Personal Blog: Entry 2025-01-18 – 2025 Year-end review and 2026 New Years resolution

2026-01-182026-01-18 Otto

Personal Blog: Entry 2025-01-18 – 2025 Year-end Review and 2026 New Years Resolution

Preamble

Another year has come and gone, and with that: it is time to reflect upon it. What I did well, and what I did not. How I handled life’s challenges, and what decisions did I make within them and why? I have written a private end-of-year personal review document for this purpose. This is not that. This document is an extension of that one however, albeit only pertaining to project work. (I.e. hobby activities.)

A brief on Tinkerer’s Blog activities within 2025

As far as this website is concerned I did very little during the 2025 year. I do not believe this is the actual case. However it is true that I have very little to show here for that year. Just two personal blog posts, not even articles. One personal log entry in February in a similar vein to this document: a reflection on project progress. And the other entry consisted of another personal log. One pertaining to witnessing the March 29th partial solar eclipse. All in all. Not much.

Needless to say I have failed my 2025 goal of posting 12 articles. I believe this failure is due to a combination of factors. The main is simple busyness: I have been working 6 day, 60 hour weeks for a lot more than expected this year. It really helped with my monetary goals. However the time loss had an opportunity cost for every other goal. That’s my plausible excuse out of the way. Heck. Its not even really a good one, once critically examined. As unproductive busyness can be considered a form of laziness. This is because it enables procrastination. The postponement of difficult yet important tasks.

Now for the real reason for my failure. Discipline. I have been undisciplined with the time that I did have. Evidentially I didn’t have time for productive tasks, yet I had time for mindless recreation. Like playing videogames or vegetating in front of the television (YouTube) after a day’s work. I think I fell into the bad habit of putting off project work to the weekend. This weekend unfortunately is within the mystical future that never comes. Because come the weekend (usually just Sunday): there’d be another excuse for not working. Usually it comes in the form of the 3 perpetuals that I mentioned briefly here before. Time, Money, and Energy. Add head-space to that. Although I guess that’s a type of energy. Alongside: brain plasticity, mood, sleep, etcetera…

Article link: personal_blog_entry_2025_02_22

Going forward into 2026

Somewhere along the way I started stating themes for my years. A theme is something that encapsulates my general attitude for the year. It governs my general modus operandi and orients me (and my actions) towards my top two to three objectives. If not only number one. Last year’s theme was “Grind Gold”. Like in videogames. I wanted to expand my wealth by improving my primary income, adding an auxiliary income, as well as gaining knowledge of money in order to be a better custodian of the resource. So focus on money first and foremost.

With this theme I volunteered for overtime whenever it came up. Which (un)fortunately happened considerably more than expected. Especially when I became known at work as ‘the guy who does overtime on short notice’ guy. Additionally, I setup my eBay shop to declutter and liquidate value. And listened to many (many) financial audiobooks while at work. I learned a lot, the most important being how ignorant I am on the subject of proper money management. For example I opened my first brokerage account in 2024 at the tender age of mid-thirties. To this day I still haven’t learnt to utilise the trading functionalities available, other than the absolute basics. So there is still much work to be done in 2026 for this goal.

2026 theme: “Do! Not Buy.”

2026’s theme is “Do” as in “do things, not buy things” in order to progress. I bought a lot of unnecessary stuff in the year of 2025. Much of it was for projects that I intended to do later. And before I knew it I ran out of “later”, and the year concluded. As it is I am buried in materials (and just a sheer crap-load of things) that are awaiting being used in projects. Resources that could’ve otherwise stayed liquid as money and furthered my pursuit of wealth. Not to mention give me more living space.

I have given much thought to my actions in this regard; this is in order to understand why I do the things I do (or did). I bought a lot of materials for projects that I never got around to doing. Why? I think its because it made me feel like I was legitimately progressing along these projects. It was a cheap (effort wise) way to literally buy the positive feeling of progress. Accomplishment. However it is ultimately farcical. Because the moment labour-effort was necessary to keep the project going: the project’s relevance in my day-to-day life suddenly faded. And the next project became what I was enamoured with. Complete with a new (novel and exciting) shopping list of materials. I was essentially hobby hopping on a smaller scale.

A summary on my 2025 purchases (i.e. the roll of shame)

In December 2024 to January 2025 I bought lots of camping gear and bicycle parts. Taking advantage of the January price slumps and deals. Also my new year’s zeal for the outdoors. February consisted of philosophy and chess books. Which I did not read. In March and April: I bought a (spares & repair) Tassimo Vivy 2 pod coffee machine, as well as £50 in pods, £50 in reusable pods (for myself and the household), and an extra broken machine to part out. Which I did fix, and use, and wrote 2 good articles on. One on repairing the machine, and the other on creating Americano drinks from espresso pods. Did not publish either.

May purchases consisted of more books. This time on religion, Stoicism, and a Dostoevsky box-set. Equally unread. Tool kits for working on mobile phones. I believe my Blackview A100 decided to break around now. Still broken. I also purchased a lot of first aid materials for the household as well as cases and boxes to stow them in. Got the prepper itch, and felt “unprepared”.

June I discovered an interest in better coffee. This was prompted by running out of Tassimo pods, coupled with an unwillingness to buy more expensive single-use landfill. Started watching James Hoffmann (amongst others) on YouTube. And consequently purchased a fancy grinder (£100 KinGrinder K6), pour over kettle, and drip coffee set. I have yet to use the pour over equipment, as I only use the grinder and a thermal French press. Still success. Also more books: this time a Friedrich Nietzsche box-set and several Albert Camus books. Introduced to me by watching YouTube channel “Unsolicited Advice”. Unread.

July to August: I bought multiple (cheap) solar charge controllers. Used them for making use of the large 250W solar panel I purchased the year before. Multiple USB plug kits for fashioning and repairing data cables. Two different screwdriver kits, because I just wanted them. RCD plugs, plural. Oh, and LEGO. LEGO friends sets: Mia and Olivia’s tree-house, as well as some LEGO city bundles. Stuff for the game that I was working on at the time called Toy Tactics. A basic tabletop tactics game that uses toys that the child already owns as units/pieces. It was designed as a gateway drug to tabletop games like Warhammer 40K. Unfinished.

September October. I bought parts and accessories to repair an air fryer. Fixed! Then broke again a week later. I bought plenty of Raspberry Pi stuff. Multiple computers for different tasks that I envisioned. A retro games console, a Pi-hole, a seed box, a stack of Pi’s functioning as a single “supercomputer”, etcetera. As well as various necessary accessories for them. Pi camera, micro-SD cards, micro-HDMI adapter, etcetera. I also bought a £300 E-ink monitor because the opportunity arised to get one at such a bargain price. Didn’t use any of the RPi stuff; my interest waned. Nor the monitor; as I bought it for programming and reading — and I didn’t do much of either this year. Also more LEGO, although this time it was robot sets. Two older LEGO Mindstorms NXT boxes at £40 quid a pop.

Finally November December. Here I continued the robot theme by buying accessories that allows a Raspberry Pi to interface with the LEGO Mindstorms peripherals. As well as around 10 PlayStation 2 games (for the collection). More LEGO in the form of a set of Bohrok Va (for the collection). More RPi/microcontroller peripheral boards (wanted to learn about I2C and SPI). Books (plural) on computers (found a bargain – not read). An RPi kit called the Pimoroni Scroll Bot. Got it cheap in an auction. Haven’t opened it to date. And finally a joblot of broken Casio watches and a used working unit for spares. Untouched.

Well. That was 2025. (Albeit somewhat inaccurate time-wise.) A year of mimetic desire, lifestyle cope spending, and opportunist purchases. To break that cycle I have a rule for 2026. And that is to only buy what is strictly necessary. So no more whimsical purchases fuelled by a temporary mimetic interest. Monkey see, monkey want. No book purchases either! I have a huge backlog, and one of this year’s goals is to get a library card. I want to become a book reader, not stay a book buyer. A card will help the transition along, as I can just borrow any book that catches my interest instead of buying it. Additionally the two week borrow window will incentivise actually reading the damn thing. Real deadlines tend to incentivise action like nothing else.

While I am mentioning ‘huge backlogs’: no new Steam game purchases also. I mean I write this as I am tempted to buy an ant based RTS game called “Empires of the Undergrowth”. Guess why? Watching another Youtuber. This time it’s my favourite Civ 5 Pole: Marbozir. I do not need any new computer games, I literally have hundreds available to me, and not time for them.

Going into 2026

Going forwards I have a significantly stricter budget than the previous year’s. This is to stop the silliness of these needless dopamine purchases. And to save the money for more fruitful endeavours. And considering how much crap I bought last year: I have more than enough for this year’s projects (and entertainment), and then some. I have one exception where I can purchase for a project – and that is that it has to be for an active project. The device is on my workbench and needs to get done ASAP. In addition to fitting into the budget. It can’t be for something fun that I want to work on a little “later”. Maybe this weekend. I have seen where that leads.

Do things, do not buy things.

That’s all well and good. Its a nice sentiment. However how will it actually be enacted in real life? Well, its via the day-to-day decision making. Do X, over buying Y. This is something that I have already taken on; as my mentality has changed on how I approach project/hobby work. The change coming from a keen awareness of all the wasteful spending of 2025 on projects that went nowhere.

I’ll give you two examples. A trivial case of doing X over buying Y is that I was going to buy a new calendar. Instead of dropping £2.50 to £9.99 on a calendar for my room; I opted to look online, print a free one off, and use that instead. See it’s the small day-to-day moment-to-moment decisions that matter here. Not an ideal that never really makes it’s way to daily life. Its a small effort, its trivial, but its also a single step of genuine progress.

Now the second example. I am still planning on cobbling together a working watch from the Casio spares and repairs joblot that I have. Then later doing more invasive watch mods. Think backlight LED swaps and LCD tints. However I need some specialised tools for working with watches. Things like a mini-forked pry-tool to remove the watch straps’ spring-bar (without damaging anything); and to a lesser extend other tools such as a jeweler’s hammer and pin to remove a metal strap’s link bars; or the various jigs to hold the watch parts secure.

The kit I was leaning into buying was going for £12 and had everything that I would need going forwards. However strictly speaking: I did not actually need this kit. Although it does look cool. And right now – not the mods that I’d like to do in the future – right now I do not need it to get done what I need to get done. A simple strap replacement, partial disassembly, internal cleaning, and battery replacement. And since I am not sure when (if ever) I will get round to doing the more involved mods which will require these specialised tools – I can’t justify their purchase as an honest need (right now), since I do not need them to get this immediate project finished.

Additionally my current eclectic mix of tools can be cobbled together to form a decent substitute kit. I could even go further and modify some cheap tools to specialise them for working on watches. For example sharpening a nylon plastic pry-tool – one of many I own – to make it thinner, then cut a notch into it to allow it to better encompass the watch straps’ spring-bar.

See I am trying to change my mentality from going to the store as my default primary action, to going to my store. And seeing how I can get done what I want to get done, using the resources I already have. In gaming terms, this would be min-maxing my resources. Getting the most out of what I already have. And it is only when my resources/tooling is insufficient for a given task, should I buy more.

What to expect on Tinkerer’s Blog come 2026

Lots of smaller one-session projects. Projects from my backlog. That are done and 80% written up. I am taking making pixel-art more seriously this year. Look at the title image. That is my base line ability as of today. I wonder where I will be for the 2027 post? And some programming stuff. I need to brush up on Python and C++ in order to make use of all the computers I am sitting on. Then some robotics projects. If I am shooting for the stars: they’ll even be the occasional book review. That’s the plan anyway. Y’know what they say about plans: they never survive first contact with the enemy. Anyway, consider this post 1 of 12 done for 2026.

Thank you for reading. You’ve officially read more than I have this year. 😉

Acronyms used

ASAP – As Soon As Possible
HDMI – High-Definition Multimedia Interface
I2C – Inter-Integrated Circuit
LED – Light-Emitting Diode
LCD – Liquid-Crystal Display
RCD – Residual Current Device
RPi – Raspberry Pi (a single board computer)
RTS – Real-Time Strategy (game genre)
SD card – Secure Digital card
SPI – Serial Peripheral Interface

Links, sources, references, and further reading

linked article: personal_blog_entry_2025-02-22
https://www.calendarpedia.co.uk/calendar-2026-pdf-templates.html
calendar file: calendar-2026-landscape-2-pages-days-aligned.pdf
eBay listing example: screenshot_2026-01-18_eBay_search_watch_repair_tools.png

Personal Blog: Entry 2025-04-05 – Witnessing 2025-03-29 Partial Solar Eclipse

2025-04-052026-01-19 Otto

Personal Blog: Entry 2025-04-05

Witnessing the Partial Solar Eclipse: England, Saturday 29th March 2025 at ~11:04AM

Where to being. Well, my workplace has become severely understaffed as of late, consequently I have been working six day weeks this season because of it. Too many people have either been leaving of their own accord, and/or suspended for coming in drunk and/or high. You know the story. Anyway. Halfway through an overtimed week: on Tuesday 25th, during a break, I noticed a random news item in my Google Chrome feed. It was an article by the “Manchester Evening News” (IIRC) publication on the upcoming partial solar eclipse.

Just as a side note, look at the three mobile screenshots provided. They fitted four adverts on a small 6″ screen. Including: two inline ads, a banner ad, and even an embedded video advert (with sound) that scroll with you. What an actual crock of crap. Its no wonder why sites like this are dying. I mean despite wanting the information on it’s page: I equally wanted to leave as soon as possible.

It is genuinely hard to read the actual text itself, since it is surrounded on all fronts by distractions. Its sandwiched between some random political “news” video playing, with a pre-roll ad; a typical British inoffensive fake-friendly advert of a very American Chase Bank, or a random no-name money transfer service stacked on top of a Foxy Bingo ad offered to us by an ugly transexual clutching the phone in his talons. Oh man. The adverts take precedence over the actual content that caused the click in the first place. Its wild. It screams of desperation and failure. Honestly, it doesn’t really matter anyway, I just found it annoying and wanted to share.

Moving on. Having been informed by chance that there will be a partial solar eclipse on Saturday. I decided that I would like to actually participate in it. The driving notion here is to make memories when one can. Because life moves on quickly, and it is so very easily to allow it to pass one by in the moment, if one lives life with a passive: “they’ll be more opportunities in future” mentality. That’s right FOMO. I mean Carpe diem. FOMO’s more sophisticated and significantly older relative. Anyway, I got lucky. It was on the one day that I have off this week, and the weather report looked reasonably good for it too. Sunny, partially cloudy. For England, that’s about as good as it gets.

Now with no real equipment to speak of to actually watch the eclipse, and not enough time to procure some: I decided to utilise a basic pair of sunglasses in conjunction with squinting really good. And my Chinese smartphone to try to take some pictures. It actually worked reasonably well. Although I don’t recommend it. I still got a good dose of eye strain out of it. Still though, I managed to fully witness the partial eclipse. However the phone couldn’t take any good (detailed) pictures due to over exposure as I understand it. Too much direct light to see the details within it.

Witnessing the eclipse itself was very interesting. It was actually somewhat a more emotional experience than I expected. You could even call it spiritual if you wished and it would’ve been apt. I recall sitting alone at 11 AM in on one of those cheap stackable plastic patio chairs in the garden of a rented home. The Sun could be seen clearly. Albeit clipped close to the wall of a building, and through a thin sheet of pale cloud. The cloud actually diffusing the intensity of the light somewhat made the Sun easier to look upon.

It was a weird thing to experience alone. Celestial miracles amongst (yet above in many ways) the day-to-day mundane. I think this is the first real act of nature that I just sat there and observed in while. Like standing by and watching a storm fell a great tree. A true act of nature that I have no control over what so ever. It won’t wait for me to be ready, or pause whilst I take a break, or stop to save my life.

It was completely oblivious to the self absorbed ant that is me. It was genuinely humbling seeing these grand objects move. On a scale that a single being can not really internalise, in order to really grasp and understand. The celestial objects in question are simply too big to relate to, as is the space between them, myself, and each other. And yet here I am genuinely witnessing their intersection. It was actually really cool. genuinely awe inspiring.

Watching something like that really is surreal. From my vantage point: the Moon went from being invisible in the sky, to a small black bite in the top centre-right corner of the Sun. Then slowly and smoothly the Moon slid in and down towards the centre of Sun. It then paused once it covered a solid corner of the Sun. Before then pulling out and away, smoothly gliding down and out towards the Sun’s right.

It gave the illusion that the Moon moved in-front of the Sun from it’s right side, before then reversing out the same direction. Since it appeared to me as it both entered and exited from the right side of the Sun. Probably due to the frequent look away breaks, and fiddling with my smartphone. Trying to take a good picture. I did not watch it continuously, and my mind seems to have filled in the gaps of the Moon’s movement, giving it an (I think) impossible trajectory. An ‘L’ pattern of movement, rather than the straightish line expected.

I recall that as the Moon moved over the top right corner of the Sun, everything got colder. The day got dimmer. It might’ve been psychosomatic, but I genuinely felt noticeably cold sitting in that garden at that moment. The volume of light also noticeably diminished. Enough so that I could comfortably observe the phenomena. It was a dire reminder of how much we owe the Sun. All the energy it is freely and continuously showering us with every single day.

I remember looking around the garden as that thought rose up within me. I noticed the vibrancy of colour contained within the rough patchy grass that we call a lawn. Numberless blades of deep emerald green. Made darker and bluer by my strained vision. They spoke of vitamins and nutrition, in that moment the greeness of those plants linked me to the Sun itself. It warmed me, fed me, and lit my way. Without it, there would be nothing. Just a dead ice-ball of a world. Common sense right? Cognitively yes, emotionally… well, we as a species are so detached from nature that it is hard to say.

Thoughts like that are strange; because they bubble up from the deep unknowable darkness of the mind, to the light of the surface where they could be seen briefly before evaporating. They can even make enough ripples in the process to be actively recognised by the conscious. Yet, they are still indistinct, and somewhat formless. They operate more like wordless foggy images and gaseous feelings. An emotional vapour attached to transient moving indistinct imagery. Like a wet watercolour painting with it’s pallet freely mixing and bleeding across lines and dripping onto me as I figuratively handle it.

It is quite unlike the concrete thoughts that I am accustomed to creating and administering. I felt all the above thoughts but it wasn’t with words like I am communicating to you now. It was a feeling of significance and eureka as my mind drew links between the God’s toys above, and me below. In that moment I felt part of it. A small insignificant part, no more important than the ladybird climbing a blade of grass, or the watchful magpie in the tree nearby. But still a part. It was very humbling, and felt significant. Enough to be remembered at least. It really is no wonder why our Sol and Moon have so much religious significance. They really are magnificent.

This was a fun and meaningful way to spend a Saturday morning. Worth recording here too. Perhaps for no other reason than just to practice my writing.

Anyway, Thank you for reading.

Crappy pictures taken using Blackview A100 smartphone

shot demoing sunglass use
sunglasses ON
sunglasses OFF
green green grass
bonus crappy pic of half-moon on Sat 2025-04-05

Acronyms used

FOMO – “Fear Of Missing Out”
IIRC – “If I Remember Correctly”

Links, References, and Further reading

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/uk-news/urgent-warning-issued-brits-ahead-31279092
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crmjdy10rmmo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0q1qx4d174o
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg5wd8y1xpo
example article: Screenshot_2025-03-29_BBC_News_article_on_partial_eclipse_960x6639

#0038: Demonstration of chess game data featured in Cowboy Bebop anime

2023-04-162025-08-14 Otto

#0038: Demonstration of chess game data featured in Cowboy Bebop anime

Preamble

I have been playing a fair bit of chess recently. I even went so far as to buy and start reading books on the subject. (gasp I know, first “buy”, then “read”. Must be one of those mundane everyday miracles I keep hearing about.) Anyway, as I did: it reminded me of a particular episode of an anime that I absolutely loved watching as a teen. Namely: Cowboy bebop.

Created by a Japanese company called Sunrise Inc. Cowboy Bebop is an anime that is generally highly regarded on the internet to this day (2023). Even though it originally aired in Japan in 1998. 25 years ago. Part of the reason for this in my opinion: is the sheer attention to detail, and artistic care of craft displayed within each episode. Something I will hopefully demonstrate here.

As a show: Cowboy Bebop has primarily an episodic structure. Where each individual episode features a self contained story with a start, middle, and end. That then contiguously fits into a larger narrative that runs across the season. With few exceptions such as the odd multi-episode narrative, or recap episode. The focus of this article is episode 14: Bohemian Rhapsody. A chess themed episode where I found the move-set for a full game of chess.

I wish to display that game here for your viewing pleasure. Please note however that I am no chess expert (as I am barely competent), so I will not comment on the game itself. I just want to feature it here because I think it’s really cool; that an anime would have such attention to detail as to feature things such as a complete game of chess. One that briefly scrolls across the screen for less than a handful of seconds no less. [See video extract below.]

Tools

Since this is not a tutorial piece I will be brief here. I just wish to outline the tools used to make the chess game demonstration GIF image and video extracts below for those interested.

XBoard – to play the game move-set out on, in a Linux based OS
Native Screenshot application of Linux Mint Cinnamon – to take screenshots of XBoard
GIMP – to edit images for the GIF animation
imagemagick – to convert a series of PNG files into a single animated GIF file
VLC – to play videos
Flowblade – to edit and export videos in MP4 format

Episode narrative background

Please note: this is primarily from memory, so I may have some of the details askew.

The cartoon villain of the week featured in this episode is a character by the name of “Chess Master Hex”. A child chess prodigy who whilst working for a large corporation as a researcher helped develop the first hyperspace gates. Gates which allowed space ships to move between planets in our solar system significantly faster and safer than previously available. They quickly became ubiquitous due to the savings on time and general logistics.

Now here’s the wrinkle: there is an unspecified fatal flaw in the gates’ system. One that never got addressed due to corporate interests burying it for the sake of profits. Hex who wanted the project paused until research into the flaw and it’s resultant fix was developed – was removed from the project for protesting it’s rushed go ahead. And then fired. (And likely made to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. You know how it is.) Because of this he then spun a decades long plan of vengeance on the corporation that wronged him.

Now fast forward to the present. Our cast of cowboys (space bounty hunters) are tasked with catching him. This is due to the corporation placing a large bounty on the entity that is coordinating a series of cyber-attacks against their hypergates. Cyber-attacks that involved the use of custom hardware that utilises an (until now) unknown latent vulnerability within the gates’ systems: in order to completely drain the bank accounts of any customer who uses a hyperspace gate’s pay point.

In the process of chasing up on the bounty, our cast manage to independently capture several of the low-level criminals that have been physically installing these systems into the hyperspace gates themselves. The odd thing is that all these people had nothing in common; except for the fact that they all had in their possession a digital chess piece. A King piece, that allowed the holder to play an online game of chess with a player who turned out to be Chess Master Hex himself.

The chess game

During the story a digital chess piece is scanned. It’s data is displayed on the scanner’s VDU. The contents of which are two different chess games’ moves-sets. Games played between a player named “Deep Blue” and Hex himself. The actual name “Deep Blue” is a reference to a real world notable chess super computer. That is contemporary to the anime’s time (1998). Note: I assume above that the first game was also played by Deep Blue. However, unfortunately half of the first game’s move-set (and metadata) was cut-off. So really only one and a half games’ data is revealed to us. With only the latter game’s data being revealed in it’s entirety on screen.

Now, being the curious cat that I am: I decided to actually play out the second game. The one I could see the complete move-set for. See below. The interesting thing learned here is that they are in fact real chess moves. Not just some random gobbledygook, as I feared it might be. All the moves depicted a valid game of chess, with none of the pieces making any illegal moves.

Well … There is one exception however. On White turn 18, a Rook makes an illegal move from it’s starting position of f1 to e7. (“Rfe7”.) I made the logical inference that it was merely a typo, since it was the only illegal move in the entire move-set up to this point. And since the numbers 1 and 7 typographically look alike: I substituted the legal move of “Rfe1” for it. This amended move resulted in the rest of game, including follow-up moves for that same rook piece being valid. Bravo.

One last little tidbit on this game: when it mentioned Deep Blue I was curious as to whether or not the game featured in the anime itself was famous. I.e. did they copy verbatim one of Deep blue’s games. (ctrl-c ctrl-v style.) And upon a cursory (Wikipedia) search it does not seem to be the case. I compared it to the games that made Deep Blue famous. The notable games where it had won against Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov, and it didn’t match any of the six games that they had together in 1996, as well as the six rematch games of 1997. I compared all the games with a 1-0 result as is here. First the one’s where Kasparov wins 1-0, assuming him to be a substitute for Hex. Then I chose to include the one’s were Deep Blue wins 1-0 just for the sake completeness. To no avail.

Wikipedia summary of games between Deep Blue and Kasparov

Chess data-set compiled screenshots

Original compiled screenshot

Error corrected compiled screenshot

Screenshots of first camera shots of scanner displaying chess data

Video extract of scanner displaying chess data

Chess game demonstration

Chess game demonstration stills

Chess game demonstration animation

Radical Edward and Chess Master Hex playing chess using electronic chessboards

What’s the point of this section? I just think that this is cool is all. It illustrates the use of a holographic electronic chess board with public network access. I also love the aesthetics of retro-futuristic tech in general, as well as scrap-tech; and this touches on both. Now look at the screenshot of Edward (possibly?) holding in the ratty network plug into the electronic chessboard’s socket with her foot. It’s surprisingly relatable. (Or maybe I am just projecting.)

I initially wanted to plot the move-set for this game out as well, and do another animation for it too. Since the pieces look to be in consistent positions between shots. (Operative word: “look”.) However I found the process to be too much work for the payoff. The various dynamic camera shots of the chess boards (“boards” plural!) depicting the moves of their respective pieces quickly became disorientating.

My chronically sleep depraved brain soon threw it’s metaphysical hands up in frustrated surrender. Stuff it! The straw that broke the camel’s back as it were, is the shot (@ 00:49) of Hex placing a white queen, despite playing black! I just wasn’t willing to error correct, in addition to wrestling a coherent game out of those hectic camera shots. Still… I may comeback to it one day, if I fancy the challenge. Unlikely.

Moving on. Now look at the startup animation for Edward’s electronic chessboard. Did you notice the spelling error? Nice little bit of ‘Engurish’ there. It made me smile anyway. I mean the 90’s were a golden age for top-shelf Engurish in general. And thankfully Cowboy Bebop is no exception. Unfortunately the English dub is of such high quality that I have had no need to watch the Japanese original audio version, so I have likely missed out on some peak spoken Engurish as a consequence. What a genuine shame.

Aggregated screenshots of chess game

Video compilation of chess game

Sorry about the audio syncing issues in this vid. All settings are good, yet Flowblade (repeatedly) renders the video with de-synced audio. I am not sure why. :/ I am not going to chase it up right now because it isn’t really important. (And not worth the delay.) The visuals are what I am primarily demoing here.

Closing thoughts

The funny thing is that I don’t even really watch much anime anymore. However like I said earlier: I have had my interest sparked in playing chess as of late. I’ve been playing it at work using smartphone apps (like lichess.org or chess.com) as well as using a physical set against my work colleges. And while I was playing I was suddenly reminded of Cowboy Bebop’s chess episode. Specifically the scene with the junky scanner displaying the chess data lopsided on a monochrome green CRT monitor. And the idea suddenly occurred to me: “I wonder what that game actually looks like”. And that’s how this write-up came to be. I hope it has entertained you if nothing else.

Thank you for reading.

Acronyms used

CRT – Cathode Ray Tube
GIF – Graphics Interchange File
GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program
GNU – GNU’s Not Unix! (recursive acronym)
PNG – Portable Network Graphic
VDU – Visual Display Unit

Links, references, and further reading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy_Bebop
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Cowboy_Bebop_episodes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_(chess_computer)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Blue_versus_Garry_Kasparov
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engrish
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_operating_system
https://imagemagick.org/Usage/
https://www.gimp.org/
https://linuxmint.com/
https://jliljebl.github.io/flowblade/
https://www.gnu.org/software/xboard/
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/
https://www.lichess.org
https://www.chess.com
https://www.rd.com/article/what-does-gif-stand-for/