My code for Personal Chess Trainer was in my inbox when I got home from work yesterday! I gleefully fired up PCT, registered it, reinstalled it (everyone with PCT knows what I mean, from my reading :P), fired it up again and...fiddled with the options.
Unfortunately (for my chess, at least) my daily evening looks like this:
5pm through 6pm is for helping my daughter with homework and starting to cook
6pm through 7pm is for eating, dishes and cleaning
7pm through 9-10pm is for whatever the hell my wife says its for!
9-10pm through whenever I pass out is for chess and stuff
On days when my wife goes to around 9pm, I get a G30 in, some Novice Nook or puzzles and Google up 'chess babes in lingerie'. Last night when she was up till almost 11...By the time I got PCT going, I was wobbling in my chair taking 3 second naps between puzzles trying to complete a 45 puzzle series of Mate in Ones twice, since PCT makes you solve each problem two times. I kept thinking that I had to be getting close to the turn and coming down the repeats soon, but it felt like it never happened.
As my eyes fluttered, I started making moves on automatic and the only miss I had was moving the wrong rook the first time through. By 11:15, 90 puzzles down, I was toasted and fell into bed.
I have to break it to the wife that no later than 10pm, every night, I'm gonna go play with myself for at least an hour and she's neither invited nor allowed to interrupt. There's no way I can make progress if I'm not awake enough to understand what I'm doing.
A new sidebar block:
The Toolbox
PCT
FICS
Novice Nook
I hope to add Chernev's Logical Chess to that at Xmas. The Toolbox will basically be my current reading/study list. I need to get some annotated master games on there, as well. Any recommendations for Morphy and other early players?
Friday, November 30, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Won't be running into GM Onischuk this weekend
Cause he's, you know...in Russia playing some game called 'chess'.
But I still need to get my butt out to a real chess club, so I'll get down to the Fells Point club at some point. Somebody there should know if he ever graces mere chess mortals with his presence.
But I still need to get my butt out to a real chess club, so I'll get down to the Fells Point club at some point. Somebody there should know if he ever graces mere chess mortals with his presence.
Monday, November 26, 2007
PGN Viewer Test
So...I just killed some more time seeking out a decent, low maintenance, easy to use integrated PGN Viewer. I'm hoping a body or two will take a peek at the earlier post 'Sometimes winning feels like you heart will explode' and compare loading times of the 'Read More' to the integrated game after the jump here:
Does the viewer take too long? How's it look?
ADD: Duh. I should say, clearly, that its Chess Publisher's viewer.
Does the viewer take too long? How's it look?
ADD: Duh. I should say, clearly, that its Chess Publisher's viewer.
A GM...in Maryland?
Tooling around, I stumbled on the Top 100 players in Maryland over at Baltimore Chess. Not recognizing the name at #1, Alexander Onischuk, and seeing he's so far above #2 (144 points) I Google him.
Dude's the 36th highest rated player in the world!
I know UMBC has a solid chess team, and I've casually followed them in the USCL, but I had no idea we had such a powerhouse in my backyard.
From USCF: Since 1997, Alexander has worked on chess together with the 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov being his second in many matches and tournaments. Over the last seven years, Alexander has invariably remained in the top 50 in the World. He immigrated to the US in 2001 and currently lives in Baltimore.
Shut. Up. He's been Karpov's second?
I so have to get down to the Fells Point Chess Club and find out if he hangs out there, if he plays in any clubs or whatever. I'd loved to get blasted away by a GM OTB. I imagine the experience to be invigorating.
Dude's the 36th highest rated player in the world!
I know UMBC has a solid chess team, and I've casually followed them in the USCL, but I had no idea we had such a powerhouse in my backyard.
From USCF: Since 1997, Alexander has worked on chess together with the 12th World Champion Anatoly Karpov being his second in many matches and tournaments. Over the last seven years, Alexander has invariably remained in the top 50 in the World. He immigrated to the US in 2001 and currently lives in Baltimore.
Shut. Up. He's been Karpov's second?
I so have to get down to the Fells Point Chess Club and find out if he hangs out there, if he plays in any clubs or whatever. I'd loved to get blasted away by a GM OTB. I imagine the experience to be invigorating.
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Burning the midnight oil
Whew! Got the banner completed! Please pop over to the ZOtherOne's gallery and take a look at his work. I can't say enough how thrilled I am that he let me use his picture.
I spent a good while scouring Deviant Art for the perfect image. His captured the sense of journey, fear, excitement, hopes and dreams that most of are moved by when we play chess.
The board in the picture belonged to his grandfather. My grandfather is probably the reason I keep coming back to chess as I get older. As a kid, we played a game and I stuck a Knight on f6, a Bishop on g7 and castled short. He called it an Indian defense, said it was good and that he had to work to beat me.
I'm sure he handled me better than he let on, but his words have stuck with me.
I haven't seen my grandfather in about ten years. My grandparents divorced and the family as a whole split for a little while. Deep down, part of the reason I play is the hope that I'll run into him. He was always ahead of the curve with computers. He set me up with a couple of chess games over a modem when I was a kid, so maybe he's on FICS. Maybe he's gonna be at the Baltimore Open in January.
A few years ago my mother gave me his first edition copy of Rueben Fine's Chess the Easy Way. She'd had it in a box of things she took from his farm before it was sold after the divorce. I never really looked at it- its in descriptive, after all!- until recently when I started to miss him.
He taught me about a lot more than chess- computers, electricity, radio signals, weather, deer tracking, that you don't have to hold everything inside. I just want another game with him, to show him I've learned and gotten better. I hope he'd be proud of me.
I spent a good while scouring Deviant Art for the perfect image. His captured the sense of journey, fear, excitement, hopes and dreams that most of are moved by when we play chess.
The board in the picture belonged to his grandfather. My grandfather is probably the reason I keep coming back to chess as I get older. As a kid, we played a game and I stuck a Knight on f6, a Bishop on g7 and castled short. He called it an Indian defense, said it was good and that he had to work to beat me.
I'm sure he handled me better than he let on, but his words have stuck with me.
I haven't seen my grandfather in about ten years. My grandparents divorced and the family as a whole split for a little while. Deep down, part of the reason I play is the hope that I'll run into him. He was always ahead of the curve with computers. He set me up with a couple of chess games over a modem when I was a kid, so maybe he's on FICS. Maybe he's gonna be at the Baltimore Open in January.
A few years ago my mother gave me his first edition copy of Rueben Fine's Chess the Easy Way. She'd had it in a box of things she took from his farm before it was sold after the divorce. I never really looked at it- its in descriptive, after all!- until recently when I started to miss him.
He taught me about a lot more than chess- computers, electricity, radio signals, weather, deer tracking, that you don't have to hold everything inside. I just want another game with him, to show him I've learned and gotten better. I hope he'd be proud of me.
Friday, November 23, 2007
Improvements and Concessions
Yay for a day off!
-I got the post previews to work- if anyone has any issues, let me know. The 'Read More' link may appear on posts without more content, which is a limitation of Blogger, I think. They have a tutorial, of sorts, on how to make previews work, but leave it "as an exercise for the reader" to figure out how to make 'Read More' go away when there is no more. Huh.
-I added a lot of blogs and sites to the sidebar. Right now, I'm just going to deal with some links wrapping. I don't want to force side to side scrolling for people who don't have a 1024x768 or higher display. Maybe in the future.
-I'm linking blogs by blog title, not blogger name. I've seen both ways on other blogs, sometimes a mix of both and I'm gonna try to be consistent this way. If I ever expand the sidebar, I'll add blogger names to the links if they'll fit.
Hopefully I'll update this later today with more done.
-I got the post previews to work- if anyone has any issues, let me know. The 'Read More' link may appear on posts without more content, which is a limitation of Blogger, I think. They have a tutorial, of sorts, on how to make previews work, but leave it "as an exercise for the reader" to figure out how to make 'Read More' go away when there is no more. Huh.
-I added a lot of blogs and sites to the sidebar. Right now, I'm just going to deal with some links wrapping. I don't want to force side to side scrolling for people who don't have a 1024x768 or higher display. Maybe in the future.
-I'm linking blogs by blog title, not blogger name. I've seen both ways on other blogs, sometimes a mix of both and I'm gonna try to be consistent this way. If I ever expand the sidebar, I'll add blogger names to the links if they'll fit.
Hopefully I'll update this later today with more done.
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Blog To-Do
Things I want to do with the blog:
*Hack the HTML enough to make the sidebar wider (or choose an alternate layout, but I kinda like this one) because links are getting wrapped and messy looking
*Figure out how to post just a preview of my posts, making the front page easier to read
-Once the layout is squared away, I've got an awesome picture create a nice banner/header with
*Explore PGN viewers for blogging, as well as Chessup's diagram creator (if it'll save my color settings, then I'll make the board look nicer and more fitting for the color scheme)
-Get the other 10 or so blogs I'm reading daily added to my sidebar and fill out the non-blog site list
-Add a box or section to the sidebar with my FICS handle (gorckat) and info
-Tags or no-tags? Better to decide on that now, rather than going back and tagging 100+ posts down the road!
*Any recommendations for stuff marked "*" would be appreciated. No need to reinvent too many wheels!
Feature Ideas I've got cookin':
-Interviews with random people. (This'll be a tricky one- I'm touched with a dose of Social Anxiety Disorder. Basically, I function very well with people when we stay in the roles the current social situation demands- waiter/diner, cashier/shopper, chess father/chess coach at a tournament. Asking people to be interviewed will push me out of the nest in a big way.)
-Chess pictures. I did some digging at Deviant Art to find the picture for my banner (the photographer was very gracious in giving me their permission to use it and their gallery will be linked as soon as I have it ready!) and want to link some of them, as well as taking my own casual pictures. I have several in mind involving one of my cats...
-Live blogging a major chess game. It could be fun to liveblog a game being shown elsewhere as an exercise in evaluation and commentary.
*Hack the HTML enough to make the sidebar wider (or choose an alternate layout, but I kinda like this one) because links are getting wrapped and messy looking
*Figure out how to post just a preview of my posts, making the front page easier to read
-Once the layout is squared away, I've got an awesome picture create a nice banner/header with
*Explore PGN viewers for blogging, as well as Chessup's diagram creator (if it'll save my color settings, then I'll make the board look nicer and more fitting for the color scheme)
-Get the other 10 or so blogs I'm reading daily added to my sidebar and fill out the non-blog site list
-Add a box or section to the sidebar with my FICS handle (gorckat) and info
-Tags or no-tags? Better to decide on that now, rather than going back and tagging 100+ posts down the road!
*Any recommendations for stuff marked "*" would be appreciated. No need to reinvent too many wheels!
Feature Ideas I've got cookin':
-Interviews with random people. (This'll be a tricky one- I'm touched with a dose of Social Anxiety Disorder. Basically, I function very well with people when we stay in the roles the current social situation demands- waiter/diner, cashier/shopper, chess father/chess coach at a tournament. Asking people to be interviewed will push me out of the nest in a big way.)
-Chess pictures. I did some digging at Deviant Art to find the picture for my banner (the photographer was very gracious in giving me their permission to use it and their gallery will be linked as soon as I have it ready!) and want to link some of them, as well as taking my own casual pictures. I have several in mind involving one of my cats...
-Live blogging a major chess game. It could be fun to liveblog a game being shown elsewhere as an exercise in evaluation and commentary.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)