caught in the fire

Caught in the Fire

2007-09-05T13:00:00.000+01:00

Stop the presses.

Time for you to update your links. I will from now on be blogging on the following location:

mythology.nu (link)

And that will be the name of the blog: Mythology.

For some reason I can't export my posts from this blog to that one, so I'll keep this blog as an archive for the time being (perhaps forever).

I will conclude this blog by explaining its title, Caught in the Fire.

Firstly, I started this blog as a kind of self-therapy, dealing with some personal problems. Caught in the Fire seemed like a good title (and it is). While I did write some insightful posts on that topic, it was difficult and I never dared announce the blog to anyone (except a few friends). So I removed those posts and began writing about other things that interested me. With great success -- it's actually both more therapeutic and more fun this way, and I got some great readers and commenters that I wouldn't have had if I had kept the original topic going.

Secondly, it's a line from a song called "Walk through the Fire", which is a song in an episode of Buffy (Once More with Feeling -- a musical, and possibly the best ever TV show episode).

Exit fire, enter mythology!

anti-aging: overpopulation

2007-08-28T16:13:00.000+01:00

I wrote some posts a long time ago regarding the possibility of being able to stop the aging process [edit: actually, only two posts it would seem. I had planned more...] some time in the future (which seems like a likely possibility), specifically arguing against the arguments against non-aging. A substantial number of people dislike (even hate) the idea of non-aging, and prefer to age and die. I don't.

One objection that I didn't say anything about is that of overpopulation. If we don't age, the rate of dying would naturally decline (but it would not reach zero - people would still die from other things: accidents, sickness, murder...), and the population might start growing rapidly.

If so, is that a problem?

The growth might not be as dramatic as one might think, for several reasons.

Firstly: the age in which people have children now is adapted to our life-span. People can't at present have children at age 200, because they won't be alive. But that will change completely if aging is stopped. There will be no age-related restriction and people will be free to get children whenever they want. And I suspect many will wait. Humans are often pushed into things they don't really want to do, because people expect them to do certain things or because they can't wait because it will be too late. Those expectations will disappear as the age in which it will be "too late" will disappear, because it will never (theoretically) be "too late". And if people get children at age 200 rather than 25, that will make a difference in population growth.

Secondly, much of the population growth today is in primitive and poor nations (often influenced by religious ideas geared toward child production in various ways), like parts of Africa and the Middle East. In the West (including semi-West nations like Japan), on the other hand, the population is actually shrinking (and would be so even more if the immigration groups, still influenced by their earlier culture, hadn't been included in the statistics), which is seen as a big problem by many. In case of non-aging this unwillingness to reproduce wouldn't be a problem anymore, but an asset.

Thirdly, if overpopulation is starting to become a problem, it will get rather unpopular to get children. It will be seen as irresponsible and bad. That certainly will affect peoples desire to reproduce.

Fourthly, if overpopulation really becomes troublesome we will, as a last resort, regulate against it, and have some sort of system with a queue, and let one child be born for each person that dies (or something like that).

Fifthly, at some point in the future we will probably (assuming a continued development of science and technology) start going into space big time, and start colonizing other planets.

Finally I got to post this one. I've had it in my draft for some time. I've lost most of my interest in the topic, and I have more pressing things to attend to. If anti-aging technology is developed and put in use before I die, fine. If not, then I get to know if something is waiting beyond the rim. Fine too, unless it's a hell of some sort. That would really suck.

The PGA and PGU of chess tactics

2007-08-24T21:30:00.000+01:00

Finally. Back in March I wrote about the CCT-rule. It was my intention to continue writing on that, and I did write a draft but it's not until now that I finished it. It could be a good idea to start reading that post, but I will try to make this one self-contained (which means some repetition). Also, the delay means I can write this one using the terminology of PGA and PGU, and using a diagram position that wasn't available at the time.

I still think that the CCT-rule (checks, captures, threats) is the by far best method to find tactics, especially simple tactics (which is especially important in blitzes, but obviously everywhere.) And it is a pure PGA, as against a PGU. (Learn about PGA and PGU here. Here's the very short version: PGA stands for principles of action, and PGA is principles of understanding.)

There are many PGU's in chess, including categorising different "motifs" like forks and skewers. But I've found it to be useless to actually systematically try to go through these in a game. It's a very useful skill to see these motifs quickly, and these terms are very useful in some ways, but non-useful to consciously go through one by one in a game. It's just too much, and too incomplete. The CCT-rule on the other hand is complete. It does cover all tactics (which doesn't mean that it guarantees you will find any tactics, of course, just that there is no tactic that doesn't begin with any of those.)

Checks, captures and threats and mentioned from time to time in many places, but it's mentioned together with lots of other stuff, some of it rather unimportant. (That's how I found it, literally as one of 100 or so ideas throws together on a web page). That indicates that its proper role and value isn't completely discovered.

I've found that there are several benefits to this scheme.

1. Covers all tactics (as mentioned above), which gives a feeling of "completeness", and sense of control (based on a genuine increase in control, so it's not an illusion.)

2. It gives a sharp line between categories of moves, making it simpler to mentally keep track of what you are doing. If you try out moves randomly, or based on some feeling about "importance", you basically have to keep track of the moves one by one, which often, for me at least, leads to chaos. I miss checking some moves, I double-check others, I jump back and forth between moves in a wildly irrational way. With the CCT-rule and that sharp line I get some sense oif what I've tried. (I still jump back and forth some, but not as much. There is a noticeable increase in control)

3. I often find tactics hidden behind a non-intuitive move that I otherwise may not have found. For example, you will easily find all queen sacs if they are not too deep. The problem with much tactics is that you don't even consider some moves (such as a queen sac, unless obvious), but with the CCT you do. There is no guarantee you will see the tactic just because you examine the first move, but you increase your chances anyway.

4. If you apply the CCT-rule consistently when doing tactics, the mind eventually starts to look for those moves automatically (as against in the beginning when you constantly have to remind yourself to go for these first, which feels kind of unnatural if you're used to the chaos-method of checking moves randomly based on 'feeling'). In other words, you look at the position and without any effort at all pick out the most crucial moves. That's a great thing. (No I'm not there myself completely, for the simple reason that I don't practice much, but I've seen some movement in that direction.) Doing the CCT will eventually become with feels right and natural.

For example: Take a look at the position below, it's from this post by BDK. He says: "One problem with trying to classify everything is that I become somewhat blind to tactics that don't fit into my schema.For example, here is a problem that I ran into today at CTB, with white to move." (Referring to the diagram below.)

That's one problem with using a schema of motifs. However, using the CCT-rule, the correct move, Bg8+ is literally among the first two moves to look at (which in fact is what I did look at immediately when I saw that diagram, and I solved it within a second, and that's not because I'm a great player, which I'm not), since it is one of two checks (and checks come first.) And once you examine that move, the rest comes naturally. Here's the diagram:

There are some difficulties (areas that need further development) with CCT.

Firstly, the T part. Because it isn't obvious what is a threat on the board, as against captures and checks. I've done some thinking and experimenting, and it seems useful to have the following two subcategories to find threats:

1. Look for unguarded pieces and see what moves you can make to attack that piece (often making a double-threat). (Unguarded pieces is something most player know to look for, but it's treated more or less as a random idea, just as the CCT-rule itself. Here, however, it's sorted under the T-part in CCT. It's part of a systematic, and realistic, approach.)

2. Look for moves where pieces of lesser value attack more valuable pieces (such as attacking a trapped piece by doing a pawn move).

Secondly, what to do after the first move. I admit that I mostly only apply the CCT-rule when doing the first move. However, it makes sense to apply it (in some way) further within the search trees as well, at least the second move. But it's tricky and maybe some simplified version is needed. I don't know, my plan is to automatize the CCT-rule as the root to begin with, and then worry about the rest. But eventually that question will become relevant, I think.

It all comes down to purpose

2007-08-22T12:30:00.000+01:00

I wrote in this post about how purpose is central in both GTD, chess and Objectivism. And I mentioned briefly in this post the centrality of purpose in fiction writing (both on the part of the characters and the writer).

(And of course, "knowing what you want" is almost like a cliché in our culture -- even if most got the meaning of it wrong in one way or the other --, and it's a part of countless systems. Aleister Crowley spoke of a "True Will" [which basically is a mystic version of Ayn Rands "central purpose"], to be arrived at by means such as rituals and getting in contact with spirits.)

The GTD idea of altitudes (ranging from 0 to 50000 ft. ), with 0 being the purpose of the immediate moment and 50k ft. the purpose of your life on earth, corresponds nicely to the idea of different levels of purposes in stories, as I wrote about in last post. On a scene-by-scene level the most obvious purpose is the short-range zero feet purpose, but from a higher altitude, looking at many scenes at the same time, the purpose behind the narrower purposes becomes visible. And all adds up to something (assuming it's not a character who lacks a purpose, but then that usually means the character is looking for a purpose -- which is a kind of purpose --, and all characters, purpose or not, have a motivation of some kind.)

Well, I just find all that fascinating, the way in which different subjects tie into each other.

Storytelling: mindmap, change of method

2007-08-21T02:37:00.000+01:00

Sorry about the delay.

I dumped the idea of writing a review of every episode on Babylon 5. The idea was to learn about storytelling by means of analysis. However, it's just too time consuming doing it that way, and I think I'll learn more from just watching the episodes and trying (in my mind) to analyse as I watch them (and pause when necessary). I need quantity to build up a large internal base of knowledge from which to draw later inductions.

I'm working on a mindmap to aid my analysis. It's a map containing info like the concepts I gave in the "concepts, method" post below. It's designed to be practical, so I ruthlessly cut out every part in it that isn't useful (which I usually find out after having watched some episodes trying to use it...)

My latest addition is a node called "scene" with some sub-nods about things related to scenes, for example what the character is trying to achieve in it. I already was on the lookout for the general purpose of the character, but there is usually some more specific purpose within the individual scene. For example, the main purpose of a character might be to climb a mountain, whereas the purpose in specific scene at the bank might be to get the banker to grant a loan so he can afford the climb.

And as soon as you have the purpose identified, it becomes easy to identify many related things, like obstacles and conflicts.

Of course, everyone notices these things anyway (or they wouldn't understand the story), however there is a world a difference between explicitly identifying these things and just getting them as an ordinary consumer. Not in terms of understanding the story or getting more out of the experience, but certainly in terms of understanding the art of storytelling.

And the more you train yourself to notify these things automatically, there deeper it's possible to go. I often get frustrated when engaging in this activity, because I sense that there is so much more to notice in the story, except that I don't notice it. It's there, I react to it as a consumer, but I can't identify it explicitly. Like being outside a mine of gold lacking the tools to access it. Very annoying. But I'll get there eventually.

Meanwhile I'll keep working on that mindmap

Storytelling: plots

2007-08-14T13:01:00.000+01:00

One interesting PGU in writing is to list the number of possible (basic) plots. Some (many?) writers have done some thinking on that, and come up numbers ranging from 1 ("stuff happens") to 100, and anything in between. One popular number seems to be 7, as in this book called "The Seven Basic Plots". Here's one writer claiming that there are 20 plots, and here's 36.

The usual hierarchy applies: how many plots depends on what level of abstraction. The more detailed, the more plots, obviously. With enough details there are as many plots as there are stories. And with everything abstracted away from you get one single plot: "stuff happens", which covers pretty much all stories (but isn't very helpful in any way).

I think 7 plots sound about right; the right level of abstraction for most purposes. I will make it one of my (ongoing) assignments to identify which those are (maybe I'll agree with one of those who already have decided upon 7 specific plots. Maybe not.)

Fiction Writing: concepts, method

2007-08-13T11:48:00.000+01:00

As with most other subjects (including chess), fiction writing is one of chaos. The books and guides lump together fundamental concepts and ideas with trivial and unimportant ones (without clearly specifying which is which), and it's up to the aspiring writer to make sense of it all and put it into a system. (Actually I'm exaggerating a little, the guides differ in quality a lot -- I'll get back to that later.)

My main task for the moment is to identify the central concepts of storytelling and then make them come to life by tying them to those concretes that they are an abstraction of. And that last part I will do by making identifications as I watch TV shows. After all, that's what being a fiction writer is all about: beer, peanuts and TV.

Right now some of the stuff I keep explicit track of while watching is:

arcs
plot
conflicts, obstacles (inner, outer)
characters purposes (what they want)
resolution of conflicts
set-pieces (often a confrontation of some kind)

I often also try to explain to myself the purpose of various scenes, and ask myself things like what would happen if it was removed (a well written piece shouldn't have any scenes that can be removed without suffering in some way.)

Fiction Writing

2007-08-12T08:35:00.000+01:00

TV shows and movies have awaken in me an interest in storytelling, so I've decided to add a new project to my list: learn how to create stories and write them down. Fiction writing. That's something I on and off have considered before, and I've even bought a number of books on the subject. But the time hasn't been right until now. If it is, I'll see about that.

This means a new system to play around: the identification of central concepts (and their interrelation), and the relation between concept and implementation, and so on. Very interesting. I guess there is a risk I never get around to actually write, I guess I just have to wait and see.

There seems to be interesting similarities between chess and storytelling, at least on an abstract level (things like the relationship between abstractions and concretes, and so on. Both subjects are similar in that they combine theory and practice more evenly than many other subjects. Or so I think, but I'll have to think some more about that and get back to it.)

Babylon : Report

2007-08-07T20:54:00.000+01:00

A new post on my chess program. I've mostly been improving the design, but some improvement in playing strength too.

New games included in the end.

Most of what I've done since my last report is structuring the code. The major change is large scale modularization (my fifth design principle, identified here .) Earlier I had all code in the same unit (which also means same file), as it's called in Delphi. Now it's divided into 6-7 units (one main unit, one unit with classes related to evaluation of a position, and so on), and the best part is that no two units are dependent on each other. It's always one way only. This meant I had to spend considerable time decoupling different parts of the program; unnecessary connections I've made out of laziness. (That's often the case in programming -- ugly and complex solutions are often easier and faster to make, until the program starts to breakdown out of sheer complexity, in which case finding bugs and making modifications start to take much time. On the other hand, simplicity in structure and design is more difficult to achieve, but much easier to maintain, understand and modify.) Took considerable time, but it could've been far worse. I feel I understand the code better now.

Decent before, better now. So on a global level I'm pretty happy with the design now. On the level of algorithms it's still pretty messy (you wouldn't believe some of the solutions I've created and still use). But that's within controlled areas so to speak, so it's not urgent to fix.

The improvement in strength consists of two things: improvement in evaluation, and more importantly: iterative deepening. It is a complete iterative deepening with extraction and insertion of a principal variation (these terms are explained below). However, it doesn't work as it should. The PV thing is actually making it somewhat slower that before (the opposite should be the case). But, the improved time management inherent in iterative deepening is a big improvement, especially in the end game.

What iterative deepening is: playing without it (usually) means searching to a fixed depth. For example, the chess engine always thinks 5 plies deep (+ quiescence search, if included), regardless of position. But that makes no sense, because in some positions 5 plies may take 400 seconds, and in others only 4 seconds. Iterative deepening solves this problem: it means to start with 1 ply deep, and then 2, then 3, and so on, until the time runs out, and then choose the best move from whatever depth you managed to achieve given that amount of time. (In the games below Babylons depth varied from 1-9. Without iterative deepening I would have had to go no deeper than 3 plies, to be sure it doesn't get stuck in some time consuming analysis. And going 9 instead of 3 is a huge benefit.).

That thing "extraction and insertion of a principal variation" means the following: when the engine goes, say, 3 plies deep (expecting to go more), it extracts what is considered at that point to be the best variation (both sides playing the best possible moves). And then at the next iteration (4 plies deep), the variation extracted the iteration before is the first variation to be tried. This improves the move order, which improves speed. In fact, it's the (by far) best move ordering principle that chess engine programmers have come up with so far.

Time for the games, three of them.

Against Raspoeting (one level in the chess program called Nagaskaki, which is free for for download . It's a very nice chess program.) A draw!

Another Game. Same enemy as once before, The Thinking Machine. Some funny moves, including a gambit (?) of some sort by TTM early in the game. It's a draw, but only because Babylon, who is two queens ahead in the game, can't differentiate between mate and stalemate.

Below a win against another old enemy, Homeostatic Computer Chess Player. It's very slow, so I stopped when Babylon had rook + three pawns against a lone king. (Technically it could have ended in a stalemate for the reason mentioned above. I'll fix that some day, just a detail.)

It's a long and somewhat boring game. A fierce warrior Babylon isn't. It's the most cautious engine around (and always ready to accept a draw, judging from all attempted threefold repetitions. But the enemy wouldn't have any of that, luckily.)

Grand Master Chess for free

2007-08-05T09:38:00.000+01:00

Just thought I'd tell you that Grand Master Chess (14.95$) is given away for free today at give-away-of-the-day. (I've been checking GAotD every day since it started, and found some really valuable and useful software.)

I'm downloading it right now, so I haven't tried it yet.

Update: Tried it briefly now. Disappointed. It's flashy, but no real configurability (except for graphics and a few other things), and you get no info on search depth and stuff like that (which is of interest to me). At least not as far as I have found. Also, it's kind of annoying to use. Lots of different boards and pieces to choose from, many of which I doubt anyone ever uses, so it's just pure bloatism. It has network capability (and can act as a server and client), which is good. But I suspect that it only works its own protocol (so it can only connect to itself, and not to FICS for example). Anyway, I'll keep it for now and maybe explore it some more later.

Update 2: Maybe I was too harsh. It does look great, which I appreciate.

Still, the old free version of Fritz (see link in left frame) is better.

two sets of principles: PGA and PGU

2007-08-04T10:09:00.000+01:00

Some time ago a wrote a post identifying positional elements. A couple of commenters seemed to assume I was trying to create a guide with elements to go through as part of the process of evaluating the position. That, as I explained, wasn't really my intention. I just find it a helpful way to think about chess (and other subjects) when not playing, which in one way or the other will affect playing as well. Hopefully.

I think it's a good idea to differentiate between two different set of principles (not just in chess but generally): principles to guide action (let's call it PGA), and principles to guide understanding (PGU). The latter is usually in the form of a classification.

For example, the period system (which I did mention in that post mentioned above) is clearly an example of PGU. No one would during a chemistry experiment have as a guide to "go through all entries in the periodic system, one by one, and ask the following question..." or something like that. That would be a complete waste of time. Yet the period system is obviously a very valuable classification. But a PGA needs to have much fewer principles and be easier to apply.

I do think that PGU can be used as a sort of knowledge base to refer to when creating PGA (to make sure that it covers enough ground, etc), as well as a knowledge base to (intuitively) draw information from when applying PGA.

The list of design principles of programming (posted recently) was a PGU, but I still from time to time, in a non-systematic way, use it to influence the process of programming. But mostly I just compiled it to strenghen my understanding.

Battlestar Galactica -- 2003 Miniseries

2007-08-02T02:18:00.000+01:00

I'm planning to go through all episodes of Battlestar Galactica and review them as I go along. I'm not used to writing reviews, but hopefully I will learn in time.

Actually no, I've decided to do that with Babylon 5 instead, but I had already written the first review of BSG when I changed my mind, so I'll post that one.

The BSG Miniseries (the pilot):

Obviously, spoilers abound.

Background: Humans create cylons (intelligent robots). They rebel. A war follows, which ends in a draw. The cylons leave into space. Then no one hears from them in 40 years, then they come back with a vengeance. They destroy almost all of mankind; everyone except a fleet containing about 50k humans. The biggest ship in that fleet, a battleship, is called Battlestar Galactica.

The starting point of the show is the same day they come back, a few hours earlier. Everything that happened before that we learn through exposition.

Before the attack we are introduced to a number of characters. The setting in which they are introduced is mostly 'daily life' situations. That's probably deliberate: they want show a contrast to the rather extreme premise of the show (most of mankind exterminated). One moment they drink coffee, cut their hair, and drive their children to school. The next a cylon fleet kills them all. So long suckers. They don't actually do exactly those things I said (maybe the coffee, I don't remember); those are just metaphors for everyday life. Also, they don't kill them all, just almost.

The everyday life phase is not entirely everyday though; it's a heavily slanted towards explaining that whole cylon thing, through various devices (such as a speech held by a general -- "it's now forty years since the cylon war, yada yada", and a guided tour of Battlestar Galactica, which the viewers happens to catch some of). Which of course is a good thing. The viewer needs to know those things, and it's not too intrusive (especially since it's three hours long. With a two hour movie I'm sure much of that would have felt artificial and rushed, but now it's pretty well done.)

Then the cylons attack, and they barely manage to escape. The attack is a well planned one and they aimed for total destruction, but there are specific and believable reasons why some humans survived. I won't go into that.

The worst part of BSG in my view is the storytelling. The basic design (few surviving humans trying to flee the cylons and finding a new home) is interesting, as well as many of the ideas used (the sense of paranoia created to the fact that cylons look like humans, and can even be programmed to think they ARE humans), but the implementation, the actual plots they build with these ideas, isn't top notch. [Actually, it may not even be the plots that are the problems, but their implementation. The series of events, described abstractly, could be good. I'm not sure. I know I dislike the dialog; that much is for sure.] I cannot at this point satisfactory explain exactly what's wrong (except for a few things), but hopefully it will be clearer in time. The flaws in this regard are especially evident when contrasted against the excellent storytelling in shows such as Babylon 5 and Buffy.

And I feel the characters aren't believable at times. Here is one example: The (newly appointed) president, who has cancer, says at one point (after the extent of the cylons ongoing attack is known, and her surviving this attack is uncertain):

"I wish I could say [the cancer] was the least of my worries. But the world is coming to an end, and all I can think about is that I have cancer and I'm probably going to die."

Come on! You are on the brink of being killed by cylons (a much more acute threat than the cancer); almost all friends and family, as well as most of humanity, has been killed already, and you worry about the cancer? Not to mention that fact that the cylon attack is still very new, and it should be a rather shocking thing to experience. Her reaction is completely unbelievable. And spare me any explanation such as "yeah but humans aren't always reacting rationally you know; blah blah". That's nonsense, because my objection isn't that her reaction isn't "rational".

Sometimes the dialog is slightly better, as in the following exchange: (It's before that attack. A cylon is speaking with the scientist who unwittingly, but still immorally, helped the cylon attack. He has just found out about what he's done (but doesn't know the imminent attack), and is worried that he might be charged with treason and executed.

Cylon woman: "It won't matter, because in a few hours no one will be left to charge you with anything."
Gaius: "What exactly are you saying?"
Cylon woman: "Humanities children are returning home. Today."

The look and sound of BSG is very good, but I won't go into that.

Another good thing about BSG is the drama and tension created through having to consider (and make) tough decisions, which includes sacrificing the innocent. (However, 24 is probably even better in that regard.) I'm tired of last-second-rescues and TV shows where nothing ever really is at stake. At one point the commander in chief has to decide to leave a fleet of civilian ships (including a little girl in an artifical garden she had talked to earlier) to certain death because of approaching cylon attackers.

Unresolved issues:

Escaping the cylon fleet (and finding a new home -- they actually look for earth; the show starts in another solar system, and earth is basically just a myth to them, but they need something to search for, purpose of some kind, so that's earth.)

We get to know that one member of the BSG crew (and which one) is a cylon without knowing it. That's a good a plot device which is used frequently is various ways in later episodes (not just, or even mostly, in regard to this particular crew member.)

"Father and son conflict" between two of the main characters.

Immoral scientist, believed to be good by the others, is on board the ship (in close cooperation with the leaders).

The mentioned scientist is haunted by an unexplained woman only he can see.

Conflict between Starbuck, a main character, and a superior officer.

That superior officer has a drinking problem, which is bound to cause problems later on.

MBTI, more on

2007-07-29T04:03:00.000+01:00

One problem with the borderline cases is that the difference between two types is bigger than one letter might suggest. For example, just judging by the letters J/P it's easy to conclude that the difference between, say, INTJ and INTP is minor. After all, three letters are equal. However, that's not the case.

To really understand MBTI, one has to go beyond the individual letters and see what they mean in terms of functional analysis. For example, here's a comparison between INTJ and INTP:

INTJ:

Dominant function: Introverted Intuition (Ni)
Auxiliary function : Extraverted Thinking (Te)

INTP:

Dominant function: Introverted Thinking (Ti)
Auxiliary function : Extraverted iNtuition (Ne)

(There are also a third and a fourth function, but I leave those, except to say that they, like the first two, are different in INTJ and INTP.)

So, being on the fence between J and P in this case means being on the fence between two completely different personalities, and not between two personalities that are 3/4 the same.

Some types are more similar than others. For example, INFJ and INTJ, as I mentioned, share the dominant function Introverted Intuition, so it makes more sense to be on the fence between these two than between INTJ and INTP (there are always exactly two types that share the same dominant function).

Though I might add that I don't think that MBTI is exact enough to really withstand this kind of analysis. It becomes speculation with references to theories rather than correspondence to reality.

MBTI

2007-07-26T13:18:00.000+01:00

Some ten or so years ago I had some interest in MBTI, a psychological system that divides humans into 16 different personality types.

I think there are some serious problems with this system, but there is some truth to it and it can be fun to play around with.

I first tested out as INTP, but not long thereafter I discovered that I'm probably more of an INTJ. Recently I've become increasingly convinced that INFJ might be the best fit. They are not that different, INTJ and INFJ, as they share the same dominant function (introverted intution), and I find myself somewhere in the middle.

Both are system builders, but INTJ:s tend to be more concerned with technical stuff whereas INFJ:s are more people oriented. (That's not the only difference, and it's not a defining characteristic.)

Anyway, I think of the nerd within me as the INTJ (whose interest are things like programming and chess), and the activist within me as the INFJ. (You don't see much of that latter side in this blog.)

INFJ:

They put a lot of energy into identifying the best system for getting things done, and constantly define and re-define the priorities in their lives.

: )

Basic design principles of programming

2007-07-18T09:24:00.000+01:00

I'm going to try to compile a list of the most fundamental design principles of programming. The current list will most likely not be the last one, but I have to start somewhere. I want perhaps 4-5 principles (although it's not entirely up to me to decide -- it depends on the nature of the subject).

The criteria of a fundamental principles, which probably will become updated in time, is something like:

1. The principle should be broad, cover a lot of ground. So a design pattern doesn't count, it's too narrow. On the other hand, the principles these patterns are based on (using interfaces, loose coupling, etc) are candidates.

2. Not be trivial. The principle could (and maybe should) be easy to understand definition-wise, but not be easy to apply fully. (A counterpart in chess would be a positional principle like piece activity. Takes 15 seconds to understand the meaning of, but a lifetime to apply fully. Both a beginner and a grandmaster can study aspects thereof.)

3. I should have experience with it directly. There are some design principles that sounds great and useful that I've read about, but that I haven't thought in terms of and haven't seen in action directly. They may be great, I just don't know yet.

Also, it should, of course, really be a design principle, and not a design goal. You can't say for example "my design principle is to write efficient and correct code. Yihaa!", because that's a goal. It doesn't really guide or tell how to achieve that, just what to achieve. And I don't know what "yihaa" was supposed to contribute. Be serious, and cut that silly stuff out, okay? Okay.

What I've come up with, so far: (There are no revolutions here; these are well established principles, but they are usually not compiled into a list like this, or they may be mentioned together with less fundamental principles etc. The subject is somewhat chaotic, perhaps like the pre-modern area in chess was. So I'm basically extracting and compiling my personal collection, but I don't originate anything really new. Maybe someday I'll become an evil nerd-genius, but until then I'm just a lost farm boy.)

Avoiding duplicity. This applies on many levels, anything from using a loop and a table instead of 30 assignments in a row, to merging two big units of some sort. Usually what is merged isn't literally duplicates, but it's similar enough so that you can extract one aspect of it and put it separately. Or something like that.

High Cohesion. I think of this as 'classification'. It's basically putting related instructions (and data) in the same place, neither having non-related info in the same place nor having highly related info spread out. So it's clearly related to avoiding duplicity (but not the same), and this also applies on all levels: functions, classes, units, libraries, whatever. I once read an interview with one the programmers behind Age of Empires, and when asked for some programming advice, the only one he gave,as I recall, was having a well defined task (no more and no less) for each function. Well, the principle of high cohesion covers that, and more.

Loose coupling. Often mentioned together with high cohesion. It means not having unnecessary connections between different parts of the program. A simple example: Three parts, A, B and C. A calls both B and C, and B calls C upon receiving a call from A. Now, instead of B calling C it's, or could be, possible to make B return whatever value it sends to C, to A and then let A send it to C. That would eliminated the (direct) connection between B and C, with A as an operator. Assuming that's a reasonable task for A (which it probably is since it already has contact with both anyway.)

Encapsulation. As in information hiding. Maybe this is too object oriented to be included. But I feel three principles are too few, so I'll include it for now, and maybe remove it when I have 1-2 new principles. Or maybe I keep it, because OO is growing stronger by each day, and is, in my opinion, the best paradigm. (Let the flame war begin...)

Modularization. Another principle with close ties to the other principles, yet different. It's breaking up the code into different units, each as independent of the others as possible. Loose coupling, mentioned above, is an important principle in achieving this.

That's it for now.

TV shows, top ten list updated

2007-07-12T08:28:00.000+01:00

This is an update from the list I published 5:th of May.

It's almost the same list, but with some extra fluff like links and pictures. And it's a top ten now, from being a top eight, since I've finally found two more shows worthy of inclusion (Babylon 5 and 24). I'm probably the latest kid on the block to discover 24, but I'm usually years behind in that sort of thing.

As before some shows share the same spot, but it's otherwise in order:

Babylon Vs Fritz, SEE now implemented, threefold repetition, more on q search

2007-07-09T17:47:00.000+01:00

Some results: Babylon easily beats Fritz set to a rating of 1350 (lowest possible). It became a threefold repetition at rating 1500 (with big advantage for Babylon), and another threefold repetition when Fritz was set to 1596 (with equal position, endgame). I claimed some time ago that one goal was to beat Fritz set to 1350, so that is now achieved. Of course, I don't know what this rating means in relation to other scales (other than that it's much inflated compared to elo), but it ranges from 1350 to 2150. (It's btw an old free version of Fritz, and the personality used was Reckless.)

I will soon have to something about those threefold repetitions. It's a well known problem with chess computers and something all engines need to deal with one way or the other. Most implement hash tables (to remember positions) sooner or later. I probably will too, but not anytime soon. Instead I will do the following: Always save the two best moves (instead of one), and never play the same move that was played two moves ago (assuming the position is good enough, and that the second best move is good enough). That will not stop all threefold repetitions, but at least the most common one, like 14.Rba1 Rab8 15. Rab1 Rba8 16. ... it will break the potentially repetitions pattern here by not playing Rba1). Also, by saving two moves I will be able to create some randomness, by giving it a certain chance of playing the second best move (if it's good enough). However, for testing purposes it is better having it playing deterministically, that way I can more easily spot errors (by detecting deviation from previous play when it should play the same).

I've discovered that having a quiescence search not only helps in the middle of tactical sequences, but also plays an important role in making the engine play positional. The reason is that without it, the computer will always think that it can take a piece at the end of the search (or that the opponent can do so, depending on whether it's an even or odd search depth), near the horizon beyond which it cannot see. And it will adapt its move choice to that and play more non-positional, even in a completely quiet position with no immediate captures possible. Well, I just find that interesting, but not so relevant now that I have a fully functional quiescence search.

And I've also implemented SEE to improve the move order (and therefore search speed) for the q search. The result is impressive: one position that earlier took over 600 seconds to analyze now takes only 21s. Usually the difference isn't that dramatic, but it's always faster. However, I still can't go deeper than 3 (complete) plies within reasonable time, so I haven't gained anything strength-wise by using SEE, but it's faster with three plies and also pretty close to being playable at 4 plies. I consider anything lesser than 10 seconds per move in average to be "within reasonable time" (then it can play 2 12:s, with some margin). (Btw, 3 and 4 plies may not sound like much, but with q search it can still play pretty decent chess. The q search often makes it go deeper than 20 plies into the position when analyzing captures.)

Next stop is iterative deepening (again, but this time I'll make it right and not give up easily.) That'll speed up things a lot I think, maybe even get me 5 plies deep.

Found opponent. Two new games. And who's Babylon?

2007-07-06T01:07:00.001+01:00

I've found a chess engine under current development that is of similar strength as mine (two games, both draw, will follow below), and that has been developed during the same period. That's pretty cool, as I need competitors of similar strength. And maybe they will progress together.

Meet Vicki. There is also a related blog, but it is not updated frequently.

Vicki has some fancy stuff not yet implemented in my program, like SEE (a function to improve the move order of captures, which prunes the search tree, which improves search speed) and principal variation with iterative deepening (also a way to prune the tree, but not just for captures). I did try to implement this last thing, but it went wrong and I moved on to something else. But I'll be back on that. But first I'm going to implement my own SEE-function, since it is of great help to the quiescence function (which is a real bottleneck right now).

I downloaded Arena yesterday to be able to play with chess engines. But since my program isn't connectible to it yet, I have to be the "operator" (moving the pieces manually using two boards) when competing with my program, so I can't test the relative strengths with many games (becomes too boring). But I did play through two games (and more will come, especially after new stuff has been implemented in either engine), and both became draw. The first game I decided to stop, since nothing was happening. Vicki was pawn up, but never did anything. Both just made meaningless moves, so at move 100 I decided upon draw, but Vicki had for the most part the better position. In game #2 there was a real draw by three-fold repetition.

Vicki is probably slightly better, but they are pretty equal.

Oh and btw, I've decided to call my chess program Babylon, influenced by my recent and valuable discovery of Babylon 5.

And now (drum roll), the games. (For the record, the time format was 3 6, but both used much less time that that.)

Round 1:

(There is some deep stuff going on in the game above. First, at move 36, Vicki sacrifices the exchange, and then just a couple of moves later Babylon also sacrifices the exchange. Both sacs seem unforced, but I may be wrong on that.)

Round 2:

Clash of the dilettantes -- game and quiescence search

2007-07-03T11:43:00.000+01:00

Later in this post: a new game by my chess computer, against another chess computer. But first some boring techno-talk.

I've finally implemented what is called a quiescence search. It's a basic search algorithm that improves any chess computer greatly. I tried to implement it weeks ago, but there was a bug I couldn't find and I gave up knowing I would return to the task. Now I did, with success this time.

So, what's a quiescence search? A chess computer suffers from the horizon effect. It doesn't see beyond the assigned number of plies. So if it stops searching in the middle of a tactical sequence the evaluation of the position becomes very wrong. For example, white may just have taken a knight with its queen. Great, a knight up! Easy win! But, what the search algorithm didn't see is that black the next move can take the queen with a pawn. The computer didn't search deep enough to notice. But, that's with the ordinary search algorithm. Quiescence search to the rescue! Q-search is basically a search algorithm that searches only captures, so at the end of the ordinary search the q-search takes over and searches all the captures (as deep as needed), and evaluates the position as soon as no captures are left (technically it actually evaluates the position during the search too, for reasons I won't go into). No more searches that run out of depth in the middle of a tactical sequence.

Having a q-search makes the chess computer much more difficult to out-tactic (and it makes it more likely to out-tactic you!). And it is noticeable. My program was finally able to draw (with the better position) against its old nemesis The Thinking Machine. The Thinking Machine is basically a dilettante chess computer, but my chess computer isn't ready to take on Rybka just yet so I have go for easier competition for now.

The Game:

My chess computer (got to give it a name soon) is only thinking 3 ordinary plies deep (the q-search can be really time consuming) and was analyzing 34090 positions/s in average, and was thinking 3.11s per move average. It does play some funny moves, but not as funny or frequent as in earlier games. (It actually plays better now, with q-search, going only 1 ordinary ply deep, than it did before going 5 ordinary plies deep).

(And BTW, I was wrong in my post on null move pruning. It was wrongly implemented, and the branching factor and plies didn't get that boost. I'm not sure whether it improved anything at all, but it will when I get it right... but it's not a priority right now.)

TV watching

2007-07-02T02:32:00.000+01:00

In the post on my favorite TV shows I halfly expected some critical comments for writing the following: "for years I foolishly lived without a TV". More exactly, for using the word "foolishly". That's because most people don't hold TV watching in high regard; it's a low status activity and many would consider it some sort of strength to live without a TV (even if they themselves don't).

I find this strange, because it so obviously equates "TV watching" in general with a certain kind of TV watching (although a common one). That's like saying that reading poetry or meditating is bad because it's possible to do it too much, or in a wrong way, or whatever. Anything can be done destructively.

There is also a light version of TV bashing, and that's when someone would say something like "sure TV watching has its uses -- it's great for entertainment or relaxation" with the obvious implication that while not being bad, TV watching still can't be, say, a deeply meaningful or spiritual activity, like I'm sure they would (if they're typical) say that reading books can be.

I'm suspicious of people whose value hierarchy happens to mirror the cultural norms exactly. It doesn't prove anything, but it indicates that they instead of independently having reached conclusions simply have adopted intellectual cliches, like "TV bad, books good". The indication becomes stronger when you get to know that they do watch TV but never read any books... (I might also add that my criticism is directed at TV bashing, not TV avoiding. It is a perfectly valid choice to not watch any TV. The reason it was foolish in my case is that it was the wrong choice for me. Or maybe it was the right choice at the time since I hadn't found the good TV stuff yet.)

But it's also worth saying that TV is a challenging medium to use correctly. It's easy to get too much of it (even watching boring stuff), and it's difficult to find the really good stuff (though somewhat easy to find *rather* good stuff, but that may not be good enough to spend time on.) I was serious when I said that it wasn't until I found Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I really understood the value of TV shows.

Anyway, having now seen four complete seasons of Babylon 5, I can easily add that show to the list of "deeply meaningful" TV shows. Really great show. Stay tuned for an update of my favorite TV shows list to see how I rate it in relation to my other favorites.

Chess computer and castling

2007-06-29T15:34:00.000+01:00

You may have noticed in my last published game by my chess computer that none of the sides castled. That's no accident since I have no particular code to make it value castling (and in fact nothing to even make it understand when it's illegal -- it may, for example, move the king and then go back and then castle. Cheater!) That's because I haven't decided on how to do that.

It's not entirely trivial, for the following reason. You want the computer to value castling, but disvalue losing the ability to castle with a non-castling king move. So, you can't just have a single boolean variable that contains info on whether it has the possibility to castle and make your judgement based on that, because you haven't distinguished losing the ability to castle by castling, and losing it by just moving the king elsewhere, and you have to give points based on having the ability to castle or not having it. Which is best? There is no way to tell just from examining that variable.

At first I solved this by having two booleans. One called "can_castle" and one "have_castled". The default for them is of course "true" and "false", respectively. And then I gave plus for the combination have_castled = true and can_castle = false, and minus for the combination can_castle = false and have_castled = false, and neutral (no value either way) for can_castle = true and have_castled = false (the default). (Observe that the fourth combination -- can_castle = true and have_castled = false -- can never occur since having castled by necessity also means losing the ability to castle.)

Now I've decided to use just one variable, a simple int using the values 0,1,2 to cover the above possibilities. [Edit: 0-3 is better, so I can differentiate between short and long castling.] But I haven't implemented it yet. So I currently have nothing to tell the Ai to value castling specifically, which is why none of the sides castled in the recently published game. And that's that. (It does castle from time to time anyway, to achieve some other goal, like a more active rook.)

Edit: it didn't occur to me until now that there are cases when castling in one direction is all that ever will be allowed (when the castling rook has been moved). That has to be reflected in the code somehow too. Guess I have to use more numbers.

Chess computer: null move pruning

2007-06-27T18:17:00.000+01:00

I've implemented a feature called "null move pruning" which helps the search algorithm to get rid of ('prune') more unnecessary variations. I'm down to an average branching factor of slightly above 8 (from about 11). That means it's now possible to (within reasonable time) go 6 half-moves deep. And that's reason to celebrate, like every new half-move. Not that long ago 4 half-moves was unplayable (took too long). Six is still not much, but it's better and it's something. More will come.

Now I'm starting to feel a need to be able to measure its performance in some more way than I'm currently doing. As long as I'm just speeding it up in terms of positions analyzed per second it's no problem since it can be measured directly and with little risk of error, but some other changes as not as easily measured (yet). Of course, counting half-moves (or branching factor), as I've done in the current case, is as good as any measure (or even better) as long as it's free of error, but I'm not sure I've implemented the null move pruning correctly and would like to have it verified by some other means. It seems stronger when I'm playing it, but it couldn't beat a chess program that it earlier (without the null move pruning) had a chance to beat (though it didn't). An accurate way to measure its rating would have been great. Maybe it's time to get it ready for FICS, or maybe download one of those packages with test-scenarios that I've read about. Or something.

GTD -- what I'm still doing

2007-06-23T05:22:00.000+01:00

Many GTDers "fall off the wagon" (as it's often called) from time to time. Not quitting completely, but getting sloppier, and the pre-GTD chaos comes back to some degree. It's easy to see why -- GTD is a comprehensive system with clearly defined actions and principles (with some room for tweaking and personalizing). If you adhere to some fuzzy system based on "do your own thing", it is almost impossible to "fall off" since by definition whatever you do is right. Not so with GTD, since it is an evil and cultish system.

I've never been a strict GTDer, but some things have stuck:

I do write down lots of things, and in a more orderly way than disorganized "to-do" lists. Not having to remember things in my mind is very relaxing, especially when the habit is so deeply set that you really trust your external system.

I write down ideas that comes to me, and I have different categories for different types of ideas. Sometimes I do things with these ideas, sometimes I just keep them to later reference. (Strict GTD would require making decisions about these notes more consistently.)

I write a lot of blog och forum comments, and keep a list of links to these posts. After a couple of weeks, sometimes more, of silence (no new comments) I erase that particular link with the assumption that the thread is dead. (Before I started to do this I always felt as if I was about to forget something, and sometimes I did.)

I keep a list of things I want to do with my chess program.

And much more. However, some of what I write down I don't look at again, at least not for a long while, making it almost useless.

And I don't keep all those elaborate lists with "next actions" with different "contexts" and so on. I do have a someday/maybe list, but I rarely read it. Still, knowing that everything I want to achieve someday is written down feels calming somehow. I know I will not wake up in 15 years suddenly remembering I should have achieved something during the latest 10 years. Maybe I won't achieve it, but not because I forgot about it.

The questions "what's the next action" and "what's the purpose" (in any given area) have been valuable, and it's something I ask myself a lot.

I have a much greater understanding of what causes chaos and stress -- lack of equilibrium between input (stuff coming into your life) and handling that stuff. Which means, among other things, that I now more easily can identify problem areas and work on them. (Still have a problem in this area though -- I tend to keep more stuff than I use or organize, especially non-physical stuff like bookmarks.)

And will also write a post on what software I still use. Some GTDers get obsessed with finding "the right software" to enhance their productivity. I didn't become like that, but I have tried (and discarded or kept) some. What you actually keep and discard is not always what you initially think when you try it out.

Game played by chess computer

2007-06-21T01:37:00.000+01:00

Played 2007-06-18, against itself.

4 plies (half-moves) deep.

time avarage per move: 0,613s
position analyzed per second, avarage: 30520
branching factor avarage: 11,0546037560704

Branching factor is how many moves it tries out in a given position. The avarage number of available moves during middlegame is something like 35. An unsophisticated search-algorithm (usually "minimax") tries them all out, whereas the better ones (always some version of "alphabeta") cut off lots of branches. How many branches it after pruning will try out depends on some features in its implementation -- it ranges from about 6 to 36. So my avarage branching factor isn't that bad compared to the worst case scenario. However, there is still a huge difference between 11 and 6. If you go 8 half-moves deep with a branching factor of 6, that's 1.7M moves to analyze, whereas 8 moves deep with a branching factor of 11 is 214M...

(It is possible to let it play 5 plies deep within reasonable time... about 7 seconds in avarage per move. Next game to post will be a game against Fritz, set to play at a lower rating, 5 plies deep.)

chess program, funny position

2007-06-16T23:50:00.001+01:00

Sir Edward Vs farm boy

It was finally dawning upon Sir Edward that he may lose.

Or maybe: "After careful consideration Sir Edward concluded he was worse off."

The above position came up when I was trying out a new method that sets up a position based on a string. Earlier I had few pre-coded positions in order to test the program in different positions, but the information of where to put each piece and pawn was integrated with the instructions that put it there. Now they are separated; one method handles the setting up, based on a string (which represents the position) sent as an argument. At first there was some problem and the position above came up (without the kings). Thought is looked funny. : )

I've started to measure the performance of the chess computer by letting it compete against other chess computers and record the result. I'll be back with some statistics. (It still plays badly, but it's fun to watch nonetheless, at least if you're the creator.)

Delphi, hallelujah

2007-06-10T01:23:00.000+01:00

Still love Borland Delphi. Very easy and intuitive to work with (which is important and leaves more time and energy to the intrinsic difficulties of a chess program, or whatever one is working with), and virtually bug-free. In all this time I still haven't encountered a single bug in the environment. It never hangs or crashes or anything. The chess program itself hangs all the time (because of temporal coding errors, like forgetting to increase the counter variable in a loop) but it never affects the environment within which I'm testing the program.

It is very easy to navigate through the code. The chess program currently exceeds 7000 lines of code, and it would be hopeless to work with without a good navigation system.

Some of the semantic features in Delphi are very useful. I've mentioned in an earlier blog post the possibility of starting an array with any index. I've now seen the usefulness of that. My board-representation was an 8x8 array. With a language that makes you start all arrays at zero, the board representation would range from 0 to 7, which is somewhat anti-intuitive compared to 1-8 (I also use constants a-h to represent 1-8, so to access e4 I simply type board[e,4], which is simple to work with. A language with zero-based arrays would use board[4][3] to access e4.)

But the real power of non-fixed starting index became obvious when I expanded my array to become a 12x12 array (in order to make checking for off-the-board coordinates easier.) With a zero-based array you would have rewrite the code so that board[3][3] becomes board[5][5] and so on for all earlier instructions (unless you've used constants, which I bet you haven't, you slacker). But with Delphi you simply make the new array range from -1 to 10 (assuming the old one ranged from 1-8), which means that the old board still applies in the exact same way. You don't have to rewrite a single line of code to make it work (although you do of course have to rewrite some part of the code in order to benefit from new board).

Okay, now I've spent too much time on a detail when the real strength of Delphi is how intuitive and easy to use it is (while still being powerful, as fast as C++ and so on). But to be honest my experience with other environments is somewhat limited, but I know many Delphi users agree with me. (For the record, I'm using Delphi 7 from 2002, so I don't know about other versions.)

chess program, board sweeping, inefficiencies (part 3)

2007-06-06T16:15:00.000+01:00

No, not board sweeping of the good kind. And I realize these posts may not be of great interest for the majority of the readers, but since I'm evil I'm posting them anyway (insert maniacal laughter here).

There are a number of places in the program where it needs to have information on all the pieces. For example, when evaluating the position it needs to know what pieces are present on the board, and where (to take doubles pawns, placement of the pieces etc into account when evaluating). And when it checks for checks and for mate (and being in check) it also needs this info, as well as when it is generating all possible moves.

At this stage I 'sweep' the board every time. That is, this information isn't stored, so I go through the board square by square to collect this information. And this is done a lot; for every position evaluated (thousands each second), every time it generates all moves, checking for checks (which is done for each generated move).

I'm not going to do the math, but let's just say that it is sweeping the board *a lot*, and for no good reason since there is a simple way to cut out this operation -- by storing and updating this information as it changes with each new move. That means some adding some new instructions, but that's nothing compared to what I can remove. The net effect is increased efficiency.

And btw, with "checking for checks" for each generated move, I mean examining to see whether the ai will be in check after having performed the move, in which case the move is invalid (and will not be among the generated moves). However, that's fairly expensive, and a more efficient way is to skip that test and let it perform potentially invalid moves, and instead look for positions where the king is taken (which means that the previous position was invalid since it allowed for the king to be taken). [Edit: in fact, I've implemented this now, and it is considerably faster.]

chess program, inefficiencies (part 2)

2007-06-02T14:54:00.000+01:00

When I first implemented the rules (making the server/model -- that's what I call this part of the program, not to be confused with a web server -- recognize the difference between valid and invalid moves) I thought (probably correctly) I was going to have it ready a little sooner if I didn't have to make every method involved side-neutral, being able to handle both black and white. So, I made all the methods white-centric, and simply mirrored the internal board every time it was Black's turn, and then mirrored it back when the move had been examined (accepted or rejected). So: black makes a move, the board and move (and more) is mirrored, the move is examined as though it was White's move and White's turn, then everything is mirrored back, and the move is either executed (if accepted) or not (if not).

That may not sound like much work, after all computers are pretty fast, yes? Well. It isn't, and they are. But when the chess computer is thinking, it is trying out a lot of moves. And every time it's Black's turn to move, that routine is performed (and every time it's White's turn, it has to run several tests to see whose turn it's, to know whether it should switch or not, so computing power is used even when it doesn't switch). It's an essential part of the process, and will be done many times. To make matters worse, I found it to be fairly easy to make those white-centric methods side-neutral (which also takes some computing power, testing for side...), so I implemented that too on top of the mirroring (but not exactly everywhere, so I couldn't cut out off the mirroring...). So I handled the same problem twice, wasting CPU cycles.

That mirroring, which is long gone now, isn't the most interesting example of inefficiency, but illustrative of a general principle in how to gain computational efficiency: to make the computer do as much as possible with as few (and cheap, time-wise) instructions as possible. Referring here to the number of instructions it actually runs, not how many instructions are written in the code (so a loop with three written instructions running 100 times, is counted as 300 instructions, not three.) (In the final analysis the instructions to be concerned about are the ones on assembly-code level, or even machine-code, however that would be waaay overkill at this stage, and perhaps in all future stages as well.)

That principle is btw similar to the GTD principle of trying to get as much as possible done with as little effort as possible, and the scientific principle of trying to explain as much as possible with as few principles as possible.

chess program, methodology, inefficiencies (part 1)

2007-05-31T17:36:00.000+01:00

I haven't spent much time planning in the process of writing the chess computer, but rather have been working by creating increasingly more well structured (and efficient) prototypes. As against extensive planning to get everything right the first time you get around to coding. It's not as chaotic as it sounds, I do make decisions regarding structure along the way, just that I do it when it comes naturally, rather than trying to force it. And I try to adhere to design principles such as low coupling och high cohesion. But still, as soon as planning isn't easy or obvious I start to code until my insight into the program is such that I'm ready to for new decisions regarding structure (which often means some degree of refactoring needs to be done).

As a result of this, my chess program has gone through some stages when my code was very different (in some ways) from what it is now, and less efficient and less well structured (not that it's particularly efficient now, but everything is relative and all that). I just thought I'd document some of these inefficiencies for future reference. Starting in my next post (I can't keep my plan to post three times a week if I write those long posts every time...)

(Is there any way to always be logged in at blogger? It annoys me having to log in every time, even if it only takes a click.)

Positional elements and what to do

2007-05-29T16:58:00.000+01:00

It is not entirely obvious what various positional elements mean in terms of actions. Not to be me anyway. It is quite possible to be able to assess a position, see who's got the space, the well places pieces and so on, yet not know what to do, neither in terms of goals nor next move. (And I'm not speaking of breakthrough positions... in an general, positional way you do know what to do in those, achieving the breakthrough.)

One of my goals, one that I think is of crucial importance in playing chess, is to always have some grasp of what to do in position. So when I blitz, as I think I've explained, I'm always on the lookout for positions in which I'm clueless, and after the game I think about what I should have done (in terms of positional goals, usually not specific moves). I also think about what my opponent does, especially in cases when my opponent is in a position that I don't know what I would have done in. More than once I've learned something about what to do just by observing what they did, and their ensuing success.

This and tactics is the way to improve, I think.

Much of this is tightly related to things I've already written about, but it's not exactly the same.

Here's a list of very general plans and goals related to a certain positional elements: (in all cases it is also desirable to prevent the opponent from achieving these things, but I write primarily from the perspective of what to do yourself with your position).

Opening: develop pieces, control center

Endgame: promote pawns

Weak (enemy) pawns: attack it

Weak (enemy) square: put a piece on it.

Pawn majority: push them forward

Space advantage generally: use it to manoeuvre pieces (attacking something, I suppose.)

Space advantage on kings side (normal castling): attack the king (if enough pieces left)

Badly placed piece: activate it

(I'm not too happy with these examples, there should be more tricky ones. Maybe I'll add to the list as soon as I've come up with more.)
---

The general point is to always to able to translate static qualities into what it means in terms of action. Needless to say, most positions have several of these at once, and just because you have a badly placed pieces doesn't mean your immediate goal should be to activate it. Maybe something else more important at that moment. Still, when you see that piece your mind should automatically make the connection that it would be nice to have it more active. That's an obvious example, but it's not always that obvious. We all have 'blind spots', and for me one particular blind spot is pawn majority. I've been in blitzes not knowing what to do and afterward found it obvious that I should have pushed those pawns. The solution is to keep repeating that connection until I see it without effort.

"Every is implies an ought" (Ayn Rand)

Positional elements, analysis and integration of

2007-05-25T02:15:00.000+01:00

First a short announcement: I've finally created a link list. Look to the left and you shall find. If someone linking to me isn't added, let me know and I'll consider including you (which I most likely will, unless you write really wicked stuff).

Okay, it's time to go mendelejev again, this time to identify groups of positional factors (not to be confused with the semi-positional elements in the tactical inventory, that I've written about else).

What I once learned and retained is the following, these four groups:

1. Safety of the king
2. lines and diagonals (lines includes rows)
3. squares and pawns (including weak pawns/squares, pawn-formation, etc)
4. Placement of the pieces.

Edit: actually, I haven't retained it correctly after all, since "space" must be, and was, included. Yet I'm sure there were exactly four groups. Maybe space belongs with "placement of the pieces"? No... um. Whatever, let's add a fifth category until further notice:

5. Space

(Edit 2: and what about the center, shouldn't that be mentioned? Uhmm.)

Does that cover it all?

I thought I had got it from "The Art of the Middlegame" (Keres/Kotov), but I've searching in that book and can't find it. Perhaps it was from "Thinking like a Grandmaster". Anyone know? Or maybe I just compiled the list myself, using these works. Don't remember, although I do remember Keres (or Kotov) specifically saying something about the value of extracting the various elements, specifically comparing the activity to creating the periodic system.

Ayn Rand identified four elements in fiction: plot, characterization, style and theme. She pointed out that these parts are not separate in the fiction itself, it's just in our mind that we can pick out the parts and analyze them by themselves. For example, through the character's actions we learn both about the character himself (characterization) and it also drives (or should do) the plot forward, and it's also part of the theme and expressed in a certain style, and so on.

Likewise in chess. Having weak squares around the castled king both falls under "safety of the king" and "squares and pawns", and possibly under "placement of the pieces" (you would like a black knight on h3, wouldn't you?) as well as lines and diagonals (like that killer bishop on b7 that is just about to shoot the white king in the head). These things are picked apart intellectually only, in reality they are connected (and they should be connected in our minds too, part of the process of analysis is to discover these connections. So analysis has a close relation to integration and 'holism', actually. Or should have.)

To be continued. I've already written the next part (actually I haven't, but I thought I would by the time I published this, but I will), which is about connecting positional analysis with goals. What exactly do we *do* with these positional elements after they've been identified? In GTD terms, what's out purpose and what's the next action?

(I like the phrasal verb to "go mendelejev", and I think I'll make "mendelejevism" its own category/label. Good thing about not having english as your first language; you get to say anything, including making up your own words and phrases. : ))

(And btw, I've now seen the first season, and 1/3 of the second, of Babylon 5, and I like it a lot. I'll have more to say about that.)

Chess -- chess computer, some info and a game

2007-05-17T18:00:00.000+01:00

I've recorded another game played between me and my chess computer, this time it's thinking four plies (half-moves) ahead so it plays a little better tactics-wise, but overall still pretty badly. But eventually it will start beating me so I should relish these winning days 'cause they won't be here again.

Actually I haven't tried to make it any stronger since last time (except that I now have the Alphabeta search algorithm, and Negascout is on its way). It's the same algorithms and evaluators. What I've spent my time doing is adding things and re-structuring the code. I've now (mostly) implemented it using the MVC design pattern. It has some nice advantages I might be writing about some time. Also, I've added graphics (or maybe I've already said that?). Earlier I had a board with labels showing numbers, like this:

Now it looks like this: (I still have plenty to do, but there's a difference.)

As you may notice, I've used the graphical depiction used on CTS (using screen shots). I contacted them twice about this, asking for permission. They didn't respond. Perhaps any reader knows whether it would be a copyright violation to use this board and these pieces. I mean, chess pieces are really trivial graphics (especially these pieces -- they are the 'standard' pieces), so it's almost like asking for permission to use a black background, but if there is a problem I'll create my own or get some other.

Here's the game:

It unexpectedly won a pawn in a quiet position, but other than that it really needs to read (and study!) Keres, Euwe and the others. But you know how they are, today's chess computers. It's all about beer, chicks and crappy TV shows. Back in the days...

GTD, chess and Objectivism

2007-05-14T19:20:00.000+01:00

There are some parallels between these. Ayn Rand considers the three cardinal values in life to be reason, purpose and self-esteem. In GTD the the two big questions are what you want to achieve (or in other words, what's your purpose?) and what's the next action. So purpose plays a big part in both these. Also true in chess, except that 'goal' is a more commonly used term, and in chess there's also a correspondence to GTD's 'next action', which of course in chess simply is 'next move'. Objectivism doesn't have a direct correspondence to 'next action', but then it's a philosophy and that would be too narrow a concern. That's why Objectivism and GTD work so well together -- Objectivism identifies broad principles (including that productivity is a virtue) and GTD is a system that applies parts of Objectivism (such as being more productive) to your dialy life. That's how I see it anyway, and I know GTD is somewhat popular among Objectivists (and would be more so if people knew about it).

As for chess. I think of chess as a magnifier of these and other principles, perhaps especially purpose and causality. Living is often ambiguous and bewildering. You don't know what you want, or how do get it, or what follows, or the identity of certain objects. Chess is much more manageable. Much of what makes life bewildering and complex is removed, yet those really important principles in life remain in chess, writ large. You still want things in chess, and things follow, and things have identity. Chess creates a sense of order and clarity, a much needed feeling.

Chess -- Another breakthrough position

2007-05-11T13:13:00.000+01:00

Here's another breakthrough position, one that I got from Susan Polgar's blog (a blog every chess player should read, but then I guess most already do) the other day:

Notice the elements making it a 'before the breakthrough'-position: white has the superior position, all pieces are well placed (any positional move seems to just make the position worse), the king is safe. It's an open position, so making pawn moves are out of the question. And you can't have a positional goal such "making a piece more active" either, because all pieces are already fully active. Vintage pre-breakthrough; something radical is required.

In this position the solution happens to be purely tactical (nice tactics, find it out), which in a way is the least interesting type of breakthrough, since tactics isn't as ambiguous as other ways to continue, like sacrifices or 'making threats and switching targets'. (I need a better name for the last one.)

This just in: crazy game by computer

2007-05-07T14:38:00.000+01:00

Okay, here's a game my chess computer just played (both sides). It's thinking only two plies (half-moves) ahead, less than 0.5 s per move. It evaluates a position according to three criteria: material worth (of course), center squares, and a secret criteria. It knows no opening theory, of course, and there is no randomizer, so it plays this game every time (given two half-moves. It would play better looking ahead more moves, but I'll wait until I've implemented the alphabeta pruning algorithm before I play through any longer games, as well as some other changes.)

I've now added a nice looking board and some real pieces (earlier I just had board with numbers representing pieces). And I've increased the search speed to at least 6000 positions per second. Still haven't put any real effort in speed increasing, so I expect to gain more later. Anyway, the game:

I actually don't understand why it plays some of the moves, but then my third criteria is difficult to calculate as a human (and it probably makes it play some bad moves, but I had to throw in something quickly in order to make it stop playing a3 and then Ra1-Ra2 back and forth...)

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TV shows, top 8

2007-05-05T00:19:00.000+01:00

Update: a more current (but to a large degree similar) TV show top list has been published here. Aside from being more current it also contains a couple of nice pictures and a link to info on every show.

Being a great fan of TV shows I thought I'd try to compile a list of my favorite shows. Kind of a recent interest actually, for years I foolishly lived without a TV. Then I changed. It all began with Buffy the Vampire Slayer...

In order:

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2. Angel
3. Here it is starting to get tricky. I let these shows share the third spot, without order:

House M.D.
Veronica Mars
Firefly

4. Battlestar Galactica

5. No order:

Star Trek: the Next Generation
Lost

There are other good TV shows, but not good enough to mention. Next show to explore is Babylon 5. I recently bought season 1-3 and The Gathering.

Chess -- positional play and pawn structure

2007-05-03T09:49:00.000+01:00

One of the most important factors to consider when deciding upon a positional goal is pawn structure. And I've found the best ever site to explain what that's all about. This one. Apparently based on a book by Euwe and Kramer, currently out of print.

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Chess -- positional analysis of a blitz

2007-04-30T07:48:00.000+01:00

Today a quick analysis (not analysis as in 'calculation') of a recent blitz (3 10) at FICS. Not that it's a particularly profound or interesting game (and I have barely looked for missed tactics with a chess computer, but in this analysis I'm more interested in ideas and position than exact lines anyway), I just feel that I have something to say about it. It's a Caro-Kann, which is my preferred opening as black in response to 1.e4.

First some opening moves, then this position:

In my mind, the next positional goal for each side is pretty clear: White wants to play f5 and go for an attack on the black king. Black wants to play c5 and take on d4 (opening the line, and also making the pawn on e5 pretty weak in case white plays f5.)

In these positions with each one playing on each side of the board, speed is important. The one breaking through first can hope to force the other one to defend, getting the initiative. (As long as no one is forcing the other to defend, no one has the initiative the way I see it, but I've seen this view disputed.) So, with that in mind my next move in the position above was a6. The idea was to prevent Nb5 and Nd6. I didn't have time to calculate whether that manoeuvre is actually playable or meaningful. However, I think a6 is bad and that it's better to just capture the knight (Bxc3) and then play c5 (or c5 directly if I deem Nb5-Nd6 to be of no threat).

Then white played a3, I responded with Bxc3 and white played Pxc3.

Then I made another, much graver, mistake. Kind of a positional suicide. Here is the position before the mistake. See a good way to play positionally badly?

I should have played c5 here. In case of dxc I can't retake the pawn immediately, but it's undefendable, so I can then play Rc8 and hopefully start getting some play on the c-file.

I played Nb6. The idea being, of course, to play it to c4. Which makes a nice outpost, however it's bad because now c5 isn't playable anymore, and without that the Knight on c4 is pretty much all I get on the queen side, and I will have to start to seriously worry about the safety of my king, because now white played f5, at last. And it's a killer. Pawn takes, knight takes, knight takes, rook takes. Then we have the following position. Black's king is starting to get really scared:

Black to play. How to get out of this mess? The Bishop will take on h6 at any moment. Looks lost. The only move I can think of is Qh4, getting some extra defence against the attack (white won the race and has the initiative), hoping to exchange queens.

I did play Qh4, and white played the natural Raf1. Black then played the also natural Nc4, finishing that manoeuvre. White played Bf2 threatening black's Queen. Positional mistake though, allows for Qe4 (which I played) almost forcing an exchange of queens. And he did play Qxe4, I took with the pawn and he played Re1 (going to take the pawn). I can't defend it, so I take the pawn on a3, Nxa3, and white played Rxe4. The attack on black's king failed (or is it any life left in it?) and now the game takes on a different character once again, so it's time for a diagram (black to play).

I can't say who has the best position at this point (GNU chess prefers white despite the hanging pawn on c2), but I do know that I by far prefer black's position. Why? Because it's easy to play. The positional goal is clear: running with the a-pawn to promote it, while fending off whatever white is going to try to do. What should white try to achieve positionally? I'm not sure but maybe marching onwards with the center pawns (which is what happens), maybe even going for an attack on black's king.

Btw, black shouldn't waste any move on capturing the pawn on c2. I played a5.

Some more moves where made. White played rather aimlessly (as I too would have as white in that position, I think) and managed to lose both center pawns in a desperate attempt to create some threats. Eventually this position came up (white to move):

White is lost, of course. I managed to get my rook now on d7 to b1, and won.

Here's the complete game. (Is it possible to switch side on these boards, to see it from black's perspective?)

The End.

Chess Computer 2

2007-04-27T23:39:00.000+01:00

I've fixed the memory leak. Turns out that it was caused by not overriding the destructor (not something needed to do in other languages I've used, that I recall). Some of my objects have their own internal objects, and they are de-allocated in the destructor, so when it wasn't called they weren't, and they quickly became numerous since it's a type of object that I create and destroy a lot when the ai is thinking (hundreds of MBs became allocated if I left the Ai thinking for a shore while...) I spent hours trying to find that leak. No warning from the compiler or anything (it warns about all sorts of things, like declaring a small variable and then not using it, but if you write the worlds longest and coolest destructor without overriding it, it won't say a peep. Boo, etc. But still, Delphi's great.) Anyway, now that's fixed, although I still have a minor memory leak yet unfound.

The ai examines about 2000-3000 positions per second. That's pretty bad, but I don't mind as I've not taken speed into account when writing the code. It will get better as I refactor the code. (My main consideration has been the structure of the code, at least on a higher level like what objects and what relations etc, but that too will be improved.) At first I got the result 4000-5000 positions per second, and even 10000, but then it got lowered. I'm not sure why, but I've changed the code back and forth without keeping track of anything. Anyway, I like things measurable and it will be fun to see what speed I can reach. And with a baseline like this, it can only get better.

Apart from being slow in general, the search-algorithm is also ineffective in another way. It searches all branches, even useless ones. I've implemented the minimax algorithm so far, and my next step is using alfabeta pruning. Code-wise the change is minimal, but search-wise the change is huge. The same number of positions will be examined given the same time, but irrelevant branches will be cut off. And without risk too (as compared with minimax, but of course both suffers from the horizon effect, but alphabeta normally sees further given the same time.)

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Chess, achieving a breakthrough

2007-04-25T19:02:00.000+01:00

Time to write more about those frustration positions when you've placed your pieces optimally but don't see a breakthrough. Getting to these positions is easier than knowing how to continue, at least for me. It seems in these positions as if every move just makes your position worse!

Anyway, I think the solution is to examine how the masters handle these positions, and then try to generalize. Why generalize? Well, it's kind of pointless just knowing what move to play in this or that position, because you will never run into exactly that position. What you need to know is what *type* of move to look for in what *type* of position. All the positions I have in mind are of a certain type (before-the-breakthrough positions), but I'm guessing a further classification can be made, into sub-types.

I already have these three general 'solutions', but I need more understanding of each (and maybe find more):

1. Tactics (non-sacrificial). Sometimes a breakthrough can be achieved by simply finding some tactics. Not necessarily tactics to get a mate or even gaining material, just getting the desired breakthrough and a nice attack of some sort.

2. A sacrifice. A *real* sacrifice where you get your breakthrough at the price of losing some material you can't forcibly get back as far as you can see (if you *can* get the material back forcibly, it falls under non-sacrifical tactics.)

3. Starting some activity at some other part of the board (like pushing a pawn with the idea of opening a new line, even though your rooks are already well-placed), knowing that you got the better mobility and that the enemy's pieces are tied up in defence. You will be able to more swiftly move some pieces over to this new target than he will be able to defend it.

Yesterday's 'today's puzzle' at chessgames.com was a position from a very nice game (simul!) by Capablanca, and at one point this game had one of those 'before-the-breakthrough'-positions: (Btw, this isn't the position featured in the puzzle, but it is in my opinion the most interesting position in the game.)

Capablanca - T A Carter

White to move!

Here is the complete game. The breakthrough starts at move 21.

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Chess computer

2007-04-23T18:38:00.000+01:00

I mentioned briefly that I'm working on a chess computer. I do, and I've come this far:

I've implemented most rules, so it can tell the difference between valid and invalid moves, including recognizing mate and castling (but not promotion or en passant yet). Getting all the rules right was more tricky and time-consuming than I would have thought. Some day I'll look up how others have done and compare notes.

I have a graphical interface using numbers as pieces. Same numbers the pieces are represented by internally (1 for white pawns, 2 for knights and so on, and the corresponding negative number for black's pieces.) Pieces are moved by clicking the board (not drag'n'drop yet, but clicking on the start and the end square.)

I have created a simple Ai. It can either choose randomly between the available moves (not too interesting...) or look into the future any arbitrary number of plys (half-moves) and choose move in accordance with material gain. So it should in principle be able to find any forced material gain however many moves into the future, except that the code is in such a weak state right now that anything beyond 3 (maybe 4) plys is simply too time-consuming. I also have some problem with memory leaks and my next task is to find and correct that. But still, it's really cool seeing my creation come to life like this. One day when it begins to beat me I'll pat it on the head and say "I'm proud over you" and "you've come so far".

I intend to make this a highly configurable chess program, the user will be able to in detail decide how the chess computer is going to play. Whether it should sacrifice a lot for an attack, or play quickly, or tend to do long castling and pawn storms, what opening to play, or even make it value knights more than bishops (or queens...). That way it will be a nice and adaptable chess training tool, I think. However, don't hold your breath. It may take some time to get there.

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Chess -- positional play, plans and such (part 2)

2007-04-20T12:59:00.000+01:00

So I'm a fan of simple plans and goals. But actually, I'm not sure exactly what I mean by "simple", except in some vague way that it should be easy to understand. I did refer to short plans in that post (part 1), but some of the plans I have in mind aren't that short or simple. They're simple in the sense of being easy to understand and describe, but may take more than a few moves to implement. So what's going here, what is my actual view?

There is a certain conceptual confusion going on that needs to be clarified in order to think clearly about these things. Goals can be described on different levels of abstraction that all exist at the same time. I don't mean that different positions require different goals and that some are more abstract than others; I mean that most (perhaps every) positions have goals at different levels at the same time. A few examples:

In the opening, the general goal is to develop the pieces and take control over the center. But more specific goals also exist, it may be to take control over a certain square, a certain line or diagonal etc. The more abstract goal of developing the pieces is done by means of those less abstract goals.

In the endgame, the general goal is often to promote a pawn (or prevent the enemy from doing so). That struggle may go on for more than 20 moves. But the more specific goal may be things like "put the rook behind the pawn", "create a passed pawn", "exchange knights", etc. So which goal is the player trying to achieve, promote the pawn or putting the rook behind the passed pawn? Both. It would be absurd to try to have a discussion about which of these goals to choose since it isn't an either/or choice. As in the case above, the general goal is achieved by means of achieving the less general goals (so these less general goals can also be viewed as steps in the plan to achieve the general goal. So they're both goals and part of a plan, depending on the perspective).

Stay tuned for part 3.

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Chess and other activities

2007-04-18T20:58:00.000+01:00

It's possible that I wouldn't spend any time at all on chess if I couldn't integrate it into my other activities as much as I have. Like this:

I'm currently working on creating a chess computer, which is pretty interesting and makes me a better programmer (though I'm not sure it will have something new to offer). I'll write more on that later.

I like blogging, and chess gives me an unlimited amount of things to blog about. It seems like every written post gives me ideas to at least two new posts.

I like creating systems, especially when it's related to thinking in some rather direct way. And chess playing (and improving) provides ample opportunity for that. One gets to think about and trying out different methods, and identifying new interesting principles.

It provides many opportunities for interaction with other chess players.

Without all this extra stuff (and I'm sure there's more than the above) it just wouldn't be worth it, I think (even if playing is fun and interesting in itself, of course). But now it is, and that's great.

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Chess -- The value of blitzing

2007-04-16T16:32:00.000+01:00

The question of the value of blitz came up a while ago in a blog comment (see BDK's comment in this post). What's my take on that?

I did play a lot of blitz on the net back in the early FICS days, and my total improvement was only something like 100-150 points (which isn't much given that I played a lot, also as I recall I made most of the improvement rather early and then stagnated).

However, I didn't aim to improve. I played mainly to keep my mind off other things for a little while. I was basically just applying what I knew without expanding it.

Knowledge and skill don't just enter your mind just because you look at reality or just because you're doing a certain activity. Not even when the effects (good or bad) are obvious. Some people keep doing obviously destructive stuff over and over again, not learning anything. Something more is required: a commitment to improve, and certain mental actions (and practices) appropriate to whatever it is you're trying to learn. Often it's a question of deliberately establishing the right mental habits.

So, regarding blitz. I do think blitzing used a certain way can be very helpful in improving. For example, now when I'm playing I try to always be on the lookout for positions that I can't handle, and if I identify such an area I try to spend time (not while blitzing) improving that area specifically. (One example of that is positions where I've reached maximum pressure on some point but can't break through. It is easy enough to have a general idea of what to do as long as some piece can be better placed, but when they've all been coordinated and that isn't enough I'm just lost. I'm currently looking for general answers what to do in these cases.)

But notice that you don't automatically make these identifications just because you're playing blitz. If you do have given yourself the mental order to be on the lookout for things like that, you have a good chance of noticing them, otherwise you won't (or sometimes you will, but you leave it up to chance, and it will in any event be a slower progress.)

That's just a simple example (and an example within an example), but my point is that it all depends on how you use it. You can neither say "blitz will help you improve" nor "blitz won't help you improve". Rather, blitz has a good chance of helping you improve, if you use it in a good way.

Okay, enough for now, but I think I'll write more on this topic later.

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Chess -- exhaustive list, mate threat

2007-04-13T15:44:00.000+01:00

I like exhaustive lists (on an abstract level) for all kinds of situations in chess (and life). A simple one that most learn early on is how to deal with a check. The three ways: take the checking piece, block it, or move the king (in double check only the third option applies, and blocking isn't possible when a knight checks).

What would be an exhaustive list of possibilities prevent a threatening mate? I think it would be:

1. Take any of the pieces that threatens mate.
2. Block any of the mating pieces.
3. Arrange so that a piece will be able to block the mating piece (if it's not a knight).
4. Set a piece to guard the square that the mating piece is going to move to.
5. Prepare an escape route for the king (i.e. move a piece, for example the rook on f8 if the mate threat is Qh7+)
6. Make a check yourself (can be very disrupting in many positions).
7. Move the king

Does this cover it all? (Btw, I put no thought into the order, but I guess they should be arranged in order by some criteria.)

(Btw again, "the mating pieces" refer to all pieces that cooperate in the mate, and "the mating piece" refers to the one of those, if several, that does the actual mating, the check.)

I wrote the above from the perspective of the defender, but it is as useful for the attacker. When you consider making a move that threatens mate (or a move that threatens a move that threatens mate...), you need to be able to go through every possible way that mate can be diverted. And the further into the future the mate threat is, the more difficult it is to make sure you've gone through every relevant counter move, and having a series of steps like this does help.

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Chess -- Vasily Smyslov and positional preferences

2007-04-12T01:08:00.000+01:00

Most chess players have a favorite among the grandmasters (dead or living). I used to (years ago) like Fischer, but that was more his achievement than his actual games (he did a lot on his own, whereas Kasparov and many others had access to good chess teachers, even went to chess school).

I've never really had a favorite based on playing style. But I've recently been going through some of the games of Vasily Smyslov, and I like them. So if someone held a gun to my head and forced me to pick a favorite, it would be Smyslov. But I've only seen a small sample, and to be honest I base that opinion also on the fact that the great grandmasters describe his play as harmonious. I like harmonious play (assuming they mean what I mean) and I dislike chaotic positions (though not necessarily sharp ones -- a position can be both sharp and harmonious, as for example in some variations of Kings Indian with mutual attacks on each side of the board. Very sharp but not chaotic.)

Also, as an amateur musician I like the fact that Smyslov is a singer (opera). Listen to a short clip here.

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Chess -- some games of mine

2007-04-09T07:14:00.000+01:00

I've decided to not post my rating or online nick (it's not XY) on this blog, in order to avoid feeling any pressure to improve. However, I will post games.

Some games:

Game 1

A win, I'm white. I played this game about 10 years ago, one of the last games I played before I stopped playing chess (until recently).

For fun you can do the following: play to (and including) the 12:th move, and then stop and try to decide what to do as white. Both generally and the specific next move (the 13:th).

After that, play to (and including) the 15:th move, and do the same thing again. How should white continue?

(I could have started the sequence now starting at move 16 one move earlier, I just missed it.)

Game 2

Another sweet win, but this a closer call.

Game 3

Another win as white. Look at those knights. Don't play out whites 37:th move immediately. What would you play?

(btw, 34. Nxe6 was a mistake. 34...Qxe6 would have given black counter play.)

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Chess -- a couple of quotes

2007-04-06T13:10:00.000+01:00

Today some true words by Ward Farnsworth, from this site:

The quality of your chess is determined by the quality of your train of thought when deciding what move to make. The train of thought may be partly verbal, partly visual, or partly intuitive, but in any case it will involve a sequence in which you consider candidate moves and their pros and cons. The climb from novice to something better largely is a move from meandering, unsystematic trains of thought to more methodical and fruitful ones.

And:

The trains of thought offered in the commentaries emphasize the use of clues: signs to search for during your games that indicate a tactic might be available. The explanations show how the same sets of questions, some of them simple, can generate impressive tactical ideas when they are asked and answered methodically.

Chess -- calculation

2007-04-04T21:17:00.000+01:00

Another post on chess, much to the dismay of my non-chess playing readers. : )

I found this interesting blog (by Blue Devil Knight) and this post on analysis inspired me to write about analysis.

First a note on language. The general meaning of 'analysis' is to pick apart and examine the parts. For some reason the term has in chess come to mean primarily (or only) examining specific variations. But strictly speaking (assuming the ordinary meaning of the term) it would be analysis even if you analyzed only positional elements ('there's a weak square, there's an inactive piece' etc) and not a single variation. And I like to keep my terminology as close to the ordinary meaning as possible, so I will use the term 'calculation' instead. That may not be the best term either, but it's closer. The relation to analysis is that calculating is a specific form of analysis (the latter being the broader term, then.)

So what's my take on improving the ability to calculate? It's basically that I don't consider it worth doing as a specific activity. One reason is simply that it's boring. I mean, boring to train, not boring to actually do in a game. And that's always a factor. I'm not a chess professional, I'm playing because it's fun and interesting. I do want to improve (of course) and if training calculation (specifically) would be the only way, then I would either do that or quit playing chess. However, it isn't the only way, not even the best one for a player of my strength, I think.

I keep talking about training calculation "specifically". With that I mean that I do actually train my ability to calculate, except that it is an indirect effect of training tactics, which I do. I'm referring mostly to my adventures on CTS. Granted, these are short variations, and the main purpose is not to train calculation, but with most tactical problems there is some calculation going on (if the problems start becoming so easy you 'see' solution almost without any calculation, your rating will go up and you will get more difficult problems which requires more calculation... so there will always be some calculation going on.)

I don't have that much time to devote to chess (I almost spend more time writing these blog posts than actually doing chess... but that's okay, because I like thinking about how to do stuff), so to begin training calculation would mean spending less time on other chess-related activities (tactics, blitz, trying to expand upon my system of though) and I'm pretty sure that wouldn't be a good trade.

Actually, there is another way in which I train calculation, also indirect. The CCT-rule gives guidance as to in which order you should check variations (especially in its expanded version, which I'm working on), which is closely related to calculation.

BKD mentions chess visualization. Now that's something I'd like to learn some time. I would really like to be able to play a game of blindfold chess. Stay tuned for a post on that.

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Chess -- positional play, plans and such

2007-04-02T21:53:00.000+01:00

Okay, enough about tactic, and more about strategy and position. Some positions contain no tactics; there's no attack going on, and no one might even have the initiative. No good checks, captures or threats are worth considering, so the CCT-rule isn't of any help at all. What do you do here? You can't just move your king back and forth waiting for tactics to consider. What you need to do is to find moves that make you position better. If you are more successful at this than your opponent, soon enough there will be tactics available. The better a players position is, the better the chances of having decisive tactics at his disposal.

How do you achieve this, getting a better position? How do you find the right moves? You need to know what you want to get done. You need purpose and a plan. The purpose being what you want to achieve and the plan how to get there. (Funnily enough, some, even many, chess players speak only of plan and mean both 'purpose' and 'plan'. However, that's misuse of language, no?)

And when it comes to these, I share the views of Michael de la Maza, quoting from his "400 Points in 400 days" article:

I implement very simple plans (as opposed to Silman, Kotov, and Pachman-like plans) that improve the probability that there will be a tactical shot. These plans include:

1. Improve the mobility of the pieces.
2. Prevent the opponent from castling.
3. Trade of pawns.
4. Keep the queen on the board.

Indeed, I certainly agree with the idea of simple plans. This is especially true for a player below the strength of an expert, since the situation on the board quickly changes -- mistakes (both positional and tactical), often serious ones, are made in every game, and when this happens you often have to abandon whatever plan and take advantage of the mistake. Also, at a non-expert level, you just can't judge the position well enough to come up with a good complex, long plan. (Even if the opponent makes no mistakes, you don't know what he is going to do and how it affects your long plan.) It's just pretentious trying. And you can get very far with simple plans. Read what Kramnik has to say about Karpov:

Probably, he did not have a sufficiently deep stratetic thread of his play. Karpov is a chess player of a great number of short, two to three move combinations: he transferred his knight, seized the space, weakened a pawn. In my view, he was not a strategic player by nature.

(From here)

And btw, Kramnik has many good things to say about Karpov, so it's not that he has anything against him. For example the following (from the same article): "He is a versatile chess player, a good tactician who brilliantly calculates lines and positionally very strong." and "Yes, he is definitely a great player."

If short plans are good enough for Karpov, they're good enough for me.

Anyway, the big question is of course: how do you know what plan to make? It annoys me to no end that I don't have a systematic way to decide that, and that's something I have to come up with. Btw, remember that I only play blitz, so everything I say is in that context... and systematic way of thinking that I come up with has to be really quick and efficient -- I have only seconds, but it is remarkable how much you can 'see' quickly in a position if you just ask yourself the right questions (and how many obvious things you don't see without those questions), and it's finding these questions (and integrate them into my thinking so they occur automatically) and their order that is my task.

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Chess VIII -- The CCT-rule and pattern recognition

2007-03-30T13:15:00.000+01:00

I imagine that the following objection to the CCT-rule can be raised: "following that systematic way of thinking is a waste of time. Are you familiar with the concept of 'pattern recognition'? It's basically the idea that you train your mind to recognise pattern so that you see things immediately and don't need a systematic way of thinking. That's what the aspiring tactician should strive to archive, to solve enough tactical problems so that they start to get a 'feel' for a given position and see what needs to be done or thought about. You're assuming that the human mind works like a computer, but I got news for you: it doesn't! We can never be as efficient as humans in doing brute force, and need to work with the strength we got. So take your CCT-rule and shove it up your a**!"

What is my answer to the above? Let me begin by saying that I think its garbage. Well, not really, I actually agree with a lot of it, but it's stupid of the objecter to think that I wouldn't. Most of it is completely irrelevant to the CCT-rule. And I know, I'm was rude (for saying 'garbage' and 'stupid'). But so what, he began. You did notice that part about shoving the CCT-rule? Did you, did you? Punk. Oops.

Firstly, and this is point that I haven't stressed in the past but is somewhat self-evident: If you do see something interesting immediately, a way to win a piece or such, then by all means go for that (or examine variations thereof, trying to win more). That's perfectly all right. The CCT-rule is more a rule to fall back on when you *don't* see something immediate and have no leads. As soon as you see something, even if it's a capture or threat while you are examining checks, switch to that which you see, even if it means deviating from the rule. The rule is just a tool to help you find good moves, and often your mind will make 'unexpected' jumps. For example, you see a check that would be great to do but you can't do because the square is guarded, but then you see that you can capture the piece that guard the square. In this scenario, check mentally what happens if you capture that piece, and do this despite not having examined all checks yet. You've found something, go for it! If it leads to nowhere, go back to the rule and the (semi-)systematic approach.

Secondly, the CCT-rule does leave a lot of room for intuition; everything isn't structured. The rule just gives you the start point of certain variations; you still have to decide by other means which variations are interesting enough to think more about, and evaluate the resulting position. I have no rule for that (yet. :) )

Thirdly, far from being anti-intuition, the CCT-rule is actually an efficient way of training your intuition. By constantly going through these series of questions (what are all possible checks, and what happens on the board when I make them? What are all possible captures? etc) you train your mind to start to automatically notice these things. You get faster and faster at answering these questions. That's how intuition is built. (Okay I know, I made the exact same point in my earlier post. Repetition is the mother of all knowledge etc.)

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Chess -- CCT-rule revisted

2007-03-28T19:33:00.000+01:00

That simple CCT-rule has really grown on me. Having spent time with it, using it and thinking about it, I can now see that it's even more beneficial than I initially thought. Specifically, I can see that it covers more than I thought, and I see more and more useful connections between it and other things. Using it is like having a tree of knowledge growing inside you, or something. Maybe that sounds cryptic, let me explain.

The CCT-rule, as I've explained, is the check/capture/threat rule. That these things should all be checked (all moves that fall under these, it's usually not that many and you don't need to go that deep within each), and in that order. This is what I've discovered using it:

You don't miss much. Since you look at everything within these areas, you will find moves that you otherwise wouldn't. The rule doesn't cover everything in every situation, but it's great when attacking or being attacked. Great for finding tactics or just keep the attack and initiative going. (I'll write about the limits of the rule, and what you need in addition, later.)

You get much faster at finding certain things on the board. (This point will get its own post later.) Since you always systematically look for these specific things, your mind eventually starts to notice them without you even asking the question. This is the stuff chess intuition is built of.

The "capture"-part has a tight connection to "pressure" (that I've written about) and "removal of the guard" (a tactical manoeuvre). Every possible capture is a "pressure point", and the sum of these is the total amount of pressure. And for every pressure point you might ask yourself: why can't I take this piece? (Assuming you can't). That will often lead you to noticing the guards, and then you might ask yourself "can I remove this/these guards?", and that may lead to ideas you wouldn't otherwise have. (And btw, there are exactly four different ways to remove the guard, and maybe I should go through them all! I haven't decided. Again, I don't want to make it too complicated, but I don't want to miss anything either.)

The "threat"-part has a strong connection to the tactical inventory and the enemy's weaknesses. That's how you find the threats. You don't just mentally randomly try out moves and see if it threatens something; you begin by looking at the enemy and see what can be threatened. You find the loose pieces and weak spots and other weaknesses (see the post on the tactical inventory), and you move a piece to attack this. If you can't find a direct threat, just increasing the pressure is fine.

So you see, by applying the simple CCT-rule you will automatically get into all these other things. You don't have to remember to check out "pressure" or doing a tactical inventory or even examining "removing the guard" as specific points, rather its integrated into the CCT-rule. You create strong mental associations between the elements in this rule and these other things, and your mind will automatically remind you to do these things. That's how it should be done: you shouldn't have a long list of disorganized things to check, but a simple rule with logical connections to these other things. That's mental integration.

Of course, the final proof of the value of the rule (and whatever other rules I can come up with) is my own coming success. : )

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Chess VI -- Rapid Chess Improvement part I

2007-03-26T19:04:00.000+01:00

There is (or was) a debate on the net regarding a certain book on chess skill development. His ideas on how to develop skill is different from many other books (which he criticises). The book is "Rapid Chess Development" and the author is Michael de la Maza. I haven’t read the book, but I’ve read about it, and I’ve read the two articles on which it is based (sort of), and I have a few comments.

I think he has some good points and some bad. Where do I begin? Actually, I think I have to split it to several posts.

He place a lot of emphasis on tactics. I think that’s good, for non-expert players tactics is THE most important thing to train, vastly more important than opening theory or such. (Not that you should ignore other areas completely.)

He mentions a few insights he reached. One is "chess knowledge isn’t the same as chess skill". That is certainly true, and is exactly why my chess training nowadays (if this relaxed thing I’m doing can be called training at all) consists not of learning chess (except training tactics, but that’s very skill-related training as against acquiring chess knowledge) but how to bring the relevant knowledge to my mind at the right time through a systematic way of thinking, and asking the right questions. A systematic way of thinking is HUGELY important. There is no point in having a lot of knowledge in chess unless you’ve learned how to use it. That’s precisely what "the psycho-epistemology of chess" is, even if Michael de la Maza wouldn’t put it that way. However, I don’t really agree with what he is suggesting on how to think (I think I can come up with something better, at least for me), although it’s clearly better than some other advice I’ve seen.

I’ve seen a slight improvement the last week or so: I’ve found tactical solutions through my system that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen, or would have taken longer. On the other hand, it feels somewhat unnatural thinking in this new way, but that’s because it is new. And I’ve barely begun.

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Chess V -- pressure

2007-03-21T14:40:00.000Z

I think that the concept of ’pressure’ might be of help for me to integrate into my thinking when playing chess.

So firstly, what is it? It’s what you put on your opponent when any of your pieces (pawns included) can capture an enemy piece, whether it’s a good or a bad capture. So there is a simple way of measure pressure: just count the number of possible captures. If two pieces can capture the same piece, count it twice. Now, some possible captures may be completely unimportant, and some positions may have fewer but more important captures possible, so the number of possible captures isn’t all that is important, of course.

The more pressure you exert on the enemy, the better. It means more options, more possibilities of there being some good a winning path (more possibilities of some nice tactics). Also, exerting pressure forces the enemy to defend, it ties his pieces up and fixates them. Pressure is good even if there is no immediate tactical gain from it, but eventual tactical gain is often the result of pressure. It’s a positional advantage with a clear connection to tactics. Also, there is, very generally speaking, a somewhat clear plan if you’re the one pressuring while the enemy is defending: add even more pressure, throw in a currently under used piece; place an already active piece even more active. Or move back and forth between targets, because the attacker in these situations is often also the one with spatial advantage, which sometimes mean your more able to switch between targets than the enemy is able to switch his defence.

There is clear connection between pressure and space, but they are not the same. One way of measuring space is to count the number of fields (whether they are occupied by pieces or not!) on the other half of the board that you can either move to or capture (in case of pieces). However, space is more about maneuverability and is far more a positional aspect than pressure, which is more tactical (though not purely so -- it’s in that area between tactics and position.)

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Chess IV - The Tactical Inventory

2007-03-19T18:11:00.000Z

So I’ve mentioned *the tactical inventory* a few times. Time to dig a little deeper.

Firstly, I want to place it in the wider context of chess theory. I place it between pure tactics and position. Pure tactics is calculation and maneuvers (these often have a name -- forks, skewers etc), and position is open lines and pawn formation and stuff. The tactical inventory positional aspects with a close connection to tactics. A major (*the* major?) example of this is undefended pieces. They are often suitable targets to attack. Another is a king on eigth/first row with no escape-route (which invites placing a rook or a queen at that row), and yet another is the enemy queen and king on the same diagonal. Notice the difference between these aspects and tactical maneuvers -- they are ’static’ qualities on the board while the maneuvers are... well, something you do. And often the maneuvers take advantage of precisely these aspects in the position that are identified in the tactical inventory.

I saw one page on the net using the names "theme" (for tactical maneuvers) and "motif" (for that positional aspect the maneuver is taking advantage of). However, this terminology seems both pretentious and arbitrary to me. But I do need a name for "that positional aspect the maneuver is taking advantage of". Well, maybe I can use the "motif" part? No, no. The word I’m looking for could be *constellation*. Which is more accurate and descriptive than "motif". So, you use tactical maneuvers to take advantage of a certain constellation. (It also occurred to me that "taking a tactical inventory" is to a large extent - or maybe completely - to identify weaknesses in the position.)

It is interesting to observe the tight connection between certain tactical constellations and what to *do* in the position, in contrast to what I’ve written about how it is not obvious how the identification of certain positional aspects leads toward finding a move. If the enemy has two undefended pieces, it is natural to look for ways to attack both at the same time. If the queen stands on the same line or row as the king, you wonder whether a rook do a skewer (or pin), and so on. Now, these are obvious examples of course, but bear in mind that these tactical constellations arise on and off through out the game, and the idea is to always be aware of them. Sometimes you can gain in more subtle ways than actually manage to pull of a double attack, for example moving somewhere where you *threaten* to make a double attack, forcing the opponent to defend.

Anyway, one of the things to automatize during a game is (during the opponents turn) to take a tactical inventory. To establish this habit one has to direct oneself explicitly again and again which the command "okay, let’s do a tactical inventory." And one needs to have automatized a (short) list of things to look for.

(It seems that "what’s the weaknesses of my enemy" is a better question than the imperative "let’s do a tactical inventory." Maybe that’s just a habit thing, but it’s also important to personalize the questions asked, so that they are psycho-epistemologically optimal)

The list:

1. Undefended pieces (and pawns?) (How about trapping a piece? A rook may not be undefended, but if you can take it with a knight or bishop that’s usually a gain even if it’s defended.)
2. Interesting lines, rows and diagonals (kings and queens on the same line/diagonal etc) (Or is this too close to purely positional analysis? It’s tricky to draw a line.)
3. Weak first/eight row (makes mating maneuvers possible). Or does this fall under "interesting rows"?
4. Pieces and pawns attacked once and defended once (they are basically undefended should they be attacked with one more piece).
5. Pieces performing more than one task (overworked pieces)
6. Pins.
7. Possible forks? (I don't know, I just feel that the above about lines and diagonals covers rooks and bishops, but I have nothing to cover knights.)

This list could (and should?) be longer. Or should it be shorter? Too long is bad. Am I supposed to go through every item repeatedly during a game? When? I don’t know, this is a damn tricky area. But I think I’m on the right track, and that what I’m doing here is the right way to improve.

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Delphi and general design decisions in a language

2007-03-16T17:15:00.000Z

Here are some pros and cons with Delphi, over and above what I’ve written (e.g. the great value of the Delphi-environment).

One thing I value in a language is ease of use when it comes to standard stuff. Those ordinary things you always do, like using basic I/O, file operations, conversions, arithmetic and so on. Most languages have their annoyances (actually, all I know have that, with the possible exception of Python though I’ve just barely begun using that. I don’t mind the forced indentation in Python.) Java requires too much work to do I/O (all that stuff with streams to do such as simple operation. But Java has that nice feature that auto converts non-strings to strings when using the "+"-operator. Delphi doesn’t, so you have to using function calls for that, although is an inbuilt always accessible easy-to-use function.

I like arrays in Delphi. Index doesn’t have to start at zero, and the indices in multidimensional arrays can be written within the same brackets, for example like this: [i, j] (instead of [i][j]). Simple and nice. Also, as in languages such as PHP and Python it’s possible to use ordinary arrays as map/key structures. That is, as indices you can use whatever values you want, including myArray[myString] where myString is a string. (Languages such as Java and C++ only let you use integers as index values. In ordinary arrays that is, there are of course available map-structures as classes, but that requires a little more work to use.)

The way you can receive several variables of a certain type with one declaration (in functions and procedures) is nice. You can type some_function(row, line: Integer), not having to type the type (no pun intended) twice, as in many languages).

And btw, I love the inbuilt powerful data types in Python. Having that powerful tool at your disposal with that ease of use is really nice, and worth writing about in its own blog-post some day.

Delphi deviates from the usual by having return-statements (called "Result" in Delphi) that works as variables. They do not end the function upon being called, but just changes its content and whatever the content is when the function has reached its end is what’s getting returned. That’s kind of weird and actually an semantic difference (compared to most other structured and object oriented languages) rather than a syntactic one. Haven’t decided for certain what I think about it, but I think I like it.

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Is GTD a cult?

2007-03-14T13:08:00.000Z

As an Objectivist I’ve often come across the accusation that Objectivism is a just a cult. Not that I’ve been accused of that myself, but I’ve seen it in debates and texts, there’s even a book called "The Ayn Rand cult" (which I’ve read, and I’ve read many other books on actual cults -- it was an interest of mine some years ago.) Now when I’ve started to follow what is going on in the GTD community, I see similar charges are being made against GTD.

Obviously I don’t agree at all with the charges against neither Objectivism nor GTD. They are typically unfair and based on nothing (or based on a twisted interpretation of something).

So what are the charges against GTD? Here are a few:

It’s rigid: no deviation from the system is allowed. (Not really true. Firstly, the system itself is pretty flexible, allowing for much personal tweaking. Secondly, if you want to skip a part or add something not part of GTD, just do it. Who will stop you? DA may recommend certain things, but so what? He’s just saying what he thinks works best and why, take it or leave it.)

If something in the system doesn’t work out, it’s the fault of the individual. (I haven’t actually seen GTDers say this. On the contrary, I’ve seen the opposite, that GTD may not be for everyone etc. The forums I’ve been in have been relaxed and friendly, not full of blame or such. On the other hand, some claims critics make do meet some opposition, but again, so what? People making false or dubious claims should be opposed. If someone misunderstands GTD, tries it and fails, they shouldn’t be surprised if someone is pointing out that they haven’t tried the actual GTD. Even this, however, is done in a friendly and non-condemning way.)

David Allen (the creator of GTD) is a part of MSIA (which is true), and he is communication secret messages through GTD to brainwash people into joining MSIA. (I’m not kidding, I’ve seen those exact words, also that he is conducting "thought reform", so subtly that you can’t find the messages if you look for them.) There’s also the claim that David Allen is trying to hide his membership in MSIA (not true). This one is just silly.

People are afraid to speak up. (Playing the victim-- "boo hoo, I get attacked every time I dare question the GTD dogma!") That’s their problem, people have all sorts of irrational fears.

Btw, I’m probably going to reconstruct my system into something that isn’t quite GTD anymore. Many GTD-practices are great, but some are not well suited for someone with my lifestyle and need to be changed.

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Chess III

2007-03-12T22:45:00.000Z

How’s it going with my thinking rules? Well, some problems have occurred.

I said I would think about positional stuff (including doing a tactical inventory) during my opponents turn, and specific calculations during my turn. One problem is: it is way to vague to have "think about positional stuff" as a mental guide. Out of all countless "positional" things to think about, which should I choose? I want rules that are as independent of the actual position as possible, to have the same rules as often as possible (some people, those who do not understand the way in which abstractions covers many different concretes, would immediate brand that as "inflexible" and tell me about the necessity of adapting the thinking to the actual position. Of course I would agree about adapting the thinking, in a certain sense different from the one I was talking about.)

Another related question is: how do I go from identifying positional aspects to finding a move? Okay, there’s an open diagonal, there’s a well placed piece, and there’s... okay, so what? The aim is to find a good move, and the connection between a positional analysis and a good move isn’t always obvious. Maybe I slant my analysis too much on what is rather than what could be? In any event, I need specific questions, and I want to integrate into the mix the following: Keres/Kotovs four positional areas, the question of purpose (what I want to achieve), plan (how to achieve it) and the question "what are my opponents weaknesses And of course the tactical inventory, which I think will help a lot when integrated fully.

Another problem: the checks/captures/threats-rule (CCT-rule?) It’s easy enough to check all checks and captures, and know you’ve looked at all. But the threats-part isn’t as clear. How do you know you’ve looked into all possible threats? Of course, I’m talking about immediate (or near immediate) threats here (otherwise it doesn’t fall under tactics), but it’s still much more difficult to handle than checks and captures. I need to break it down. Does it come down to "threaten to make a move which the next move will check and/or capture something"? Maybe, or should count such things as "moving a black knight e5, threatening to move it to a secured position at d3" (a black knight at d3 is kind of threatening regardless of captures and checks, but it is more a positional advantage than a tactical one unless some immediate tactical manoeuvre is possible).

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Chess II

2007-03-07T12:42:00.000Z

Okay, I’m trying out the following two rules:

1. This one I mentioned briefly in my last post on the subject: checking up all checks, captures and threat, in that order, and for both me and my opponent. And I’m doing this when it’s my turn to move, before I make a move, and for every interesting move I do the same for my opponent (i.e. checking which checks, captures and threats he can make in return.)

2. Calculate specific moves when it’s my turn, whether they apply to me or my opponent, and general principles when it’s my opponents turn, whether they apply to me or to the opponent. (One exception might be open positions, when calculating moves is of special importance. In these positions it might be a good idea to calculate moves even at the opponents turn.)

The general principles referred to above are basically of two categories: positional and tactical. Positional principles are things weak pawns, the placement of the pieces and so on, and tactical principles are tactical themes that are present in the current position (things like unprotected pieces, mate on the first row, the placement of piece in relation to forks, etc. These have a strong connection to positional principles, but aren’t the same. Tactical themes are basically positional aspects with a fairly direct connection to tactics, so it’s a mix of position and tactics, you might say). Checking for tactical themes is what sometimes is called doing a "tactical inventory". In some positions, in particular those with an open center, I think you almost only do tactical inventories rather than positional analysis.

It is really, really easy for me to overdo what I’m doing to here, to create a really elaborate system that takes into account everything but is impossible to follow. The idea is to really practice and make a habit out of the things I come up with. They should be few, and they should be the best possible out of many alternatives. An essential part of this whole thing is to try out everything I propose and see how it goes (and not keep building the system without a throughout testing of it at the same time.)

And btw, I haven’t here motivated the above rules, just stated them. But I might do that later.

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Chess and psycho-epistemology

2007-03-05T15:32:00.000Z

I played chess actively for a couple of years some years ago, and now I’m doing some playing again.

I’m think I’m going to make a systematic attempt at getting better, while at the same time not spend too much time on it (the last part is important -- it’s easy to start to obsess about chess and just play "one more game" etc.)

The question is how. How do you get better at chess? (Specifically faster games - blitz - played on the net.) Well, what I’m thinking at the moment, and which usually isn’t being taught, is a systematic way of thinking. I often found myself loosing after allowing something to happen which I *should* have seen, and *would* if I just had taken 1-2 seconds to specifically look for it. So why didn’t I? It didn’t occur to me, because I lack a systematic way of thinking (of course, a really good chess player would have seen it without even trying, but...). My thinking is rather random and chaotic. Not completely random of course, but directed by intuition and what happens to get my attention on the board. Those are not unimportant of course, and any systematic way of thinking must leave room for letting intuition be the guide.

That’s one important challenge: to not make the system to rigid or too extensive. For example, you can’t make a list of 25 things to go through in every position (e.g. "are there any open lines I can use?", "what’s the weakest point in the enemy camp?" etc), that would be very inefficient and very boring. And the fact that it is 25 things indicates that it is a system that is too specific (and too disorganized). By contrast, one simple three-step rule I saw the other day is a pretty good one: check all checks, captures and threats, in that order. That’s a simple (and just a small part of what I'm looking for) but efficient rule. In some positions you’re done in a few seconds, in others you may find interesting lines to think about for a long time. It sounds basic, but many, including some very good players, don’t follow that advice. They can miss a nice queen sacrifice because they didn’t actually look at every check. (Using the queen to take a pawn protected by another pawn is a kind of move that’s easy to discard mentally as a bad move, thusly it’s easy to not even consider that check... even though you would have seen the value of it immediately if you just had examined it.)

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Non-explanations annoy me

2007-03-02T15:06:00.000Z

There are number of explanations that doesn’t explain anything. What I specifically have in mind is explanations that just repeats what you are trying to explain. One example: it is easy to observe that people like different music and movies and so on. So, how could this difference be explained? Well, one way is to refer to the fact that people have different taste. But, having "different taste" just means "liking different things", which is what we are trying to explain. It’s just a restatement! That’s obvious if we substitute "different taste" for the equivalent "liking different things". Why do people like different things? Because they like different things! Some people actually think that they have explained something with that.

This is what happens when one is trying to think without knowing how.

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Software -- Global Clipboard

2007-02-28T15:37:00.000Z

Another free program from giveawayoftheday.com. I don’t like this one very much. Of course, I do like clipboard enhancers, but this particular one just isn’t that good. For one thing, there is no tree structure. You really want to be able to save the clips in a tree structure. Or, if you don’t want that, then you’re probably not an advanced user and could probably go by with one the freewares.

I often describe (good) software as "neat", to the point of overusing that poor adjective. Well, Global Clipboard isn’t neat. It contains unnecessary information (like number of chars of each clip -- totally uninteresting... for me anyway), and each slot takes up way to much space (which is especially bad since there is no tree structure; if you have more than six clips, you have to scroll back and forth to read and access them).

It does have some features that could be useful to some users (not me), like ability to save things that aren’t just text (like pictures and sound files).

It looks pretty good, despite the non-neatness.

For text that is going to be pasted repeatedly, Flashpaste is the best choice (like I’ve said before). For text just saved for later reading or reference, I use ClipPlus (which has a tree structure and a three panel window).

Oh, and another important thing. You can’t use Global Clipboard to actually read the text you’ve copied (except the first words of it), unless it is short enough to fit in one of the slots. You’ll have to load the text into memory (hoping you can identify the text based on that which you do see, the first words in the text) and paste it somewhere, or save the slot as a file and then read the file. ClipPlus with its three panel view, on the other hand, let you read the whole text -- one of the panels is used for exactly that. So ClipPlus is basically a complete text editor as well (although I only use it for reading saved clips and maybe make a few changes here and there.)

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Lack of precision II

2007-02-26T11:48:00.000Z

Some people really ought to train themselves in being more precise. I wonder if maybe start doing an activity that demands precision would be of help to them. I think everyone would be well of having a hobby that demands precision. I’m thinking chess (or some other precise game), programming, math, maybe grammar. And trying to improve precision in writing directly too, but the problem with that is that it isn’t easy to measure precision in writing. In chess or math you really know whether you’re right or not. If you’re right in chess, your rating goes up.

When dealing with humans the opposite is often the case. The wrong and imprecise may very well also be that which is "working" best, so social interaction can carry a certain risk for one’s mental processes.

(And of course, those who do not express themselves precisely usually don’t understand precision in others either. Some people, for example, would respond to what I’m saying with something like "so you’re saying one should avoid or cut back on social interaction?" No, I’m not. Go play chess or something, and come back when you’ve learned to read. I know, I’m evil. What was that, not evil but pathetic and hostile? Whatever dude, whatever.)

(And BTW: with "precision" I don't mean nitpicking. If someone writes "he eat pizza today" that's grammatically wrong, but since you clearly understand what he is saying he's 100% precise and clear in the sense I'm talking about. The reason I included grammar as an area to study is more because of the mental training and not to actually learn grammar. Sounds strange, huh? Whatever, again. Lastly, English isn't my first language so I'm sure some of what I write isn't as clear as it should be. I'm trying, I'm trying. Sorry.)

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Lack of precision

2007-02-23T11:43:00.000Z

Okay, it has happened again. Someone has replied to something I wrote and that reply is unreadable in its vagueness. I don't know what he is trying to say, or even whether he is disagreeing with me or is agreeing but makes a few additional points. So what do I do know?

I could ask him what he means, but that can be risky at times, for a couple of reasons: 1. Some people interpret requests for clarifications as an attack, as if one is trying to rip his statements apart under the guise of "innocent questions", which isn't the case. 2. Some people makes the clarifications in a patronizing way (like, "okay, I'll explain it to you again, with simpler words and shorter sentences, let me know if it's still too difficult to you...", as if the reason one didn't understand to begin with is that one is a little slow rather than that the statements in fact were unclear (which they really are in this case). And then one has to decide how one should reply to that patronizing, which itself is kind of annoying.

Another way is to give a general answer (or "answer"). To just talk about the same issue but avoiding direct reference to anything he said. But that's somewhat sneaky and indirect.

I think I'll just ignore his post, but if he did indeed disagreed with me, he may interpret my silence as agreement, as if he made me change my mind (when I didn't even understand what he said).

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Anti-aging: boredom

2007-02-21T12:50:00.000Z

One popular argument against not aging is that life would become boring after a while. Well, speaking for myself, I don’t think so. Life generally just gets more interesting. I’ve had (and have) problems, but boredom hasn’t been one of them. And I know pretty old people who isn’t the slightest bored. Boredom is the result of having a certain mind, certain values (or non-values), not a result of having lived too long (in fact, among the most easily bored are people who haven’t live much at all, children.)

But even if everyone would get bored after a while (say, after 250 years). So what? I’d rather live with a young body until I am 250 and then take my life, than dying at age 85 having spent most of my life gradually getting older (with everything that implies). Heck, I would rather live until I’m just 60 than 85 if I could do so in a young body.

No one is going to force anyone to extend their life. It’s just a option, take it or leave it. If you feel life is more exiting decaying and dying, that’s fine. Just don’t stand in our way.

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Battlestar Galactica III

2007-02-19T14:03:00.000Z

Woo! Just saw a couple of very good BG episodes. I’ve reached the middle of season two now [actually, this post was queued, and I have now seen the whole second season], and things have changed in a very interesting way, and they used that change of background to create 2-3 very good episodes (but it’s a change of a more lasting nature). The dialog have suddenly become better too.

Wait a minute, am I withholding information out of consideration, not wanting to give spoilers? Haha. I haven’t even got any readers. So here’s what happened, broadly speaking: they found another surviving fleet, which opens up many new possibilities plot- and character-wise. And they’ve already taken full advantage of that and created a few episodes that would have been impossible with the earlier setup.

[And now, after having seen the whole season, some other even more important plot-turns have occurred. The found a planet on which they settled -- against the better knowledge of some of them --, and a year later the cylons arrived to occupy them. Or so it seems, that’s how the season ended. The ships managed to escape, and the colony became occupied.]

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fight aging

2007-02-16T13:24:00.000Z

If I stay alive for another 20 years or so, I (and everyone else) might stay alive for a long, long time thereafter. The medical area of longevity could have come a long way by then, and it is possible that the process of aging can be slowed. That’s the first step, then comes the stopping of the processes completely, and lastly to turn it around and make the body (including the brain) biologically younger. That would mean goodbye forever to dying of old age. Most experts, as I understand it, think that aging will be stopped and reversed one day, although most think that lies further into the future. But some intelligent, reasonable and knowledgeable people think that 20 year is enough to get some good results in the area (although just a genuine slowing of the aging process, not a stopping or a reversal - but a slowing is enough to begin with, it’ll buy you some extra time.)

On the other hand, in twenty years the world may have been ripped to pieces in another global war. There is a war coming...

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Three times a week

2007-02-15T12:24:00.000Z

I’ve decided to post here three times a week: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. May God strike down upon me with furious anger should I ever neglect post on any of these days.

Software -- Flashpaste

2007-02-11T02:52:00.000Z

I’ve bought a license to the software Flashpaste, a program I’ve found to be of great help with some things. It is a place to store text snippets in an arranged and easily accessible way. What kind of text? Any kind that you use often, so that you can paste the text from this storage. For most people this is probably not very meaningful, but for a programmer, however, it is very useful, as many instructions are similar. They are rarely identical, but what you do is that you store a kind of template of a certain type, and then paste that template and change/fill in whatever the detail should be.

It is somewhat expensive given how simple it is (30$), but it comes with a lifetime of free updates which is great (most software sells with a free updates for a year or until the next major update), and I think I will be using it for a long time.

It is very neat. It is possible to access the snippets with the least amount of clicks as is possible. It sits in the system tray and is activated with one click, and a small window opens. You locate the snippet in a tree structure of your own creation, and when you click the desired text it is automatically pasted to wherever the cursor is at the moment (make sure it’s correctly placed), and then the window closes automatically.

The software has another mode also (dual-mode) -- if the symbol in the tray is double-clicked another window opens (the earlier described window is by the way as small as possible, which is nice. It’s not as if you open a big clunky program), to where you can add new snippets at a desired location. It was a good decision to have a specific window for this part rather than trying to combine the two.

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Battlestar Galactica II

2007-01-26T19:52:00.000Z

Okay, now I've seen the whole first season now, and still like it a lot.

They use music in a very efficient way, just like Veronica Mars and Whedon's shows, which is important. In contrast with for example Star Trek: The Next Generation, which has very bad and anonymous background music (but it's still a pretty good show).

The dialog isn't always entirely satisfactory, especially when the show is running one of its spiritual plot-lines (god is actually a pretty central theme in the show). It's not terrible like the spirituality in the matrix, but it isn't Joss Whedon either. It's just kind of squarish at times, like "I am a scientist, and god cannot be observed or measured, so it's just fairy tales!"

The plot-lines are good. They have the right pace -- the right amount of time passes before each new big step... and it has some interesting (and daring) turns. I'm not too fond of the political plot-lines, but they're not too bad either. I just hope the 'terrorist' really is just a terrorist, so they don't try to make him "complex" by adding some true honesty, good-will and 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter'-stuff to him. That would be cliche-like in a terrible way, and I'm sure they would handle it badly.

It's still deliciously dark.

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Battlestar Galactica

2007-01-20T06:26:00.000Z

Recently saw the mini-series and first three episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Not bad. It's dark and brutal and is based on an interesting idea -- which is basically... hm, terminator meets blade runner meets star trek... meets BtvS. There is the war against machines (terminator) and the human-like machines (androids, replicators, cylons, whatever) themselves than may not know they are machines (that's Blade Runner) and it takes place in space with space ships and life on board those (that's Star Trek). Lastly, like in BtvS they take things beyond certain established borders, like having the good guys abandon or killing innocent people, or having lots and lots of people put in jeopardy without any "last minute"-saving (i.e. they die like flies) that is so common and boring in TV shows like Star Trek (although ST has other values).

Well, that's my view so far.

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Software -- CoffeeCup Free

2007-01-18T05:54:00.000Z

I got a new html-editor, the freeware CoffeCup. Like it better than my last one.

It's not a WYSIWYG, which I don't want or require. But it's possible to preview the code in one easy click (probably available in most html-editors, not like back in the days when tools like notepad were commonly used... anyone using notepad these days for coding of any sort has got to be mad in some way.)

It has an inbuilt ftp-uploader -- which is really important for me, since I need to test out php-code all the time (and I don't have an php-interpreter locally, and CoffeeCup won't even let me interpret html-code in the preview-mode if the file contains php-code, so even if I just change the html-code I need to upload it in order to see the change...)

And of course it has code-highlighting (also a must), and using all these things is intuitive and simple (uploading a file -- or even all files -- is done very quickly.)

One annoying thing is how it handles tabs, which makes is somewhat difficult to work with at times, especially when writing php-code. However, there might be some option to change that. Couldn't find any, but perhaps I need to look more closely.

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Reinstallation of Windows

2007-01-17T07:13:00.000Z

Yesterday (or the day before that actually) I got into trouble big time after my computer stopped working properly. I accidentally deleted a few system files and suddenly it went all terminator on me. Not with the killing and destroying, but it wouldn't do what I said and it behaved weird. So I had to erased it and re-install it. Man that sucks. Some info got lost, and it meant lots and lots of work reinstalling everything (which includes searchin' the net for drivers of all sorts... which itself means trying to de-code some pretty cryptic hardware names/codes to get the right drivers. Still isn't done. Not to mention all my nice progs from giveawayoftheday which is now lost and can't be re-installed.

Life sucks and all that.

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open loops

2007-01-13T03:19:00.000Z

An open loop is, as mentioned some months ago, an unfulfilled purpose, something yet undone. And these tends to bother you -- they will remind you of that which isn't done, they will create stress and restlessness and things like that. The way to make them go silent is to GTD them, which involves three things:

1. Determine what the successful outcome is.
2. Determine the next physical action.
3. Write it down in a trusted system.

Examples of open loops: You've decided to do something, or you've been given some assignment by someone else, or something has just landed in your life and you need to do something about it (an email, a suggestion by someone waiting for a answer) or you have an idea you think is valuable but don't know exactly what to do with. Psychologically it is experienced as something on your mind that won't go away even though you don't want to think about it.

A certain type of open loop is when you get into trouble of some sort. It is particularly open loopy and disturbing to your mental peace if it's a serious problem involving things you fear and things you don't know how to handle. To make that leave your mind requires... well, drugs or loud music or something like that. Or that you come up with a way of solving the problem.

Well, I have encountered one of those big problems now, and it won't let my mind rest. But it helps to some extent to know that I don't actually need to solve the problem completely for my mind to rest. What I need to do is to determine what the successful outcome is, the next physical action and get it into my system.

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GTD is anti-evasion

2007-01-12T00:29:00.000Z

The ultimate sin in Objectivism is evasion, the nameless act of pushing things out of your mind. Things that some part of you know you should be thinking about. Anything you can do to guard yourself against evasion is a good thing, and GTD seems to be really beneficial in that regard. With GTD you get all your concerns out in written form, and things that are externalized that way can't easily (or at all) be evaded. You have a system of reminders, so you can't conveniently "forget" to do or think about some things. Maybe you can prevent the thought from forming properly before it even gets to the stage of being written down, but even that is made somewhat difficult because GTD has those regular "mind-sweeps" specifically executed to bring to awareness things that are floating about in your mind that isn't yet externalized.

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Quake 4

2007-01-11T00:17:00.000Z

I bought Quake 4 recently at discounted price. I had fun playing Quake 2 some years ago, but I don't particularly like Quake 4. For one thing, it is very "noisy". Lot's of things going on all the time, many warriors running around shooting at the same time, both (computerized) friends and enemies. I want my FPS's clean and dynamic. Clean as in "not too many things going on at once" and as opposed to blurred. Fewer (but perhaps better) opponents (and friends) make for a better game. Also, fights should have an element of sneaking and waiting too, not just running around shooting like crazy. That's the dynamic part. Best FPS is still Unreal 2004. That's a great game.

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Social control

2007-01-10T00:21:00.000Z

Part of the secret behind being successful socially is being able to tell how people will react to different things. Not having a decent grasp of that is like wandering around in the dark. In fact, that comes before that "controlling the flow of information" that I've been written about.

As a small example: In many of my conversations on the net many years ago I unintentionally got into fights. At that point I really was clueless as to which statements were provocative and which were not (I didn't even really know that statements could be evaluated after how provocative they are). And getting experience and experimenting is the only way to learn. That particular lesson I did learn; I rarely get into fights these days and I have a good grasp of what is provocative and what isn't.

To have a good grasp is to understand causality in that setting, and at that point it's possible to start to control the flow of information.

A good analogy would be the history of science. Before the era of science people had very little grasp of the universe. They didn't understand what was going on, and to travel to the other side of the world would be out of the question because they didn't know there were such as thing as another side. To them that would be marching towards the edge of the world. And of course no technology was possible. Scientific understanding of the world is necessary in order for technology to be constructed. So they lived in a world they didn't understand and couldn't control. Success whether in social contexts or whatever requires knowledge of many kinds.

Political Correctness

2007-01-08T23:28:00.000Z

I recently encountered someone who thought he was an independent thinker for criticizing Microsoft. He complained about all politically correct people who have been fooled into thinking that Microsoft creates good software.

Well, that's just amazing. If there is anything that is politically correct to criticize, it's Microsoft. That, Bush and Fox News are probably the most politically correct things to criticize of all things in the entire universe, especially where this guy lives. Basically, if you're a complete non-thinker who only adopt others views, you'll be anti those things.

Of course, nothing is neither good nor bad because it is politically correct or incorrect, but the point is that I find it completely amazing that anyone can think that being anti-Microsoft is brave, independent and politically incorrect. Jebus.

Software - RoboTask

2007-01-07T23:18:00.000Z

RoboTask is one of the free programs on giveawayoftheday. Usually costs 99$, and it's a neat program. You write scripts to automatize certain tasks. It based on actions and triggers. It can perform a number of different actions (or series of actions) and these actions can be activated by any of a number of triggers. The scripting language of course has if-statements and loops.

The only really useful thing I'm using it for this far is uploading files to my web server. I've created a folder on my local computer and when I push a button anything in that folder uploads to the server. The pushing of the button is all i need to do to upload (aside from putting the files in that folder) and the process is over in a few seconds. As against starting up the 'ol FTP-program och doing it manually, or log on to the server and do it that way. Neat, although I'm sure many homepage editors have that function as well.

You could also easily create a backup-program with RoboTask (as well as many other types of programs that manipulate files and folders). Upon a certain trigger (hot keys, a certain time every week, clicking a ikon etc) it could backup any number of pre-set folders and/or files to any folder (even a remotely located folder). I already have a backup program so I don't need it for that, but it's still neat. It's like it has an inbuilt backup-capacity.

It has some functions to access he clipboard, so you could build a clipboard-enhancer if you like. It could be set to automatically copy anything in the clipboard to a file, or only copy it when you push Ctrl+q (or whatever), or any other of many possibilities.

You can write scripts to access the registry (add, delete, change, search), run program, download (and parse) or send mail, and some other stuff. It can ping, so if you have a network you can write a script to make it ping all servers and notify you if a server is down (and have a time-based trigger, let it auto-ping every 30 minutes or so).

None of the above will impress anyone that has been working in commando-mode in UNIX and been writing scripts, but it's kind of hard to get that functionality in Windows. Also, it's easier and more fun to work with RoboTask than Bash. In fact, the interface is really nice and intuitive which is a big plus.

I wouldn't buy it, but it's worth the price when it's free. And that FTP-thing is going to make life much simpler for me.

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Software - Maple Professional

2007-01-07T00:54:00.000Z

Another small revolution. Maple is a notes organizer. Not to be confused with the note holding ability of NotesHolder. NotesHolder is just a place to collect notes, but it's only temporarily until you get around to put them into your real system, which for me primarily is Maple.

Maple is basically a bunch of notes organized in a tree structure. In these notes I write down much of what is relevant in my life. Much of this stuff is things that are a part of GTD - a list of all my projects and next actions and areas of responsibility and someday/maybe lists and so on. That alone is a lot and it's great being able to put everything in the same place, and it would had been nightmare to try to write it all down without having the tree structure and the possibility to quickly switch between documents (using only, say, ordinary text-documents in a folder... that would have been completely non-working and chaotic). The tree structure makes it possible to group things that belong together. For example, I have various someday/maybe lists (lists of things that I will or might do someday). One is a list of things I might write someday (emails, blog posts, reviews, etc), another is a list of things to possibly buy, and list of things to read, and so on. All of these lists are placed as sub-nodes to the node "someday/maybe".

I tried other note organizers, but Maple Prof. is the most intuitive and neatest. Highly recommended.

I'm not GTDing as well as I would like to (mainly because of bad health and all that), but without Maple I wouldn't be GTDing at all.

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Software - NotesHolder Vs DayMate

2007-01-05T22:09:00.000Z

A while after I found and bought DayMate, a program called NotesHolder came to the give-away site. Turns out it has a functionality similar to DayMate, with some differences.

How do they compare to each other?

One similarity is the possibility of programming an unlimited amount of reminders. NotesHolder has the following advantage: when setting reminders to remind you regularly it's possible to set pretty much any interval from minutes to years. You can get a reminder every 11th minute, or every 9th year, and anything in between. With DayMate the smallest unit is actually a day, so you can't set it to every 11th minute or fourth hour unless you type in the events one by one. (Actually, you can cheat a little and "snoozing" non-recurring events to get that functionality, but that has its own drawbacks which I won't go into now. Also, there is a possibly to get voice-reminders at certain pre-set intervals like every 30 minutes or once per hour, but I don't like voice-reminders nor not being able to choose exact interval myself, and lastly this option can't be set in advance to start at a certain time.)

DayMate looks nicer, and it is arranged around a calendar so if you want a reminder a certain day you can click that day directly and write the message. So it's actually a little faster to write a note than with NotesHolder (where you have to write in date manually.) And you can easily in DayMate check what day and week number a certain date a certain month is, which is useful sometimes (and regularly getting a graphical view of how many days it is between now and a certain date has some advantages as well). DayMate also has some graphical stuff like being able to attach different colors to different events (like green for personal events and blue for business events etc). I haven't used that very much, but maybe it could be useful.

NotesHolder is basically just a series of lists (you create the lists yourself, how many and what theme each should have, and of course the content in each). Which isn't all that bad. You get a quicker overview of what notes you've added within a certain theme (DayMate is day/week-based, not theme-based, so it's quicker if you want to see what happens a certain day or week. But I rarely look ahead like this in DayMate anyway, I just wait for the reminder to occur)

Here's a biggie: NotesHolder can also function as a holder of notes, which DayMate can't really. DayMate is a pure planner with automatic reminders, whereas NotesHolder can function both as a planner (though not as well as DayMate in all respects) and as a holder of notes. If you get an idea you quickly want to write down before you continue with whatever you did before, you can open of NotesHolder and place it in a certain category you call 'ideas' or 'inbox' or whatever. And then at some future point you go through these notes and do whatever needs to be done about them (like putting them into its final destination in my GTD-system).

Anyway, if I had to choose one of them I think it would be NotesHolder actually (which btw also is cheaper, 15$ I think). But as it is I use both. I use NotesHolder as note collector and for reminders of regular events, and DayMate for events that is to occur once and checking time-related stuff like days, dates, weeks.

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Software - DayMate

2007-01-04T22:08:00.000Z

This little program has meant a small revolution for me. I got it a couple of months ago and been using it every day since. Basically, it's a planner. A place where you write down stuff you want to be reminded of sometime in the future. But since it is a digital planner you don't have to remember to look in it (like you would have to with an analog one), when it's time for something it pops up a little window saying so. If the computer is turned off, it shows the message the next time you turn it on.

What do I use it for? Pretty much everything. The standard stuff of course, like appointments at the dentist. But also things that are coming up soon, like a phone call I have to make in 2 hours. You can set to remind you regularly, like once every week at a certain time (like the start of a TV show), or once every day or year. When I want to learn something or change a habit, I set it to remind me of it once every day.

It offers other possibilities too, like sending a pre-written mail at a certain time.

It is definitely in the category of things you don't understand how you once did without.

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Software for free

2007-01-04T01:31:00.000Z

I have begun downloading and trying out (and buying) lots of new software, something I rarely did until recently. Some of that software has made a big difference in my life, which I wouldn't had guessed before. I will write more on these little programs later, but let me begin with mentioning a great site:

giveawayoftheday.com

They give away a new free piece of software every day. Not freeware but shareware. It's not illegal; they have an agreement with the vendor. Some of the conditions are different from buying the program though. It is a full program (not a 30-days trial or with limited functionality), but you don't get any support and you must install it the same day (this is checked) and lastly you don't get any updates. But other than that, it's free as in free beer.

It is usually software in the range of 15-40$, but there have been a couple of more expensive ones too (like 100-150$).

Even when I'm not downloading I've found that visiting the site is a learning experience. I get a more clear idea of what software can do.

GTD - The Five Steps

2006-09-27T03:03:00.000+01:00

Okay, here is my version of the most common way to explain GTD -- the five steps.

1. Collect. This is the phase where you gather all stuff into inboxes of various kinds. "Stuff" is any item there is yet to make a decision about. Things that aren't yet neatly organized into your system and life, like mails in your inbox or papers lying around. Internal things also goes into this category, stuff on your mind. Just write it on a paper and put it into the inbox.

2. Process. Everything in your inbox should be put through a certain series of questions in order to decide where it belongs. There is a useful flowchart to aid this process. Where does an item belong? Well, it can go into a filing system if it's reference material, or a calendar if it's an appointment. (There are more categories.)

3. Organize. Actually, a big chunk of the organizing was done in step two when you decided where every item belongs. But I guess some organizing can still be done within each category.

4. Review. For the system to work, you need to review it regularly. All your projects and "to do"s are in the system, and you need to be reminded of them often enough. So, some part of the system should be review daily, and some part weekly.

5. Act. It's not enough to keep track of your projects, you need to work on them too. D. Allen has some useful advice on how to choose what to do, which I won't go into here.

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GTD, psycho-epistemology, trusted system

2006-09-16T20:49:00.000+01:00

One of the great benefits of GTD is that it is based on, and teaches, sound psycho-epistemological principles, although David Allen doesn't word it as such.

An example would be the idea behind the use of the 'trusted external system'. The idea is that it is bad to store "open loops" (as he calls it) only in your mind. (What's an open loop? Basically, it's a yet unfulfilled purpose. Things you need to get done.) Why? The mind just isn't very good at handling that task, and what follows is pressure, stress and possibly failure. What pressure? The pressure of having to keep track of everything, having to remind yourself what needs to be done, having to worry about forgetting, having to remember stuff that relates to your purpose, and so on. But that's not, some would say, how people do handle stuff - after all, people already use external helpers such as calendars and "to-do"-lists. That's true, and to that extent the mind is relieved from some pressure, but most systems people use are incomplete in many ways. GTD is the system to end all systems. It basically works as an extension of your mind. (It wasn't that long ago I begun doing it, but I'm already a cultist.)

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GTD - Order out of Chaos?

2006-09-09T21:48:00.000+01:00

I've started to use the GTD (Getting Things Done) system. It is a system to organize the activities required to fulfill your projects (whichever they may be).

It includes things such as getting all important information into an external system you trust (such as a suitable computer program), filing everything appropriately, having a system for reminding you of important events, and so on.

The best thing about GTD isn't perhaps any specific idea it contains, but the way it all fits of them together into a nice closed system that covers all the activities in your life (in an overview-ish kind of way). And that it is fairly simple in its principles (always a good thing). It also leaves a lot of room for tweaking and personalizing.

It has helped me realize (again?) that a big reason for my own disorganization is indecision (which itself isn't news to me or my readers - indecision is my nemesis. One of them. Yes, I have many nemesis..es - ha! Ten point to whomever gets that reference!)

Indecision, how? Well, I let things pile up with the idea that I decide what to do about it later (e.g. should I answer this email? Let's decide later. Should I print out that info, or just throw the file way? I'll keep the file for now and decide later. Etc). And I used the same place for different purposes (the mails in my inbox would serve as reminders, containers of information - such as addresses needed in a few days, or reference material I might sometime need - and so on.) A similar pattern was/is present in other areas than my inbox.

And then new stuff arrives all the time, and it gets worse and worse until you force yourself to re-organize some (or all) of it. However, then the process of disorganization starts again, and chaos starts to build up. The secret is to organize it once and for all and then see to it that it never gets out of hand again. And that's what GTD will help you with.

GTD helps you establish a system which you then can apply to every new stuff that arrives in your life (whether it comes from within or without).

A funny detail - I don't think I really understood until now the crucial part incoming stuff plays in the creation of chaos.

To learn more, just search on GTD - Getting Things Done - and the author of the book, David Allen.

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Externalization

2006-07-13T19:28:00.000+01:00

The spiritual need of externalization represents an interesting contrast (and similarity) to the need of visibility (written about elsewhere).

But first things first. What is externalization? Simply put: it's expressing oneself, in one form or the other. So the need for externalization is then the need for an expression of mental content.

But how can that need be explained? What is it we get out of expression things? Certainly what I have in mind isn't practical values such as, say, the need to tell someone you love her to let her know so that she can decide whether she feels the same. Now, that's a reason to express oneself too, but that aspect isn't an example of satisfying the need for externalization.

Rather, I think the reason is the same as with visibility (and the need for art). That which only exists in our mind isn't completely real to us. We don't fully experience it until there is some physical expression of it. And this is something that is very central to everyone's life. Every spoken and written word is a physical expression of something, as is how you decorate your home and a million other things (needless to say, a specific form of expression may not interest a given person. We all have our own priorities in regard to what to express and how and when, and so on.)

It's central and broad, but not everything can be said to be externalization. For example, consuming art or trying to understand something (by thinking) is not examples of it.

Both visibility and externalization are central in proper human relationships, and that's a big part of why the relationships are so valuable and irreplaceable. Although, while visibility is heavily dependent on human relations, externalization can be exercised without it (though some content of the mind is easier to express in interaction with someone)

If that which you express isn't really you but a faked you, you won't satisfy the need to externalization, and likewise you won't get the right things back from others. They won't mirror you. So you'll leave both those needs unfulfilled. That's one reason why it is so stupid and painful to be a criminal - you can never be open with decent people, because they will despise you. You will either have to lie massively, or spend time with other criminals. Two very unattractive options.

A large part of all human activity can be explained in terms of visibility and externalization.

Interesting integrations can be made to creating art, which happens to be externalization per excellence.

UML

2006-07-07T22:42:00.000+01:00

Been doing some UML lately, for a course. Interesting stuff. An UML designer is to the implementer (programmer) what an architect is to a construction worker.

What's interesting is that you get a better understanding of the to-be system even without creating any diagrams, just by learning and using the different views. The specific diagrams are irrelevant. You could have had the exact same views (use case, class, state, etc) but (somewhat) different looking diagrams.

One idea that I find interesting and fascinating is to create a similar system to deal with humans and human relations. Not so much as an architect trying to build something (though some things perhaps, like a good relationship?), but for understanding (which affects your actions). It should be possible to create similar theoretical models of humans and relations, a set of different views with corresponding diagrams. Where each view in some way helps you understand a person and/or relationship. I'm sure there are some attempts in that direction being made, but I'm also pretty sure that it's not very well done. In a more rational world, there would be well developed systems like that and we would all run around diagramming each other.

Conceptualization

2006-07-03T19:43:00.000+01:00

No two games of chess are the same. The first moves may be the same, but for each new move fewer identical games have been played, and eventually each game is unique (with the exception of short games between bad players). Yet, despite that all games are different the principles describing the games are the same. So despite the uniqueness of each game, to an experienced player much is familiar and similar to other games. Principles such as "open lines" and "control of the center" etc always applies (though in different degrees depending on the details of each game). And there are not that many principles either. I think it was Kotov and Keres that suggested that to understand a position, four different areas need to be considered (that is, four principles, each containing a few sub-principles).

The same is true for all human areas, whether you are trying to understand how to act, how to think, how a government should be governed, how to explain star systems or our own biology, and so on. Without principles there is no such thing as understanding.

Humans understand the world by conceptualizing it, and principles are the result of that process. (Note to self: is applying principles also best described as an act of conceptualization?) .

The world is immensely complex, and without principles we are completely lost in that complexity. Some old (and young) fools claim that for a theory to be really true, it has to "mirror" the complexity of reality, and be as complex itself. That's just stupid. The exact opposite should be the goal: to let as few principles as possible explain as much as possible. For example, the principle (or law) or gravity explains both falling apples and planets rotation the sun. One single principle explains an infinite amount of complex stuff in the universe. Imagine trying to understand all those things that gravity explains through a theory that "mirrored" the complexity of that which it is trying to explain (which I assume would a mean a unique theory for each unique object - and every single object in the universe in unique, no two things are identical -, instead of the same principle/theory/law explaining an endless series of different objects).

All areas in life should be conceptualized. Hey, a principle.

In my current wave of extroversion and interest in politics (especially some areas) I see a lot of lack of principles. The conclusions people (including politicians and journalists) come to and the decisions they make are completely irrational.

altruism, egoism, purpose

2006-06-22T01:51:00.000+01:00

I have a confession to make. When I was younger, I was in some contexts terribly altruistic. Actually, it was a combination of thinking that sacrifice is right (which is altruism) and a feeling of fear of asserting my own (barely developed) will with others. And I suffered the consequences, among them mental passivity. If you don't have your own goals there isn't much to think about. It is virtually impossible to think about things that don't interest you, such as others goals. So you don't even succeed in being particularly valuable to others, instead you get pretty boring to hang out with. The most interesting people are always people who primarily act in their self-interest (even if many who act in their own self-interest of course are boring as well).

It is important for all involved to use other people for you own interest. To always have some sort of purpose with them, though it may not be any remarkable (it doesn't have to be more than "it's nice to have a cup of coffee with this person". An altruist on the other hand may agree to that coffee without even wanting it, if it is that other person's will.)

Of course, it has to be made in a moral context, as a trader. I'm actually less manipulative and "advantage-taking" than most. I don't try to get value from people without having their agreement, or without having something to offer myself. And that's how I prefer others by be also, rational egoists. So I practice what I advocate, which is more than many advocaters of altruism can say. They advocate altruism and then collect the sacrifices themselves, acting like egoists of the bad, predatory kind. Always be suspicious of people who ask you to sacrifice something.

Of course, always having a purpose in your dealings with other people is just an instance of the broader principle to always have a purpose. Purpose is a fundamental need for us humans. People who are completely adrift (and the Lord knows I've been there) is at odds with their nature and the requirements of life, and suffers accordingly. (Todays philosophical question: can't the purpose be an altruistic one? Stay tuned for the surprising answer...)

stability

2006-06-11T15:42:00.000+01:00

One interesting and useful concept is stability.

What is it? It is measurement of change of conditions. The conditions can be of various kinds, psychological, societal (economical, cultural etc), relational (a stable/unstable relationship).

A few comments on psychological stability (that's always an interesting topic, no?)

What is psychological stability? I have no formal definition, but a stable person is someone who in some ways doesn't change too much or fast. Obviously I'm not talking about someone who is stagnated. It is possible to develop oneself while at the same time being stable. Someone with a firm character is stable, but that person might very well keep learning stuff and develop in various ways, though it's likely that the basic philosophy remains the same.

How is stability achieved? I think one precondition is having that stable philosophy. Is that enough? No, it is necessary but not sufficient. I'd also add specifically that it needs to be integrated deeply. And I think the need for integration goes deeper than that, not only needs the philosophy be deeply integrated, but all ideas and values. I think that's the basic psycho-epistemological principle that brings stability, being integrated.

Being disintegrated means (among other things) having lots a disconnected ideas (possibly islands of ideas - that is, ideas that are locally but not globally integrated). Not integrating ideas inevitably means holding contradictory ideas. It is almost like these people are different persons depending on which of these disconnected ideas that are operating at any given moment. Or it could be like the so called "seekers". Those who may seem stable and certain when they currently are into some new thing, but then suddenly they abandon it in favor of something else... they never really believed that earlier stuff, it just seemed that way (even to them).

Moving

2006-06-10T09:55:00.000+01:00

I'm growing increasingly tired of my country and have begun thinking about leaving it. That's not something I'll do in the near future, but perhaps in a couple of years or so. Maybe it's just a daydream and something that'll never happen. I don't know. Given all my fears, changing country is about the most frightening thing I can imagine doing. Next after having my eyes cut out and getting jail-raped and burning in hell and about a million other things. But right after those million other things, leaving this nation is the worst. But the thought of it also excites me. A daydream only? Only time can tell.

Since I'm not moving next week, I got plenty of time to consider different places to live in. Let's try to outline things to consider. I don't know at this time exactly want I want in each area, or the relative importance of each area (or whether I have identified all areas.)

Climate. I want the right temperature and 'precipitation' (that's how my dictionary translates it into. You know, the amount of rain and snow, if any.) Well, I like it fairly cool, but perhaps slightly warmer than here. Some rain would be nice, snow doesn't matter.

Geography. Do I want to live near the ocean? Near mountains? Forest? Stuff like that. Well, living near the ocean is nice. I think. I don't take much advantage of that here though. Do I care for forests? I don't know.

Population. Do I want it sparsely populated or more crowded? Relatively sparsely, no doubt., yet I absolutely don't want an "everyone knows everyone" type of situation. Actually, I like the population density here. Enough people so that no one knows anyone, but not so much it feels crowded (like I imagine that New York would feel, although that's a great city in other ways.)

Work. I want there to be computer-related jobs available, thanks.

Dwelling. I want to be able to get an apartment in a decent area.

Idea climate. What kind of philosophical ideas that are popular. Hey, I'm an Objectivist, so the nearer those ideas the culture is, the better. Also, I've had enough of this nation's rampant anti-Americanism (and anti-Israelism), and I want to escape that.

The people. How do I want them to be? This is going to be a tough one both to discover in myself what I want, and to discover how the people are in any given area.

High-Tech...iness. The cornerstone in my life is internet and my broadband connection. That has to be widely available so that wherever I get my apartment I'll have easy access to a cheap broadband connection.

I feel no pride at all being a citizen here. I want to live somewhere where I can feel I belong and be proud of. I've always assumed that the problem is just me and that things would feel the same wherever I live. But perhaps I feel this way partly because of where I live. I've become slightly more extrovert of late, been thinking more about how my environment affects me.

Thinking along these lines is exciting. Scary but potentially valuable. The place I have my eyes on right now is Auckland, New Zealand.

Mouhaha

2006-06-09T10:52:00.000+01:00

No, I'm not dead so stop celebrating. I'm here and I'm ready to terrorize you with more info from the evil side.

I have no really good reason for my absence, so I won't even try explain myself. Instead I'll just laugh evilly to distract you. Muhahaha.

But really. Writing here is high on my priority list. I just don't do it. I guess I'm weird. Perhaps I'm lying. Again with the evil laughter.

psychotherapy, the importance of actions

2006-02-20T13:50:00.000Z

N. Branden on psychotherapy:

As I propose to make clear, psychotherapy is properly to be conceived as a process of education through which the patient is (a) led to understand the deficiencies in his method of thinking, and the errors in his values and premises, that underlie his problems; and (b) taught how to improve the efficacy of his thinking processes, and to replace irrational values and premises with rational ones.

And that's all there is to it. When I look at those words, I get a feeling of clarity, as if I'm on the verge of some breakthrough; that I'm close to making a brilliant mental connection that will solve my problems, or at least initiate a process that eventually leads there. That's never the case though (although it is helpful).

The problem is often that I read/hear something that makes perfect sense, while at the same time I have no idea how to use it to my advantage. The added knowledge has some value in itself, of course (it will help future though-processes in numerous ways).

Most of the time in past, though, I've been perfectly content with just stocking my subconscious with truths of various (relevant) kind, but now I've beginning to think more about how I can translate it into action.

From the same essay as above:

As we have discussed, many elements are involved in therapy: helping the patient to identify his feelings and desires, teaching him more effective ways of thinking, leading him to understand his conflicts, etc. Nevertheless, it is vital to keep the patient thinking of his problems in terms of action. By what actions (psycho-epistemological or existential) did he contribute to the creation of his problem? By what action can he move towards the attainment of the kind of life he wants?

motivation

2006-02-13T04:58:00.000Z

I don't always realize the significance of motivation. I tend to think that motivation is nice, but not necessary. That work can be done even if I lack motivation, just that it's harder. However, that's probably not true. Lack of motivation is a barrier as real as a concrete wall. It makes work not only more difficult, but literally impossible.

Some interesting questions:

What kind of thing is motivation?

How can it be developed, long term?

How can it be increased short term?

How can one discover which motivations oneself has? (I mean all of it, some things are pretty clear.)

What is the relationship between motivation and values? (Except for the obvious, that values motivate.)

The relationship between motivation and feelings? (Again, except for the obvious...)

Okay, stop it. I can just go on and on with questions, and then feel that I have to work on all at once, and feel overwhelmed and kind of helpless, and give it all up. (This is the feeling of mental overload, which itself is an interesting topic for analysis, but not here and now.)

How can motivation be strengthened?

It helps to believe that you can reach your goals. First, that requires having goals. Second, you need self-confidence. And self-confidence can only be achieved by in fact being capable of achieving your goals, and knowing that you are. And to have that capacity, you need to be rational. Which means, having an active, reality-oriented mind.

I think the above reasoning holds, but it somehow feels empty and I'm not sure where to go from here. How does that apply to me and what do these abstractions mean concretely?

For starters, which are my existential goals, and what inner state do I hope to experience by achieving them?

I.A.Q (infrequently asked questions)

2005-12-25T03:32:00.000Z

So, where have you been?

Around.

Around? What do you mean?

Um, I mean... um, what do you mean?

I mean, you've not updated your blog in a long time. Why?

Oh. Much to do and stuff.

Really?

No. Or yes, sort of. But not so much I couldn't have updated the blog.

So why haven't you?

I'm not sure. I apparently don't understand myself as much as I should.

What about the future, will you remove the blog?

No, no. I do intend to write more frequently, I just need to sort out some things first.

What things?

Well, better planning would be great. I waste a lot of time by not planning enough. And I need to remove those factors that paralyze me, as I've been writing about and probably will write more about. I need to define a clear value-hierarchy.

You mean like one of those that are mentioned in Objectivist literature?

Yes, exactly. To avoid conflicts. Without a clear hierarchy, I don't know what to do, and when I make my choice arbitrarily I feel guilt because some parts of me feel I should be doing that which I with the same choice choose not do to. A value hierarchy will solve that problem.

Okay, but will you really do that? You are Mr. Procrastinator, and you know it.

Yes, yes. I know. Or wait, perhaps I don't know. "Procrastinator" sounds like I don't have real reasons, and if that's what you mean, I'd like to object. But anyhow, some things are different know. For one thing, I used to often get headaches (and the like) that threw me off track on a daily basis. That can really be devastating for your plans. Now, however, for the first time in years, I've found a way to get rid of those headaches. Actually, I found it some time ago, but it's first now I can begin reaping the fruits of it.

Sounds like a big thing, tell us more.

No, not now. But I'll blog on that some day. Anyway, the basic line is, things will get better from now on. With updates, I mean.

I'll believe that when I see it.

Okay, that's a wise attitude.

Reason and Freedom

2005-10-11T01:09:00.000+01:00

Woo hoo, today I got this. Increased wisdom and happiness is expected.

Visibility

2005-10-08T20:49:00.000+01:00

My perhaps favorite work of psychology is Nathaniels Brandens 'The Psychology of Self-Esteem'. He was an associate with Ayn Rand, and most of the content in this book is written during their time together (it was published 1969). His later works aren't as good.

One of its interesting concepts is visibility. Quoting:

A man's intelligence, his psycho-epistemology, his basic premises and values, his sense of life, are all made manifest in his personality. "Personality" is the externally perceivable sum of all those psychological traits or characteristics which distinguish one man from another. A man's psychology is expressed through his behavior, through the things he says and does, and through the way he says and does them. It is in this sense that a man's self is an object of perception to others. When other react to a man, to their view of him and of his behavior, their reaction (which begins in their consciousness) is expressed through their behavior, through the things they say and do relative to him, and through the way they say and do them. If their view of him is consonant with his own, and is, accordingly, transmitted by their behavior, he feels perceived, he feels psychologically visible - and he experiences a sense of the objectivity of his self and of his psychological state; he perceives the reflection of himself in their behavior. It is in this sense that others can be a psychological mirror.

Firefly

2005-08-31T22:13:00.000+01:00

Just saw the last episode of Firefly. Love it! The whole TV show, which unfortunately only consists of 14 episodes. Great characters with interesting developments, many yet unsolved mysteries (possibly for ever, but Joss is saying that he wants to tell the whole story, sooner or later) involving the characters, interesting interactions between the already interesting characters. And I like the idea of flying around in space taking different missions (often not quite legal, though the crew is still pretty good guys) to get cash. It has a great adventurous feeling to it, as it is done so well. But the real strength is the characters, just like with the Buffy and Angel shows.

When I watch any of those three shows I feel things. It's like the world suddenly has colors again. And when I stop watching, I sometimes go through a kind of transition period where I feel the contrast between how I feel in response to those shows, and to my own life.

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Welcome

2005-08-28T20:49:00.000+01:00

This'll be my first REAL post.

To tell the truth, I'm not sure what kind of stuff I'd like to write about in my blog. I have this diffuse need to communicate, and I always have things going on in my mind. I'm just not sure which of it I'd like to express. My plan is to experiment, improvise and learn as I go. Here are some guesses, which also to some extent serve as a further presentation of myself:

Objectivism. I'm an admirer of Ayn Rand, and a follower of her philosophy
(to the best of my knowledge and ability, and as far as I agree with it).
I'd be suprised if I didn't write some on that, sometimes.

Cultural imperialism. Not suprisingly, I'm likely to like writing about
things that I like. Go buy Whedon's Firefly at once.

Computer science, being what I study and all. But I dunno.

Issues. I have my fair share of those, including social anxiety (or social
phobia, if you prefer).

I'm not likely to write about politics or current (political-ish) events, as
I'm not very interested in that (even though I have some views.)

Lastly, english is not my first language, so anything that might look like
fallacies, errors, crucial omissions and the like, can safely be assumed to
be errors of language. :D

That's all for now.