Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Why am I stuck?
I read something in Andrew Martin's chess column on my favorite chess website (www.chess.com) today and boom ... it struck me why I am still probably the 1400+ player and not the 1600+ or 1700+ player I wish to be.
"Not every move in a game has the same weight. We play 95% of our games like Anand, but it's what happens the other 5% of the time that matters. I look for CRITICAL MOMENTS in a game and try to anlayse at those points. Critical moments might incude:
1) Before the game, how do you feel?
2) The end of your theoretical knowledge.
3) Exchanges
4) Turning points, obvious mistakes, blunders
5) The very end of the game;
a summary of why the game was won, lost or drawn. You build your chess instinct with this work; it's the quickest way."
Of course, all of this and the fact that I started playing chess seriously only about 5 to 6 months back :)
Hehehe .. the truth is, I am not even a 1400s player, because I have never even played a FIDE tournament to get that rating!! :) But I have played against some chess engines on my computer and have beat the system rated at 1400+ and so just assumed myself at that level.
BTW if you are still lost as to what the numbers 1400 and 1600 mean, they are the ELO ratings of a chess player. And if anybody reading this is wondering what ELO and FIDE mean, one piece of advice - 'grow up and learn chess seriously' ;)
"Not every move in a game has the same weight. We play 95% of our games like Anand, but it's what happens the other 5% of the time that matters. I look for CRITICAL MOMENTS in a game and try to anlayse at those points. Critical moments might incude:
1) Before the game, how do you feel?
2) The end of your theoretical knowledge.
3) Exchanges
4) Turning points, obvious mistakes, blunders
5) The very end of the game;
a summary of why the game was won, lost or drawn. You build your chess instinct with this work; it's the quickest way."
Of course, all of this and the fact that I started playing chess seriously only about 5 to 6 months back :)
Hehehe .. the truth is, I am not even a 1400s player, because I have never even played a FIDE tournament to get that rating!! :) But I have played against some chess engines on my computer and have beat the system rated at 1400+ and so just assumed myself at that level.
BTW if you are still lost as to what the numbers 1400 and 1600 mean, they are the ELO ratings of a chess player. And if anybody reading this is wondering what ELO and FIDE mean, one piece of advice - 'grow up and learn chess seriously' ;)
Friday, December 12, 2008
A prisoner of birth!
I finished reading the novel 'A prisoner of birth' by Jeffrey Archer just today. It has been a really long time for me since I read my last Archer novel .. and sadly I don't even remember what it was! But this one will not suffer the same fate.
To say the least, it was a cool & gripping story right to the end. Let me outright reject any notion that I am a big fan of murder / trial stories. I read a couple of John Grisham novels and never read him fully after that because 'even I' could predict what was going to come later in the other novels :)
This story is about a young man wrongly punished for a crime someone else commits and how he comes back to normal life with the help of his friends & a lot of luck. Although I wondered sometimes why certain things were not considered in the first trial, was happy to find that precisely those things (stab scar) coming to the rescue of our hero in the second episode. And yes, some parts of it are too good to be believed - but heck, what good are we if we can't indulge ourselves in a nice 'tailor-made-movie-story' :)
Am most certainly impressed with the flow and my regards for the author's skill have only increased.
To say the least, it was a cool & gripping story right to the end. Let me outright reject any notion that I am a big fan of murder / trial stories. I read a couple of John Grisham novels and never read him fully after that because 'even I' could predict what was going to come later in the other novels :)
This story is about a young man wrongly punished for a crime someone else commits and how he comes back to normal life with the help of his friends & a lot of luck. Although I wondered sometimes why certain things were not considered in the first trial, was happy to find that precisely those things (stab scar) coming to the rescue of our hero in the second episode. And yes, some parts of it are too good to be believed - but heck, what good are we if we can't indulge ourselves in a nice 'tailor-made-movie-story' :)
Am most certainly impressed with the flow and my regards for the author's skill have only increased.
Friday, November 21, 2008
Minefield blasted
OK. I have finally uninstalled Minefield from my laptop and it promptly removed all the bookmarks and passwords stored inside Firefox too! To be fair to the uninstaller, it did ask me if the bookmarks, etc. can be removed. I did not understand it because the installation folder was different, it would not touch the bookmarks or plugins under Firefox folder. But it did! :)
Is this an opportunity to restart my bookmarks from scratch (there were literally hundreds of them) or is it a bane? I don't know - it sure does irritate me to start typing all the URLs again :)
These plugins top my list:
1) Downthemall
2) Image-show-hide
3) All-in-one sidebar
4) Morning Coffee
5) ColorfulTabs
6) NoScript
7) Fast Dial
8) IE Tab
9) Chromifox
Is this an opportunity to restart my bookmarks from scratch (there were literally hundreds of them) or is it a bane? I don't know - it sure does irritate me to start typing all the URLs again :)
These plugins top my list:
1) Downthemall
2) Image-show-hide
3) All-in-one sidebar
4) Morning Coffee
5) ColorfulTabs
6) NoScript
7) Fast Dial
8) IE Tab
9) Chromifox
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
One more lover
The DSP exam is closing in but I felt it is time I gave out my verdict on Minefield. It did not score a perfect 10 but still got a decent 7+ on my scale.
I did notice some perceptible speed improvements compared to Firefox 3 and IE 7 [is it still in contention?!:-)] - for some of my favorite sites most notably google.
There is still some more support needed for my favorite firefox plug-ins and apart from the couple of crashes while watching the Vishy Anand vs Kramnik chess championship match on chess.com site, there were no hiccups with this browser.
So, one lover already in for this cutie of a browser ;) once the testing stage goes off and it launches in full-scale mode (still hoping plugin support by that time)
I did notice some perceptible speed improvements compared to Firefox 3 and IE 7 [is it still in contention?!:-)] - for some of my favorite sites most notably google.
There is still some more support needed for my favorite firefox plug-ins and apart from the couple of crashes while watching the Vishy Anand vs Kramnik chess championship match on chess.com site, there were no hiccups with this browser.
So, one lover already in for this cutie of a browser ;) once the testing stage goes off and it launches in full-scale mode (still hoping plugin support by that time)
Friday, October 24, 2008
This ain't a bomb ...
Did you try 'Minefield' yet? It seems good! I would not put in the same league as its predecessor yet, since it is still in the alpha stage. But from what I have tried since this morning, there have not been any problems with it.
Oh, by the way, minefield is the next gen Firefox (yepp ... built from the same mozilla base by the mozilla team) with a supposedly ultra-speed Javascript engine. One site (arstechnica) even went to the extent of putting it 10 times faster than Google chrome's JS engine.
An advantage with installing Minefield is that it installs into a separate folder from Firefox. Most (not all) of the firefox plugins I had worked seamlessly with Minefield automatically. Even in the Windows Task Manager, the process appears as "firefox.exe". The bookmarks and form passwords I had saved in Firefox also got transferred automatically to Minefield.
FF's themes however are not yet supported in MF. So, am going to be in the testing mode for next 1 week and see how Minefield fares as against Firefox on user experience. In fact, to update this very blog am using Minefield now. Will update my findings later ...
Oh, by the way, minefield is the next gen Firefox (yepp ... built from the same mozilla base by the mozilla team) with a supposedly ultra-speed Javascript engine. One site (arstechnica) even went to the extent of putting it 10 times faster than Google chrome's JS engine.
An advantage with installing Minefield is that it installs into a separate folder from Firefox. Most (not all) of the firefox plugins I had worked seamlessly with Minefield automatically. Even in the Windows Task Manager, the process appears as "firefox.exe". The bookmarks and form passwords I had saved in Firefox also got transferred automatically to Minefield.
FF's themes however are not yet supported in MF. So, am going to be in the testing mode for next 1 week and see how Minefield fares as against Firefox on user experience. In fact, to update this very blog am using Minefield now. Will update my findings later ...
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Bitten by the bug
If you are thinking of love, well .. yes, it is love (and hate!) for me :)
It all started with my birthday when Abi gifted me a wooden chess board. Poeple might ask what is so great about a wooden board with 64 squares painted black and white. For me, it is a huge opportunity to do something I really like to do. For lack of ability to express better, I can simply say 'it is just beautiful' :) Chess has been a secret passion for a very long time now. I used to even sometimes envy people who were so good at playing chess .. may be that was a silent hurt - of not being able to learn that elusive art well!
Well .. so began my chess saga. Now, after about 2 months, Abi is just short of complaining that I am so lost in my games and chess study spending very little time with her or Isha. The truth of the matter is, earlier I used to spend so much time on the internet for which she complained and that time just got diverted into chess now!
Out of the blue, I downloaded the Kasparov Chessmate software and started using it. Abi's brother saw it and needless to say got bitten by the same bug. We started playing some serious matches within ourselves. Abi is not someone who witnesses from the sidebar for a long time. After all, she was the one who taught me the basic chess tactics of fork & pin while we were in the US! And mind you, she loses regularly but only if she is distracted with something or other - otherwise, she is a far better player. Am not ashamed of that, it as after all a great learning experience to play with a downright attacking player like Abi :)
May be I will write all my chess learnings and how one site led to another in this process sometime soon. But first, I need to study DSP (that is right - Digital Signal Processing) - the exam is nearing, hushhhhhhhhhhh!!
It all started with my birthday when Abi gifted me a wooden chess board. Poeple might ask what is so great about a wooden board with 64 squares painted black and white. For me, it is a huge opportunity to do something I really like to do. For lack of ability to express better, I can simply say 'it is just beautiful' :) Chess has been a secret passion for a very long time now. I used to even sometimes envy people who were so good at playing chess .. may be that was a silent hurt - of not being able to learn that elusive art well!
Well .. so began my chess saga. Now, after about 2 months, Abi is just short of complaining that I am so lost in my games and chess study spending very little time with her or Isha. The truth of the matter is, earlier I used to spend so much time on the internet for which she complained and that time just got diverted into chess now!
Out of the blue, I downloaded the Kasparov Chessmate software and started using it. Abi's brother saw it and needless to say got bitten by the same bug. We started playing some serious matches within ourselves. Abi is not someone who witnesses from the sidebar for a long time. After all, she was the one who taught me the basic chess tactics of fork & pin while we were in the US! And mind you, she loses regularly but only if she is distracted with something or other - otherwise, she is a far better player. Am not ashamed of that, it as after all a great learning experience to play with a downright attacking player like Abi :)
May be I will write all my chess learnings and how one site led to another in this process sometime soon. But first, I need to study DSP (that is right - Digital Signal Processing) - the exam is nearing, hushhhhhhhhhhh!!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)