Chess Log: Coming from Behind to a Knight Checkmate

It's been a long while since I posted one of my chess games on this blog. Years ago I switched from FICS to Lichess, and it took me this long to figure out how to cut and paste the moves from a Lichess game. 

And even now it's somewhat difficult, because this cut and paste results in a continuous stream of numbers and letters with no spaces and no periods. Spaces and periods are important sometimes. I had to put them all back in manually. 

There may well be a much easier way to do this, and I may eventually find it. People ask about this in the discussions on Lichess, and the answers typically contain 5 words of IT jargon in every 10 words. Eh. Anyway, on to the game. 5-0 blitz, I played White:

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. O-O Bc5 6. c3 O-O 7. b4 Bb6 8. Bb3 h6 9. h3 d6 10. a4 Be6 11. Bxe6 fxe6 12. Qb3 Qe7 13. Nh4 Nxe4 14. Nf5 Qd7 15. Ng3 Nxg3 16. Kh2 Nxf1+ 17. Kg1 Rxf2 18. d4 Nxd4 19. Qc4 Ne2+ 20. Kh1 Nfg3+ 21. Kh2 Rf1 22. Qxe2 Bg1+ 23. Kxg3 Rxc1 24. Qd2 Rf1 25. c4 Rf2 26. Qe1 Qf7 27. Qxg1 Qg6+ 28. Kxf2 Rf8+ 29. Ke2 Qe4+ 30.Qe3 Qxc4+ 31. Qd3 Qxd3+ 32.Kxd3 Rf2 33.Nc3 Rxg2 34. Ne4 Rh2 35.b5 Rxh3+ 36. Ke2 d5 37. Nf2 Rh2 38. Kf3 g5 39.bxa6 bxa6 40. Rb1 Kg7 41.Rb7 Kf6 42. Rxc7 Rh1 43.Nxh1 e4+ 44.Ke3 Ke5 45.Ng3 d4+ 46. Ke2 g4 47. Rc5+Kf4 48. Nh5#

Another come-from-behind win for me, another illustration of why you shouldn't resign unless you and your opponent are both rated much higher than I am. And even if you don't win as I did here, the experience of fighting every move to the end is educational. 

And earlier on this bog I said that, unlike fictional depictions of chess in movies and TV, only very low-level players don't see checkmate coming on the very next move. I need to qualify that. This changes, of course, when a player is under time pressure. I don't remember how much time I had left at the end of this game, but my opponent was under 10 seconds and I was moving as fast as I could, and I wasn't sure whether the last move was checkmate. 

It has recently become more clear to me how powerful a line of Pawns on the same rank can be. I first noticed this technique about 12 years ago in a chess club, watching a chess Master destroy all comers and frequently lining up two, or three, or four Pawns next to each other on the same rank to extremely good effect. 

A mere 12 years or so later, and it occurred to me that I, too, might be able to use this technique. I'm becoming a better chess player. Very, very, very gradually.

Anyway, in this game, I was down severely, but didn't give up, and my opponent may have become overconfident toward the end. This allowed me to trap his King with a Pawn wall on one side and checkmate him with my Knight from the other side.

Statistics About Electric Vehicles

The problem is, you don't always know what they mean. 

California has registered over one million EV's. First and foremost, I want to say that this is tremendously good news. And secondly, I want to acknowledge that it's possible that I'm the only one who doesn't know exactly what "EV's" means in this context. 

Possible, but it seems very unlikely. And it's not just this story. People say that so and so many EV's have been sold in this time frame in this place, and very often, the meaning of "EV" is not clearly specified.

The most common confusion is whether PHEV's are being counted along with BEV's. 

But that's not all. In case of the one-million-EV milestone in California: and just let me repeat: I think it's great, no matter what "EV" means exactly -- I don't know whether we're talking about cars,vans and light-duty trucks only, or whether we're talking about cars, vans and light-duty trucks, and also electric public-transportation buses, and private buses (think music superstars on tour), and delivery trucks and other large trucks, and electric earth-movers and farm equipment, and electric motorcycles and scooters (stand up scooters as well as sit-down scooters) and power assisted bicycles and electric unicycles. Yes, electric unicycles are a thing. 

If you added up all of those other categories besides car, vans and trucks -- all of the categories besides personal-use 4-wheel electric vehicles -- would it add up to enough to change the number significantly? I don't know. 

I know that the pollution avoided with an electric bus is much more than that avoided with an electric car. How much more? I don't know that either. 

And I don't know who knows these things, I don't know where to get this information. It would be nice to know.

Dream Log: Difficulties in Communication on a University Campus

 Last night, as I have many times before, I dreamed I was wandering across a university campus. 

In this dream, I was trying to find my way somewhere. Where, wasn't exactly clear. Maybe back home, maybe to someone else's home, maybe just to somewhere familiar, where I had my bearings again. I was about to say that the university looked unrealistic. But I haven't spent much time on university campuses lately, so for all I know, many of them may have come to look this way, with most of the buildings glass-walled, 

 

with much space devoted to huge indoor lounges where students energetically socialized. I walked and walked, in and out of the buildings. Repeatedly I got too cold, then comfortable again, because, in real life, I was slipping out from underneath the covers, and then getting under them again.

Although I was lost, and there were throngs of students all around, I didn't ask anyone for directions. In fact, I didn't speak at all. I was concerned that my absolute muteness might make me seem even more strange to these young people than I already did. But I worried that if I said something, I might make things even worse. And I was finding it very hard to get a feel for how these young people thought. I was worried that they might be somewhat right-wing. I was worried that they might not wish me well.

At one end of one of these glass-walled buildings, a bank of monitors and consoles rose well over ten feet high. I couldn't figure out how to work any of it. And I looked at the videos playing silently on the many monitors, looking for a clue to the students' orientation, and/or the orientation of other people who might be trying to shape their minds. I couldn't tell whether there were ports somewhere, where the students could pay, or scan their ID's, for greater levels of access. 

After a while I turned away from this wall, about as clueless as when I had gotten there.

I saw that PC's were wired to tables throughout the building. There didn't seem to be any charge or ID verification to use them. I was almost broke, and didn't want to spend money on a computer session which I might soon need very badly for a sandwich. 

I sat at a table next to a PC and fumbled through some videos, uncomprehending. A cheerful-seeming young man leaned over me and pressed the lower Left hand corner of the screen of the computer I was using, several times. It seemed to work like changing channels on a TV. 

My first reaction was anger, taking the young man's action as aggressive and/or disrespectful. But then I noticed that I was suddenly much better able to understand the video content on my PC, and that it was politically progressive. I nodded in silent thanks to the young man. He certainly seemed to be progressive, and perhaps he wasn't alone in that. I suddenly felt much safer. I felt on the verge of speaking, and explaining my situation. It was around then that I woke up.

Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor

Rudolf II continues to grow more interesting to me personally.

I have mentioned the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II on this blog before, who reigned from 1576 to 1612, welcomed both Protestants and Catholics at his court in a time when tension was high between denominations in most parts of western Europe, and named Ulrich Bollinger to be an Imperial poet laureate.

Recently I found out -- and it didn't surprise me at all -- that many of the leading clockmakers of the time worked in Prague, where Rudolf's court was. It fits in with Rudolf's fascination with whatever was new, strange and clever.

Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler -- you've heard of them, I'm sure -- were there too, and there was a certain amount of fruitful interaction between the astronomers and the timekeepers. When Brahe first arrived at Rudolf's court, the two of them spoke for a long time alone. A monarch and a mere lowly scientist, speaking with no one else around: that was very unusual at that time, for any monarch, let alone the Emperor. But Rudolf was very unusual.

So, anyway, leading clockmakers were at Rudolf's court -- and some of them were also attempting to make perpetual motion machines -- and this was the right time for them to be making early watches, also. Watches go back to before 1550. I don't know whether any watches were made at Rudolf's court or nearby in Prague. And it may possibly be hard to find out for sure, because Rudolf's collections were plundered by the Queen of Sweden around 1645, and many objects got lost that way. It's shame, because everyone at the time agreed that Rudolf had put together a very remarkable collection of art, books, machines (including clocks and possibly watches), etc.

One of my sources of information about these sorts of things is the book Rudolf II and his World, by RJW Evans. It came out in the 1970's, and, unusually for its time, Evans, when quoting things which were written in Rudolf's time, left a lot of German and Latin untranslated. My kind of guy, my kind of book. Most historians writing for English audiences in the late 20th century or later, no matter how snooty they are, would either translate everything into English, or cite the original German and Latin and follow it immediately with an English translation. But Professor Evans just assumes -- correctly, in my case -- that he doesn't need to translate the German and Latin. He does translate the Czech and Hungarian and other languages.

You see, there are a few other people like me.