Grazza

Probably because of the badass name! If I'd saw a book like that, I'd be pretty damn interested as a novice chess player myself :D

It's actually just a series title from the English edition. But yes, not a bad title. I've been told it sounds a bit funny when translated into French, but who knows? I suspect the colour scheme is helping too - it is very eye-catching even as a mini-image.

Lovely :)

Awww... you always go to the coolest places! (Not always literally.)

@Grazza I've tried to send a PM, but sadly you cannot recieve any messages. Is there a way i can address you directly?

Dang, gnarly! As DW's infamous driver I generally do not take into account busy times when driving as far as safety considerations (only traffic), though that is beginning to change in regard to driving in snowstorms. I do have a lot of confidence in myself regards to reacting to harry situations, though, and my track record in that regard is pretty good. 

Last summer a bike pileup happened right in front of me in the line of bikes I was riding in. I was squeezing the brakes while swerving out of the way of the collapsing/piling up bikes in front of me. Was *super* close to being entangled in the bedlam, but somehow remained upright as I went offroad. I had a few super close calls to hitting the deck on my back last summer but somehow remained upright in all instances, including one where I went into a super steep, super tight S turn too hot and ended up going off the road (with a few other experienced cyclists as well).

I once slept under the stars in Grizzly country a couple states over from where two campers were mauled to death in their tents a week earlier. Not quite the same as your thing, though. My sister once was on a flight that was about 12 hours different from an airline that crashed (in other words, had she been on the slightly later flight it'd be sayonara). 

Anyway, I think I'll just avoid the places you travel, though you do go to all the coolest places!

I try to stay out of trouble, and use flexibility in terms of schedule and route as far as possible. There are dozens of routes between Minnesota and the Rockies, after all, and you're often threading your way between an icestorm and a snowstorm.

Ah yes, the old "one/two week before/after" phenomenon. I've got these:

• Used that very same escalator one week before the King's Cross fire
• At the Grand Chancellor one week before the big earthquake (in the room immediately above one where people were trapped for many hours)
• October 2017: in Las Vegas two weeks after the massacre and in parts of northern California two weeks before they became fire-disaster areas (I could just have easily done that trip in reverse order and been there for both)

Jeezus--I can imagine you had already made your reservations for the vegas/cali trip before the massacre happened.

It is a bit eerie you've been temporarily so close to so many disasters. Most people experience that sort of thing about 0 to one time in their life.

Now and then. Less than I used to.

And what are your other books about?

Clicking on the author link on the Amazon page will list many of them.

They kinda look like crystal balls with tiny worlds inside.

Linguica: no, selfies suck.

Glad people like the ice cave. Though it should be said that any photos of the cave looked amazing. If you want to see it, it is at the Perito Moreno Glacier (around 50.4906 S, 73.0532 W), but it will soon be gone as water pressure will break it apart. New ones will form of course, here and in other places, but this one was relatively stable and pretty easily accessible (well, once you were in that part of Patagonia...).

Another one, taken today:

Champagne Pool, Waiotapu, New Zealand

I miss chess. Playing online isn't quite the same as sitting down at a hand-crafted board for a gentlemanly game.

Unless your point was that they're intentionally putting those things side by side, in that case... Gotta agree with you.

I like how the first pic seems to be entirely about the US, then the next, clarification pic is mostly Britain. Funny coincidence.

It's corporate news, what do you expect? Both sides do this shit.

Yeah, pretty much a worst-case scenario.

That's a terrible, tragic story of everything going wrong, but it's nice that they made a pretty memorial for it. Good pics, btw.

I learned something today. Something sad, but something nonetheless

Ball shit snake, notice me.

There's something really wrong with your senpai, Voros.

Yeah there is. I don't know what, but there is.

85.5 meters. Though the conversion is a bit off.

Ahh.. not dyslexic, just blind.

Two depth-related pics:


Bunch of info (though apparently a little out of date). I often take pictures of these things to save time - I can read them later.


You can make out the "sea level" marker part way up the cliff. Somewhere on the top (right of centre) is Dante's View.

A guide. See the link in my last-but-one post.

Grazza's last pic reminded me of this classic sky texture:

That looks totally like a picture I might have taken, though I don't recognize that precise scene.

I bet Robert Hyatt would buy this (again). I'll let him know.

Let's face it, after your rather amusing advert, no-one here will buy this for the 50,000 chess moves. They're buying it to laugh at the funny names.

Nice retrospective, I've never thought about just how "dangerous" it was to write chess books back when people didn't have chess programs and the authors had to do all the analysis by themselves. Managing an opening library must have been hell as well, having to deal with countless papers and to follow the latest findings all the time.

I see that Alexander Kotov's books are known in the US as well. Just recently I've read his "В шутку и всерьёз" (1965), an inside look at a grandmaster's life (no analysis or anything, just stories and anecdotes). In one of the chapters he talks about the practice of adjourning games after 40 moves. I thought it's a shame that that wouldn't work today since we have computers, it sounded like an interesting part of the game, like an ultimate test of player's analyzing skills.

Thanks - glad you liked it.

Memfis said:
I see that Alexander Kotov's books are known in the US as well. Just recently I've read his "В шутку и всерьёз" (1965), an inside look at a grandmaster's life (no analysis or anything, just stories and anecdotes).

It's really only his book Think Like a Grandmaster (Kak Stat' Grossmeisterom) that he is widely remembered for in the West, and in fact just the first part of that book. It is viewed as a somewhat unrealistic model of how to think, but at least it gets people to think about how they think. A generation of players were probably too embarrassed to admit that they didn't think in that way, but in the last couple of decades there have been some critiques that present a more realistic view. Perhaps the most telling point is that even computers think in a much more flexible way than Kotov advocated, and his whole point was to get people to think more like a machine. Anyway, I felt pretty safe in this piece referring to Kotov's model as an archetype of excessively regimented thought.

In one of the chapters he talks about the practice of adjourning games after 40 moves. I thought it's a shame that that wouldn't work today since we have computers, it sounded like an interesting part of the game, like an ultimate test of player's analyzing skills.

Actually, there was a recent event that experimented with adjournments. It is indeed possible that they were abandoned without sufficient reason. At the time (early 1990s) it just seemed self-evident: computer use could simply decide the result of some adjourned games, so there should be no adjournments at all. The upshot, however, is that most endgames are now played with very little time to think, with the outcome depending on stamina and bladder stength as much as chess skill. We've swapped the occasional injustice for a general lowering of the level of endgame play. On the other hand, events can run on a faster schedule, with no need to build in extra days for adjournments.

Two weeks on, and the three bodies are in pretty good alignment again, albeit in a different order. Only a partial eclipse (no corona), but still interesting to see a bite being taken out of the sun. Once again a clear sky, and the eclipse continued through sunset. Here are some pictures, all taken looking west across the Mississippi from just south of Prescott, WI. (GPS: <a href=https://www.google.com/maps/place/44%C2%B044%2734.4%22N+92%C2%B047%2729.8%22W/@44.7428884,-92.7916111,15z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x0>44.7429° -92.7916°</a>)

<a href=http://i.imgur.com/Lesiqsm.jpg><img src=http://i.imgur.com/Lesiqsml.jpg></a>
OK, so using an improvised dark filter may not have been the greatest idea.

<a href=http://i.imgur.com/tOWSEuc.jpg><img src=http://i.imgur.com/tOWSEucl.jpg></a>
View up-river.

<a href=http://i.imgur.com/yoVPyfq.jpg><img src=http://i.imgur.com/yoVPyfql.jpg></a>
The top of the sun is missing!

<a href=http://i.imgur.com/Ili03MQ.jpg><img src=http://i.imgur.com/Ili03MQl.jpg></a>

<a href=http://i.imgur.com/ohyYPz8.jpg><img src=http://i.imgur.com/ohyYPz8l.jpg></a>

<a href=http://i.imgur.com/22B0u5v.jpg><img src=http://i.imgur.com/22B0u5vl.jpg></a>
The round ball is one of those things they put on high cables crossing the river to make them more visible.

Grazza said:

The round ball is one of those things they put on high cables crossing the river to make them more visible.

Or a UFO, since it's a bit too large to be Mercury.

They're still not visible enough to keep crop-dusting pilots from hitting the wires.

Completely clouded out again. Today? Beautiful, not a cloud in the sky.

TheCupboard said:

pot in Colorado

I still believe that's what John Denver was alluding to when singing "Rocky Mountain High".

Good job making it through Grand Junction. I got stuck there for a whole week once when the car broke down. Nice town though. Did you happen to see the old hotel or water park or theater or awesome tea shop?

No, but thanks for the pointers. I'll spend a little more time in GJ when I pass through it again on Monday. My schedule will be more relaxed then.

TheCupboard said:

Cheers! The first picture would make a great FSKY1.

Glad you like it. FWIW, the rightmost peak in the mountains in the distance is Alto de Los Leones.

Obsidian said:

I see green, yellow, blue and possibly orange on that lizard. It's the M&M Gecko! :P

The orange ones don't appear to be scales like the other colours. Even on the original image, I find it hard to make out what they are. Maybe it is skin in the process of being shed.

Maybe faded flecks of blood from the last tourist it ate? I know they're tiny, which means they must hunt in packs to take down large prey.

Is that crucifix in the third picture a wayside shrine?

Something like that. It was near a trail, and also on the edge of a small settlement (Latitude=-33.823693; Longitude=-70.050217; Elevation= 1883 m).

The name on it is Juan E Molina N, 4 April 1965 - 1 April 2002 (the last digits uncertain, since there's undergrowth obscuring them on my photo).

Funny; these ASINs normally don't look anything like a word. One of our earlier books was assigned B00ASHEFBA, while you might also consider B00AKXIOGO just about readable, and Jersey Shore fans may find something in B007JVO0WW.

Edit: lol, hottest new release at the moment. :P

Those would make some good black metal band names. :)

I knew you wrote books or whatever, but I didn't know you've written 22 previously. Respect :D

icewind dale...

I snapped this pic somewhere over Greenland back in August. Stunning terrain all over that region.

I was briefly in Nuuk again yesterday, where they had their first snow since last winter. Our tiny plane (from Narsarsuaq) skidded on landing, but the pilots didn't seem unduly perturbed.

The last few days in South Greenland were warmish and sunny, so the sudden arrival in wintry conditions came as a bit of a shock. We dined at a Thai restaurant with "porn" in its name before boarding another little aeroplane for the flight to Reykjavik and a return to normal civilization.