MindTripper

... a real one this time (ie: not software)! It has wizards for the bishops, dragons (each with dragon eggs) for the knights. The rooks are thin, tall model castles. The pawns are trolls on one side, and crouching gargoyles with clubs on the other. The two kings and queens are beautiful too.

I bought it about a year ago although I never played chess at the time. I actually decided against buying it when I first saw it in the shop window. Then I spent the night regretting that & woke up still thinking about it. I phoned the shop to check that there were still some available, went straight out & bought it.

At the time I ached to use it. I bought 3 books about chess intending to study the game but found that lack of time prevented me from following the interest then. After a few weeks without any follow up the urge faded. I felt saddened by that as I believe in following strong passions toward things – I find I learn a lot when I’m driven.

That chess set has been on display in my home ever since, though sadly never used for an actual game. With my newly re-awoken interest in the game I’m hoping that my chess set will at last be used! :)

... though until very recently it was in the “one day I will” category. I’ve known the basic rules of chess since I was a child & I played some games then but never really got into it. As an adult that seems to surprise a lot of people as, so they say, “but you are just that sort of person…”

About a week ago, inspired by a chess-loving friend of mine, I decided that now was the time. I searched online and found Chessmaster Challenge, though it was only a 60 minute demo. Never the less it was exactly what I was after & I loved it. I wanted more. I found that by downloading that software from different places I could have more 60 minute demos!

I was on my fourth time through the Chessmaster Challenge demo when I happened, for other reasons, to visit PC World & found a chess program, apparently different, and bought it (Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition). It turned out to be the same software but with a lot of extra stuff than the online edition contained.

I am totally hooked. I’m working through the tutorials and doing the chess puzzles in the software. I love the puzzles more than the full games at the moment. The puzzles involve a chessboard with a game at some point during play. You are instructed to, for example, get checkmate in 2 moves, or recognise & avoid the imminent checkmate, and so on. There are also lots of exercises in the tutorials to practice attacking, defending, seeing ahead, starting the game, and so on.

Is this the start of a new, lifelong hobby? Maybe. Right now it feels that way. :)

... with hard drives full of stuff I wanted to keep. The tricky thing about doing this is that old PCs with their RS232 serial ports, internal IDE drive connectors, and total lack of USB ports are not very connectable to modern PCs (with their lack of RS232 ports and their SATA internal drive connectors).

One old PC was working just fine, though 10 years old so very slow & limited. With the help of a USB add-on card (bought for other reasons a while ago) & a 2Gb flash drive I transfered the entire contents onto the hard drive on my new PC.

The second old PC was a lot more tricky because it has a totally broken, kaput, non-functioning, dead motherboard after suffering from a severe case of IBM PC leaky capacitor syndrome a few years ago. I didn’t know whether its drive was still ok but wanted to check it out. I managed that with the help of an external IDE hard drive cradle (borrowed from work). That little device was a wonderful thing. I just removed the old hard drive from the broken PC, plugged it into the cradle, plugged the cradle into my new PC via USB and (Awesome!!) I could use that old hard drive just as though it was internal to my new PC.

That old drive was completely intact and it was great seeing all the things I thought I’d lost when the motherboard went down – old pics, emails, music, and lots more. It all transfered over like a dream.

And all of this has hardly made a difference to the free space available on my new PCs hard drive. It put me in mind of a phrase my father used to use… “Like a spit in the ocean”!!