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I love LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0
). The possibilities it opens up are endless; Really a good way to satisfy your creative part.
I own couple of books on NXT (I know…buying the books before the actual NXT pack is kinda stupid, but hey at least I can plan for what I’d do from now itself), and have seen lots of wacky designs done using NXT parts, but still got blown away when I first saw what Steve Hassenplug did with them.
He created a monster chess board with the pieces’ movements controlled via a touch PC. The piece is moved in a GUI in the PC by the user, then the PC calculates the optimal path for the piece to reach from its source square to destination square in the monster board, also deciding what all pieces need to move and make way for the piece moved by the user and then the command (or set of commands) gets relayed to the board. Captured pieces go out of the board, neatly lining up at the outer edge squares. This board even has support for queening process (pawn reaching the last rank). Pretty neat stuff! Watch the following videos to see what I mean.
Continue reading “Monster Chess – Lego Mindstorms NXT Magic” »
Chessbase is undoubtedly one of the most useful and most prevalent DB software in the Chess community. What with its siblings like CB Light 2009/Premium, everybody has had a chance to dabble with it one point of the time or other.
My interest on Chess started in 2002 (relatively recent). At that point of time CB8 was the king. CA was a distant competitor, with its own set of (cult?) followers. Interesting stories like how Frederick demoed the first CB to Kasparov are abound in the net. Have you ever wondered how CB1 looked? Where the heck can we get hold of this binary now? Even if we get it, will it be compatible with the Windows Vistas and 7s? Don’t worry, you can not only obtain a legal copy of Chessbase 3, but actually can try that out too.
Continue reading “Download ChessBase 3 and Fritz 1 – Abandonware” »
One of my opponents in FICS today allowed me a nice attacking win. I am happy I could capitalize on his blunder.
Following is the game position we reached after 9 moves. Till this point I made so many sub optimal moves (a.k.a weak moves 
), I was pleasantly surprised when I won the game. Time to put together at least a basic opening repertoire, methinks!
[FEN "r1bqk2r/pppp1pp1/7p/3Nb3/2B1n3/2P5/PP3PPP/R1BQK2R w KQkq - 0 10"]
The game continued:
Continue reading “Capitalizing on blunders: My latest FICS game” »
I am new to Deep Aquarium and still trying to figure out many things that I am so comfortable with the other GUIs.
One thing I observed is the absence of “+” in the notation window to mark “checks”. Look at the image below (highlighted yellow). Rc1+ was just played and there is no “+” in the notation window….aahhh!
Luckily, I soon found the option to bring back the “+”.
Continue reading “HowTo: Make Deep Aquarium show checks in notation window” »
This is one of the CT-ART positions (Exercise 825 – level 50). Black to play. Do take some time to internalize this position before scrolling down to my notes:
[FEN "5rk1/8/2p1r1p1/3p1n2/R1qP3P/4P2P/1R3P2/3QB1K1 b - - 0 1"] 
My Notes:
Let us try breaking down the position:
Continue reading “CT-ART exercise 825 chess puzzle and solution” »
I am a long time user of Visual Studio (2003/2005 and now 2008), as it ends up mostly as the primary development IDE in my day job. Even for developing Kernel drivers, I use VS as the IDE (with Visual AssistX) and switch to CMD shell for the good old “bcz” (I don’t like the integration of DDK build in to VS-IDE). I was waiting for the VS2010 RTM to be ready, and finally yesterday decided to download from MSDN and have a go.
Installation took around 45 minutes in my Windows XP SP3/3GB/C2Duo system. The worst part I hated was when the installer asked me to reboot 3 times (once after .NET runtime got installed, the next after Windows Installer 4.5 got installed and one more reboot I don’t remember now for what). Usually I start off these time-consuming installations in the background and do my other stuff (usually E-Mail and PPT!) in the foreground. These constant reboots annoy you because you are forced to get off the thread you are in, you may even not go back to that thread again, trust me. I guess these reboots are probably because of the Windows XP, these may not be applicable on Windows 7.
After the final reboot and the success thing, I clicked on the VS2010 menu entry. First thing I noticed opening VS2010 was the revamped splash screen.
Continue reading “Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate – First Impression” »
Firebird 1.2 – WeakDelfi 
[FEN "1r5k/r2BP1pp/pp1R1p2/6B1/4P3/5Q2/PPP4P/1K5R w - - 0 26"]
Solution:
Continue reading “Chess Puzzle – Find the best move for White” »
