Love you more

I put up Link Love as a potential post in the Reassembler voting process.

It lost. Undeterred, Wahrheit took up the flag on his excellent chess (and other stuff) blog. He’s right – the river of interblog links seems to have dried to a trickle in recent months. I’m guilty as anyone.

For instance, I don’t think I’ve ever linked to Blunderprone’s in-depth chess history posts. Unlike 99.9999999999 percent of the world’s bloggers (*points at self*), George really puts some research into his posts.

The inimitable DK Transformation never fails to enlighten and entertain (unless he’s on hiatus :) both on his chess blog and on The System of the System.

My friend and former co-worker Michael Fitzgerald covers broad ground on Archimedes Hot Tub (get it?); eg On Feudal Capitalism – read the comments too. (Michael recently wrote an indepth series about the Mafia for csoonline.com.)

I thought this Abbie Lundberg interview was fascinating on the revolutionary nature of the iPhone - this is much more insightful than merely “oh look it’s so cool”. Gets to the nature of software systems in the business world.

There’s lots more to link but I’m pressed for time. More later.

In the words of some 70s band, let your love flow.

A small side note for those who love to give: It’s better to link words of substance (examples above) than to link the word “here” or “this post”. From a Google POV. Just sayin’.

This is your brain on French

A friend asked what we did in the evenings in France. My answer? We went to sleep. Usually by 9:30 pm or so.

Maybe that’s partly because of the time difference. France is 6 hours ahead. But we were there for about 10 days, which is a pretty good amount of time to adjust.

Rue Dauphine, foot of Pont Neuf bridge, Paris

I think we were exhausted because being in a foreign environment makes your brain work overtime, even to do mundane things that you take for granted in your usual habitat.

Simply going to the bakery or grocery store and buying a few items is a big deal if you speak only a few words of the language. Road signs are different. The car dashboard (in this case a rented Renault) is different. Waiters and shopkeepers may or may not make any allowance for the fact that you are obviously straining to follow their questions.

It keeps your mind working overtime, like running a mental marathon.

Not quite as extreme as this neurobic exercise, but still pretty darn good.

Going through your reads

In football, on a passing play, the quarterback usually has a primary receiver. Ideally, that’s where the ball is going.

If that option is taken away – the DB knocked the receiver off his route, the safety is cheating over that way, etc – the quarterback has to look to his second option. And so on, maybe checking all the way down to a dump pass to a running back. Of course, there are several 300-lb men rushing to try to flatten the QB while he still has the ball.

So I’m quite impressed with the brain of the quarterback. They have to read the defense at the line of scrimmage, make and communicate a coded play adjustment if necessary, take the snap, drop back, and then go through this mental and physical progression of reads  – each one requiring a microsecond throw/don’t throw decision - while trying to sense and avoid the rush.

So in chess, what’s your progression? If your first plan doesn’t work, are you prepared to check down in an orderly manner?

Sometimes I get a position that I just don’t understand. Don’t know the themes, can’t figure out a plan, don’t know where the pieces belong, don’t know who’s better. I have a reputation for stewing endlessly over these positions – a 20-minute think is not that unusual for me, which in the context of our club time control (40 in 90) is que estupido. It’s roughly like a quarterback holding the ball for 10 seconds – an invitation to get flattened.

It would be smarter to give myself a time limit for any particular move (I think Howard G does this) and then check down to a simple question like “Which of my pieces is least active?” and attempt to improve it.

This approach undoubtedly applies at work and elsewhere too. What about you – do you have ‘checkdown’ strategies for dealing with complex situations?

How to make time stop

When I was a kid, a summer day lasted roughly forever. Now the clock and calendar conspire against us, and sometimes whole years seem to zip past, like blurred scenery through a train window.

Through the generosity of a friend, we stumbled on a way to slow it down:

If you go to France, and travel to the Provence region in the south, there’s a valley connecting immaculate little hillside villages like Sault and Moniuex.

Go to the valley and stand outside a farmhouse in the afternoon in a lavender field. Look at the mountains, look at the lavender, look at the villages.

Don’t do email, don’t blog, don’t tweet. Turn the ringer off.

Bring a glass of wine if you like. If you’re hungry, pick a fig off a nearby fig tree, or crack open a walnut.

Listen to the grasshoppers, or the sheep just over the hillside.

While you do this, the sun will hang in the afternoon sky for a long, long time.

We’ve gone on holiday by mistake

Not reassembling anything until mid-October.

(Can you name the source of the post title without assistance from Mr. Google?)

But if I did roll, that’s how I would do so

I’m starting to think that people who say “that’s how I roll” usually don’t roll that way. In fact in my observation most people who say “that’s how I roll” don’t really roll at all.

I’m starting to notice that people who say “that’s what I’m talking about!” usually weren’t talking about that. Often they weren’t talking about anything.

Maybe they were having a conversation with an imaginary friend. Maybe that’s how they roll.

Road trip

What a strange and excellent week it was, while I was busily not-blogging.

Traveled to Anaheim for a physical security trade show. Boring? Furthest thing from it! This show revs up my inner geek – images posted here.

Anyway the conference booked Disneyland for an evening reception. Yes, kicked all the civilians out of the park so we could take over the west side. Couldn’t access all the rides, but six or so were kept open – and for most of the evening you could walk on without waiting. In this manner I rode Pirates of the Caribbean, then Indiana Jones (twice), and the Big Thunder Mountain roller coaster, and a few others. Total time spent in lines, all night: about 15 minutes. Total money spent: Zero. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

In Anaheim I also ate dinner at Roy’s. We East Coasters may remember Roy Yamaguchi from the Hawaiian finale of Top Chef season two. Apparently he has a lot of restaurants now and the food was fantastic. A colleague observed that the waiter seemed very knowledgable, so he told the waiter “surprise me”. And everything he got was amazing as well. Crispy calamari, tasty salmon, short ribs, tuna tartare with pine nuts, chocolate lava cake, pumpkin mousse, lychee caipirinha. All great.

Then I went to Philly and got to eat dinner at Morimoto. As in Iron Chef Morimoto. It’s a beautiful space and we had some great food, although I definitely established some limitations to my sushi enthusiasm. Tako, for instance, and some whitefish and some blue-skin fishes, are not for me. Chutoro, on the other hand, is spectacular.

The debatable value of trying too hard to win

Okay, the chessplayers have spoken. But I’m also going to write “running with your belly” later.

When you try too hard to win, you lose.

If this happens to you frequently, as it does to me, the game is trying to tell you something. But most of us come up with a wrong rationalization for these results. Tell me if this sounds familiar: “Well, at least [higher rated opponent] knows I wasn’t playing for a wimpy draw.” Yes, we tell ourselves that we play like cavemen because that’s more honorable than making draws. So the ‘value’ of this style is that it makes us feel mas macho.

There’s certainly such a thing as a wimpy draw. But for most players who frequently experience these tried-too-hard losses, here’s what it should teach you:

1) Your ability to evaluate a position is poor. This reflects lack of technical skill.

or

2) You aren’t objective enough. This reflects emotional immaturity (in the context of competition – don’t take it personally :).

Which problem is yours, and how do you fix it?

1) Ever do a post-mortem with a good (2300+) player? Almost without fail they will frequently assess positions — it’s equal, white’s a little better, black has enough compensation. If you don’t think this way, if you never draw these conclusions explicitly DURING PLAY, lack of technical skill is indicated. Read “Reassess Your Chess” by Jeremy Silman. Follow his methodology until it develops into a habit. Working and analyzing with a strong chess coach will also help.

2) Game scenario: You have an advantage but you are now presented with a choice. The line that makes the most sense seems to let your advantage slip. This makes you unsatisfied or angry, so you sacrifice material instead to try for a knockout blow. Then you lose the endgame. If that happens to you a lot, read “The Seven Deadly Sins of Chess” by Jonathan Rowson. Stop saying “Well at least I went for it” and work on developing the habit of trying to play the objectively strongest move at all times, regardless of result. Notice that in the language under point 1 above, strong players often say “White’s a little better” rather than “I’m a little better”. It’s that objectivity thing at work.

For the record, I have both problems :) But I am making a little progress.

Anyway you can always go back to playing like a caveman, but why not try to be strong instead of trying to look strong?