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Nov-14-06
 | | Tabanus: <Joe> Thank you, I'll remember that. Actually, the sun is just beneath the horizon during winter so it's not completely dark. During Christmas I should be able to see it, since then I'll be in middle part of our long country. ...and away from CG.com for at least a week. We'll loooose! |
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Nov-14-06
 | | Domdaniel: God's turban and tu-tu! Could I really have mixed up We Are Normal with My Pink Half of the Drainpipe? Have I mislaid a marble? Am I a complete idiot? Has Old Scrotum, the wrinkled retainer, been at the sauce again, despite the curious dipping procedure it demands? Or did my subconscious mind - curiously dominant at four in the morning - so arrange things on purpose? As a demonstration of the fallibility of human memory ("so take your eye-witnesses and stuff 'em") or as a last desperate assertion of dilletantery amid the hegemonizing swarm of googlistas? Gee, thanks, Sub. Stay concho. |
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Nov-14-06
| | Domdaniel: <The sun will disappear completely in a week or so.> And, just over eight minutes later, if these scientist johnnies are right about the speed of light, we'll ALL know about it ... |
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Nov-14-06
| | Tabanus: <if these scientist johnnies are right about the speed of light> Let's hope they are. |
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| Nov-14-06 | | Larsker: <Domdaniel> Maybe I'm amazed that you like the Danish language. I'm accustomed to Danish-bashing.
Of course, I love the language myself since it's the only one where I can fully express myself. Also, emotionally, it reaches my heart more than any other language - that's the magic of one's mother tongue, I guess. Anyway - it's disintegrating like anything else in this world. It's like a flower in the field - among hundreds of others - they all have their time and will all eventually wither and be replaced by something else. Danish is hard and soft at the same time. It's also one of the fastest languages I know of. Danes can speak faster than, say, Italians - partly because of the <stød> which is essential to the language. This also makes spoken Danish harder to understand for foreigners than eg. Swedish. |
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Nov-14-06
| | Domdaniel: <Larsker> - <This also makes spoken Danish harder to understand for foreigners than eg. Swedish.> Oh, I know, believe me. I have a niece and nephew in Copenhagen - a city that I love anyway apart from the family connection - and they mostly have to speak English to me. They also find my 'Swedish' accent funny - I had some Swedish lessons long ago, and the sounds stuck. I can read Danish, fairly slowly, with a dictionary. But I can understand only some words in the spoken language. I once jokingly said that Danish sounded like Swedish spoken with a mouthful of herring. I'm still trying to improve, though. It doesn't help that so many Danes also speak the best non-first-language English in the world. |
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| Nov-14-06 | | Milo: FWIW, I've heard the "all rook endings are drawn" line attributed to Tarrasch. |
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Nov-14-06
| | Domdaniel: <Milo> Hmm. You could be right yet again. In which case it probably wasn't a joke. I don't think Praeceptor Germanicus had much sense of humor... On the other hand, anyone who could come up with 3.Nd2 against the French must have had a refined sense of irony, or something. |
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Nov-15-06
| | Domdaniel: Events move apace. A sudden Nxd5, with the devastating threat of Nf6+. Lucky for him he's got a pawn at c6 ... **MARKER DIAGRAM**
We have played 26.Nxd5 to reach this position (Black to play - obviously 26...cxd5): 
click for larger viewThe recapture is likely on Thursday. We will then have until Saturday to decide our next move. The leading contender is 27.Raf1. |
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Nov-16-06
| | Domdaniel: If he's recaptured, it must be Thursday already. So: **MARKER DIAGRAM**
He has played 26...cxd5 to reach this position (White to play):
click for larger view |
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Nov-16-06
| | Domdaniel: "Chess is the movement of pieces eating each other"
- Marcel Duchamp |
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Nov-16-06
| | Tabanus: <"Chess is the movement of pieces eating each other"> Ok, accepted, BUT there is no poem between the last two marker diagrams! |
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Nov-16-06
| | Domdaniel: <Tabanus> - <BUT there is no poem between the last two marker diagrams!> There is. But it's an invisible Duchampesque conceptual readymade poem, where the true content is in the reader's head rather than on the screen. |
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| Nov-16-06 | | achieve: HaHa, great stuff guys, I'll create the poem in my head.. (very good at that sometimes ;-)
Nontheless.. |
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Nov-16-06
| | Domdaniel: Some chess quotes, for a change:
"It is still unclear who actually gets closer to the truth in chess - the human, with his intuition and familiarity with many years of accumulated knowledge of positional chess, or the computer, with its endless and deep analytical capabilities." - Jaan Ehlvest
"Suddenly I felt something like an electric shock: I caught sight of Mikhail Botvinnik's piercing eyes... [later in the game] I saw Botvinnik again. He studied the position on the chessboard, then he looked at my face, and after that he went over to Geller and whispered something.
Many years later, Geller told me what he had said: 'Who's this yobbo who's playing in our team?'" - Eduard Gufeld |
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Nov-18-06
| | Domdaniel: A notice.
Thomas Pynchon's new novel, Against The Day, is published this week. As soon as I get my hands on a copy, all other priorities recede. Nickel? Work? Food? What are they for? Contra Diem. |
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| Nov-18-06 | | TheSlid: <domdaniel> 2500 posts in 3 months? Quite extraordinary. As far as books go, sadly, I can only find the same enthusiasm for a new Harry Potter book. Perhaps you could explain the outline of Against the Day and maybe us failed intellectuals might try it out :-) |
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Nov-18-06
| | Domdaniel: <TheSlid> I'll try, but I haven't got it yet - just read a few pages. Very impressive. I discovered Gravity's Rainbow in the 1970s and have never been the same since. Wrote an MA thesis on it -- 30,000 words in 6 days, which makes 2500 posts in 3 months seem simple. As a writer (of sorts) I can type quickly and I'm usually at the keyboard anyway. Mind you, before that sudden irruption began I'd lurked quietly for two years under another alias. Against The Day, note #1:
set mainly in radical circles in Europe and the USA in the early 1900s, with many side-excursions. Features members of the extended Traverse clan, previously seen in Vineland (which links to The Crying of Lot 49 via characters like Wendell 'Mucho' Maas). Extract in which Webb Traverse, American dynamiter, meets Veikko, radical Finnish lunatic: - I'm in a really bad mood.
- What's that got to do with me?
- You are what usually makes it worse.
They had some such exchange once or twice a week. Helped them get along, annoyance, for both of them, working as a social lubricant. [later, an explosion:]
Four closely set blasts, cracks in the fabric of air and time, merciless, bone-strumming. Breathing seemed beside the point. Rising dirt-yellow clouds full of wood splinters, no wind to blow them anyplace. Track and trusswork went sagging into the dust-choked arroyo. [and one of those useful linguistic asides:]
"Aitisi nai poroja," replied Veikko, a pleasantry long grown routine, meaning, "Your mother @#$%s reindeer." |
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Nov-18-06
| | Domdaniel: Of course the firkin censors fugued up that last verb, there. But it's not hard to work out, is it? |
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Nov-18-06
| | Domdaniel: MARKER DIAGRAM?
What MARKER DIAGRAM? Give it a rest, kiddo.
Pynchonista Note #2:
Pynchon describes Against the Day as:
"... stupid songs, strange sexual practices... obscure languages... contrary-to-the-fact occurrences..." My kinda day. Contra diem. |
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| Nov-18-06 | | achieve: <Pynchonista Note #2
"... stupid songs, strange sexual practices... obscure languages... contrary-to-the-fact occurrences..." My kinda day. Contra diem.>
LOL Dom, you are on a roll!
So is <dak> check him out. I'm off to a boring sleep possibly.. Pynchon factor approaching zero.. but not anaesthesized yet.. |
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Nov-18-06
| | Domdaniel: OK. Contra diem...
**MARKER DIAGRAM**
We have played 27.Raf1 to reach this position (Black to play):
click for larger viewEnter our FREE spot-the-bishop competition! If you see somebody on the street who you think might be our 'bad' bishop in disguise, pin him (or her) to the wall. Wrestle them to the ground. Offer a free farmer (bonde, peasant, peon, bauer, pawn, pion, etc.) If the 'bad bishop' STILL can't escape you might win up to one-twentieth of a CHESSBUCK! Terms and conditions apply. State taxes and church tithes should be paid in real money. Do not use chessbucks for this purpose. Or for police bail, bribing prison officers, etc. They say that a mental hospital is a soothing place in which to play correspondence chess. Please send moves only. Messages like 'I am innocent', 'it's all a horrible mistake', 'Domdaniel made me do it', and 'Free the GMAN One' will be ignored. |
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Nov-18-06
| | Domdaniel: <Slidster> Must confess, I haven't actually read any of the Harry Potter books. Emphatically not literary snobbery - I read lots of sci-fi, thrillers, murder mysteries, fantasy. I've done time in Narnia and Middle Earth. I very much like the Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer, about a criminal mastermind boy genius and fairies with laser blasters. One reason I like Pynchon so much is the way he mixes it all up - hi-low, quantum slapstick, arcane learning and Tomfoolery... But I still haven't read Harry Potter, though I know what a muggle is. |
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| Nov-19-06 | | Elixir of Life: Hi, Domdaniel, sorry for bothering you, but I would like to ask you a few questions: First, what do you think is the best free chess engine for analysis? Second, I would like to use the engine for analysis, and I would like to learn how to guide an engine to analyze a position, instead of just letting it analyze the position on its own. How can I do this? Thanks |
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Nov-19-06
| | Domdaniel: Hi <Elixir> - I'm probably not the best person to answer this, but I'll try. I now mainly use Fritz, but that was a bought CD, not a free download. Rybka seems to be strongest, but I haven't converted to it yet. I know that several people in the GMAN game downloaded free versions recently. I also have Crafty, Ruffian, GNU (not very good) and a few others. With some freebie engines you just get the basic program and you need to link it to a board/display like WinBoard (also available in a free version). Another idea is to download the free version of chess database software, with a built-in engine. ChessBase Lite comes with an earlier version of Fritz. I also use BookUp - not as powerful in database terms, but the free version (Bookup Express) is easy to use, well supported and has Ruffian and Crafty built in for analysis. Boards, displays etc included, and you can also open game files in PGN form, or save your own. Check out Random Visitor's forum - I have a link on top. He knows a lot more about this than me, and has a FAQ section about using engines. <twinlark> also knows more. Sorry I don't have any other useful links to hand right now. Whatever about the GMAN game, I don't (personally) believe that an engine *has* to be the latest super-powered version. When used in conjunction with your own intuition and analysis, all of the strong ones seem alike to me - very good tactically, great blunder checkers, great for showing how your latest brilliant idea actually loses. But not great at positional play. (Some Rybka fans disagree...) Hope this helps. Check out the BookUp site, or ask <RV> about Rybka, (or <twinlark> about Shredder and others) would be my advice in a nutshell... |
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