I promise, dear game, I have not left you, despite appearances to the contrary.

I’ve just been busy. Very busy at that, both over the board playing my favorite game, as well as at several of my other side projects such as iShudan and the iPhone unlocking biz. In fact, I’ve had many more games over the board in the last week than any in recent memory due to my increased mobility. This comes at the cost of time for writing or studying software. Over the last week I enjoyed a best-of-three match with David York, a fireside game at HotWire with Adam, and at least 3 separate games with the newest person at work to learn the game, Benjamin. I think we had more, but they were interrupted before completion due to time. Unfortunately, my games at David’s Go Dojo have slowed considerably, as I have few moves per day lately, if any at all. I welcome anyone who prefers the slow pace of “Go-by-email” to register an account and start up a board or two with me here.

Most of my non-playing Go time has been spent learning something completely tangential to Go, programming PHP and learning the basics of Cocoa. I have watched all five of the video podcasts that Apple released to iPhone developers to help make sites Compliant, Optimized, and then Native. I have been putting thought into the design and roadmap, and I hope to have a wireframe mock up soon that I can post and share with others that explains my vision for the future of iShudan as a project. I can say that I have a lot of lofty goals currently, as I accomplish these milestones I will write about them further.

And did I mention that my Regular Job has been really busy too? ;-)

c’est la vie, c’est la guerre!

Some of my teaching games at work I lost because of moving too fast after a distraction, as I would lose the tempo of what was happening, and when I came back and tenuki‘d away from an important situation the student would promptly pounce without remorse on the now reversed situation. Counting liberties sometimes gives you a confidence you don’t deserve because the local situation has complexities that are not at first apparent.

This weekend I plan to have a mini-ranking blitz on KGS to see if my skills have improved of late, barring any late invitations to an in person game.

I hope to also start studying for my FCC Amateur Radio Technician Class license this next week and on my upcoming vacation. This is just a side project of mine, perhaps a work related hobby. I have precious little time left over for new hobbies, heaven knows, but I find I enjoy a steady diet of new and interesting technical material. I have been assured by one of my friends that the first level exam is pretty easy to pass once you have studied, particularly since they have dropped the Morse Code requirements. I have a book here on loan from the library, as well as some online resources to study next week, I think that may be really all I will need to prepare.

I will post some Go-related study materials this weekend, as well as a kifu from a 19×19 game on the Dojo. I hope your own projects and goals are proceeding apace, and that this note finds you well. Namaste’.