USATE 2012 preview

I intended to skip the US Amateur Team East (USATE) tournament in Parsippany, NJ this year – time, money, practice, ennui.

However, I got invited to play on a team rated 2192 (thank you, Matt!). Can’t turn THAT down!

I don’t recall how many teams were over 2190 last year, but going back to a photo of the 2010 wall chart, 2192 would have seeded us 5th or 6th.

Will look forward to playing a game (or six) in the relative luxury behind the ropes. I may blog less this year and spend more time during the tournament drilling some new opening lines I have been waiting to spring on the unsuspecting.

And now, off to the laboratory…

A mathematical content manifesto

{Writing, video, audio, graphics} + Brains = Content

{Writing, video, audio, graphics} – Brains = Crap

Brains + Data  = Analysis

Data – Brains = Counting

Brains + Search data + Interviews + Social = Audience analysis

Search data – Brains = Counting

Content + Audience analysis + UX/UI = Excellent content

UX/UI + Social + Clarity + Brains = Findability

Audience analysis + Findability = SEO

Findability – Excellent content = Crap

Goals + Content + Audience analysis + UX/UI + SEO + Social = Content strategy

Content strategy = Winning

Removing Brains at any stage = Crap

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons

I use a paper desk calendar.

When I get a new one at the start of the new year, I don’t throw away the old one.

Originally this was pragmatic (in January it’s still useful to see stuff from the previous December). Then it became funny to have a stack of them.

And then suddenly a decade went by.

And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair—

[They will say: "How his hair is growing thin!"]

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin—

[They will say: "But how his arms and legs are thin!"]

Do I dare Disturb the universe? In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all;

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?

Bottom shelf

Carlo Rossi and his bottom-shelf friends (Gallo, Almaden, etc) make some interesting varieties of wine. “Rhine Style” and “Sangria” are two flavors available in the big jug size. To my mind calling it Rhine Style is slightly more specific than just putting “Germany Wine” on the label, which would be one stage away from “Grape Wine”. Which, to be fair, would distinguish it from Boone’s Farm.

This is by no means the strangest thing in the liquor store. Have you tried ChocoVine? “The taste of Dutch chocolate and fine red wine” it says, right there on the bottle. Looks indistinguishable from YooHoo.

Marketing these things must be an interesting challenge. Since “even cheaper than Red Truck” isn’t a compelling slogan, even the lowest-end products are marketing based on alleged quality.

“Pruning, weeding, cultivating…that’s hard work, but that’s why our wines taste different,” says Carlo in large type on the company website. (Think about that for just a sec.)

And my favorite: ChocoVine touts its status as “still to this day the #1 selling Chocolate Wine in America.”

 

What it’s like to jump off a mountain

This is unbelievable.

I thought it was bold to jump out of an airplane but this makes skydiving look like hopscotch.

Maths, mnemonics, chess

or, How to memorize chess openings (long version)

Watch Arthur Benjamin, “Mathemagician,” multiply two five-digit numbers IN HIS HEAD:

The scene in question starts around 10:30, although the whole video is quite interesting.

He explains his methodology just a bit, and then attempts to verbalize the whole thought process as he solves the problem, which he breaks down into three segments. After finishing one segment, he remembers the resulting number by repeating a phrase: “cookie fission”.  Substituting words for numbers. The mathemagician’s mnemonic aid. After he finishes another of the three segments, he will recall his first segment result with “cookie fission”, combine those two segments, and continue on from there.

Now stay with me:

There is a wonderful, ridiculous, ultra-sharp, ultra-theoretical chess opening called the Botvinnik variation of the Anti-Meran line in the Semi-Slav defense against the Queen’s Gambit. (Yeah.) Starts 1.d4 d5 2.c4 [Queen's Gambit] … c6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 e6 [Semi-Slav, versus a ...Bf5 setup] 5.Bg5 [Anti-Meran, rather than 5.e3 Meran] …dxc4 [Botvinnik, as opposed to 5...h6 Moscow variation].

 

Botvinnik Anti-Meran: let the fun begin!

Now I don’t have a great chess memory. I have to keep looking up these names in Wikipedia just to know what a Meran is and what an Anti-Meran is. And the Botvinnik line is so notoriously well-researched that GMs often play more than 20 moves they’ve memorized before making any original decisions. So this is not a logical line for me to play, with either color.

However, it’s fascinating and fun. Either side could get mated, or lose or win an ugly endgame. So after taking it up in blitz for a time, I had a chance to play it over-the-board for the first time against a 2350+ player this weekend. I half-expected to get embarrassed by making some basic well-known theoretical blunder. And I did make a bonehead mistake immediately upon forgetting the book line on move 14 (but actually we wound up making a draw!).

Listening to IMs talk about this kind of line, I was always blown away that they not only remember reams of analysis, but even remember specific games between other players that have taken this course or that course within the opening. “Shirov-Van Wely, Wijk An Zee 1994, continued 27…Qg8! and won” they might say.

Holy mackerel! They remember who played it and where?! Astonishing!

But does Arthur Benjamin give us a hint as to why that might be? I think so.

What I failed to grasp previously is that the names and locations are actually HELPING the chessplayer remember the analysis. I know who Shirov is, and I know van Wely – what they look like, where they are from, how they play. I can attach their names to particular strings of chess analysis just as one might store a string of numbers as “cookie fission”.

Now that I have grasped this probably obvious fact, I may actually be able to remember some of my King’s Indian lines.

Consilience spotted in the wild

The New Yorker (no less) says Steven Jobs’ secret sauce was consilience, which I earlier described as “the puddling together of all knowledge.”

Point is, technology became exponentially better when married with design.

Just as content strategy is emerging from comingling journalism and SEO and UX. And physical security is merging with digital security.

And so on.

And so on.

My new blog on Content Strategy

Reassembler remains defiantly non-focused. (That’s its focus, actually.)

However, there’s an exciting field called Content Strategy that takes a re-assembler-ish approach, tossing journalism and SEO and marketing and ecommerce and user experience into a professional mosh pit.

Great stuff, exciting times if you 1) like content and 2) like change. Which I do.

I’ll be adding my own observations to this conversation (from my b2b journalist perspective) at Content-Jitsu.

Please, hold your applause :)