Yet Another Cycling Forum
Random Musings => Gallery => Caption It => Topic started by: Wowbagger on 09 May, 2019, 12:03:41 am
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(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/59717725_10161628484865632_5619500906182606848_o.jpg?_nc_cat=104&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr3-1.xx&oh=d1d0ff5f895162964ed92bcc33344a8a&oe=5D5AEED3)
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"Okay, with the new CPU cooler, there's no way this overclocked 386SX can possibly lose!"
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Okay, with the new CPU cooler, there's no way this overclocked 386SX can possibly lose!
We weren't playing chess. The three of us were running the "live" streaming from the 1999 British Chess Championships in Scarborough. Sensory boards had yet to be introduced so we entered the moves manually from the top 4 boards. Runners conveyed them to us on scoresheets. This was pretty much the birth of "live" chess on the internet. Cutting edge stuff. All set up by Dez and the other chap, Dave Flynn, who I believe is still one of the admins at FICS (Free Internet Chess Server).
It's quite possible that YACFers may not recognise the very youthful Dez standing to my right.
Edit: around the same time, I had a 386 on my desk at work. I had loaded Fritz onto it, which was (and probably still is) the best chess-playing program around. I reckon I used to beat it 3 times out of 4. Then the bastards at HMCE upgraded me to a 486 and I only ever won 1 more game against exactly the same software.
Edit no 2: the matches started at 2.15BST every day, which is about the time that a lot of USAnians get to work. Initially we were putting the data on our own server, but after a couple of days so many people were trying to access it via our modem that it just ground to a halt. After that, Malcolm Pein, owner of Chess & Bridge, in London, invited us to store the data on his servers, which had much faster connections, and that cured the problem. A year or two later we were redundant as Malcolm had invested in some sensory boards so the moves were genuinely being broadcast live. The trouble was his tech types knew buggerall about chess and they mad some glaring errors with the presentation - like mixing up the names of the white & black players.
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It's quite possible that YACFers may not recognise the very youthful Dez standing to my right.
I thought it was him. He looks very pleased about his enormous fan, anyway :)
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Hang on, a 486 as an upgrade in 1999? Sounds about right for a government agency...
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Hang on, a 486 as an upgrade in 1999? Sounds about right for a government agency...
No. That must have been some years earlier. I left HMCE in 1995.
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Des sweated heavily from the armpit furthest from the cooling fan.
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Dez informs me that the above photo is actually Torquay 1998 and on the screen is the round 2 game between Grandmasters Nicholas Pert and Peter Wells. So Dez is even more youthful than I thought. As indeed am I!
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Paint? We didn't have paint back in my day, laddy! We had to take t'carpet off floor and put it on t'wall. Then we had to take t'bricks off t'wall and put them on t'floor to have sommat to stand on.
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The competitors in the 1998 Minesweeper World Championships line up for the camera.
Des Walker, standing right, was declared winner after a one-click clearance gave him an unbeatable score of 0.3 seconds.
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Deep Blue: The Early Years