Friday, June 29, 2007


:-O : With the Prince of darkness ??

Beside the George Washington memorial.

Tuesday, June 26, 2007


Aye Captain !! I am at the wheel, seated is Mahesh and the guy in black is Chindu.
This was a dream come true - Lake George, NY, where I got a chance to drive a speed boat. The experience of the cold wind brushing you wildly and the leaps from one wave crest to another is incomparable. This is far more exciting than hitting 100 mph on an open highway !!

Monday, June 25, 2007

Fermat's Last Theorem
This is amazing.
Andrew Wiles proceeded to solve Fermat's last theorem (For n>2, the equation a^n + b^n = c^n has no solutions for non zero a,b and c) by proving Taniyama - Shimura Conjecture. Does it not sound incredible that a man who lived about 400 years ago could come up with a different solution, which even the greatest mathematicians of our time have not been able to reproduce ? It speaks volumes of that man's incomparable genius.

Saturday, June 23, 2007


A small gain at one end, a massive loss at the other !!. The foreground shows the destroyed Panzers and the British tanks responsible for it, while in the back ground the common wealth forces are being slaughtered and their machines obliterated !!


The Germans make an all out offensive on the entrenched defenders. This was the bloodiest part of the whole battle. The Common wealth forces suffered huge casualties and were wiped off the field. Needless to say, the Germans too paid a heavy price.




The Panzers under fire !! Even after destroying a couple of Panzers through a successful ambush and suppressing yet another, the British tanks failed to carry the momentum forward. The Germans wiped the Common wealth forces off the field at the other end of the battlefield. The success that you see above was fleeting.




Ambushed !! The Panzers run into well concealed British Cruisers as they make their way around a dilapidated building.

A burning Panzer, after it took a hit on its flank.

Germans vehicles getting toasted by the well entrenched Common Weath forces, as they try to push uphill. Capturing this hill was one of the key German objectives.


The "Road To Kozani" - April 13, 1941 ( Wars in Greece )


On April 13th, 1941 the German 9th Panzer division - 33rd Panzer regiment entered Ptolmais. As the Germans began to push out of Ptolmais, they had to move through a hostile territory consisting of Swamps, Anti Tank ditches and rough terrain. While under the constant barrage of Artillery and anti tank fire, the German forces moved slowly through the swamp and were able to flank the Common wealth forces. The Panzers were then engaged by the tanks of the 3rd Royal Tank Regiment and elements of the 19th Australian Infantry brigade.

The Germans were finally successful in inflicting heavy losses on the Common Wealth force and also driving them off the field. The battle was bloody and the Germans lost several lives, tanks and support vehicles.


Game-a-thon @ SWA - 23rd June 2007

I had the chance to watch an amazing WWII game using "Battlefront" rules today. There was a big crowd at the table and hence I couldn't play, nor was I familiar with this rule set. So I spent my time watching the game and trying to learn the rules. Anyway, Steve and Pete have offered me a place on one of the teams in an upcoming game and also at Historicon , where they are planning to conduct a few games.
In the afternoon session, I played Junta and managed to finish second with a decent swiss bank balance. It is a game that takes you through the political and military life in a typical banana republic, where Coups, Intrigues and Assassinations and part of everyday life.

Sunday, June 17, 2007


We played Cities and Knights of Catan at the SWA yesterday. Got back home after midnight to get some quick sleep before rushing to office on Sunday morning, as my project was going Live. SWA is conducting Game-a-thon next Saturday. This is the line up of Games,


Morning Session ( 11am - 4pm )
FCS Dungeons & Dragons - "Ambush at Gelding Glade" (Chris Ford)
Dawn RPG - "Under Lock and Key" (Dennis Perlstein)
Battlefront Minis - "Clash of Armor" (Steve Keyer)
Army of Ireland - 1866 Battle of Ridgeway (Dave Cuatt)
1830-Railroads and Robber Barons - Railroading...Tresham Style (Eric Paperman)


Evening Session ( 5pm - 10pm+ )
Seventh Sea RPG - "Elizabethan England" (Charles Moorehouse)
Galactic Destiny - Intergalactic Intrigue (Mike Haggett)
Junta - Political Hijinks (Peter Landry) Settlers of Catan - Cities and Knights Expansion (Daryl Kimmel)


For more details, go here.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007


Obsolescence-o-phobia !!

I have read somewhere that English gains about six and loses about four words a year. So if anybody is into the art/profession of coining new words, please create one for the "fear of the light speed obsolescence of gizmos". I suffer from it. For well over a year I have been vacillating about buying a camcorder and everytime I hear someone say that their gadget now costs half of what they had originally spent on it and that better and far more capable devices are available now, my heart sinks.


Anyway, a couple of gadgets have finally made their way into my life recently. After being blown away by the GPS I had on a car that I rented to travel to Washington DC, I decided to buy one. I am sure I would have lost my way and wandered around in the night if I had relied on my printouts from Mapquest alone. So I finally bought the "Garmin Street Pilot i3". To put it simply -"Its a great invention". StreetPilot i3 offers me everything I need for my peregrinations - A robust navigation system with good signal strength, Automatic routing, Voice guidance with turn-by-turn directions , address lookup and 2D/ 3D maps. It has 32K-colour display and mounts perfectly on my wind shield. This particular model has been discontinued but I got a a very good deal and hence went for it, inspite of gravitating towards the c330 model.

The next one to walk the ramp and catch my attention was the ubiquitous Ipod. I had no plans of buying one till I saw an offer on Amazon where the 4GB nano was being offered for $149 (the original market price being $199). I have loaded a couple of audio books and some music that I got from the Schenectady Public Library yesterday.

The third one is a real life saver. With my laptop having crashed twice already in the last one year, I needed to take periodic backups of my data. I hated storing them on multiple DVDs and therefore went for a portable hard drive. Now, this baby is unbelievebly small for its capacity. It fits into the palm of my hand, weights roughly 100 grams but stores a whopping 120 GB. I am certain that the days of Tera and Peta byte storage are not far away. The Blue Ray disk has not yet reached many hands and it has already been overtaken by holographic storage.
Wonder how many more new technologies would become obsolete even before they hit the market !