Taylor Clan

Just a few thoughts on learning chess.

First, start with the end game, not the opening. Learn how to finish the game and close out the opponent before learning strategic openings. Save opening study for much further down the line. We could talk more about why this is critically important if you want. But, don’t study strategy or openings yet. Study tactics, end games, and “winning chess” theory. Examples are tempo control, piece development, piece movement, piece value theory, etc.I recommend everyone start with the book from Pandolfini, “Pandolfini’s Ultimate Guide to Chess”. This hits all beginner and mid level tactics.

Next, for the end game study, work through Bobby Fisher’s end game training with the book, “Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess”.http://www.amazon.com/Bobby-Fischer-Teaches-Chess/dp/0553263153

Then, follow up with the obscure book, “Winning Chess Traps”.http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Traps-Irving-Chernev/dp/0679140379

I also recommend purchasing very solid Chessmaster 10th Edition, Deluxe version. It’s not a strong chess engine, but is very good for beginners. It has walk through tutorials that are very, very good. It also gives you the ability to play against opponents of the same level so you don’t feel overwhelmed.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chessmaster

Once you get really good, you can step up to a worthy computer opponent with Fritz. Fritz has even defeated Chess Grandmasters. Very solid. But, it’s tutorials and entry level play are not even usable.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Fritz

Great site here.

I just got a rubber protection cover for my iPod Video 30GB. Very cool one from iFrogz. Check em out.

I’ve been experimenting with HDR. I have a Canon Digital Rebel XT shooting in RAW. Still unable to get a great subject for testing. How do people find such great locations? Example:

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=4920356 

I like the wikipedia HDR summary. Just haven’t had a lot of luck with getting one to turn out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_dynamic_range_imaging

I’ve done a couple of video editing projects now.

I started out with a video capture board from Pinnacle Systems. The board came with version 9. After banging my head against the wall for a while, I decided to try out other products.

Next, I tried Nero’s  Ultra 7 Suite’s products. Ugh. There were a lot of very clunky steps. While the products were very good and easy to use for some things, the video editing was terrible. Very simple things were straight forward, but I needed some advanced features and found this product to be unusable for even the most simple editing.

I also figured out, at this time, to switch to digital video and go firewire. I abandoned the analog capture board and bought a high end Firewire board. I also switched to a decent 3CCD prosumer digital camera and ditched my old Hi8.

Next, I decided to stop playing with toys, and upgrade to the “standard” prosumer product, Adobe’s Premiere line. I started with the Premiere Elements and then upgraded to the full version. At first, I thought the product was pretty good. Quickly, after spending time, I realized how unstable and incomplete the product line was. I had multiple things, like Firewire image capture, which was just plain painful.

I thought my discomfort may have been a problem from using a high end product, when I’m not a video professional. I went back and retried Pinnacle Systems, version 10. It wasn’t much better than the first time I used the products.

I tried one more product, Sony’s Vegas Movie Studio Platinum. Wow. Finally a non-linear editor with a decent capture tool. And, with the studio, it came with Sony’s DVD Architect product. I had an end to end suite where the products didn’t suck. The tools have the features I want, a simple interface, and some of the advanced features all bundled in and still accessible.
That was my experience. What tools do you use?

No reason to put new images up. The final one is the same as my last one. But, it’s finally complete.

Well, I’m making more progress. Here’s where I’m at for now. I had to clamp and drill the pilot holes for the neck to attach to the body. Talk about spooked. I was worried I would royally mess up at this point.

Then came the wiring. I was really not very happy with how fast my soldering skills have deteriorated.

After all those, it’s getting close. I mounted most of the hardware and even put some strings on temporarily. Now for the painstaking finishing details…

Well, I’m finally making progress on my guitar woodworking project. After the body and neck were prepped, I finished by staining the body with a minwax wood finish. Then, I used a minwax polyurethane on the neck. So far, the most time consuming part has been the planning and the sanding.

Lately I’ve been suffering from the CrackBerry addiction. The instant and always on is starting to take it’s toll. While I’ve been relooking at things, a friend of mine forwarded an interesting article. Check out the 4 hour work week and crackberry summary:

 http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/24/marijuana-trumps-blackberries-for-productivity-and-amazon-challenge/

 Wow. I ran across this set of examples for CSS menus. Truly amazing. I’ve been thinking about how to make my site better and really like these. At some point, I may get this integrated. I really like the 7th example.

CSS Menu Examples

http://www.roscripts.com/8_web_menus_you_just_can’t_miss-116.html