Hugo Estrada's House of Wonder

This is a short, quick reaction to Shirky's post.

I agree with a lot of what Shirky says.

We just got to be careful about fully embracing the idea of simple beating complex. Small beating big has always had a great appeal to us humans, and the motif occurs a lot in ancient literature. This should make us even more careful about it because it has a romantic appeal to us.

And it can lead to some strange ideas, such as those of Microsoft when claiming their precarious business situation since they are threaten by Linux. If we start counting, Microsoft has been on the verge of collapsed threaten by little Linux for almost 20 years.

The reality is that big and complex has a strong advantage called money. And tons of it. They could make bonfires with it at their corporate camp retreats to sing around it and roast marshmallows without hurting.

And they can use this money to eradicate the competition through buyouts or just war prices. Even for quick radical internet start ups, the "live happily ever after" lines is "they got bought up by Google."

And even though some big. complex civilizations did go under, it took a mighty long time for many of them to do so. The Roman empire was very complex, and it managed to survive for about 500 to 1500 years, depending on how you count it.

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/04/the-collapse-of-complex-business-mo...

Well, I have finally enabled comments on the site. Although this is not entirely true: only new content will be have comments. I will see how good the anti-spam module is for a few weeks, and then I may figure out how to turn comments on every page.

My plan with chess was to play a game a week seriously in real time. Well, I kept putting that off, which means that I really didn't want to do it.

Well, it seems that chess means a lot more to me than I previously thought. And I do have to state that chess has helped me during the hardest times in my life. In any case, it seems that chess is very serious for me, so serious that it is even worthy to procrastinate an actual game.

Okay, if there is an uber-silly goal, is to become a chess master. Now, since I am more modest, I would be very happy if I can become a chess expert... and even that is pretty amazing.

After reading the talent code, I realized that the treasured chess book,
Comprehensive Chess Course, Lev Alburt, a chess-specific application of deep practice developed in the Soviet Union, could help me attain at least the goals that the book promises to deliver: take a serious student to Level A. This is actually my true goal, but hopefully I can move from there to expert level [:)]

Over the years the problems that I have had applying the lessons of the book have been that I have resisted memorizing the board, which is something that Alburt insists that it is important. I still don't understand why, but I decided to give it a serious try. Guess what? It took me about 8 hours of serious practice over a week to memorize the board. I could have done this 9 years ago.

Also, another problem of mine, is that I won't go over the board after a game. This is a problem because I don't learn from my mistake. I only learn from the overly bad mistakes, the ones that you get the instant pain from. But the more fruitful ones are the ones that one gets by going over a game and figuring out what is wrong. I personally don't like that pain, but it seems that that is the way of learning deeply chess.

So this is my goal: in 5 to 10 years, become a chess expert.

So my plan now is the following: do the exercises of the book, play over endings with the AI, play one game of 30 minute limit chess a week, study it, and repeat.

I will discuss my experience learning the board later. I will probably also start posting analysis of my games (Hey, if I wrote them, I may as well use them as content.)

My first goal is to make this plan a habit by the end of the year. Then I will set another goal :)

In the code sprint of last week, I learned many things that I feel I should put there here. I guess I will be putting them here as I go review the week.

Also, I got the muppets made and photos taken, so all what I have to do right now is put the pictures up.

In other news, I am up to chapter 17 of the Hebrew alphabet book; I have been practicing the abacus and esperanto on a daily basis, as well as violin.

Here is a list of silly goals that I want to do during my life. Some are easier than others. As I activate them, I will create a whole little node for them.

Done so far:
* Hike for most of the day with the kids
* Write a cheesy action novel

* Speak like a pirate for 48 hours
* Learn how to carry a tune
* Finish question game
* Make a 2d animated short
* Make 60 strips of a newspaper-style comic strip
* Make a history documentary short
* Finish my board game
* Create a nonviolent trading card game
* Implement my parliament game
* Implement my board game design program
* Make a kite
* Hike overnight with the kids
* Learn Klingon
* Learn Dutch
* Learn Finnish and Estonian
* Learn ancient Greek
* Learn ancient Hebrew
* Learn nahuatl
* Make a video game
* Make a robot
* Finish my college advice book
* Create a post-modern mariachi band
* Learn how to finger pick on the uke
* Make a cigar box violin
* Learn how to draw realistically
* Write a track for my invented religion
* Play and sing the uke on a metro ride
* Play and sing the uke in a bus in Mexico
* Write a simple simulation engine
* Learn how to dance Charleston
* Build a theramin
* Annotate Alan Mendelssohn Boy from Mars
*Read the whole bible

Well, I am about to activate another silly goal: creating a muppet. Later let's see if I have energy to do put pictures up.

I have taken pictures, but they haven't been uploaded yet. I will have to troubleshoot that this evening.

Sharing Board Game Library Policies

0. It is free. No fines. No late fees. No dues.

1. You can take an item if you live in the Falls Church, Virginia, or if you have direct contact with me

2. You can have the game exclusively for 3 week. After that you can keep it for as long as you want until someone else wants it.

3. If you lose pieces, don't worry about it. Just give me back the game so that we can use the pieces to replace other sets. If you wish, you can replace it, but you are not obligated.

This is the list of available items. The conditions of the items vary. Some are in very good conditions, some are not. But all should be playable, to the best of my abilities. I also have listed jigsaw puzzles. All of them open, and all of them should have all of the pieces, to the best of my knowledge. Read Library Policies

* Go
* Risk
* Stratego
* Upwards
* Dungeons and Dragons First Quest, Second Edition Rules
* Parcheesi
* Red Star Rising
* Scrabble, Spanish Edition
* Waterworks
* Breakthru
* Perquakery

Jigsaw puzzles

I am going to run a board game library out of my house :)

At some point I am going to write down a list of board games that I have that I want to share with people. If you live in the Falls Church VA area or you actually deal directly with me in some capacity, you are welcome to take these games homes. You will have exclusive use of the game for 3 weeks.

After that period, you may return it or keep it until someone else asks for it. I will keep a list on who has what on this site.