The Immortal Game

I'd like to highly recommend the book I'm finishing right now: The Immortal Game - a History of Chess, by David Shenk.

No, you don't need to love chess to admire this book. You don't even have to know how to play it. The author traces the long (over 1500 years) history of chess and analyzes its impacts on the way we think, plan, strategize and abstract the real world.

His main question is: how could 32 carved pieces, on a 64 square board have so much impact on human intelligence? While tackling this question, Shenk covers other issues, such as:

• Does chess really help in planning and executing real war strategies?
• Why are so many chess grandmasters driven to mental illness?
• Why was chess used as a propaganda tool by dictatorial regimes?
• Does the child "chess prodigy" really exist, or is it just hard work mixed with myth?

Throughout the book, the readers will follow one particular intriguing game of chess. A practice game, held in a cafe in London between 2 European grandmasters in 1861. No one attributed any importance to this unofficial bout, but it later entered the annals of chess as the last great classical chess game - the "Immortal Game".

Along the way, the book managed to rekindle my interest in chess, history, religion and the human psyche. Give it a try and you won't regret it. A link can be found on the left - as always.

Goating

One thing I was taught early on, when I started working with sensitive material: when you get up, even to get a cup of water, you lock your terminal. The enemy is always around.

Usually, it's no biggie: with Windows, you just click the Windows Key + L and the OS is locked (similarly, if you're an aspiring pianist, you may go for ctrl + alt + del and then click "Lock Computer"). But sometimes you forget. And if you forgot in a room full of tech people, as once happened to me, you pay the price.

One colleague (I now know who) opened my mail program, and wrote an email (full of BS) to our CEO. He left the mouse hovering over the "Send" button. Luckily he didn't click it - and neither did I

I've learned my lesson, but many people around the world haven't yet. And their "friendly" colleagues are there to remind them. The art of mucking up a person's workstation in his absence is called "Goating" - because originally people would put a picture of a goat on your screen while you were away (don't ask me why).

It has advanced a bit over the years. Other than changing your background, fonts, language, send emails to distribution lists etc., some people resort to smarter tricks. Such as replacing your desktop with a picture of your desktop (minutes of fun to watch), or invoking Clippy, the annoying Microsoft "helper".

Read and get some more ideas here. And don't get near my laptop!

Search for Faces on Google Images

I've used Google Images many times, to find images that would suit my posts. But I never knew that there is an extra, undocumented parameter, that can make my search easier and more precise.

The parameter is imgtype and it takes 2 values: news and face. I'll let the images do the talking.

Here's what you get when your search term is "gates":
You can see good old Bill, whose image I was looking for, appears the first time at the 13th place, after various gates.

Here's what you get when you add &imgtype=face at the end of the URL:

Clearly we're getting somewhere here - with more people pictures than abstract gates.

Now, when you use &imgtype=news, you get this:


Now you get pictures of Robert Gates, the US Secretary of Defense, who's been in the spotlight lately.

Why not give it a try? Search Google Images

AllFacesNews

Where Was I? Oh, Yeah...

Call it a combination of lack of time and laziness, but I haven't blogged at all last week.

I spent Thanksgiving in NYC and continued to Boston from there. I can say one thing for certain: if I hear "Silent Night" one more time, I will go postal .

So here are some New York vignettes to warm your cold nights:

1. Everyone got upset that the mayor of NY pushed the lighting of the Christmas tree one week, to "conserve energy" (he can conserve more if he pushes it to next year, in my humble opinion ). Furthermore, the tree this year will be decorated with LED light bulbs.
   
   
2. Apparently, the NYPD is running out of recruits, seeing as how they have Spongebob direct traffic:
   
   
3. A long line went around the block, to get into the Abercombie & Fitch store on 5th avenue. While I was pondering who are those idiots and what are they waiting for, I heard from behind me "Sweet! This is a genius business plan! Let only 4 people in the store at a time: create a line outside and more pressure on the people inside to buy!" - 3 young MBA students (one can only assume) appreciated the situation for me.
   
   
4. Central Park looks A-M-A-Z-I-N-G in the fall. If I were more of a photography enthusiast (which, by judging my photos so far, you can clearly see I'm not), I could have spent an entire day there.
   
   One tidbit: a bum, lying on the floor and shouting at shoppers with bags full of whatever: "Hey, give me some money! You clearly don't need it, but I do!".
   
   
5. One more thing I've learned this week: don't trust United Airlines. When they tell you a flight from Boston to San Francisco is "direct", they don't necessarily mean "non-stop". As I found this week, not only can they include stops, but they can charge you extra to change back to a "direct, non-stop" flight. Boo

That's it, now back to tech tips, news etc. The rest of the photos can be viewed here.

Drive Halo's Warthog

I'm not the one to post motor news. I was never taken with cars. To me they are just a way to get from A to B faster. I could care less for horse powers, turbos, and hood ornaments.

But this was too good to let it go. Chrysler just published its concept for a new vehicle called the Jeep Renegade 2008. It's supposed to combine an electric and diesel engines and achieve a maximum speed of 110 MPG. So far, I could care less, but then I saw the concept drawing:
And this threw me immediately into the world of Halo, the Xbox 360 game I'm playing right now. You see, the game's protagonist, the Master Chief, gets around the map on a vehicle dubbed "the Warthog" that looks like this:


Am I the only one seeing the similarities, or have the Chrysler designers came up with this design during an evening of hot, hard multiplayer action?

PS: as far as I know, Chrysler does not offer a Gatling gun as an option with the Renegade. But who knows? if enough people ask for it... Could be a great way to clear a traffic jam .