Wednesday, November 30, 2011

A Master Description

Kurt Vonnegut's review of a chess book, "Grandmaster's of Chess," by Harold Schonberg.  Mr. Vonnegut elegantly describes chess folk:



"This charming history of modern chess will not be surpassed in our time....Mr. Schonberg has given us a playful,musical,haunting account of huge,often irresponsible,unsociable animals who have devoted their lives to thinking that is pure as snow" - Kurt Vonnegut


Monday, November 28, 2011

New Classroom Website Announced

Yo, Desmond had the household Skyrim tied up most of the weekend . . . so I revamped, rethought, and reinvented my classroom website.  My students really liked the new look and the better perks.  I fashioned  an icon system for faster navigation (like the smart phone aps), stream-lined each page for faster loading, and created a much better course organization.  Let me know what you think.


Saturday, November 26, 2011

Chess Rage Newsletter Resurrection


Using my level 10 Resurrection spell from Skyrim, I was able to conjure up a newsletter that I used to produce.  It was killed when I began putting all my websites together back in 2008 and I am now going to commit myself, my class, and my club to publishing again.  I will make the newsletters available at our club website in PDF format as it is a pain to do in blogger.  Here is our first official edition of the year to be released Monday at school.



Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Memory Chess and Exercising a Cognitive Skills

I read an article about Susan Polgar once and I remember reading that she can look at a chess board for 10 seconds and replicate where up to 32 pieces were on the board with nearly 100% accuracy.  Or, some such

Sunday, November 20, 2011

5 Steps to Chess Viewer Deluxe

I discovered that Chess Viewer Deluxe opened much faster without any "Kill" page message from chrome when I created a whole new sister blog to The Chess Nut Blog.  This blog page now opens faster than it did before.  If I get rid of all the widgets, I bet this blog would be even faster, but it would lose its appeal.  I called the new sister site,  Chess Nut Games and it will house the game files so that you can view multiple games from each year.  Of course I posted a link to the Chess Nut Game blog from the home page of The Chess Nut Blog called Games.  You can spot this tab or button in the upper right side of the page menu.    Here are some other quirks that I did my best to work out in 5 steps.

Why is this cool?  Because you can display multiple games without using someone else's server to store game data, and it looks rather nice with an easy-to-use interface.  Flash PGN viewers (that I have found) only show one game at a time.  My favorite Flash viewer being ChessFlash PGN Viewer.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Blog Anchors and Internal Links


This is some documentation so I can remember how to create an internal link (a jump from one spot on a page to another spot on the page.  The example I provide is from the States page where I jump from the "N" to "Nebraska."

Here is the code where I want to jump to:
First, you should create the document and decide where you want your internal links to go. You label these using the anchor tag (a) with the name and id attributes. The name and id attributes should be identical.

e.g. <a name="anchor1" id="anchor1">Anchor text</a>

Here is the code where I want to jump from:
Then second, you create the link to the site using the anchor tag (a) and the href attribute. You indicate the named area with a pound-sign (#). 

e.g. <a href="site.html#anchor1">Anchor link</a>

The important thing is that href= (enter the page URL you want to create a jump).

(no spaces) Also, to write an example of code in a blogger post without it being interpreted use these instructions:
Replace all the < characters with  & l t;(no spaces) 
And all the > characters with & g t;(no spaces) 




Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Creepy Rooms and Monkey Chess at SIO

Jeff v. Caleb in an intense game with draw offers on the table.
The Southern Idaho Open 2011 was as entertaining as it was competitive on Saturday, November 12.     Desmond, me and two other Wood River Valley residents attended the one day, 4 Round G/60 event.  Des, Riley and I were slated for the U1400 Reserve Section, but Nick Bruck wanted to play in the Open Section.  I won 1st place (3.5 pts.) and my son, Des, won 2nd place (3.0 pts.).  Cash prizes were for placements while chess books from the library of the late Glen Buckendorf, 10-time Idaho State Champion, were donated to 3rd and 4th places for each section.

Brooklyn Castle

from IS 318 website
The Outreach Director of the documentary, Brooklyn Castle, contacted me about their project.  It was originally called Chess Movie, and it is about the IS 318 Chess Team.  Elizabeth Vicary and other scholastic chess celebrities organize and help run the chess club that is made up of junior high school students.  Ms. Vicary runs a blog that updates the world about politics, personal happenings, and the successes of the IS 318 Chess Team.  Now, the successes have attracted the attention of movie makers.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Support Veterans

Every year our high school chess club collects signatures and words of support for our troops abroad and we send our prayers along with chess boards.  Please think of everyone's veterans and soldiers around the world and pray that battles could be carried out on the chess board instead of with real bullets.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

Idaho Chess Icon passes away

Glen W. Buckendorf
June 19, 1929 - September 12, 2011
Glen W. Buckendorf will be missed at chess tournaments and by his family and friends.  Glen passed away on September 12, 2011 at the age of 82 in his home.  Glen was a celebrity of sorts in the Idaho Chess community and was a tournament standard at the Idaho Closed for nearly 54 years!  In 2010, Glen was awarded lifelong supporter and Emeritus Trustee of the ICA (Idaho Chess Association).  He was 10 Idaho State Champion and was a contemporary of Dick Vandenberg, who recently passed away in 2010.  Without Glen's and Dick's avid support and efforts to enhance Idaho Chess, it would hardly be what it is today.  (Click here for the Times-News link).

Building websites is enjoyable


I made some nice changes to the WRHS Chess Club website.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Integrating a Simul into Integrating Chess


Olivia records a move
Austin likes his new opening repertoires
Playing chess seventh period every day is a great way to end the day.  The Integrating Chess and Critical Thinking Class is one of the most unique classes at Wood River High School and a popular one among the students that signed up.  For the students that were placed in the class by counselors searching for an open class, it was certainly an eye-opening experience.  One such student said,"I didn't realize there was so much [about chess]."  Another said that he can now "demolish" his brother.  Most of the students in this class are new to the game, but their are some veterans of chess club that I use to help teach concepts.

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