Archive for August 13th, 2008
Chess By Blog Plugin for WordPress
Chess By Blog is a plugin for WordPress that — surprise — adds a number of chess-related features to WordPress. According to the developer’s list of features, that includes,
- PGN (Portable Game Notation) inserted into your post body will be displayed as a graphical board, inline in the browser. The client side code was written using the Google Web Toolkit (GWT), resulting in Javascript (no Java required) that has been tested in Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Mozilla/Firefox, and Safari. The graphical look of the chessboard is controlled by themes, and can be easily controlled in the management panel for the plugin.
- The board supports interactive play directly in the browser, in a mode which does not update the post body. All rules of chess are supported, include en passant, castling, and pawn promotion. This can be used to present chess problems for readers to work through.
- Chess By Blog also supports a persistent game played between two players, hence the name of the plugin. Readers that have edit permissions on a post can take turns moving pieces, with the state of the board saving to the WordPress database between moves. The plugin uses WordPress and PHP security features to ensure that only moves that come from the client chessboard code can update the database.
The plugin is regularly updated and the developer notes it has been tested and works with WordPress 2.6.
Chess Learner Board
Lanceross makes this nifty little beginner chess board that includes initial piece layout preprinted on the board as well as a visual guide to the movement of each piece.
Tags: Chess
Call of Cthulhu Dice
Sadly, this Call of Cthulhu dice set from Q-Workshop has been sold out for awhile, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to be doing any more. These do occasionally show up on E-Bay, however.
Tags: Cthulhu, Dice, H.P. Lovecraft, Q-Workshop
Hitachi Claims 612 Gigabits/Square Inch
Hitachi recently announced it had successfully written and retrieved data at a 612 gigabytes/per square inch ration on a magnetic hard drive media using perpendicular recording,
Perpendicular magnetic recording is now the current mainstream HDD technology. Hitachi GST demonstrated 230 Gbit/in2 in April 2005, 345 Gbit/in2 in September 2006, and has now shown extendability to 610 Gbit/in2. This growth supports the theory that technology can support storage capacity growth of 40% annually. It has been predicted, however, that the current perpendicular recording, which uses a continuous film media will eventually reach a limit in achievable recording density, and therefore, new head and media using alternative technology such discrete track recording, bit patterned media and thermally-assisted recording, are also being considered. These new methods are still being developed, but hold potential for much greater advancements in areal density growth.
Please, sir, may I have some more?
Tags: Data Storage, Hard Drives, Hitachi
Guitar Hero Action Figures
McFarlane Toys ended up with the license to do Guitar Hero action figures. These will be out in November 2008, which means by April 2009 you should be able to pick these up on clearance (seriously who is the target audience for this?)
Tags: Action Figures, Guitar Hero, McFarlaneToys
AfriGadget.Com
AfriGadget is a fascinating blog that highlights African ingenuity in finding creative uses for technology.