Good quote

If you feel you are stuck or overwhelmed with a complex task with not enough progress, the following Mark Twain quote could come in handy:

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex over-whelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one." – Mark Twain

Board games...

I have had some friends of mine ask me recently about where to buy board games, so I thought I will put out a list of the relevant resources:

Board Game Geek: This is THE authoritative place where you can find information, ratings and reviews of all the board games. Search for a game by name and look for its "user reviews". Or you can look at the top-rated games and see which ones suit your style and the style of your group. It is usually better to get a diverse genre of games (for e.g. number of players, theme, heavy vs. light etc.).

Places to buy: Once you identify a game that you are interested in, there are various online resources where you can purchase it:

1) http://www.boardsandbits.com
2) http://www.funagain.com
3) http://www.thoughthammer.com

The following is a very short list of some popular games:

1) Settlers of Catan
2) Puerto Rico
3) Ticket to Ride
4) I'm the Boss

The newest additions to my collection are Memoir'44 and Pompeji which I haven't really got a chance to try out yet...

Fare wars!

Looks like the fare wars are heating up for flights from India to Singapore/Malaysia/Gulf. Air Sahara announced yesterday the Rs. 10,000 round trip fare for the following segments:

Delhi-Singapore-Delhi
Chennai-KLMPR-Chennai

Air India's low-cost spin-off "Air India Express" would have significantly lower fares for travel to the Gulf. For instance, a one-way fare from India to Abu Dhabi could be as low as Rs. 2,500!

Fares have been getting better in the domestic scene as well. Per this article, air travel has shot up by about 28% this year (about 19 million air-travellers for the year ending March 2005). Safety should be a top-priority for these low-cost airlines - hopefully that will not be compromised in any way because of the low fares (I don't care about service etc.).

I am planning to check out Air Deccan next week - will post my experiences!

Micro-hydel power projects

You may be knowing that the movie Swades was inspired by a real-life incident. Looks like these young engineers from Kerala (Anil and Madhoo) also won a prize at MIT in 2003. Dilip D'Souza's articles explain it all:

http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/mar/11dilip.htm
http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/aug/31dilip.htm

Per the information in http://technovators.mit.edu/Winners2003/Anil_Madhu.html, "Anil and Madhu estimate that the potential for these projects in certain areas of India is huge. Kerala, famous for its backwaters, for example could generate 2000MW of power through microhydel projects (the present installed capacity of the entire state is 2500 MW!). If these two men get their way, they could revolutionize power generation in small villages and save a way of life that is facing the dire threat of being lost forever."

Isn't that cool?

BTW, I think Swades is one of the sweetest movies made in recent times. Hats off to Ashutosh Gowariker, Shahrukh and ARR!

Use of technology in cricket

Cricket: In the second Test match between India and Pakistan, Tendulkar was given out when he wasn't actually out. Why can't technology be used for such decisions? It was surprising to watch the panelists Kris Srikanth and Mohinder Amarnath saying that "it all evens out in the end - you get good decisions one day and you get bad decisions another day". Apparently, Tendulkar didn't walk in one of the previous matches when he was clearly out. Two wrongs don't make a right. Amit Verma's blog on cricinfo.com has a detailed article on why umpires should embrace technology for such important decisions.

My first blog

Hello, World!