So, How you guys doin' ??

[Dru Lee Parsec]

It's been a bit slow here on the PSD forum.. So I just thought I'd ask how everyone's getting along and what's new.

I've been doing the same boring JSP's and Servlets that I was doing the last time I worked at "The Bank". But at least they pay me every week (which is much better than either of the dot-com companies I worked at this year).

I've developed a fascination for the game of chess. I've been studying several chess books lately, foremost among them "How to Reasses your Chess" by Jeremy Silman (awesome book). I've been playing (and getting my butt kicked) by my new chess program Fritz 6.0. It's very cool.

I'm pretty burned out on writing code at this point so my sourceforge project is on the back burner again. I've been playing guitar some more. Other than that, there's just not a lot of time to do anything else.

So what are you folks up to? What's new? Grab a virtual beer and kick back in the PSD bean bag chairs and relax for a while. It's a mellow, layed back party. So come on in and chat.

[slacker_x]

For the benefit of those of us who don't know, what is the sourceforge project?

[klamath]

At (high) school, more of the same: I just finished studying King Lear, which I really enjoyed. I'm also reading Plato's "Republic", which I don't like so much.

At work, I've been doing some consulting -- fixing problems when necessary and so on. I'm also working with another consultant who's really experienced -- we're redesigning and implementating a system for getting Sports data from a company in XML, parsing that dat and inserting it into Oracle and creating a webpage front-end for viewing that data -- using Velocity on Tomcat, fetching data from an XML-RPC "view", running on a separate server. It's very interesting.

I've developed a fascination for the game of chess.

As have I; I usually play once or twice a day (although I played 5 games today). We should definately play online some time -- do you want to give me an email?

I'm still hacking on Ruby-GNOME (ruby-gnome.sf.net), but I hardly have any spare time to work on it due to school work. I got to release Ruby-GConf 0.1, which was cool -- probably my first OSS project that I started myself and is legitimately important/useful. Oh, and I'm continuing to learn Common LISP (Dylan is next on the TODO list), which is very interesting.

I've been doing the same boring JSP's and Servlets

Have you taken a look at some of the Jakarta technology, like Turbine, Velocity, Log4J, and so on? That's what I'm learning right now and I'd be interested in your opinion on it.

So yeah..... tons to do, but it's definately interesting.

[Gnu/Vince]

I'm back to doing some Ruby. I'm gonna take a break of O'Caml for a while.

[kmj]

At work I'm integrating a Java application with a C++ OLE interface for a Repository. I'm not a big fan of either app, but it's cool getting them to work together, and it's nice to take a break from MFC.

At school, I'm taking cryptography, which has been pretty cool, except I have to write a paper on how the ENIGMA was decrypted, and I just don't care enough... but I have been reaquainted with Python and C, since the class requires a number of small programs. I just registered for Distributed Artificial Intelligence, which I think goes into the use of independent agents in AI, and Computer Graphics, which I'm hoping will be a nice little break from the typical seriousness of CS.

I need a vacation. :)

[Stuka]

Well, in my neck of the woods, I'm learning Java and some hardware (basic digital circuits stuff) in school, along with Numerical Methods (number crunching theory for the computer) and Probability and Statistics. At work, I'm putting some finishing touches on a Java app to drive our LED wallboards - fun with javax.comm.*! Oh, and I've been shanghaied into our newly formed IT group - until now our phones and network were a one-man operation! :o At home, I'm trying to get an old Compaq ProSignia VS to take a Linux install - the SCSI driver was givin' me fits...but it was my fault (as usual), and just celebrated my 3rd anniversary yesterday (I'm surprised she's put up with me this long! ;))

[jemfinch]

Wow...I didn't know people here had so many interests outside of programming!

In recent news, I scored above average on my Chemistry H201 (that's the honors
general chemistry series) exam. I bombed a Greek 101 quiz on monday, and
scored an 88 on the exam on tuesday (which is not satisfactory, I'm not
putting nearly enough effort into it.) Nothing especially noteworthy has
occurred in Latin recently.

I've been hacking a bit on my O'Caml IRC bot, nothing really special or
remarkable. I've been strongly considering writing an http server in O'Caml
simply because none of the ones in FreeBSD's ports tree really suit me -- Apache
is too...big, and thttpd is way too anal. If anyone knows any good references
to simple webservers that I could learn from, I'd be happy to read them.

I used to be a serious chess player -- I even played in a tournament at
one point (I never had enough games to become even provisionally rated, though.)
How to Reassess Your Chess is indeed an excellent chess book; one of the
best I've read. If any of you are interested in purchasing some cheap
chess books, I have a decent collection I can't see myself making much use of in
the next few years. Let me know if that's the case, I'll be happy to inventory
them and bring them up next time I go home (not this weekend but the next as
plans currently are.) I'd be happy to swing a chess game with anyone here
(though I'd likely get my rear kicked :)) Perhaps we can have the chess
version of the standard "What's your favorite programming language?"
conversation -- so what's your favorite opening? I, personally, used to
(and still do) have an absolute blast playing black after 1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Nf6 :)

Well, that's about all that's of interest here :)

Jeremy

[klamath]

I've been strongly considering writing an http server in O'Caml simply because none of the ones in FreeBSD's ports tree really suit me -- Apache is too...big, and thttpd is way too anal. If anyone knows any good references to simple webservers that I could learn from, I'd be happy to read them.

I wrote one in Java a little while ago. Web servers are pretty trivial to implement the basic ideas: the RFC (2616) is quite straight forward. I'd be happy to send you the source code, but it's not particularly useful. Take a look at the State Threads library by SGI. They claim that their threading model is very scalable. If you're using Ocaml though, you might be forced to use the threading implementation provided by the Ocaml runtime. A webserver that exposed an OCaml API and allowed writing loadable OCaml modules would be interesting (although you could possibly implement this for Apache as well, like mod_perl).

I used to be a serious chess player

One of the guys in my grade is in the top 20 in the world for his age, so I don't know if you were THAT serious ;-) Of course, neither am I.

If any of you are interested in purchasing some cheap
chess books, I have a decent collection I can't see myself making much use of in
the next few years.

I'd be interested.

I'd be happy to swing a chess game with anyone here
(though I'd likely get my rear kicked)

I'd be up for a game or two: send me an email if you'd like and we can set up a time. I'm that that good though... ;-)

what's your favorite opening?

I've been playing Queen's G***** for a while now, with a fair amount of success. 1. d4 d5 2. c4

[ 26 October 2001: Message edited by: klamath ]

[jemfinch]

Originally posted by klamath:
If you're using Ocaml though, you might be forced to use the threading
implementation provided by the Ocaml runtime.


The webserver will be a simple, single-threaded webserver based on asynchronous
I/O -- I already have the network framework, I just need to write the HTTP
request handlers.

Jeremy

[nanode]

I have to ask, why are http servers such popular pet projects? Aren't there enough web servers out there? :)

Like Dru Lee, I'm stuck doing JSP/servlets at work. Servlets are still new enough to me that they are somewhat interesting, but at the end of the day, http is still stateless and all the javascript and control servlets in the world won't change that. JSPs are a mess -IMHO. The syntax is fine, but the fact that they get parsed in .java files then compiled into servlets, makes them near impossible to debug, except for System.out's.

In an attempt to escape from JSP land, I've begun studying EJBs and other things relating to distributed objects. I think I've got the basics down, but there's a lot of knowledge to absorb.

Also, to fulfill a requirement at my job, I'll be taking the SUN Cert. Java Programming exam in about 10 days. Say what you will about certifications, but the bottom line is, I need to take it and pass it. If anyone has taken this exam (310-025) or has any info. that might help, please share it with me.

[frustratedlinuxnewbie]

I just passed the java cert. exam a few weeks ago. My java instructor had been encouraging his class to take the exam. But since I'm stuck with COBOL I'm not sure what good it'll do me.

[Dru Lee Parsec]

For the benefit of those of us who don't know, what is the sourceforge project?
It's tapper.sourceforge.net

This is a music teaching program originally designed for players of The Stick ( www.stick.com (http://www.stick.com) ) but it will work great for guitar and bass as well. nanode did some work on it with me last year. Wow, I haven't touched it in almost a year. :(

klammath and jemfinch: So you're chessplayers too!? I use to play in tournaments back in high school but never got beyond about a 1200 rating. And lookng back at my old games I'm amazed I even got that high. I ran an analisys on one of my old games against a 1455 in Fritz 6.0 and we BOTH missed mate in two!

jemfinch, the last thing my wife want's to see is more chess books showing up on my doorstep ;) We'll talk.

Openings? I'm so bad at openings. I just play basic opening and middle game theory without having memorized actual opening lines. Everyone from Kasparov on down says that if you're under about 1800 to 2000 then you're wasting your time if you're trying to learn hundreds of opening variations. As Silman shows in his books, even if you hand a won position to a player in that range of ratings they will lose to a master because they don't understand middle game strategy and tactics.

Having said that I must admit I was studying the Classic Dragon variation of the Sicilian last night.

Wow, It's nice to know that so many of us "geeks" (and I mean that in the best way) have lives away from the computer.

OK, you chess geeks, Here ya go: Put your pieces on these squares:

White
Kd2, Na4, Ne8, Bb8, a6, a7, f2, h2
Black
Ka8, Bd8, Ng1, a5, e2, f3, g2, h3

White to move, Mate in 2.

Have fun.

[Dru Lee Parsec]

Hey JemFinch:

You and I are both hiding our emails form spammers so I can't get in touch with you to talk about those cheap chess books.

Give me a buzz at DruLeeParsec@users.sourceforge.net

So, when you say you were pretty good at one point what was your rating? The highest I ever got was in the 1200's but that was only because I won a single game against a 1455. My rating immediatly dropped back down to more accurate numbers after that.

I'd guess that right now I'm probably in the 1200 to 1300 range on my best days. At least in Chessmaster 7000 I can consistently beat the personalities that are rated in the 1100 to 1200 range.

Explaination for non-chess geeks:
In Chess you are given a rating that is dertermined by your win-loss record against other players and what their ratings were. It's all rather wild and fluctuating at the lower levels.

A rating of 2000 to 2199 gets you the title of "Expert".
2200 to 2399 has the title "Master" and 2400 + is a "Senior Master". Titles like "GrandMaster" are honorific and are handed out by FIDE (the international Chess Federation).

Below 2000 there are the rest of us (93% of all players in tournaments are below the "expert" level). We're called "class players" because there are simply letter names to the varioius ranges:
Class A 1800-1999
Class B 1600-1799
Class C 1400-1599
Class D 1200-1399
Class E 1000-1199
Class F 800- 999
Class G 600- 799
Class H 400- 599
Class I 200- 399
Class J Under 200

If you know how the pieces move and have some basic talent (you can beat your little brother) and you don't call the Knight a "horsie" i.e. you're just the average guy on the street who "knows" how to play chess then you probably would have a rating of about 600 or so.

Also, the ratings are not linear. If you're a 600 player it's easy to improve your game by 100 points to 700. But if you're rated 2350 it's ridiculously difficult to gain 100 points to get to 2450. So being a 1200 player means I can beat most of the average players who play me, but I get totally spanked if I go to a chess club and play there. ;)


So much for chess geekdom. Come on folks, this is a party, grab a glass of wine and let us know what's new with you.

[inkedmn]

haven't been doing a whole lot, mainly just working and hanging out with my wife as much as i can. i'm pretty bummed because i only have dial-up internet access and a winmodem, so i haven't been using linux for the past couple months, but i should be getting an external modem i can use at some point soon.

i've been really lazy as far as, well, almost everything that isn't my marriage (which isn't entirely bad, i don't think), and i just can't seem to get the motivation to take care of the other things i have going on...

but life is grand, to be sure. no complaints here, i just need to get my *** in gear and start hacking :D

[nanode]

It's hurting my brain to think how long it must take to play 2000+ games of intense, competitve chess.

[klamath]

A rating of 2000 to 2199 gets you the title of "Expert".
2200 to 2399 has the title "Master" and 2400 + is a "Senior Master". Titles like "GrandMaster" are honorific and are handed out by FIDE (the international Chess Federation).

A couple of the guys at my high school are ~2300. :eek:

My guess would be I'm somewhere around 1200. I've never played in tournaments, so I'm not that good, but I can beat most of my friends.

OK, you chess geeks, Here ya go: Put your pieces on these squares:

Hmm... I looked at this for a while, but I couldn't come up with any ideas. Any clues? ;)

BTW, Dru -- do you get my reply? I haven't heard back from you yet...

[jemfinch]

Originally posted by Dru Lee Parsec:
Give me a buzz at DruLeeParsec@users.sourceforge.net


Done!


So, when you say you were pretty good at one point what was your rating? The highest I ever got was in the 1200's but that was only because I won a single game against a 1455. My rating immediatly dropped back down to more accurate numbers after that.


I only played in one tournament where I only played 4 games, so I really didn't
get a rating -- Even the USCF doesn't give provisional ratings to those with
only 4 games, but I think I did the calculations and was around 1200-1400.
That's not very accurate though.

I was the first board league champion my senior year, but since I went to a
public school in Ohio, that's not much to brag about. If you consider an
average public school chess team, I was almost certainly better than its
first board.

Jeremy

[Dru Lee Parsec]

Hmm... I looked at this for a while, but I couldn't come up with any ideas. Any clues?


It's an issue of mobility. If the Black Bishop moved to ANY other square then it would be mate in one. You must force the Black Bishop to move. But nothing can attack the bishop!? However, what if every black piece on the board was stalemated except for the bishop? Then the only move black could make would be to move the Bishop somewhere.


BTW, Dru -- do you get my reply? I haven't heard back from you yet...

Yes I did, I just havn't gotten around to responding yet. (Or did I? I seem to remember writing something about Kasparovchess.com) I logged onto Yahoo Games and there are tons of rooms for Chess games. Where do we meet and when?

DLP

[Dru Lee Parsec]

I was the first board league champion my senior year, but since I went to a
public school in Ohio, that's not much to brag about. If you consider an
average public school chess team, I was almost certainly better than its
first board.

Our first board (Edison High School, Huntington Beach Calif. Class of '77) was "D" [name withheld to protect the innocent]. "D" was the 18th highest rated master under the age of 21 in the country at the time. He was so good it was scary. Considering the amount of pot he smoked it's amazing he could play at all. (Hey, it was the 70's) ;)

I was board 4 of the "B" team. But our "A" team had one master, one expert and a couple of class "A" players so it was WAY out of my league.

"D" Story:

The school chess team wanted to go play in this tournament but we were all broke and didn't want to sell cookies door to door to raise money for the chess team (Hey! We still have SOME pride!) "D" found a tourney up in Lone Pine (about a 6 hour drive north of L.A.) He ditched school and bought a bus ticket to go to Lone Pine. He played speed chess for money to get cash for food and spent the night homeless in Lone Pine. He won his games and that got him the $600 prize money. He bought another bus ticket to get home and showed up Tuesday morning with the money to pay our entrance fees.

Totally cool or totally crazy? You decide. I can't imagine being so confident in my chess playing skills (and chess gambling skills) that I would buy a one way ticket to Lone Pine with my last dollar. And imagine sleeping in a park at night and being in good enough shape to still win all your games the next day!!?? Amazing.

[waxmop]

chess is cool. in junior high and high school i played pretty regularly and made an effort to study the game. i think i remember reading a lot horowitz books about strategy.

anyway, i started playing again recently and i realized the mental endurance just isn't there. now, if i play a real game, it's a serious hassle to focus that hard. i feel like an old boxer that's still fighting even though his body is over the hill.

what interests me now is AI in strategy games. it's more fun to try to write an AI script to beat the average player than to beat them myself.

or better than that, have my AI beat someone else's AI.

been working on some AI scripts for games that are simpler than chess. there's an african bead game called mankala and i've written a think() function that can consider strategy out to 3 moves. but it's sloppy code right now.

the project has taught me to appreciate recursive rather than iterative functions.

i'm thinking about putting up the work on mankala on sourceforge at some point and getting other people's insight into how to solve these problems.

have any of y'all ever worked on the knight problem?

[ 31 October 2001: Message edited by: waxmop ]

[scanez]

Ah chess, I remember chess. Played during high school. Ah, those were the days. The days when I was the best player in our region and our team won state my junior year only to have a tough season my senior year (I individually was rated 2nd that year in the state but had a few troublesome games so finished 6th at the individual state finals). The days when I ended my junior year rated 943 (this is Arizona high school rating, corresponds to around 2000-2050 USCF rating) and ended my senior year rated the exact same thing (highest I ever got to was 988). But senior wasn't all bad, I did win $1000+ in a few tournaments I played in so it was pretty cool.

But since then, I have not played at all. I just lost interest I guess...

...maybe some day the interest shall return
SC

[Dru Lee Parsec]

this is Arizona high school rating, corresponds to around 2000-2050 USCF rating

Wow! So you were playing in the low expert range? If so then you were in the top 10% of players in the country. Not bad.

So, if you could list the top 3 to 5 things that make a class player's game play different from an expert's game play what would you say they were? I'm interested because one of the books I'm reading is "The Amature Mind" which attempts to answer that very difficult question.

Thanks

[david]

Well, anyway, I haven't been hanging around this forum much at all. Not many PHP questions whenever I come around here.

I'm just a little(well, not really little. about 6', not TOO wiry) high school geek. no big career for me yet. but there's a nice job opening at the local CAP site(gov't funded public access internet type thing). $8/h, which is pretty good for a student job around here.

I'm now the drum major at my local sea cadet corps(the person with the mace(the big stick) that leads the band).

I never did get into chess. I like to play, but I doubt I could play any way competitivley.

[scanez]

Originally posted by Dru Lee Parsec:
<STRONG>
So, if you could list the top 3 to 5 things that make a class player's game play different from an expert's game play what would you say they were? I'm interested because one of the books I'm reading is "The Amature Mind" which attempts to answer that very difficult question.</STRONG>
You know. I really have no idea, lol. I wouldn't know what to say. Visualization skills would be a top one, like being able to see many moves ahead and see how certain positions could play out. Hmm, I don't know. But one thing I do know, no matter how good you are, luck comes into play a hell of a lot of the time :)

SC