I have been playing Serious Sam: The First Encounter - the coolest FPS (First Person Shooter) I have ever seen - jaw-dropping, yet fast, 3D graphics, relentless action, great music, lovely locales and amusing one-liners from your alter ego make this an unrivalled winner of a game!

Created by the super-cool people at Croteam from Croatia, it is not for nothing that this game has won GameSpot's 2001 "Game of the Year" Award - check out the reviews if you don't believe me! The retail version is priced at $20 and comes with the full game as well as level and map editors and tutorials to help you create your own levels and maps - is this value for money or what! I can't wait to get my hands on the sequel - "Serious Sam: The Second Encounter"!

Praneeta introduced me to Tangrams - an ancient Chinese puzzle that comprises a deceptively simple set of seven pieces cut from a square, which can be put together to form an amazing number of figures - puzzles involve trying to recreate the arrangement that results in a given silhouette figure. With the kind permission of Randy and Susan, I have put together a little document on Tangrams (PDF/128KB) that collects material from their sites, including history, rules, how to make your own set and a small set of puzzles - for the solutions, you would have to visit their sites. I hope you enjoy these puzzles as much as I did.