Chess, publishing, SEO, security, and other things less obviously related
Yeah. Finally used the Williams-Sonoma gift certificate my friends generously gave me for my 40th birthday. (I’m 41 now. Slow thinker.)
A tagine. A low-temperature North African cookpot that condenses steam as the food cooks and returns all the moisture to the dish. Creating very aromatic, tender meat and vegetables.
In Morocco, used for stews seasoned with cinnamon, cumin, saffron, more goodies.
Very excited. Recipes welcome.
2200 is the New World and I’m in Egypt on a reed boat in hurricane season. With a paddle made from Rice Krispies and a sail of pig iron.
I’ve got a circa 1902 Georges Mieles spaceship, and 2200 is Neptune.
2200 is the Best Actress Oscar and I’m Claudia Jennings.
Just back from Kansas City and an annual awards banquet for ASBPE, the American Society of Business Publication Editors. (What, your profession doesn’t have an association or two?)
ASBPE named my magazine, CSO, as the best small-circulation trade mag since the year 2000.
Not too shabby.
Very cool, if I may say so.
Protecting Joe's Office
Joe has a billion-dollar secret. How can he keep it safe from thieves, turncoats and spies?
More often than not I’m among the last players going in the wee hours at the chess club. I play slowly and don’t pack the tactical punch to put people away early very often. But occasionally…
me – RH (1850)
1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.Nf3 d6 4.g3 Nd7 5.Bg2 Rb8 6.0-0 b6 7.d5 Bb7 8.Nd4 Ngf6 9.Nc3 a6 10.f4 0-0 11.e4 h6
Black’s semi-hippopotamus setup is like chum in the water. Often I overextend myself trying to smash this kind of opening. Which is what Black would like to provoke. In reality, often this type of setup (for us amateurs) isn’t so bad; Black just tries to complete his development modestly and flexibly, then counterpunch in the center or the wing files. In this particular case I’d like to think the c6 hole is truly a liability, but maybe White’s early d5 was unnecessarily committal.
Anyway, Black’s move …h6 is the sort where an instructional book might tsk, ‘weakening the light squares around Black’s king’. And as a reader, I honestly would say, ’so what? White isn’t even remotely attacking those squares.’ But the thing about pawn structure weaknesses is that they’re semi-permanent. (See – I’m catching on. A mere 27 years into it.) So even if it takes ten moves or twenty, White may get around to exploiting those squares. And of course the White player in this game was already dreaming of a fast e5-e6 push. And now that sequence would attack the base of Black’s remaining pawn chain on the kingside…
12.Be3 Re8 13.Bh3 Nc5 To crib from James Marshall and Swine Lake: If Black had played …Nf8 (guarding g6 as well as e6), much that follows could have been avoided.
14.e5 Nfe4 15.Nxe4 Nxe4 16.Qc2 Squarely at g6. The undefended Ne4 just happens to give White a tempo.
16…dxe5 Tricks! I overlooked that this will give him the option of …Ng5 (since I have to reply 17.fxe5, as 17.Qxe4 exd4 18.Bxd4 Bxd4 19.Qxd4 e6 and White’s center falls apart). On the other hand, Black has just opened another line on the kingside.
17.fxe5 Ng5 18.Bxg5 hxg5 [diagram]
Hm. Obviously the long-awaited e6 push would hang my knight with check. If White has no immediate action here, he may have some problems – Black’s got the two bishops, White’s king is kinda nekkid. Happily he has some immediate action:
19.Ne6! Qd7 20.Nxg5 e6 21.Rxf7 1-0
19…fxe6 20.Bxe6+ Kh7 21.Bf7 and Black gets mated because there’s no way to protect g6 – the magic light square weakened by 11…h6.
A young friend of our family (7 years old) has recently discovered that she has a large number of food allergies.
I need kid-friendly recipes and information resources that do NOT involve the following ingredients:
I’ve got artichoke pasta with a tomato-free meat sauce (basically ground pork and herbs). What else? All help greatly appreciated!
Neither fish nor fowl would be the equivalent English idiom. This version is German so instead of fowl they say flesh or meat. (Once on a business trip to Chicago I ate at the famous Berghoff restaurant and ordered the charmingly named “Schlachtplatte”, or slaughter plate. Those Germans.)
I want to say Heinrich Boll or Friedrich Durrenmatt wrote a story or novel of this title, Nicht Fisch nicht Fleisch, but apparently it was someone named Franz Xaver Kroetz. Aside: Read Die Besuch der Alten Dame (The Visit of the Old Lady), a creepy Durrenmatt play where a spurned lover returns to the small, close-knit town decades later, where spreads the tacit idea that she’ll pay a big bounty to anybody who offs her ex.
But never mind all that. Nicht Fisch Nicht Fleisch is my review of Coldplay’s Viva la Vida. (Didn’t see *that* coming, didja!)
I think I like it, but I want to love it, and I don’t, but I can’t explain why exactly. Violet Hill reminds me (at the end) of the earlier albums – it’s melancholy Chris at his piano. Notwithstanding the extremely pedestrian guitar solo. And other songs on the album go back to the piano but just don’t do anything for me. The highs aren’t high enough and the lows not low enough.
In which respect it’s similar, unfortunately, to U2’s tepid recent efforts.
Too much polish, not enough passion, I guess. Clearly most of the world disagrees. Oh well.
I can write and edit and come up with creative Web publishing ideas. I can play chess okay. (This part of the post brought to you by the previous post.)
Something I can’t do is fix mechanical stuff. Very little idea about how things work. Today I swapped out two bad headlight bulbs and a blown car fuse. This is cause for wild celebration in my household. It goes on my very short list of ‘fixit’ achievements along with swapping electrical outlets (I’ll save the how-I-electrocuted-myself story for another time) and replacing a wax ring. You know what that is, right? Eww.
But it’s all good. Another stretch for the brain, like playing double-queen-pawn and brushing your teeth left-handed.
For you engineering types, I guess the converse neurobic is something like writing a poem replicating Gerard Manley Hopkins’ sprung rhythm.
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