I saw Forest Whitaker this weekend

On Friday we were flying down to Texas to visit Melissa's dad. While we were waiting at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport for our connecting flight, Forest Whitaker comes off a plane. We waved and he waved back to us. That was a neat moment! (I especially liked his performance in Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai.)

For those who are interested, here is a story about a Hip Hop Chess event. The story mentions the RZA from Wu-Tang Clan, whose music was in Ghost Dog.

Chess dream

Last night I dreamed that I was playing in a tournament. Gata Kamsky was sipping cognac and taping up the latest copy of This Week in Chess on the wall. He paused and asked if I wanted it.

Round Four

Yesterday's top five boards were all decisive, so we now have a single player, GM Alex Shabalov, with a perfect score. He will have the Black pieces against Nakamura. I'm predicting a hard-fought draw.

U.S. Chess Championship: Round 3 today.

As reported on Susan Polgar's blog, three players share first place with a perfect score, but they are not the players with the highest rating going into the tournament. The top three boards were all draws yesterday, including Eugene Perelshteyn's game against defending champ Alexander Onishuk. (Game)

I am interested in Perelshteyn's results, partially because he was listed in Chess Life as a "Show" for this tournament (as in Win-Place-Show), but also because he played the Caro-Kann, my favorite opening, in round one. (Game)

Today he plays Black against Jaan Ehlvest.

The U.S. Chess Championship is underway!

The Frank K. Berry U.S. Chess Championship is taking place today. Live games are available at the Monroi site.

5/8/1977

I was way too young, and my parents were...um...not in Ithaca that night, which was 30 years ago yesterday.

I listened to just a single song from the Dead's legendary show from Cornell University last night, which was the amazingly powerful Morning Dew.

Chess game that I recently finished

I played the following game on Chessworld.net over the last few weeks, and it just ended. A number of positional factors came together which helped me complete the game successfully.

Environmental design

I read this interesting article in The Rake yesterday about the construction of extremely energy efficient housing near Bemidji. It is based on the German standard known as Passivhaus. I was up until yesterday unaware of that standard, so I thought I would share it here with interested readers.