Musings on chess, and lesser things
Non-chess posts
Today was a good day. The sun was not only shining but actually warm, which is a rarity for the solar mass that usually takes an aesthetic-only approach to the Amsterdam sky. In fact, shorts and flip-flops were the order of the day, for the first time in the Netherlands since, well, about a year. …
One of my former schoolmates, Jonathan Ringrose, is going to cycle home. ‘Home’ is Brisbane, Queensland. His current location? Stockholm, Sweden. The Jonathan I remember was a quiet, friendly, well-liked kid at Churchie, who was pretty talented at chess as well. I’d lost touch with him since high school until his quiet, friendly, and bearded (!) …
Check out Garry K’s eloquent interview on one of Australia’s major news channels. The interviewer, like most Australians, is predictably fairly ignorant about the chess world, but the questions are above average, and the answers are insightful. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3V6DhocYwb0
(This is a short story/guide on the best way to install ChessBase on a Mac, including Macs without a DVD drive.) Recently, I decided to embrace my inner hipster and get a Mac. (If you don’t know what a hipster is, this handy flowchart from the youreahipster tumblr might help: You know you’re a …
I’m backpacking around Australia at the moment, ‘tourist-style’, but even these small coastal towns are reporting the death of the original Hollywood child star, Shirley Temple, at the ripe old age of 85. In case you need a reminder (or the title of this post confuses you), here’s a little trip down memory lane at …
Yes, I know, I know, I’ve been slack. Thanks for the messages reminding me to write (Sarah’s was my favourite: “Something that’s not too chessy please”). I managed to ignore such promptings until some began to worry about my safety – because, naturally, only my kidnapping could explain such a large hiatus from the writing. …
When I was back in high school, I set myself a list of goals to achieve before I turned 30. Okay, many people make these lists (as our Facebook news feed so often annoyingly reminds us), and it’s not like I ever actively pursued my list. Still, having recently turned 29, I couldn’t help but …
A couple of days ago I posted on my Facebook wall about a game from the fourth round of the strong Hoogeveen chess tournament in the Netherlands. Watching the games live from my office, I saw Dutch Grandmaster Erwin l’Ami play the incredible 36.Bh8-a1!! against Polish Grandmaster Michal Krasenkow. Why was this Facebook-worthy, I hear …
Well, my attempts to break down the Tony Abbott gender issue into simple, undisputable mathematics proved anything but uncontroversial. On my Facebook page, the comments came thick and fast, quickly turning my wall into rigorous debating forum. The post received so much interest that for a couple of days in a row last week, it …
[EDIT: Make sure you don’t miss Part II: Comments, Clarifications and Corrections for an update on the analysis.] Like many Australians, I was dismayed to read that the newly elected Prime Minister of Australia, Tony Abbott, had appointed an incredibly male-heavy Ministry to the Parliament of Australia. Most news reports in the mainstream media, …