MuseBlog

Robert is going crazy with this chess software. Tesseract, Lovely Lunegood, Adeia, Pseudonym, SudoRandom, and mas0n have all expressed interest in a lesson, in approximately that order.

Tesseract — ready to roll?
 
(Note: “Lesson” games are played in public. Players may comment on their own or each other’s moves; observers may ask questions, which the players may or may not answer. It’s all highly experimental.)
 
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Robert has an idea for a new way to use the chess software: He’ll play a game with one MBer (at a time), trying to create interesting positions for his opponent to exploit. He’ll make comments on the action as it unfolds and will answer questions from anybody on the blog. Sound interesting? Read more »

Greetings, O wanderers in darkness! Please start here for a warm welcome (involving pie) and advice from Those Who Know. Enter, please.
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Ernest Hemingway wrote is supposed to have written a very sad one:

For sale: Baby shoes, never used worn.

What can you come up with? (We’ll also accept summaries, reviews, biographies — anything you can squeeze into this even-shorter-than-haiku format.)

We’ve just installed a new version of the “Chess by Blog” plug-in, which is supposed to solve the “closed board” problems some of you have been having with Internet Explorer. Please let us know if you notice any difference.

MuseBlog’s software upgrade went smoothly and was much less painful than expected. At least, we think it did and was; we can’t tell how well the new version is working yet. Let us know if you notice anything odd (that is, beyond the baseline oddness that passes for normal around here).

Thanks,

The GAPAs

Ahoy! Are you new to MuseBlog? Don’t just wonder around bumping into people and breaking things. Come in here, where our cheerful welcoming committee will pie you fill you with pie and bloggerly wisdom. Come on in!
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Use the comments here to swap tips about outstanding, little known, and/or underutilized parts of MuseBlog. (In four years, we’ve accumulated an amazing number of chasms, subterranean passages, sunken cities, and fossiliferous formations.) Be sure to include the URL (Web address) so others can share your finds.

Known Muser birthdays this month*:

09-01 Ambystoma Maculatum (1996 – purple and green)
09-02 Der Wachtelschlag’s/Queen Julietaini’s birthday (1993 – orange)
09-02 Loupgarou’s birthday (1991 – blue, purple, or green)
09-04 Kokopelli52 (1997 – clear turquoise)
09-06 the_californian_chick (year? – rainbow)
09-09 jammin j’s birthday (1993 – green)
09-15 The Man For Aeiou’s birthday (1995 – Muse Shirts)
09-17 rachael’s birthday (1993 – yellow)
09-17 Iamisthebest (1996 – blue and black)
09-17 eragon’s birthday (1997 – blue/rainbow)
09-18 Sweet Melpomene’s birthday (1990 – black-and-white)
09-19 The Bookworm’s birthday (1995 – green, purple, blue, silver)
09-19 marfwarrior’s birthday (1995 – green with multicolored flecks)
09-24 Zinc the Sorceress’s birthday (1997 – black and “highliter”)
09-25 Lioness’s birthday (1995)
09-28 Dracasting’s birthday (1993 – green or purple)

You turn 5,000 days old this month if you were born between and December 24, 1995, and January 23, 1996
You turn 6,000 days old this month if you were born between March 30 and April 28, 1993.
You turn 7,000 days old this month if you were born between July 4 and August 2, 1990.

You will have been on MuseBlog for six months if you started posting in March.

*Note: Listed MBers who have been inactive for several months won’t appear on next year’s birthday calendar unless they show up again.

Some of you report that you haven’t been able to move your pieces since we upgraded the blog’s chess software around the end of July. We’d like to solve the problem but need more information.

• Can anybody move, or is it a universal outage?
• If you can’t move, have you tried clearing your browser’s cache (not just the browsing history, but the actual cache of Web pages that your browser stores to make them easier to load)?
• What sort of message do you see when you try to move? Does it say “closed board,” or does it tell you it’s waiting for your move and then fail to accept it?

(Of course, some of you probably have gotten tired of chess and stopped playing, but if anyone wants to keep playing, we’d like to make it possible.)
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Infinite questions, and a non-zero number of answers. Fire away.

Continued from No. 6.

What do you want to see on the blog, at Musery Loves Company, or anywhere else in the GAPAs’ domain? Let your voices be heard!

Are you new to MuseBlog? You must have questions, and we’d like to meet you. Make this thread your first stop for pie and advice.
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Help others navigate the blog by signposting your favorite threads here, when they’ve scrolled off the main page. (Making you re-request these every month helps to weed out the no-longer-fit.) Maybe we’ll actually manage to paste a few of them in this month. Read more »

Are you new to MuseBlog? Make this your first stop. We’ve got some pie fresh out of the oven, and friendly locals ready to answer your questions and help you feel at home.
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Help others navigate the blog by signposting your favorite threads here, when they’ve scrolled off the main page. (Making you re-request these every month helps to weed out the no-longer-fit.) Maybe we’ll actually manage to paste a few of them in this month. Read more »

Purple Panda Cat’s Eye is looking for an opponent for a game of online chess.

bookworm wants to play Capablanca-style chess. (That’s the version with two extra pieces, described a couple of dozen threads below.)

Anyone up for either of them?

Always looking for ways to improve our beloved blog, the Administrators have decided to try something new: We’re pulling the under-used Muse Academy Student Lounge off the main body of the blog. It will still be accessible to anyone who has been posting on MuseBlog for at least six months (“paleophytes,” if you will). To visit it, you’ll have to register and then log in using a password. Along with the lounge, we’re creating a companion thread for discussing the experiment. Read more »

At long last, here they are. Introducing the Boston Kokonventioneers… Read more »

Continued from Quotations, 2009.1.

Anyone who doesn’t want to argue about the existence or nonexistence of God had better go to Quotations 2009.3.

Reminder: As is the case with all threads dealing with potentially contentious subject matter, this is a place for careful, clear, respectful discussions, not brawls. We expect MBers to be able to express their opinions without attacking others personally, AND to be able to listen to people who disagree with them without feeling personally attacked.

Easier said than done, of course. But, as we’ve said before, MuseBlog is a good place to practice trying.

I decided to make this statement a separate thread rather than disrupt the Romance and Relationships thread any further. Furthermore, athough the following is mostly in response to the discussion on that thread, its substance pertains to many other instances. Read more »

Here’s her new tabulation of who is when: Read more »

Let’s hear all about it.

 
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One nice thing about this new chess software is that it can handle non-standard layouts like these: Read more »