Once upon a time, I was a registered member of the US Chess Federation. I competed on a fairly regular basis – half a dozen tournaments a year – and was a regular attender to the weekly practices. One of the perks of being a USCF member is an annual subscription to Chess Life, the monthly periodical. In addition to all the good articles and how-to’s, along with updating member rankings, this magazine carried ads for all sorts of cool chess merchandise, most of which a high school kid with no job could only drool over.
One issue, though, pushed me over the edge to beg for some money from my folks. What got my attention was an ad for a chess variant called Doubles Chess – an 8-sided board with four sets of pieces, set so 2-4 players could battle it out for each other’s kings on the same board at the same time. It was an amazing concept, and I was eager to try it out.
I really don’t remember how I badgered the money out of my folks, but they were gracious enough to give me the money to order this novelty. From the moment I pulled it out of the box, I was in awe – I’d never seen anything so cool. It took me quite some time to figure out how the pieces moved. After all, having double the number of columns and rows that meet at a point in the middle of the board proved to be somewhat problematic. Plus, the armies across from each other actually had to work together to checkmate the other two kings. But in the end I found it to be relatively straightforward.
Of course, I took it to the very next chess meeting with me, showed it to the rest of my team. Everyone was interested, and a few even agreed to try playing it with me. In the end, though, a group of four playing Doubles Chess together inevitably fell off to just one – me. It was too difficult, they said, too hard to figure out and learn. The strangeness of it all made it less fun for them, I guess.
I tried a couple of times after to generate some interest in the game, and I even pulled it out a couple of times during my college years. The novelty of it always drew a small crowd initially, but something about those eight sides and four armies made everyone go cross-eyed and the interest was short-lived. I still love the idea; I still think it’s one of the coolest things to come out of the chess world. But it’s hard to play chess by oneself and harder still to play Doubles Chess alone. Perhaps one day I’ll find three brave compatriots who are willing to sit down and learn the game with me. In some ways, it’s taking chess to a whole new level and seeing it in a completely different way.
For now, though, that frontier is still empty and lonely. Few ‘old schoolers’ are willing to brave it, and few who are still fresh to the game are ready for the added complexity of Doubles.
I think I’ll pull that board out again tonight, dust it off, pull the pieces out of their little plastic bags, and set it up. If nothing else, it’s pretty to look at.
Tags: Chess, games, geek
Jean posed an interesting question yesterday – how exactly does one edit their personal spellcheck dictionary in Firefox, particularly if you’ve accidentally added a couple of badly spelled words? It’s a question I’ve wondered about myself but hadn’t had the motivation to look into until now. It took me a few minutes to find the answer, but it’s actually really easy.
Find your profile folder in your Firefox directory (mine’s under FirefoxPortable\Data\profile) and locate the file called persdict.dat. This file contains all the words you’ve added to your approved spellcheck list for Firefox. Just open the file in your favorite spreadsheet program and delete the rows containing words incorrectly added to the dictionary, save the file again, and close it. Simple as that!
You can also find a few other ways to modify your dictionary here.
Tags: firefox, geek, hacks, software
It’s been a long time since I’ve had any formal tutelage in the game of chess, but what tips I can remember are relayed in the bullet points below. Most of these tips involve developing a strong opening game, and since there are almost as many different types of opening game as there are permutations of chess pieces, the following tips are just general guidelines for the beginning player. I don’t claim to be an expert; indeed, I would still consider myself an amateur player. But these are some of the things I was taught as a youngster learning the game and have found them to be sound advice.
- The key to a strong opening in chess is controlling the center four squares of the board. This means that early development of both bishops and both knights is a significant advantage.
- King-side castling is almost always stronger than the queen-side castle. Again, the sooner in your opening you castle, the stronger your position will be.
- Doubled pawns (two of your pawns in the same file) is almost always a disadvantage.
- Whenever possible use a rook to control an open or half-file.
- Sitting back away from the board a little ways helps prevent the player from falling into tunnelvision. It is far too easy to miss seeing possible moves when sitting right over top of the board.
- There’s nothing wrong with walking around the table and viewing the board from your opponent’s perspective. This often results in seeing threats that weren’t immediately visible from one’s own side.
I’m sure there are others, and I’ll relay them as I remember. It’s just been a long time, and things come back to me the more I play. Right now I’ve been reading and working through a book I bought in high school on the Sicilian Dragon counterattack opening. I’d bought it with the best of intentions then but really had no clue how to work through it and learn it. I’m going to try my hand at it again, and then see if I can move through some more openings. It’s never too late to learn new things, and I’d like to expand my knowledge and enhance my chess skills. Might as well start now, right?
Tags: Chess, games, geek, tactics
Chess is the game of kings and champions. It is an elegant game, devoid of chance, dependent only on mental prowess and strategy. It is a complicated game, involving thousands of possible solutions to capture the opponent’s King. It is a game that I love.
One of the advantages of now having my brother living so close to me is that we have again taken up this wonderful pastime. I’d almost forgotten just how much I love playing chess. In high school we were both among those ‘geeks’ on the chess team – we met once a week as a group to play and learn and hone our strategies. Several times a year we would travel around the state for various tournaments. It was fun just to be able to see different schools, make new friends, and socialize along the way.
I haven’t really played much in recent years, though. Chess is a game that seems to have fallen out of favor. There aren’t many people who even know how to play, let alone understand and appreciate the nuances and intricacies of the game. It is the ultimate strategy game, one that I hope to now be able to improve on.
I have a feeling that chess is going to become a weekly ritual for my brother and me. Any other chess players out there?
Tags: Chess, games, geek
I don’t generally like to post these, but today I felt like displaying my nerd factor:
Yup, I’m a nerd. And a geek.
Tags: geek, meme
Ok, bear with me for a few moments. My inner geek needs an audience.
Those of you who have been reading me for a while know that I’m an avid Halo/Halo 2 fan. A little while back, I was invited to join the writing staff for a relatively new blog for gamers called Dead Man’s Hand. The guys (and gal) who ran this blog were members of a Halo 2 clan called the TTL Gunslingers. At the time I joined the staff, I was the only writer for the blog who was not already a Gunslinger.
Earlier this week I finally completed the application process for the clan and received my invite. And in purusing the clan discussion forum, I noticed that the software they were using was not the popular phpBB. It was a relatively new forum software called Simple Machines, and it didn’t take long in playing around with it to be very, very impressed – so impressed, in fact, that I have since converted my own discussion board – Open Dialogue – to the SMF software.
Here’s where the gushing comes in – the features in SMF are, quite simply, amazing:
- The installation of SMF had a significant WordPress feel to it – upload the files, run the install, complete the very simple form, and let the install program do its thing. All I had to do at that point was sit back and watch. It did take a little longer to install and setup than WordPress does, but then again, SMF has quite a few more files and tables.
- I was hugely impressed with the fact that the SMF installation actually paused several times throughout the process. The reason for this is to give the server a break by not chewing up all the site’s bandwidth. It was a very conscientious touch on the part of the programmers, and I was very impressed with the foresight and consideration put into that bit of code.
- One of the things that discussion forum administrators dread when switching from one forum software to another is converting the old forum into a format that is usable with the new one. It’s not generally a simple process, and things almost always end up looking and acting screwy. The conversion from phpBB to SMF was every bit as easy, clean, and simple as the installation process itself was. You can browse the forum now and never see any indication that it started out as a phpBB site.
- Adding modifications to SMF is likewise a breeze. With phpBB anytime a modification or hack is added, you have to follow a rather complicated and time-consuming process. Half a dozen or more files have to be opened, specific bits of code located and either modified or have new bits of code added around them. It’s always a rigorous task and not much fun. And the downside is that whenever the forum software undergoes an upgrade to a new version, all those modifications are overwritten and have to be put back in place. With SMF the modification folder is simply uploaded to the ‘Packages’ folder inside the forum directory structure, then click the ‘Install’ button in the admin panel, and within second the modification is active. No files to open, no code to hack, and the modifications are persistent through upgrades. I was nearly weeping for joy at this point.
- In phpBB the admin panel is an almost completely separate environment from the forum itself. It sometimes feels like you are interacting with two completely different websites whenever you have to go into phpBB’s admin panel to take care of some issue in the forum. With SMF the admin panel is actually built right into the forum itself. The headers and footers are all there, and the level of administrative integration is astoundingly comprehensive.
- phpBB includes only the basic and most commonly used features in their base installation. Everything else has to be added as a hack or a mod. SMF has a lot of those extra features built right in. For instance, you can easily print a printer-friendly version of any discussion thread. You can email a friend with a link to a particular discussion right from the thread itself. Offensive posts can be quickly and easily reported to a moderator. Private messages can actually be sent to multiple recipients at the same time. SMF even has RSS built in. All this is automatic, with no additional work aside from the installation needed on the part of the forum administrator. Did I mention that I was impressed?
- One of the things that I have always wished phpBB could do was have sublevels of certain discussion boards. For instance, an entertainment and media discussion board could be broken down further into a music board, books and literature board, games board, and so on. Again, SMF has this feature built right in. Any board can have child boards, which themselves can have child boards, etc. It’s a great way to organize specific types of discussions and keep them all together. I’ve been working on reorganizing much of the content on Open Dialogue in a more logical fashion.
- SMF also gives both administrators and users a higher level of control. Users can select their own custom titles, attach files to forum posts for ease of sharing, and create custom text to display beneath their avatar. Administrators jobs are made easier by automating certain functions. If a user selects an avatar that is too large, SMF will automatically resize the image to manageable dimensions. No more need for people to play around in Photoshop to crop the image just so.
As I’ve said, SMF is a truly remarkable and impressive bit of software. The only modification I wanted that didn’t come standard was a spoiler tag, to hide spoiler information in certain movie, book, and video games threads on the site. And the activation of the modification was so simple I couldn’t believe how quick and painless it was. I’m looking forward to using this software more and trying to get the forum active again.
I’ve been considering broadening the scope of the board to include more than just theological and philosophical discussions, though I do still want that to be an important board. I tend to think that there might be interest in a board that does more, and now that I have the ability for child boards, I think managing a higher level of content will be a much more manageable process. So, come on over, check us out, and please offer up suggestions of new boards that can be added and what sort of directions Open Dialogue should go in. It’s a community project, an open marketplace of ideas, and the more people who share in it, the better and more successful it will be.
I’ll keep the door open and the light on for you.
Tags: blogging, dead-mans-hand, discussion-forum, geek, halo, halo-2, open-dialogue, phpbb, simple-machines, software, ttl-gunslingers, video-games, WordPress, xbox, xbox-live
I’m feeling much less than charitable today. I think it’s a product of recovering from being ill, trying to catch up on a lost day of work, and having read far too many inflammatory opinions over the past several days about a large number of topics. Needless to say, my knee-jerk reaction to just about every opinion today is to respond with a snippy retort, just to balance out the extreme reactions with some sort of, presumably, rational response.
These are the sorts of days where my best bet is to sit down and play a video game or write on one of my stories, something where I don’t really have to interact with anyone and risk biting their heads off. Hazards of being tired and somewhat short-tempered (though I’m not really all that short-tempered at the moment; I just know that I could be if I don’t make an effort to hold my tongue).
My day is gone, and my mind is fried from too much time spent writing code and manipulating data every which way possible just so I can run some simple analyses on it tomorrow. That profound thought I had earlier will just have to wait for another day to be written, I suppose.
Besides, I have a story or two in the ol’ hopper, as well, and I think the third chapter in the story I’ve been writing for my wife is beginning to get a mite angry with me for having left it alone for too long, so that may get started this evening, too. We’ll just see how much time and energy I have tonight and how loudly and sweetly the muses sing in my ear.
Tags: geek, human-behavior, Writing
If my previous aside had you a bit confused, I was celebrating my success at finally being able to get a new hack to work. I’ve often had cause to write a quick one-liner, but I hated wasted all that space because once I published it, the metadata takes up more space than does the actual content itself. I hated the way it looked, but I also hated not being able to spiff up my briefer thoughts. So, I found Matt’s Asides, but I couldn’t get it work. Matt hacked The Loop to have it check a specific category and then format it differently when it displayed. This allowed users to take up less space with very short posts while still allowing readers to submit their comments on the content.
The problem was that The Loop in my template’s index was structured differently, rendering Matt’s hacks ineffective when I tried to implement them. In point of fact, trying to put them into my code took my site offline due to syntax errors. Several hours of searching the Web for upgraded hacks yielded nothing helpful, so I resigned myself to not being able to use the hack after all.
The solution came in looking for a reasonable substitute. I’d settled on using a linklog to accomplish a similar function, and in the process I found a plugin called wp-recent-links. Part of the install process for this plugin involved replacing your templates index with the copy provided in the .zip file. In looking at the code, I realized that The Loop syntax looked very similar to the one that Matt cited in his write-up. So, I tried substituting again Matt’s hack code into The Loop syntax for my new index file, which actually worked this time. So, I then used a little snippet of code from another source to format the bullet of the aside and hacked my stylesheet to gives my asides a little bit of extra flare.
Since different template authors structure their index files differently, the only problem I had to overcome was finding an index file that was close enough to the original such that it would allow Matt’s Asides hack to actually work. A learning experience, to be sure.
I realize that this has probably bored most of you to tears, and for that I apologize. But in the event that someone else would like to implement this hack and run into similar problems, I share my experience in hopes of reducing the number of headaches that someone else might face. Feel free to contact me if you have any problems or questions.
Tags: Asides, Coding, geek, hacks, linklog, plugins, WordPress
For all the other coding geeks out there who like to discover new, interesting, and useful plugins, here are the one I am currently using for my site:
Feel free to Contact me if you come across any other plugins that you use that you think I might like.
Tags: geek, plugins, plugins-used, WordPress
I am very much a self-taught learner. My preferred learning style is to sit down with the subject at hand, a relevant task, a stack of reference manuals, and plenty of time to just hack my way through until I figure it out. I learn best through the process of trial and error, but I have to have a starting point, which is the reason why I require a specific task to accomplish.
I learned how to write in HTML because I wanted to build my own web page. With the help of internet references and an HTML book, I was able to build my first web site. Granted, it was pretty garish – it had every bell and whistle I could write code for, but I wanted to try everything out. My design sense has matured quite a bit more over the years, and you’ll find that most of my web sites are now much more sensible and a lot less blinding to look at.
I learned how to code in C during my brief sojourn in engineering, and again, I learned best when I was able to get back to my dorm room, sit down at my computer with my textbook, and hack my way through the code to complete each project. I’ve since forgotten pretty much everything I learned from lack of use, but I’m sure that I could probably pick it up pretty quickly again. I’m finding that most programming languages are very similar.
I learned how to use the SPSS statistical software during my graduate assistantship; I needed to be able to crunch some numbers and produce useful conclusions from it, and so many hours were spent just learning how the program handles data. It figures, though, that my favorite way to produce programs was not the point-and-click process but rather through the syntax editor and hardcoding the commands. Can you say ‘geek?’
Now, my job requires me to learn some new software in order to complete some of my projects. I have been working extensively in SPSS’s big brother SAS, which has no point-and-click interface. So, I have been forced to work in the code itself. Not a problem, right? That’s true, insofar as I love working with the code and seeing what the software is actually doing. The trouble comes in when I discover that SAS handles data much differently than does SPSS. My entire morning was spent just in trying to figure out how to get SAS to read from an existing data set without overwriting it with a blank one first. The solution was in figuring how SAS works with libraries, and now I have a very useable, workable program.
I could have asked for help and probably found the solution much more quickly than I did, but I prefer to solve problems myself. For one thing, it is much more satisfying to determine a solution on my own, but for another, I learn better by figuring things out for myself (hence, the reason why I thought I might make a good engineer). All the headache and aggravation of the first half of my day paid off when I was able to solve the problem. And now I’ll remember how to ‘fix’ it should it ever occur again. I’m just a very hands-on learner.
I love my job.
Tags: Coding, geek, learning-styles, psychology, sas, software, spss, Statistics
