Go: January in Review

To pace myself on my Go updates, and because the rating graphs naturally break into month, I'm switching to monthly updates of my Go ranking. I started January in the low 22 kyu range, briefly dropped to 25 kyu, before bouncing back to low 23 kyu. Actually, that bounceback happened on Feb. 1, so I'm not sure how this graph is drawn. Not counting that last win, I was 8-12 in rated games in January, which accounted for the rating drop. My best two wins were a very close win on an even game versus a French 21-kyu player, and a 9-handicap game versus an American 13-kyu player. The 13-kyu player actually resigned the game after making a mistake, but suggested I was playing much better than my rank. Of course, that would not explain my worst loss, an even game versus a Belgian 25-kyu.

I'm 0-3 in the Dragon Tourney, which is unfortunate. I hope not to get completely shut out, which I think would be good, given that I am the lowest ranked player in my pool.

All in all, the drop of a kyu or so in January wasn't too bad. I had climbed fairly rapidly at the end of last year, and I'm happy to see I'm still hanging out in the low twenties. My goal is to maintain this and make a push for the teens (aka DDK). Once that happens, I get to change my description for "beginner" to "advanced beginner".

I have a bunch of Go books to read right now that look really helpful. I've discovered, however, that when I'm casting about for something to read, it's easier to pick up a science fiction book than one of the Go books, which are almost like textbooks. So I'll probably slow down on the science fiction and turn more to the Go books.

Comment

Well, a couple of weeks after I turned off comments on new posts, I received my first comment in quite some time. This has inspired me to return comments, at least for now. I have the comments set up as moderated, so I shouldn't have the problems I had before with spam or obscenities.

Live from Del Mar

Christina has a new post describing our trip-in-progress.

The F-Car

Greetings from San Diego, where we're driving around in a surprisingly nice Ford Fusion. The Ford Fusion runs really quietly, has leather seats, and even comes with a V-6. But that's not the car that inspired this post.

The car in question was some sort of Pontiac. When Avis dropped us off at our car (no going to the counter for me!), I went to the driver's side to locate the trunk release. I noticed a rather significant scratch running along most of the length of the car. My first thought was to make sure the damage was noted on the rental agreement. My second thought was, "Hey, that's a word..." The F-word, in fact.

We scooted to the counter and indicated that I wasn't looking to make quite so bold of a statement when I showed up for the meetings tomorrow. The counter guy was very shocked and expressed his opinion that people who damage cars should be treated like horse thieves. OK. Anyway, I have no complaints with the car we ended up with. In past years, I've gotten a convertible, but it's a little cold for it this time of year. The sun roof does just as well.

NTN update

It's been almost two years since I gave an NTN update. Last time I checked, I was at #18 on the Santa Fe Cafe's National Trivia Network rankings.

Now I'm up to #17, but it's not through playing a lot. More likely, someone ahead of me switched to another location. I played for the first time in a while last Sunday at Joe Senser's in Bloomington. I did pretty well, even making it into that site's top 10 for the month.

No Comment

I've turned off comments on this blog. I set them up a year and a half ago and only received a handful -- mostly spam or anonymous obnoxious comments. I set the comments as moderated to discourage the latter, but recently I have received no comments. It clutters up the look of the blog a little bit, so bye-bye comments.

In general, if you have anything to say to me, feel free to e-mail me. I'm happy to post feedback, but it appears to be an unusual enough event to merit perhaps its own post.

Mahabalipuram

I promised last month to share my pictures from Mahabalipuram in India. Here ya go.

The first picture is from a set of monuments known as "Five Rathas". It was worth the price of admission ($5 for foreigners) to get away from the very agressive vendors trying to sell stone carvings, postcards and copies of the Kama Sutra ("very wicky-wicky", one assured me).



The second set of monuments we saw was the "Shore Temple". I especially liked this one for its setting on the Indian Ocean.



The final set included the "Descent of the Ganges", which is apparently the world's largest bas-relief. Like all of these stone carvings, it dates from approximately the seventh century AD.



Near the Descent of the Ganges is a rock known as "Butterball." It was placed there by Krishna as a prank.

Nebula update

When I last checked in with my Nebula-reading project, I had read 22 out of 41 novels. On our recent trip to Arizona, I read 2 more.

1977: Gateway

This first book in the Heechee series is one of the best that I've read recently. The structure of the book alternates between chapters in which the protagonist, older, looks back on his adventures in conversations with a robot psychiatrist and chapters in which he recounts the adventures themselves. Hmm, which chapters do you think work better?

Where Pohl shines in this novel is the unique world he has created. In the next century or two, humankind has discovered the remains of an ancient civilization -- the Heechee. Furthermore, we have discovered their interstellar, faster-than-light spaceships -- but we don't really know how to steer them. So "prospectors" go out on missions to unknown, and likely deadly, destinations in search of Heechee technology.

Good stuff!

1995: The Terminal Experiment

Reading Robert J. Sawyer's other work helped convince me of problems with the Hugo process. Since I was happier with the Nebulas I was surprised to see one of his novels on this list.

I will give the Nebulas this -- they gave the award to a 2-star book rather than a 1-star one. But, man, this guy can't write as well as he thinks he can.

"Pseudo was about fifty, and as slim as the Leafs' chances in the Stanley Cup."

Not so good stuff.

Go Up, Go Down

After a shaky start, my December go experience turned out rather well. I finished 18 more games in the rest of December -- I'll skip the game-by-game recap. I was 14-4, although two of the wins were in unrated games and two were in games that didn't count because the opponent never showed back up after the first 4 stones were placed.
So 10-4 in rated games was enough to send me briefly to the heights of 22 kyu.



I am, however, 2-4 in 2006, with all the games rated. These losses included three that should have been close to even for a 25kyu player. As a result, I'm now hanging on the upper edges of 25 kyu myself.

The new year also brought the start of Dragon Tourney 2006, an on-line tournament that I had forgotten I signed up for. I'm the lowest rated player in my bracket. It's a reduced-handicap tournament, so I find myself at a little bit of a disadvantage in most of the games. (Conversely, losses will affect my rating less and wins more.)

I brought some go books out here to Arizona to read on vacation, but I've mostly been sticking with science fiction so far. I guess if I want to get back to 22 kyu, I should probably crack the books open.