Archive for January 19th, 2008

My two cents

Published
by
admin
on January 19, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 1 Comment

I’ve been seeing quite a bit of buzz around financial situation of IITs, particularly about Kharagpur. Business Standard reports that Kharagpur wishes to double the 7000 strong student population within 2010, when I’ll incidentally graduate.

From the article:

At a press conference in Kolkata today, Sanjiv Goenka, chairman of the board of governors of IIT-Kharagpur, informed, “We are going to build 200 new classrooms with a total capacity of 24,000 students. We will also add 200 tutorial classrooms to accommodate 12,000 students.”

Increasing the strength of faculty and students might be a double edged sword, while it means many recieve one of the most acclaimed educations the country has to offer, overcrowding the already strained facilities might not be the best thing.

In my opinion, there are more facilities that the administration has to take into consideration apart from just hostels and living space. The gymnasiums, pools, resturaunts, other recreational activities all are shared resources, which are not taken into consideration when the expansion is taking place.

A lot of other resources are also drawn upon when the size of the populace increases uncontrolledly. Everything from water supply to internet bandwidth is drawn upon, and libraries, clubs, and all other student organizations are choked.

Accomodation is the first priority and building new residential facilities for students and faculty alike in an uncontrolled way can only spell trouble.

Another article says IIT’s are doing a Britney and saying “gimme more!”:

The IIT academic advisory council’s standing committee will shortly make a presentation to the Human Resource Development (HRD) ministry on the financial needs of the seven IITs, where it will ask the government for over Rs 160 crore (around 20 crore for each IIT) to facilitate the expansion and research programmes at the seven IITs.

So much for my two cents.

BGPrime Review - Online Backgammon

Published
by
admin
on January 19, 2008
in Uncategorized
. 0 Comments

Playing games against real people is a massive market now, some prefer using game consoles like XBox Live, etc, and others prefer online games like chess, poker, backgammon, etc. The charm of this rather than other online games is that you’re playing with real people and not mildly scripted AI.

It’s great if you have a little spare time, or if you feel you’re good at the game and wish to play for a little money. I checked out 1on1backgammon.com, a respected portal for learning and playing backgammon.

Learning to play:

Backgammon1From what I know, backgammon is a complicated game, with plenty of rules, but this page seems to explain it cleanly, with lots of picures and clear explanations. I actually got an idea of what the game is after visiting the website. Also there are tutorials and instructions from absolute novices(me) to advanced tactics and strategies for experienced players.

Playing backgammon:

Backgammon2

1on1backgammon works directly with BGroom and also provides a discount, which is apparently one of the biggest resources for playing backgammon games for fun or money. The website looks professional and there seems to be plenty of good reviews around this website, a quick search reveals. Even google ranks it on the first page for “backgammon” so you know it’s good.

To start playing, you need to download a small piece of software which requires registration and allows you to play for practice, or play for real money.

Verdict:

While there are plenty of sites out there for playing games online, very few actually help out beginners, and online backgammon being a popular pastime, this is a great place to start out.