True, it wasn’t Bush-Kerry 2004, but…the results for the US Chess Federation executive board voting are in.
I did not bother to vote, and I wasn’t alone. Only two good things happened here:
1. If I were forced to vote for one person, it would have been Randy Bauer, and he did get elected.
2. Sam Sloan did not get re-elected. (Here’s my short blurb on him.)
It was difficult to know who to vote for because, well, of politics. Not knowing which rumors and accusations are right and wrong, and who has hidden agendas.
Susan Polgar easily led all candidates in the voting, and any other result would have been a surprise. It’s like an Arnold Schwarznegger running for office: when you’re famous, you get more votes. (The Polgar sisters are very famous in the world of chess.) To me, this is not a problem; it’s not like she can help being well-known, it’s good to have a female presence on the board, and she’ll likely do a decent job.
I was disappointed, however, to see that both Polgar and Truong were elected, and to four-year terms at that. They had a recent, low-key marriage which should have been better publicized, and they will essentially be voting as a block for four years. It’s not too hard to see a link between limited publicizing of the marriage and making sure both of them get elected.
July 28th, 2007
2 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under Chess
When you were a kid did you ever…
- Try to figure out how many licks it took to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll pop?
- Get a “kick me” sign stuck on your back? And actually get kicked?
- Get confused because you associated “grimace” with happiness because of the McDonald’s character, just to find out something different from a vocab list?
- Try to build an igloo in winter?
- Get a guilt-trip from your parents about not eating awful food because of starving kids in Ethiopia?
- Have an irrational fear of Mr. Glitch from Mathman?
- Have other kids try to convince you there’s a ring around the Earth because the equator’s a yellow line on the globe? (I didn’t fall for it.)
- Think Duck Tales was a good show?
- Think America’s Funniest Home Videos was a good show?
- Discover that…oh, I don’t have the guts to say this one.
- Get a fingernail ripped off by performing a foolishly risky biking maneuver?
- Have teenagers pretend to offer you cocaine when it’s really just a handful of snow?
- Think you would ever get to be as old as you are now?
July 28th, 2007
4 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under History
One of my friends came across the unorthodox 3D Mailbox recently, and felt it was so odd, he had to share it with someone.
He said it was “too frightening” to try. However, unable to resist the siren call of representing all my e-mail as bikini-clad babes, I’ve downloaded it to see if it’s worth using.
The good:
- It’s a creative idea. The ability to represent e-mail as a scantily-clad member of the opposite sex is a great hook (you can specify male, female, or mix).
- They’re developing other “levels”, which will hopefully add variety and maintain interest. The next one is Los Angeles Airport, where the e-mails are represented by jets.
The bad:
- Why can’t we move the camera freely? The camera locations are preset, and there are two levels of zoom. While this should be sufficient for usage, it’s annoying.
- Their webpage claims “With over 60 camera angles, music and sound effects, you’ll never be bored!”, but I suspect it’ll get old fairly quickly.
- Getting more levels and no watermarks on outgoing mail costs $30.
The ugly:
- The program seems to eat up an awful lot of computer processor for the level of complexity of the graphics.
- It can’t possibly be true that 40 people worked on this.
At first, I was a bit surprised at how much vitriol the program’s received (for example, here, here, here, and here). But now I understand. It’s not that good. And if I ever want to look at computer generated chicks in bathing suits, I can pretty much roll my own if necessary.
July 28th, 2007
2 comments
Posted by Donnie
Filed under CG, Science/Technology
