Today I just released Random Chess (Chess960) for the iPhone. It will randomize the starting position of a chess game putting your bishops on different colors as well as putting the king between the two rooks. You can already buy it now from the App Store for only $0.99 or see more details on my Random Chess page.

You can also see my interviews with iPhone developers: Galcon, BloXoR and Metasquares.

Hodiaŭ mi ĵus eldonis Hazardan Ŝakon por la iPhone. Ĝi hazardigos la komencan pozicion de ŝaka ludo metante viajn du kurierojn sur malsamaj koloroj kaj vian reĝon inter viaj du turoj. Vi jam povas aĉeti ĝin nun de la App Store kontraŭ nur $0.99 aŭ vidi pli da detaloj sur mia paĝo de Hazarda Ŝako.

Vi ankaŭ povas vidi miajn intervjuojn kun iPhone-programistoj: Galcon, BloXoR and Metasquares.

You can now add my new blog as a friend to your LJ account by friending chucksmithweb20.

Thanks to jiggery_pokery for setting it up!

I explain how here on my other blog.

I now keep a professional blog on www.chucksmith.de, but I will continue to post personal news here.

Mi nun tenas profesian blogon ĉe www.chucksmith.de, sed mi daŭre afiŝos personajn aferojn ĉi tie.

Have you been wanting to learn Korean, but haven't quite gotten around to it? Are those pesky characters mocking you and keeping you from the high-energy thrill of Korean? Fret no more!

Just kidding, felt like giving an infomercial spiel. But really, check out a quick and interactive way to learn the Korean alphabet.

Well, we got our pre-registration page up today for PokerRing.  Check it out at www.pokerring.com

Jen tre interesa artikolo de Miroslav Malovec pri la evoluo de terminologio en Vikipedio kaj ĝia influo al la lingva komunumo:

Verkante artikolojn por Vikipedio ĉiu kontribuanto renkontiĝas kun terminologiaj problemoj, ĉar ne ekzistas fako teknika, scienca aŭ arta, kie ne troviĝus ankaŭ terminoj. Oni verkas pri landoj, urboj, monumentoj, artistoj, sciencistoj, sportistoj, politikistoj, inventoj, eventoj, bestoj, plantoj, mineraloj - ĉie svarmas terminoj, kiujn necesas esprimi en Esperanto.

( legu pli de Terminologio en Vikipedio )

So, now I know the home row and can touch most keys without too much thought.  In the long run, I know this will be much better on my hands and I will type faster, but in the meantime it is quite frustrating.  It is especially difficult to type German, because I have to concentrate on German at the same time.  At least with my customized layout, I can now type in English, Esperanto, German, and Spanish without changing keyboard layouts.  ...and yes this post has been typed entirely in Dvorak, mostly without looking at the keyboard!

I use a Mac, but today I seem to be finding lots of nice apps for Windows:

E Text Editor - a very nice text editor similar to TextMate for Mac

Launchy - fast search/application launching like on a Mac, open source too

Avast Anti-Virus - exactly what it says, I installed this on my virtual Windows that I sometimes run on my Mac with VMWare.

I just downloaded the Flock web browser and I'm trying it out.  Anyone else have any experiences with it?  I'm now posting to LiveJournal using its built-in blog post compose feature...

Hi everyone, I've been completely swamped the last couple of weeks working at my new job in Berlin. We really hope to be fully live by mid-May. Wish us luck!

In the meantime, I discovered that I don't really do livejournal anymore. I like it, just don't have time anymore for it. So, now I'm going for the super-short version of Twitter. Yeah, I know what you're thinking, why Twitter? Well, I like that I can send an IM to just share a quick thought I have and don't need to write a long entry nor pull up my web browser.

Anyway, if you use Twitter, feel free to follow me at http://twitter.com/amuzulo.

However, when I have really important news, I will probably still use LiveJournal to keep you all up to date with major changes in my life. In the meantime, if you want to visit Berlin, let me know and I'll see if we can put you up. We have a nice apartment in the center city. :) Oh, and I'm quite happy here. Great girlfriend, great apartment, great location, great job. What more can one ask for?

I just ran across this new site where you can post foreign language texts for others to correct and you can correct others at Corect Me. Anyway, I posted a letter I wrote in German there and I would encourage you to post any texts you need corrected too! You can see texts that need corrections on the correct others page. Pretty cool, eh? :)

Yeah, that's right, we do! Go us. Check out this group photo from ExpoLingua Berlin:



Oh, and I'll be in Japan from Nov 29 - Dec 9, so if you live there, let me know. :)

Wow, wow, wow. I just discovered this game tonight. It's basically a Super Mario four-player deathmatch. What could be cooler than that? It uses all the same images, sound and music of the Super Mario Bros series and has over 200 maps. ...and it's open source and runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. I hear it also can run on PSP and XBox, but haven't seen these rumors confirmed. Anyway, download it, give it a try and let me know what you think. :)

I just found this awesome new site called dotsub where you can upload a video and then anyone can translate its subtitles into other languages. How cool is that? So, I noticed there weren't many films there originally in Esperanto, so I uploaded a few which can be seen at my profile page on dotsub. They all have English subtitles, so you can understand them, although they're not particularly deep or meaningful. I was mostly just playing around with the site to see how it works.

So, now we see what happens to me when the girlfriend doesn't visit. ;) I get all nostalgic on arcade games. At least I'm not as nostalgic as this guy who bought a Galaxian 3 Theater. Whoa. I've always wanted to have a stand-up arcade game in my apartment/house, but this is a bit over the edge. But, I want to find out where he moves it, so I can visit... ;-)

I wanted to get a paddle controller or spinner to play Arkanoid. I'm not good at building electronics, so I just want something pre-built. Searched the net, couldn't find anything. So, eventually I came across the Mame Spinner Roundup, but they are all unfortunately built for actual arcade cabinets. I still love this sentence: "To evaluate each of these spinners, I ran them through a number of grueling (fun) and exhausting (very fun) play-tests. I also tried to rank each spinner on a number of different criteria, including ease of installation, design, ease of use, spinner sensitivity, and more." So, I decided he must be the expert to write about this. He replied that I might want to try out the PowerMate which is a USB volume control, but from what I read online, it's not gonna cut it for gaming. I'm waiting for a reply from the company though. :)

Yesterday played my first Scorched 3D online and I couldn't believe what a n00b I was. Haven't played "modern" games in so long... I even forgot to buy parachutes... how stupid of me! Also, I learned you can follow the shot camera by pressing c. So high tech... I like my gaming old school. hah! I also learned that Space Invaders didn't originally have sound, ... or color! It was in fact the first popular arcade game after Pong. Also, did you know that Pong only ran on analog? ... no digital parts! So, you can't emulate it, you would have to simulate it.

To finish it off, I just got The Ultimate History of Video Games: From Pong to Pokemon--The Story Behind the Craze That Touched Our Lives and Changed the World which is amazingly cheap (15 EUR) for a 624 page book of such importance. All five star reviews. Well, almost all. So, I guess now I should shower and clean up the apartment for Judith's visit on Tuesday. Also, I think I'll work half a day today, so I can take off Thursday.

Nostalgia just isn't what it used to be... Oh, anyone know of any decent arcades in Europe? From playing in the Hersheypark arcades when I was young, I guess I'm spoiled. I read somewhere that they have some of best arcades in the entire world...

Free your mind? Free your phone! :)

Yes, I am a lemming who wants an iPhone too, but I live in Europe, so I will be waiting til November for mine. It appears that T-Mobile will be providing exclusive coverage for Europe, so I will have to soon decide whether my love for the iPhone or my hatred for T-Mobile is greater... ugh. Maybe I'll just get an OpenMoko instead. heh


Anyway, some interesting articles:

• Washington Post about T-Mobile and iPhone
• German article from RP Online
• Funny comic about growing foreign hostility toward the USA

After a year of diligent effort, a group of nearly 50 dedicated users and developers are proud to release WikiCreole 1.0. Creole is designed to be a common wiki markup language which augments existing markup to enable wiki users to transfer content seamlessly across wikis, a boon to novice and expert users alike.

Creole, taking its name from the field of linguistics, a stable language that originated from a combination of two or more languages. As every wiki software has its own markup definitions, the differences can make them difficult for novices to learn and experts to remember, thus a common wiki markup lays the foundation for development of cross-engine wiki software.

Full Press Release: http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/WikiCreolePressRelease
Digg Story: http://digg.com/software/WikiCreole_1_0_a_common_wiki_markup