 4:

If you’d like to help, I’m missing data for the following fish:

• Blue Damsel
• Inland Silverside
• Pajama Cardinal
• Longnose Hawkfish
• Annularis Angelfish
• Blue Spot Grouper
• Blue Hippo Tang
• Bartlett Anthias

For each, please leave a comment with:

• XP / Egg
• Revenue / Level
• XP / Level
• Minutes / Level

Hope this helps the new Fishville players out there. Enjoy.

Update (11/14/2009): New blog post coming tomorrow, with updated tables and new info. Also, fixing the issue around the whole “Level 4/Adult” confusion, and publishing a Google Doc to help others benefit from the raw data. I’m still finding that people are ignoring the XP from the dropping of the egg, and only focusing on the XP from harvesting, so I’ll update tables to make that more clear.

Updates: I’ve now posted additional columns on Fishville:

• Fishville Economics: Points, Experience & Levels Part 2

Here’s a summary of the most recent posts I’ve read and enjoyed:

- Green Leader Cllr Bill Randall ruminates about the butterflies in his garden.
- Cllr Amy Kennedy's husband has carved a pumpkin with the Green Party logo.
- Cllr Jason Kitcat writes at length about the licensing rules at a local Sainsbury’s.
- Cllr Ben Duncan (and I had a lot to choose from) talks about the traffic lights at Oxford Circus in London and how by taxing junk food “there'll be probably be (sic) a fall in the high numbers of Brighton residents suffering from depression.”

It must be fun being Green. You can complain and pontificate about anything you like. As long as it isn’t about anything important to residents in Brighton and Hove. Tedious little concerns like a strike by Refuse Workers, for instance. Even in the local Brighton Argus this past week, I haven't seen a single Green Councillor speaking up.

Brighton and Hove’s pernicious Conservative council has tried to impose a pay cut on Refuse Workers in the name of equal pay. It’s bollocks and thankfully Labour folk have been out and about condeming the council, joining the protest and trying to solve the issue. Rubbish has been piling up for more than a week all over the city.

I had hoped to bend the ear of either of my two Green local councillors about the strike after the Service of Remembrance last Sunday at Old Steine. I was there but sadly neither attended. I may be a Labour supporter but Green Cllrs Rufus and Kitcat are my elected representatives.

Had they been there, I would have taken the opportunity to support the strike, condemn the Tory council’s inaction and urge them to use the backlog of rubbish to kick start a discussion about reducing waste. I have been personally shocked by the amount of waste on my street and I think being able to (quite literally) visualize the waste is a useful spur to reconsider the problem. There must be steps a committed City Council can take.

Some issues are ‘small g green issues’ that transcend party politics. But it seems like the local Green Party has gone to ground on waste and the bin strike (which has been temporarily suspended) and I’m curious to know why.

Answers on a postcard please, to the usual address.

I really haven’t had enough time to write the second post I had been planning on Buzz measurements and the profitability by unit time of different dishes. So, instead, this week I’m posting updated tables for some of the new dishes that Zynga has rolled out. (Still looking for an accurate breakdown of CP for Impossible Quiche, BTW. I’m only at Level 25 myself…)

Here are my Café World tables, updated for the three new dishes Zynga rolled out last week.

First, the table of dishes, sorted by total profit per day:

Here is the second table, dishes sorted by Café Points per Day:

As per some of the comments, I’ve realized that there is an overhead in time for setting up a dish. It’s likely small (15-20s), but still, that’s a material increase on a 5 minute dish. I’ll provide that update in a future post.

In truth, I had hoped to have my first FishVille Economics post up by now. Unfortunately, the little spat between Zynga & Facebook seems to have precluded it for now. Fishville has been down all day.

Rememberance is important every year, but recent losses in Afghanistan made it even more keen to mark the day this year.

Recently, I started collecting postcards of Brighton and Hove and I picked up these two images recently. It feels like a good day to share them.

Zynga launched several new crops this week: Cranberries, Pattypan Squash, and Acorn Squash, so I thought I’d update my tables for active players out there. So yes, this is Yet Another Farmville Post (YAFP).

For quick reference, here are the links to my first seven Farmville posts:

• The Personal Economics of Farmville
• The Personal Economics of Farmville, Part 2
• More Farmville Economics
• Farmville Economics: What Price Experience?
• Farmville Economics: Risk Adjusted Crop Profitability
• Farmville Economics: Sweet Seeds are Almost Genius
• Farmville Economics: Flowers & Updated Tables

I’ve updated my tables to include the new crops. You’ll notice that none of the new crops are significantly differentiated by either experience or profit.

Please remember, all tables normalize the values for one square per day (24 hour day), and include the cost and experience involved with plowing the square per cycle.

Here are the crops, ranked by Profit / Day:

Here are the crops ranked by Experience / Day:

Here are the crops ranked by Profit + Experience / Day (using 15 coins for XP value):

And here are the crops by Risk Adjusted Profit / Day:

Enjoy. Happy Farming.

Why is this bad? This is the backlog of just three day's rubbish. The refuse collectors have been working to rule, protesting (quite justifiably in my opinion) against massive pay cuts. The strike proper starts on Monday for seven days.

I have always found it bewildering that of all the places I have lived (including 4 London boroughs and Lewes), Brighton and Hove seems to be the one place that can't seem to crack the collection and disposal of refuse without regular disagreements, strikes, backlogs and general incompetance. In terms of recycling too, Brighton's record isn't partcularly glittering.

It seems to me that whilst education spend is more important and elderly care is also a bigger line item, that the one most visible council activity that any administration has to get right to ensure it retains confidence, is 'the rubbish'.

But it looks like Brighton and Hove's Conservative council has forgotten the old maxim that all voters care about locally is "bins, bogs and rats". And the seagulls are gonna love it.

Between 1913 and 1930, Carl Gustav Jung worked on the Red Book, also known as Liber Novus, a richly illustrated 205-page manuscript written in calligraphic text.

That is oddly comforting. To me it means that, even 500 years from now, there may still be a few lone souls printing books on paper.

(Picture: from the Rubin Museum of Art, whose exhibition marks the first public display of the book, and which has organized a stellar speaker program, “The Red Book Dialogues”, around the show).

Maybe every single generation goes thorough something like this (from I Love a Man in Uniform):

Of course, I was only a fraction of the rebel I used to be, having come to favor country music just as much as Rock ‘n’ Roll High School. Sometime in my early twenties, I had realized that punk rock might not be able to deliver on its messianic zeal. Even my idol, Dead Kennedys singer Jello Biafra, had started sounding less like a mordant political wit than a cranky old man shouting, “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!” In one of his later songs, he asked a question that echoed my own doubt: “Anarchy sounds great, but who would fix the sewers?”

I mourned the loss of my outlier faith as much as I welcomed the drift inward from the margins. The punk scene wasn’t hallowed ground or some infallible brain trust, it was just a bunch of strivers flailing around in search of answers, no better (though surely no worse) than anyone else. The far-flung dream of anarchy wore itself thin. Ideologically, I was fair game.

I particularly liked one installation called Circa 69 Sinking Ship, which I've posted below. Based on the premise that people in 2069 have worked out how to send a television signal through a wormhole created by the Large Hedron Collider to us right now, it's the future news. I looked really brilliant projected on a wall in black and white. It also made me laugh rather a lot.

Bring on White Night 2011!

wormhole transmission 24/10/09 from Simon Wilkinson on Vimeo.

I suppose it was inevitable. There comes a point when you have reached a level of wealth in Farmville where you can buy anything (even the Villa). A point when you have enough experience that you can plant any crop.

It’s natural at that point for the eye to wander, seeking out the next great Zynga game. And for me, that happened a little over a week ago when I decided to take the plunge into Cafe World.

Cafe World has a number of elements that I had originally suggested for Farmville: animated sims, shorter time spans, more functional enhancements. It’s a much more complicated simulation, and as a result, it took me quite a bit longer to get the hang of it.

There are a few very interesting new aspects to the game that make modeling the economics difficult. Expect future posts from me on how to model “The Buzz Factor”, which affects the velocity that your food is consumed over time, and how to model “Spoilage”, which is similar to Farmville but more absolute.

A couple quick tips, for the fans out there:

• Your Buzz Rating drops by 1.0 for every customer who comes in and leaves without food. The minimum is 5.0, the maximum is 105.0. There are two ways to preserve it, however. First, when you run out of food, remove the doors on your restaurant. This will close the cafe, and keep your Buzz rating flat. Second, your buzz rating will not fall if you are not actually running the game. That means it’s safe to run out of food, as long as you aren’t watching…
• If you block your waiter(s) in, then they will serve the food infinitely fast. This is just like the Farmer trick from Farmville. I highly recommend doing this with the three serving stations against a corner. One warning – for this to work, you need to give the waiter/waitress *two* squares of freedom. With just one, it doesn’t seem to work.

To get things started, however, I thought I’d just run the simple numbers on profitability and experience for each recipe. I found elements of this information on various posts across the web. (Here is one from Cafe World Strategy. Here is another from Cyberanto. This one was the best, from Simple Think.) Unfortunately, no one seems to know the Café Points experience breakdown between preparing & serving the Impossible Quiche… I guess no one is at that level yet. (I had to guess in my table).

First, profitability. Each dish below is normalized as follows:

• All values are normalized for a 24 hours day
• A “cycle” is based on cooking time, but includes the cost & cafe points for cleaning the oven once
• I assume an infinitely fast player for cleaning/preparing/serving

The next table shows the same information, but for Café Points instead of profit. This is more useful if your primary concern is “leveling up”.

Two things seem clear to me from these tables:

1. Overstuffed Peppers is the dish to beat. 12 hours cooking time means you don’t have to babysit the game endlessly. One of the most profitable, and does a fair job of building experience.
2. Fast Food is King. If you have the patience and time, serving burgers can’t be beat. All the numbers are incredibly weighted towards the foods with short cycles. After all, when you can literally serve something 288 times in a single day, that’s a huge multiplier.

In future posts, I’ll try to rebalance these numbers across risk of spoilage and personal time value, to bring some sense to the madness. I can tell already, however, that the Overstuffed Peppers is going to be the best balance of time & profit. Of course, my cafe is still dawdling at Level 14…

I applied only to NYU. Since I live in NYC, NYU and Columbia are the main full-time options (The New School and SVA are also good options). Even if I had been able to move to California, the schools there never held any appeal for a whole bunch of reasons.

I liked NYU because it was focused on production. It is also focused on the independent film and not on the Hollywood system. It is very international (I’d say 40% of the current class). It is very diverse. And very importantly, every single student gets to make a thesis film. This is huge. One of the things that put me off some west coast schools is that they slot people early and only some get to be directors while others have to assist them. Experience has shown however, that some people take more time to bloom than others. And when everyone pays the same tuition how is that even close to fair?

Another critical positive of NYU is that the filmmaker owns the rights to the films he/she makes, not the school. I am not sure people understand how important this is. Not to belabor the point, but some west coast schools own your IP. Huh?? Why on earth should the school own your creativity when you pay tuition to learn and use the equipment?

Anyway, for all these reasons, NYU it was. The application process was draining. Statement of purpose, treatment of a feature film (narrative or documentary), a scene with dialog, a treatment for a four-minute silent short film. And visual submissions of either films or photographs. I submitted both the short films I made. By the time I was done, I had no energy to even think of applying to Columbia.

The next step was the interview. I prepared as much as I could. The interview was three people – John Tintori, chair of the program, Milcho Manchevski, directing professor, and David Atkins. Wow. They just hit me with question after question without time to breathe. Nothing about my background or my aspirations. Just creative and visual challenges the entire time. 30 minutes later, I walked out feeling it was the worst interview of my life.

The fact that I am writing this post means, of course, that things were not as grim as I had anticipated.

I was ready to start in the class entering 2007. But life has its own plans. Two years later, I started in the class entering 2009. September 1 was the first day of orientation. And things have been insanely hectic ever since.

This post is a bit late, but I’m hoping to reverse the trend and blog about my experiences at NYU. If anyone is interested in the school or in film school in general, please feel free to ask any questions in the comments.

Zynga launched several new crops this week in the form of cut flowers, so I thought I’d update my tables for active players out there. So yes, this is Yet Another Farmville Post (YAFP).

For quick reference, here are the links to my first six Farmville posts:

• The Personal Economics of Farmville
• The Personal Economics of Farmville, Part 2
• More Farmville Economics
• Farmville Economics: What Price Experience?
• Farmville Economics: Risk Adjusted Crop Profitability
• Farmville Economics: Sweet Seeds are Almost Genius

I’ve updated my tables to include both Sweet Seeds and the new cut flowers. You’ll notice that, as per my last post, Sweets Seeds really aren’t as good as they should be. At least, it’s not clear to me why Super Berries were so much better.

Please remember, all tables normalize the values for one square per day (24 hour day), and include the cost and experience involved with plowing the square per cycle.

Here are the crops, ranked by Profit / Day:

Here are the crops ranked by Experience per Day:

Here are the crops ranked by a sum of profit and experience per day (see previous posts for why I ascribe 15 coins to the value of one point of experience):

And finally, the most important table: Risk Adjusted Profitability. This takes into account the risk of spoilage and the time it takes for each crop to harvest. I’ve found this to be the best table to answer the question of “what should you plant”:

Stay tuned for my next post, my very first on Café World, my new Zynga addiction. Very different simulation & economics, and should be good for a few interesting analytical posts.

Updates: I’ve now posted follow-on posts about Farmville Economics:

• Farmville Economics: Cranberries, Pattypan Squash, Acorn Squash

This week’s Economist has a very interesting piece on the political establishment in today’s United Kingdom. George Osborne, shadow chancellor, is 38. In his inner circle, advisers Rohan Silva and Rupert Harrison are 28 and 30; his chief of staff, Matthew Hancock, is 31; his speechwriter, Ameet Gill, 27. On the Labour side, Torsten Henricson-Bell, adviser to chancellor Alistair Darling, is 27. Gordon Brown’s speechwriter is said to be 29, and some of Mr. Brown’s policy unit members are reportedly “boyish”. And so on.

Greenness has its drawbacks, sure. Yet, as Bagehot remarks, “lack of personal experience does not disqualify someone from holding valid opinions, if curiosity and hard work compensate.” So, how about freshening up Italy’s gerontocracy? We don’t have enough fresh-faced UK-style policy wonks of our own: let’s just import them. They may perceive as “distant and hypothetical” some of the “grimly adult” “substance of politics — pensions, child-rearing and so on”; yet, they can hardly do worse at these topics than our septuagenarian leaders, can they?

It would be cool enough to see a new version of LinkedIn for iPhone go live in the App Store, but the fact that the credit goes to our two-time intern Andrew He makes it truly exceptional.

Full story here on the LinkedIn blog. You can download LinkedIn for iPhone v1.5 here.

This is Elizabeth Strout’s description of a turning point in the marriage of a middle-aged couple, Bonnie and Harmon.

But one night he turned to her in bed, and she pulled away. After a long moment she said quietly, “Harmon, I think I’m just done with that stuff.”
They lay there in the dark; what gripped him from his bowels on up was the horrible, blank knowledge that she meant this. Still, nobody can accept losses right away.
“Done?” he asked. She could have piled twenty bricks onto his stomach, that was the pain he felt.
“I’m sorry. But I’m just done. There’s no point in my pretending. That isn’t pretty for either of us.”
He asked if it was because he’d gotten fat. She said he hadn’t really gotten fat, please not to think that way.
But maybe I’ve been selfish, he said. What can I do to please you? (They had never really talked about things in this way — in the dark he blushed.)
She said, he couldn’t understand — it wasn’t him, it was her. She was just done.