One of my (many) chess sets

A lot of people collect things-- stamps, coins, baseball cards, cars, debts, stocks, socks... you name it, most likely someone, somewhere collects it. I made a decision a long time ago that I would collect chess sets.

Now, I also like building and making things (part of the reason I am an engineer...). So, obviously, it was inevitable that I would make at least one chess set. Browsing the internet, I'd come across a few different "nuts and bolts" chess sets, but they all seemed like they compromised in some way. Usually, there were a few pieces that seemed like quite a stretch interpretively. Or maybe a piece seemed stretched literally; there's a normal sort of height pattern for pieces in relation to one another, and a lot of the hardware piece sets didn't do a good job of following that.

So I set out to make my own, better "nuts and bolts" chess set. As with any good design project, I started out by defining the requirements:

• The chess pieces will conform to standard chess piece height conventions (more on this at the bottom)
• The chess pieces will conform to key chess piece features (it should be obvious what each piece is)
• The chess pieces will be made of unaltered hardware (with the allowable exception of cutting all-thread to length)
• The chess pieces will be disassembly-friendly.
• The chess pieces will use no glues, welding, or solder.
• The two sides will be differentiable without using paint.

The results are below in the picture and slide show.

From hardware set

Turn on the comments for the slide show to see some of the details of making each piece. A list of the parts used is available here.

For the interested: My rant on chess sets

There is a certain order to chess sets which dramatically helps with recognizing pieces and gives a sort of creative framework which I find very appealing. I'm much, much less inclined to play/purchase a set which breaks these 'norms.'

I think one of the most salient features of a good chess set is that the pieces conform to a given height scheme: the pawns should be short and about half the height of the king/queen. The rooks (castles) should be the second shortest. The knights and bishops can be approximately the same height, but if one is taller, it should be the bishop. The king and queen should be approximately the same height, with possibly a top point of a king's crown taller than the queen.

A classic indicator of the king is a cross topping his crown. (I'm particularly proud of the fact that my hardware kings are phillips head screws, and thereby are topped with a cross.... sneaky...).  A classic indicator of the queen is a many-pointed crown.  The only piece which is never radially symmetric is the knight; most of the time the others will be radially symmetric. In the case that a set is actually representing people with faces, this radial symmetry can be neglected in favor of more sculptured people.

 If you want to see the other chess sets in my collection (minus a few recent ones) you can see them here.

From chess pictures

DiscWorld

In my lifelong quest to continue to do fun things and collect nerd/geek cred, I recently was introduced to Terry Pratchet's fantastical DiscWorld series. It's one of the few fiction works that I've read recently, and I enjoyed its snarky commentary on human nature.

I have found that the fiction works that I do actually enjoy tend to be ones with grand orchestrations behind them. Virtual worlds that have so much background and context that it's like a masterpiece painting. I tend not to enjoy fiction works that are just 'normal.' If it's set in the past, then I think I have trouble allowing for that strange combination of the real and the imaginary. If it's a poor work in an imaginary setting, I tend to feel like I'm missing parts of the world. But stories with a map, with a culture, with a context... those have more promise.

(Narnia, LOTR, star wars, etc.)

I guess, in summary, there's more to a story than the story.

an idea for a product

I like to hang out around www.makezine.com in part because of the fun, adventuresome attitude that they have, in part because of their recycling sorta mindset, and in part because they have great content, and in part because they have an awesome motto:

"Void your warranty, violate a user agreement, fry a circuit, blow a fuse, poke an eye out. Make: The risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things... Welcome to Make: Online! "

But anyway, one day while I was hanging out there, I got this idea. There are radio/ infrared systems that digitize a pen input from a normal whiteboard, but they require a big system of sensors stuck to the board, or special pens, etc. Probably the best, most widely known system like this is called a smartboard and pairs special pens for location awareness and a projector for live ink.

However, I have often wondered about being able to use an existing surface with a minimum of equipment to provide a touch input area... like for instance, take a real desk and section off an area to use for touch input. A microprojector could even be used. (There are now cameras that come with microprojectors to use for photo viewing). The core technology would be pretty heavy on the processing side, since it would use small piezo condenser mics to listen for taps on the surface, and then compare relative times for the sound to travel to pinpoint the touch location. Sound travels much quicker (and usually better) through solids than through air, so ambient noise shouldn't overwhelm it. I really think it might be able to work. It'd be lots of fun to try.

and no, I haven't done a patent search.

Thanksgiving - it's a wrap!

oh wow. Thankgiving went amazing well.

We ended up with I think it was 18-21 ppl, depending on if you count total who came at some point, those who came late, max at one time, etc. I borrowed two tables, and had some great help in setting everything up. It turns out that there isn't really any way to get thanksgiving decorations here, but I used a silver tablecloth with a sorta leafy orange lace-like runner that matched the Solo plates.

Here's the menu:
Appetizers:
vegetable tray with dip by Mordecai
deviled eggs by Daniel
pumpkin bread by Mordecai
(with optional vanilla ginger cream cheese spread)

Main Course: Oven roasted Turkey
Sides:
bread with butter or margarine by Oleg
corn by Anna
cauliflower by Melanie
green bean casserole by Mordecai
sweet potato deliciousness by Emma
deluxe mashed potatoes by Anna Maria
Dairy-free mashed potatoes by Josh
gravy by Mordecai
stuffing by Dahvyd
cranberry jello by Mordecai

Desserts:
dairy-free apple pie
regular apple pie
2 pumpkin pies with whipped cream topping
crepes by Erdos brothers
Ice cream by Stefan


Drinks:
Spiced hot cider by Josh
Water by Artyom
beer by Christoph
Sprite and Diet Sprite by Ricardo
French Wine by Gael
Israeli Wine by Friend of Emma and Shachar whose name I forget

The pumpkin pies were mediocre, partly because I don't own a blender to puree the pumpkin properly and partly because the only pumpkin you can buy here is the big white kind already cut up, which don't make as good of a pie as the small sugar pumpkin ones.

Also, I forgot to put out the cranberry jello, and almost forgot to put out the green bean casserole.
The green bean casserole was a struggle, since you can't buy condensed cream of mushroom soup here, and you can't buy frenches fried onions, and I don't like frying onions because it's hot and boring and uses a lot of oil. But I managed to make my own cream of mushroom soup from scratch, and then used some yellow bread crumbs and a paprika blend and some unseasoned fried onions to put together a crumb topping that matched the tastes of frenchs surprisingly well.

We started off at the table with a sheet of paper instead of a plate. Then, because this was the first thanksgiving for many of the attendees (it was a mix of europeans, israelis and americans), I wanted them to have the full experience, so we began by drawing a hand-turkey, and then turned the paper over to play a sorta scategories-style thankfullness game, where everyone wrote down 3 things they were thankful for, and then we went around the table, reading them off and if more than one person had the same thing on the list, it didn't count. Obviously, with only 3 item list, like half the people won, but it wasn't really for the game anyway. (Plus I joked during the scoring that winning meant you got to clean up.... so lots of people winning was in my favor.)

I baked the pies and the turkey in this kinda stand-alone toaster oven/real oven hybrid that did surprisingly well. (Though it's pretty easy to shock the temperature, unfortunately, causing the cookies I tried to make a while ago to fail pretty miserably.)

The thanksgiving party was an incredible success, though. I did a few things right, kinda on accident. One was that I had the food not on the main tables, so there was room for people. The other was that because the attendee list started at 13 ppl, and grew, I had purchased an extra turkey breast and roasted that by itself in a second smaller toaster oven. it was really easy to carve, and so I had a nice platter of meat that was read to eat, and still had the whole bird that people could see and that I could carve table-side.

The party went from 7 pm to about 1:30. Then I called my parents back in the states, and found out that I had had a bigger thanksgiving here than they had there. Thanksgiving here would have been impossible without the great help of the people who came and pitched in with side dishes, especially since I only had 2 gas burners and one medium toaster/real oven and 1 tiny toaster oven to do my cooking.

My favorite quote from the night was when my housemate Oleg, who is a materials science guy, looked at my fancy shiny plastic fork that had broken and after a few moments said "Bad metallurgy."

generic

While I was packing for Israel, I came across an old notebook from the seventh grade (so I was 13). It had a selection of those really lame writing assignments from a general prompt. I was feeling sorta nostalgic, so I decided to bring it along, in case I needed something to write about on my blog, I could always pull one out and post it.
I have decided to do just that. But first, a quick update. I went to a concert downtown on Monday night by the Jerusalem symphony orchestra w/ some other choral group, and it was pretty incredible. Hayden's symphony #24, and then 2 latin masses w/ the kyrie, gloria, credo, benedictus and angus dei. Since I got the ticket for about $5, I didn't feel so bad buying a piece of cheesecake for $2 at the little coffee bar outside the theatre where the concert was. It was rather unimpressive cheesecake.
Two nights later, I made some cheesecake which was ... well... perfect. astoundingly lovely and soooo deliciously smooth. Perfectly uniform and without visual flaw. There's some pictures on facebook.

In other food news, I'm planning a thanksgiving dinner here for some of the americans and some of the internationals who are interested. It's gonna be awesome. I have a turkey ordered, and did a warm-up chicken this last week. (which was perfect, because I made some chicken noodle soup then, and had it handy when a housemate got sick this weekend).

Back to the blast from the past, though...

"Me, in a nutshell"
"I am smart, annoying (sometimes) and a little overweight. I enjoy reading immensly anything I can learn from, I also enjoy chess and tennis. My church family and real family are important to me. Right now, I am involved in Bible quizzing."
--by Mordecai Veldt, age 13

Just for good measure, here's another choice selection:

"How do you think that you would respond in an emergency?"
"I'm not sure, but I think that I would do okay. I am usually either very logical or very... strange.
In an emergency, I believe that the logical midset would kick in, and that I would be able to handle the given situation"
--by Mordecai Veldt, age 13

Another good day

So, with no classes, I still managed to have a pretty good day yesterday:

well I woke up late (which ended up working out ok).

took a walk

got some old tennis balls from the sports center and put them on my chair legs so it doesn't make horendous noises when I move

read most of a book

sat by a tiny pond covered in lillypads and cattails under a grape vine arbor

took another walk

ate dark chocolate

explored some academic buildings

explored some abandoned buildings

fixed a toaster

played knockout with friends.

Tomorrow: start the day off with a swim, then read, then clean the floor, maybe fix a fan, and frisbee!