Spring Break
I’m taking a Spring Break vacation. Here’s the note I left for Donnie; I’m sure he couldn’t be bothered to let you know about what was going on.
Love you all–I’ll be back on the 28th!
North Korean hits, Vol. 1
Never mind the garbage that comes out of American radio. The North Koreans have cooked up some serious hit songs recently (iTunes doesn’t seem to have them yet for some reason). The only thing is that’s it’s tough deciding which one’s the best…
Loading …Egg Benedict
The Mascot has gone over to BDK. Or taken him hostage. Or something. Guess I should have given him that raise.
Good riddance; I don’t need him.
The legendary Blue Devil Knight is leaving the blogosphere really soon, at least for now. (”Legendary” should be understood in context, in as much as it is possible to call a personal chess blog a legend.) I was unfortunate to have caught him only during the last third of his time on the net. He held the reins of the Secretary Knight for some time and turned his site into a nexus of chess information and improvement for the Knights Errant and passing patzers alike.
The website wasn’t without controversy. Critics universally panned his decision to get rid of his spinning head.
BDK, we at LEP wish you the best in your future endeavors.
And the black glove was a nice touch.
Themes for BabasChess
I didn’t find the themes that came with BabasChess endearing, so I made a few of my own. Note that these were created for BabasChess 4.0, and may require the additional Graphics Pack. It’s possible they will work in an older version, but I can’t guarantee it. The zip file should be extracted to your base BabasChess directory.
Use the Themes option in the File menu to load, but you should export your original settings first just in case. Loading them won’t change the window layout, or overwrite other settings unrelated to appearance (such as custom buttons, auto-save, etc.), but if there is an issue, let me know.
For some reason, when you change themes, the text style in the console doesn’t update until Babas is restarted.
Click on the name to download. Thumbnails are also clickable for a closer look. My favorite is the Refinery theme, probably because the idea is the most original and the colors ended up complementing each other very well.
 Space |
 Nature |
 Refinery |
 Pandaemonium |
 Underwater |
Quick tournament note
So things do come down to the final game. With l3rucewayne’s upset victory over drunknknite, the Wahrheit vs drunknknite match will decide the winner. Wahrheit needs a straight-out win, but he does have the White pieces.
To add to the drama, these two recently dueled in a tense OTB encounter at the Reno Chess Club.
You can’t script things much better than that.
Allen is probably breathing a sigh of relief, as he no longer has to worry about spending $5 on a McDonald’s gift card.
Round 6 review: Tom vs l3ruce
Here is the aforementioned game which held my interest. As prodded by a recent Wahrheit post, I’ve tried to include some actual variations. But it’s still mostly prose.
Low-hanging fruit
Both Hillary and Obama have now called for Bush to at least consider boycotting the opening of the Olympics, being held in Beijing this year. (Beijing’s the capital of China; hopefully you knew that already…)
Most LEP readers are savvy enough to figure out that this move as much about setting up for the November election as any sort of moral stand. The Dem candidates have an easy way to “look tough” on foreign policy while not hurting their base.
But unless McCain grows out his hair, wears tie-dye suits, and talks about free love in the White House, he’s keeping the “tough guy” mantle until November.
This must be about influencing the 2% that will make the difference, because conservatives will only assume Clinton and Obama are phony. (And Obama looks worse, because he came up with the idea second.)
And if I were China, I’d say, “Thank for teaching us about human rights. *cough* Abu Ghreib *cough* We will take your potential boycott into consideration.” (Never mind that it’s apples and oranges; THAT incident is still a stinging barb.)
: Yesterday, it was the KCNA and now it’s the primary that never ends. Could you be more boring for your next post? Thanks.
Revisiting the KCNA
As a brigandish and high-handed imperialist, I decided to revisit the KCNA in a brisk way.
The KCNA is the official North Korean news site. Yes, they really write like that. It hasn’t changed in the last six months. In fact, the stories seem to be exactly the same, except for the one about children kicking butt in Paduk (aka Go).
A couple thoughts to keep you inspired on a hump day:
“Kim Jong Il provided the historic June 15 joint declaration and the October 4 declaration, a programme for implementing the joint declaration in all fields, thus converting the north-south relations into those of reconciliation and cooperation and ushering in a new era of reunification in which the Koreans powerfully push forward the movement for national reunification in the idea of “By our nation itself” and with the will to embody it.”
“Great irony is that Japan, a political dwarf not entitled to talk about human rights, took the lead in railroading the anti-DPRK “resolution” through the recent session, behaving as if it were a ‘human rights judge.’”
Liquid Egg Bracket winner!
Congratulations to Tom of The Everyday Christian for winning the March Madness bracket this year! It came down to the last game, and Memphis simply couldn’t hit any free throws to put Kansas away.
And for your prize…the Mascot did offer a custom T-shirt or mug. Or since it is a college basketball contest, you could get a UT T-shirt or something…just e-mail me and let me know.
Of course to receive it means you’ll have to give me an actual address…which I could sell to a third-party! Bwa ha ha ha!
Tournament of Lepers, Final week
Week 8 Results
| White | Black | Result |
| drunknknite | Tacticus | 1-0 |
| chessloser | Polly | 0-1 |
| gorckat | Rocky Rook | bye |
| Tom | LEP | 0-1 |
| l3rucewayne | Wahrheit | 1-0 |
Week 9 Matchups
| White | Black |
| Wahrheit | drunknknite |
| LEP | l3rucewayne |
| Rocky Rook | Tom |
| Polly | gorckat |
| Tacticus | chessloser |
Standings
dnk Pol Whr LEP Tac l3r Tom cl RR 1 drunknknite xxx 1.0 --- 1.0 1.0 --- 1.0 1.0 1.0 6.0 2 Polly 0.0 xxx 1.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 5.0 3 Wahrheit --- 0.0 xxx 1.0 1.0 0.0 1.0 1.0 1.0 5.0 4 Liquid Egg 0.0 0.0 0.0 xxx 1.0 --- 1.0 1.0 1.0 4.0 5 Tacticus 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 xxx 1.0 1.0 --- 1.0 4.0 6 l3rucewayne --- 1.0 1.0 --- 0.0 xxx 0.0 0.0 1.0 3.0 7 Tom 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 xxx 1.0 --- 2.0 8 chessloser 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 --- 1.0 0.0 xxx --- 1.0 9 Rocky Rook 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 --- --- xxx 0.0
Are there any more Week 7 results?
As I calculate it, drunknknite only needs a draw in his last two matches (counting the week 7 match) to clinch victory. Wahrheit is still mathematically alive; he’d win based on head-to-head victory if drunknknite loses his final two. EDIT: Polly is too, I think. If she can beat Tacticus and chessloser AND drunknknite loses his next two, Polly, Wahrheit, and drunknknite will all have 6 points. I’m not sure how to do that tiebreaker yet, since drunknknite beat Polly, Polly beat Wahrheit, and Wahrheit will have beaten drunknknite.
Unfortunately, gorckat’s disappearance means the original “big prize” is not going to be distributed. I’ll have alternative arrangements ready for the coronation next week.
l3rucewayne got the better of Wahrheit in a tactical match when they were both rather tired, going to sleep immediately after finishing. There were a couple interesting puzzle-like positions which I’ll extract and post for your consideration.
I was going to post the Tom-l3ruce match but don’t have the pgn. Do either of you guys have it?
As far as my match, I sacrificed an Exchange for an unclear attack, but with better results. Crafty actually agreed with all my moves after the sac, but Fritz (which I finally retrieved this weekend) found some White resources. Both computers still had the position as =/+ even after the sac, which was surprising. But neither thought the sac was worth it.
