Alejo's Tenuki

We'll have to wait for the old posts to dissappear in order to check the speed increase; on the meanwhile, I'll just tell you that the whole board image fromo my previous post occupied 140k on blogger, now its size is only 22k.

There is one more thing: old posts are a bit messy, their alignement has been missed and I'll have to fix a few things, but they are still as useful as they were two weeks ago.

Recently I decided to buy a new pendrive to carry job stuff more easily. But, since there was a special price for a 2 Gb Kingston unit, there is plenty of space for other things and, of course, for Go.

My super-mobile study equipment is formed by:
-Gnugo 3.6
-Ggo,
on a simple java version on a single file, which performs nicely all the basic desirably features. It doesn't need to be installed and can run directly from the external unit.
-Bruce Wilcox Go dojo.
-Books (not gonna tell you which ones).
-My games.
-A couple of hundreds of games from go teaching ladder.

I'm thinking of adding kombilo... but I don't know on which computers I'll find myself and I don't really know if it can be played directly from the external unit.

The only requirements here are: java, windows system (or wine installed on unix systems) and acrobat reader (just for the books).


Kisei 2007: 4th game

On 22nd February started the game, there is a nice battle going on the middle of the board. It'll continue tomorrow.
Check it on: Kisei 2007 - 361points

Due to the commentaries on this game I read at GoDiscussions, I decided to purchase it just before leaving to London.

I'm not going to make a review of it since it isn't freely distributed.

I just finished a game against a 10k and I won, so it seems that my strength hasn't lowered too much during my holidays.


Blog's speed

I've been analysing my blog through some websites, and I've found that it takes around one minute to load on a 56k connections. The consecuence of this is that the page fails to load. From now on, I'll try to use smaller images, with low quality and see if I can make it a little bit more comfortable for users without broad-band internet connection.
The number of posts of the homepage of the site has also been reduced from 10 to 4. The archive has been enabled in order to keep it easy to find the articles on the site.

Q: How many 30-kyus does it take to change a light bulb?
A: They can't do it, because they don't see the ladder.

Q: How many 2-dans does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Their positions are so light, that they don't need light bulbs.

Q: How many 9-dans does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Their positions are so influential that other people change the bulbs for them

Last friday was a profitable intensive Go session: once again, after black ignoring my double-side approach to his 4-4 stone, I was given a familiar situation while playing as white..


There was something pumping in my head: ... this 6 space on the corner... he has to make two eyes... hey... that's familiar... I've seen this somewhere else... where?... there was something wrong with it...

... Black dies!!! The L shape dies!!!!

So you can guess the continuation. As you can see, this is a sort of L shape on the corner, and, by definition, the L shape is dead. There isn't a way to save it if white player plays properly. Here I let you try, there are only some black moves added and their respective white answers, in all cases black dies.
If it stops on "loading" it's because of the hosting service


These are some of the basic shapes which players have to learn to recognise, you'll find a deeper study and other shapes on the respective Sensei's section: Life and Death on Corner shapes. They appear from time to time on games, so it's better to recognise them and know the continuations to avoid what happened to me: I lost a couple of minutes reading the problem and re-reading it just-in-case I was mistaken.


Heading to London

On Wednesday 14th and for the first time in my life, I'll take a plane to London. I always wanted to go to England's main city, visit the British museum, lose myself in the Soho streets, Camdentown's market, speak with English-natives...
Where do you recommend me to go, related to Go? Go clubs?

Meanwhile don't expect me to post here, I hope you understand it, but I'll leave
the comments "open" for anyone, so that you can post what you want. I'll delete what I dislike when I come back (spam and such things).

The comeback will be on Sunday evening, wait for my return!!