EM

My name is Erik Mallinson. I draw pictures, make music, and some other stuff. I like playing the ‘ukulele, riding my scooter around Boston, and playing board games.
Follow me on Twitter (@erima) if you’re into that sort of thing. You might also check out my illustration and music studio (@gravel).
Got a question? Ask.

Posts tagged go

Jan25

Isn’t it ironic..

I don’t think it’s ironic at all. Democrats requested an adjustment to the Senator appointment process that seems more fair than it was. A truly balanced approach will be beneficial or harmful to either party.

dihard:

Isn’t it a little ironic that the same law that the Democrats changed in 2004 is what lost them the Massachusetts Senate seat in such a dire time?

(The Democrats, fearing Mitt Romney would appoint a Republican Senator if Kerry were to win the presidential election and vacate his Senate seat in 2004, submitted a bill to change the law to require a special election within 145-160 days after a Senate seat becomes vacant. Even more ironic is that Kennedy was instrumental in that change. Even more ironic is that they’d still hold that seat if the previous law was upheld.)

16 notes #Go #Politics

Jan12

Aug4

You can’t kill this group,” Keith Arnold told his opponent in Monday night’s Ing game, “it’s too big to die.” Said a bystander, “What is it, a bank?
American Go Association newsletter

#Go #board game

Aug3

Jun16

Tsumego collections→

Go problems (tsumego) collected in PDF format. They range from beginner to advanced and contain no answers, only problems.

Check out this introduction to the Igo Hatsuyo–ron collection:

This problem collection was compiled around 1710 by Inoue Dosetsu Inseki, fourth head of the Inoue house and fifth Meijin Godokoro. It was designed for training of the best students of the Inoue school and was kept secret for a long time.
Igo Hatsuyo-ron consists of 183 mostly insanely difficult problems and is aimed at serious players with deep interest in the game. While solving the problems takes many months, possibly even years, finding the solution is always particularly rewarding.

Totally badass.

1 notes #Go #board games

Rotted Handle

In the Zhejiang province of China there was a mountain inhabited by faeries. The story tells of an uncautious carpenter, Wang Zhi, who went up on the mountain in search of wood. At a certain point, he came over a group of people gathered round a go board. He joined the group to watch, leaning his axe against the rock. One of the company gave him a prune to eat (!). Wang Zhi lost himself completely in the game; the moves made were of unsurpassable beauty, of course. Suddenly, one of the spectators turned to him and asked if he shouldn’t be thinking about getting home at some point. Startled, he reached for his axe, but it crumbled to dust at the touch of his hand. Returning to the village, he learned that a hundred years had passed.
This myth was so popular that Ranka became one of the poetical words for Go in China and Japan. Literally, it means “rotted handle”. Painters and poets used the myth. The following brief text was written by Zhang Yiling, to go with his painting “Ranka Mountain”: “People envy the lifespan of fairies, but the life of a fairy is really quite pitiful. Who would trade a hundred years for a game of weiqi?”

from Sensei’s Library

#Go #board games #folklore

Jun13

Sensei's Library: Smart Game Format→

Smart Game Format, commonly abbreviated as SGF, has become a common file format for storing game records of board games for two players.

Here’s another slice of awesomeness: any image of Go game seen on Sensei’s Library links to an SGF file that opens in desktop Go apps. So if you find a Tsumego you would like to study further, just click on the image and open it up in your desktop app!

#Go #board games #reference

Sensei's Library: SL Snapshot→

Sensei’s Library is a wiki about Go. A super awesome, seemingly endless, fantastically great for beginners, amazingly deep for the experienced wiki about Go. I just discovered the “Snapshot” page, which is to say, ‘download the entire site for free’ page. I’ll be using my local copy for when want to catch up on Go while traveling but have limited internet access.

#go #cool #reference #board game