Internet Explorer automatically presents me with a Bing search box on the toolbar.
I tried to change it to Google.
I wonder what Bing’s market share would be if Microsoft didn’t cram it down your throat?
Archive for March, 2011
Colin Hay
Dolores O’Riordan (particularly if Feargol does backing vocals)
Florence, w/ or w/o Machine
Ray Lamontagne
Afterparty: Gorillaz, King’s X, Roland Orzabal, and/or Bela Fleck & the Flecktones
Note: No immediate plans of dying. Just planning ahead.
Wandering in DC I found Cuba Libre and ate this Ropa Vieja dish.
Those are fried banana nuggets on top, then a crispy banana cracker (how else would you describe it?), over a super-tender braised beef with tomatoes and peas and so on.
They also served a little bread basket with rounds that had been pressed and grilled, like a dense version of the bread part of a grilled cheese sandwich. I’m not doing it justice; I would go back for the bread basket alone.
Delicious.
Is it time for lunch yet?
How to really get better at chess, no seriously really though
Published March 18, 2011 Chess 7 Comments3 simple steps, $60 and hundreds of hours of work. (It’s like choosing a diet — the ones that require the least exercise are the least effective.)
1. Take the scoresheets of your last 30 rated games. Pick out the opening you dreaded most. Buy a book and start playing that opening WITH BOTH COLORS. Yes, even if you don’t play 1.d4 or whatever. Do it anyway. Study this opening.
When I say study, I mean:
a) Choose lines, play them out on a physical board, and write them down in a notebook until you can reproduce them from memory, with the resulting positions clearly visualized in your mind.
b) For each line, write out a positional goal or set of themes.
c) Ask questions and answer them in writing.
Example: In Play the King’s Indian, there are lots of lines where Gallagher says “White would like to tempt Black into playing h6 to weaken the king and prevent the Bg7 from being activated through that square.” Then there are lots of other lines where he says “…h6 is a good idea in this position. Okay Mr. Grandmaster, why doesn’t the previously stated objection apply in those positions? I wrote that question in a notebook, wrote out lines where he says …h6 is good, and studied them until I could articulate why.
2.Pick out the middlegame where you felt most uncertain, or where your opponent demonstrated to you that your ideas were completely inadequate. Study that middlegame and steer ALL your OTB and blitz games toward that exact type of position. Buy a book and study that.
That means if you score well in tactical melees, you’re going to start trading queens and playing symmetrical pawn structures. If you are happiest playing fluid structures like the Pirc or hedgehog, you’re going to start playing fixed centers. If you avoid trades, you’re going to start simplifying early.
3. Scan all the endgames and choose the type where you scored the worst. Rook endgames? B v N? Simple ones, complicated ones? Study them. Buy a book and study that.
Ignore your rating for one year and do this work. Learn to enjoy these positions. At the end your playing strength will be 100 points higher.
Wired: One man’s quest to outrace the wind.
Completely fascinating. Another Thor Hyerdahl type: Basically by solving a brainteaser, Rick Cavallaro figured out a strategy for sailing directly downwind at a speed greater than the wind.
And everyone told him he’s an idiot.
Emediavitals has posted another column on search engine optimization, pointing out a similarity to chess: Tactics without strategy are unproductive, and strategy without good tactical execution — well, most of the time it just loses.
Also I discovered that emediavitals, in changing their URL structure, broke most of the links to my older columns on reassembler’s SEO for Editors page. Tsk tsk. If you don’t use redirects, you lose a ton of hard-earned Google juice.
The chinese symbol for crisis is a mixture of the symbols for danger and opportunity
- Anonymous
My wife’s site www.myfreshlocal.com is featured on Care2.
http://www.care2.com/causes/real-food/blog/running-a-local-food-finder-site-why-i-built-it/
Even cooler is that she’s on the cusp of a major feature upgrade. Which is extra amazing since the site has only been live for a little while.
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