A Trial of Patience

Please pray for a not-so-small problem we have currently: our basement is flooded completely (and I mean really flooded). There is two feet of water in much of the basement, and three feet in some places where the floor is lower.

Christmas Pictures

The contrast on the last one is priceless.

James 1, King

"K" is certainly for King. Here is James, looking every ounce the king he is.

Fairly Unique

HowManyOfMe.com

There are: 0 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

To use a phrase which would drive my mother crazy.

World Championship Chess Match

The world championship chess match is up and going now. It is between Veselin Topalov (a Bulgarian, currently rated 2813, the highest rated active player), and Vladimir Kramnik (a Russian, and current classical champion, with a rating of 2743). While the ratings favor Topalov, the experience favors Kramnik. Topalov has never done a marathon match such as a World Championship match, whereas Kramnik has done more than one. Kramnik took the championship from Kasparov, by the way, and has had a rating in the past of 2811. Therefore, I favor Kramnik to win the match, despite his recent illness. You can watch the games in real time here.

The politics are interesting as well: about ten years ago, the chess world split because of Kasparov. Since then, there has been two champions, classical world and world. Kasparov wanted the championship to be determined not by a marathon match, but by a tournament. He wanted the professionalization of chess, whereas some still believed in the match system. The FIDE President has proposed a re-unification match between the two champions.

A hurricane

It is very odd to share a name with a hurricane.

Recent funny of Ila's

Recently, I was reading in a book, and found out something that was rather incredible (negative, actually). So I said, "You have got to be kidding." Upon which Ila's prompt reply was, "What did the kitty say?"

Great blogging tools

If you use Firefox, then you need to install Greasemonkey. This allows you to install some really great user scripts. For instance, I have installed a trackback feature (regrettably, I can only send trackbacks, I cannot receive them, since blogger doesn't allow it, unless you are willing to go the route of Haloscan. But I have already added a recent comments hack to my blog, which Haloscan messes up.), and I can edit comments that I have written (on my blog or on someone else's), and I can edit comments written by other people on my blog. I have a tags generator both for del.icio.us, and for technorati. Just get an account with Userscript.org, and then type in blogger in the search engine, and you will find most of these. They are fun, and they are great ways to get more readers to your blog.

Pretty win

White is at the bottom going up. How should Black proceed?