Chessbase style website

One of the reason Exabyte shut me down earlier was because of my PLIGG website. PLIGG is a DIGG clone and the site I used it on was a chess news website. Unfortunately my PLIGG version had weaknesses that allowed spammers to flood my website with spam content. I believe the spam was automated and the result was CPU overload on my webhost.

I have removed PLIGG but now I’ve replaced it with plain old Wordpress.

The content is still on chess news but I used a magazine style theme which makes it look very different from a blog. I like the auto thumbnail feature where the first image I post is automatically made into a thumbnail on the first page. This makes it look very professional and makes it looks very similiar to top chess news website - ChessBase.com.

Chess News is the title of this new website and it’s even optimised for Adsense.

Popularity: 5% [?]

More Exabyte woes

Got closed down by Exabytes again. This time it was for CPU overload abuse and the website is my main chess website - www.GilaChess.com. I have been warned and my website temporarily disabled a few times before and after reducing my Wordpress plugins, I have been pretty confident that I’m not threading on broken glass.

However today I got a rude surprise seeing the following message when I visited GilaChess.com.

My traffic for that website is only 200-300 visits a day. So I just couldn’t believe I got shut down for that.

This time however, Exabytes screen shot of the CPU usage actually helped me pin point exactly who the culprit was. The CPU bandwith hog was my sub domain news.gilachess.com.

Apparently I installed Pligg (a DIGG clone) sometime back and forgot about it. It was an old version of PLIGG and there were spam bots written to take advantage of some weaknesses in the application. As a result, repeated hits from automated bots overloaded Exabytes server.

I’ve been a loyal customer of Exabytes for 5 or 6 years now and I really hope they will allow me to immediately fix things. I am prepared to delete and drop the domain news.gilachess.com to solve the problem. It’s that simple. Just sent email to Exabytes support and hoping for a favourable reply.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Celcom Broadband Speedtest

This is my second Celcom broadband speedtest (using Speedtest.net) :-

Location is still the same at Ikea cafeteria on a Sunday morning.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Chess Personalities who use Twitter

It’s nice to see chess personalities embrace the use of new technologies like Twitter. In case you don’t know, twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows people to blog about what they are doing using the web, SMS or via instant messenger services. It’s a quick way to get out a message or tell your friends what you are doing.

I use it mainly to ‘live blog’ about chess events as some of you have already seen on this blog.

Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9% [?]

Celcom Broadband Speedtest at IKea

I just repaired my Dell 640m and bought a new battery to replace the dying one.

Now testing the Celcom broadband connections speed in Ikea. Also having their cheap 99 cents breakfast at the same time. 

At 1549 kb/s download speed and 110 kb/s is pretty good. In fact I think that’s even better than what I get using Streamyx fixed line (1Mbps).

I’ve read many complaints in Low Yat plaza forums about how bad the service has become but I’ve only used this service a couple of days and so far it’s been fast. Will post more on this once I’ve got to test it longer.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Chess Scholarship by Magic Tree

I am happy to see any promotion to scholastic chess in Malaysia. Particularly when learning centre offers scholarship to junior players to advance their chess skills:-

Chessmate Academy Scholarship

We are seeking 2 (two) enthusiastic junior chess players to be coached by our dedicated coaches.

Our experienced coaches are passionate in teaching enthusiastic juniors.

The objective of the scholarship is to support the chess industry train enthusiastic chess players to excel and be competitive internationally. 

Panel of Coaches consist of:

• International Master (IM) elect Lim Yee Weng

He was one of the youngest national men’s champion at the age of 14 and went on to obtain his IM title after becoming the first Malaysian to achieve a 2600 GM rating performance in the Malaysian Open 2008. Currently practicing law after obtaining his law degree from Australia in 2004 and is presently coaching chess players professionally and passionately.

• Schools and National Team Coaches

Closing Date  : 31^st December 2008

• Sponsored by management and a group of passionate chess coaches.

• 18 and below only

Please, submit your application to:

Magic Tree Child Development Sdn Bhd

20A, Persiaran Zaaba, Taman Tun Dr Ismail, 60000 Kuala Lumpur.

Tel: 03 – 7727 0817, 012 – 210 5620 (Grace Leong) Fax: 03 – 7727 3672,

Email: magictreekl@gmail.com

• Terms and Conditions Apply.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Yang Kaiqi - Korean Open Champ

Here’s some information about Chinese Yang Kaiqi current playing in the Open section of the KL Chess Open 2008.

Yang Kaiqi (Chinese: 杨凯淇; born 1988) is a Chinese chess player, who won the First (Hi Seoul) Korea Open Chess tournament held at the Olympic Parktel Convention Center, Seoul (from 29 November - 6 December 2008). This is the strongest chess tournament ever held in South Korea.

In 2008, Yang has also played at the 3rd PGMA Cup, at the Aeroflot Open, and at the Malaysian Open.

~taken from Wikipedia

Popularity: 9% [?]

Rojak style reporting but who cares?

(China’s Zhang Jing vs Vietnam’s GM Dao Thien Hai - Round 1)

I have to admit that the reports coming from KL Chess Open 2008 unofficial blog is very unstructured and messy with some grammar/spelling mistakes here and there. The blog also is seriously lacking in terms ‘journalistic’ standards but I don’t mind. It’s supposed to be that way!

The collaborative efforts of Marcus Yeoh, Hairulov and Gilocatur is a great voluntary service to chess fans by providing as much ad-hoc chess news as possible about the KL Chess Open. It’s THE place to go to to find reports, pictures and games of the KL Chess Open 2008.

It’s good to see how web tools such as blogs, twitter, email subscription, online newsletter, RSS feeds all being fully utilize to provide quick information and publicity for a chess event. Old media such as newspapers is great publicity for the general public. New media such as blogs and websites is the way to go if you want the most recent updates. For me it’s a good learning experience so that in future, these tools can be used to the max to publicize any major chess event.

Still, these are just tools. Without the power of human contribution, these tools are useless. Thanks must go to these bloggers for offering their time and effort so selflessly.

GM Anton Fillipov - top seed in the Masters section of the KL Open. Links:-

Official blog/website:- KLChess.com

Unnoficial collaborative blog: KL Chess Open 2008

Popularity: 9% [?]

Dell Mini 9 + Maxis worth it?

This is just my personal opinion and I say nay.

For a total or RM 2376 it is NOT worth it for me. Also take note that the Maxis broadband that is included is only for six (6) months. 

I’d rather buy the Dell Mini 9 separately at RM 1199. However it is currently out of stock in most shops. (Hmmm.. I smell a conspiracy theory here )

I think the Mini 9 is a perfect portable notebook for the patzer and even relatively strong club chess player. Recommended to upgrade the 8Gb SSD storage to 32 SSD which is around RM 300+ in PC shops. Then running MS Office, Chess Databases and Chess Engines should be no problem.

Bootup is quite fast at 25 seconds to 40 seconds for Windows XP which is important for a netbook.

Battery life is around 3 hours which is decent enough.

Popularity: 12% [?]

Moving away from chess

This year has been great for me as I got to see many major chess tournaments such as the DATMO, Philippines Open and the World Youth in Vietnam. That has come at a cost because I’ve passed over several lucrative web projects. Basically I’ve been trading my time for money in chess.

However, with the cold winds of recession coming, I have to get as much additional income to weather out this difficult times. Now, I don’t have the luxury of passing over a project because it is too tedious or boring. Luckily the projects I rejected early this year is still being offered to me. Apparently it’s hard to find people who are willing or qualified. The next project I’ll be undertaking is something I used to hate the most. Code cleanup. I’ve been doing that over 3 years in my previous job so I guess even though I hate it, it’s something I’m very accustomed to.

I won’t be involved in helping out at tournaments for a while. No more trading time for money.

I’ll still maintain my chess websites and offer some new paid advertising spots on the sites. I’ve never charged directly before. This is a first for me. An exception to avoiding chess projects, I’m also starting a few income generating services such as member registration and automatic tournament list generation for chess. I’m doing this because it takes little time and generates long term passive income.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Slight spike in traffic for "Dresden PGN"

I noticed a jump in my traffic for my chess blog yesterday.

That was about 350 visits which is the highest in 30 days. The reason was simple. People were searching for the record of the games played in the current Chess Olympiad held in Dresden Germany. From what I read, the official website dresden2008.com took a 1 million hit in the first day and double that on the second day!

Not surprising with such a big event there are many “holes” like broken links in the PGN downloads.

All I did was download the PGN files and hosted it on my blog. I blogged about it and search engines like Google immediately indexed them. I now rank No. 1 on Google for “Dresden PGN” or any similiar combination of words like “Download Dresden PGN”, “Dresden Olympiad game download” etc

I can see from my sitemeter referrals that many new visitors were searching for the PGN games. Thanks to Google they found the files to download easily from my blog.

I did not plan to get this traffic increase when I offered the PGN for downloads but the additional exposure to my relatively new blog is most welcomed

Popularity: 11% [?]

Dresden Olympiad : Round 1

Malaysia did well against Libya winning 3½ - ½.

Board Pairings

Round 1 on 2008/11/13 at 15:00
Bo.	74	Malaysia (MAS)	Rtg	-	115	Libya (LBA)	Rtg	3½: ½
38.1	IM	Mas Hafizulhelmi	2439	-		Homrana Mustafa	2001	1 - 0
38.2	FM	Lim Yee-Weng	2396	-		Elbaruni Mohamed	2072	½ - ½
38.3	FM	Mok Tze-Meng	2308	-	FM	Chahrani Ibrahim	2314	1 - 0
38.4	IM	Liew Chee-Meng-Jimmy	2306	-	FM	Asabri Hussien	2191	1 - 0

Popularity: 11% [?]

Downloading Ubuntu 8.10

Downloading the CD version (about 700Mb) and not the DVD version. I would have liked to download the DVD version but don’t have the patience to wait that long

It’s been over a years since I tried the last version of Ubuntu. Can’t wait to see how the new version looks like. Particularly interesting to see if I can install chess programs in Ubuntu.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Chess Virtual School

Back in 1997 I was a programming lecturer and very interested in teaching using computers particularly via the internet. I experimented with tutoring my students by giving extra notes and exercises via email. Even in practical classes I wrote computer quizzes which I made my students take after a lesson. They would answer the questions after a short lesson and I would immediately gauge how much they understood from the lesson. I’d sit on another computer and see the results in real time. The e-learning via email part wasn’t much of a success as back then the students were not that computer savvy.

About a decade later, things improved somewhat. I worked in a college that used a Learning Management System called Blackboard. The college emphasised 70% on coursework and 30% on final exams which I really liked as this forces the student to be more consistent throughout the course instead of just booking up for one final exam. For the first time I saw how effective an e-learning system like Blackboard can be. Instead of the traditional written quiz/exercise/coursework I made most of the pop quizzes and weekly tests in electronic form. It was the same content only that the students were in front of the computer to answer the questions. Of course the benefits were plenty. One of which is that I do not have to grade the answers. Everything was automatic. Another advantage was the students received the results immediately instead of waiting for the next day.

Anyway what I wanted to say is that I think the time is suitable now to have chess learning systems that make use of today’s technology. That’s one of the reasons I started Maribelajar.com - to create learning systems that can support virtual learning. Sadly back then people were not that receptive to the idea of learning online. They prefer to have face-to-face time with their instructor/teacher. Anyway, today I see that this perception has changed. There are even Universities in Malaysia that run all their courses completely via distance learning without face-to-face time with their lecturer (not directly anyway).

What I hope is to be able to build a good and practical site that can support virtual chess lessons soon. If I can make money out of such a system is great too but that’s not the main focus. It’s a dream of mine to see e-learning applied successfully to chess. Chess can really benefit from this as it bridges the geographical gap of students and chess coaches that are far away from each other.

Popularity: 11% [?]

My camera is fixed!

More than 4 months ago, the camera I rely so much to take pictures during chess tournaments went dead. I was sad because it was really good for taking above average pictures for all my blogs. No surprise I became less active in making blog posts because it’s just plain boring to post articles without any pictures. During the Malaysian Open 2008 I had to borrow a camera from a friend.

The problem was the LCD screen. It could show the menu and text and pictures already taken but went black when showing what was in front of the camera.

I was reluctant to take it for repairs as I remembered that one shop told me that it was cheaper to buy a new camera than to repair it.

Today I unscrewed and open the camera. One of the connectors looked loose so I just pushed it in and now the LCD works again.

How silly of me. I should have done that earlier.

It now works perfectly. This picture was taken using my handphone.

The first picture I took with my now back-to-live Panasonic camera. A little reddish but that’s because the lighting is actually reddish.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Crazy Bit Torrent speed in Vietnam

That’s the download speeds I’m getting while connected to WiFi in a hotel in Vung Tau, Vietnam.

I’m in Vietnam to help out with the chess tournament website. Wish I had such download speeds back in Malaysia

Popularity: 12% [?]

Dell Vostro 1310

Another 13.3 inch from Dell and they more or less look pretty much standard by now. The specs are not too impressive but for basic work and chess I think it’s more than enough.

Also at around RM 2000+ it’s getting competitive to the popular netbook prices like the Asus EEE PC.

Current price: RM 2249

Popularity: 13% [?]

iPod Nano knockoffs

You can find this on eBay and Lelong.com.my.

I’m thinking of getting one to view chess videos. Early feedback by Malaysian buyers is that the video quality is good but the audio is not that great. Have to test this out first to see for myself.

Current market price for an 8Gb MP4 player like the one above is about RM 100. 8Gb is good enough to squeeze in about 20-30 full length chess videos in the compressed format. That’s a lot!

Anyway the MP4 players looks so much like the real thing that Walmart USA actually mistakenly sold these knockoffs as real iPods to their customers.

Popularity: 13% [?]

ASUS EEE Box now in Malaysia

The highlights is that it is made for the Internet (built in WiFi) and boots up in just 7 seconds. Since it’s small and lightweight it’s ideal for carrying to tournaments. But then again can’t you do that with notebooks?

I guess so but do you know of any notebooks at the RM 1000 price range and can bootup that fast?

It would be ideal for tournament organisers as it is just as portable as a notebook but you would have to bring your own LCD. Anyway LCD monitolrs are lightweight and cheap nowadays. The only problem is that it is not as portable as it does not have it’s own batteries. So you need to be near a power socket.

Specifications

Popularity: 14% [?]

Upgraded to Wordpress 2.6.2

Just upgraded this blog to the latest version of Worpress ver 2.6.2. It’s been a long time waiting as my previous version was 2.3.2. One of the reason is I wanted to try out the “Turbo” function where many of the commonly used files are copied into the local machine making common operations fast.

Also, since I’m using Google latest browser - Chrome, it has the necessary tools already installed - namely, Google Gears.

Popularity: 13% [?]