Website en weblog van Marcel Pol | Timelord

Idea density in chess and programming

26 Oct 2019 19:20 | Geplaatst door Marcel

Ideas are a dime a dozen they say, and I can agree with that. Ideas can be cheap and easy, the execution is what matters. An idea can sound great in theory, but in practice it can turn out to be quite different.
Not every idea that gets thought of or spoken out loud will be executed. Most will remain not executed, and for some that might be better.

In chess most ideas can be executed. During a game you can think of hundreds of ideas. Inside the game itself you can execute some, and afterwards in the analysis all of them can be executed on the board, looked at and spoken about. You can talk them over with your opponent; what did you think here, how did you like this move, how would you respond, how do you see this position. You can also talk about the game with other people, be they clubmates or teammates. Positions are easy to put on the board, and the pieces are easy to make moves with and see a new position.
I would assume, the stronger of a chessplayer you are, the more ideas you can think of, make better decisions which ideas are the best, execute them on the board, and from the new position start again with that process. For stronger chessplayers this might cost less mental energy. I am only a clubplayer at a level of about 1500 ELO, and often in my games I see small series of weaker moves, where apparently I am not sharp enough.

I have wondered for some time about chess rating and people who program. I have the anecdotal experience that most people who play chess and are also programmer/developer, are more at clublevel, not master or grandmaster. Just today I thought of something that you could call idea density. In programming you can have maybe a hundred ideas on a day, but you can only execute maybe one, a few, but not often more than a handfull. I can imagine for a strong chessplayer, like around 2000 ELO and above, this can become a bit boring. They might enjoy seeing more ideas come to fruition, and choose a different kind of job that brings them more of what they enjoy and what they are good at.

Classic Stylo theme for PHP-Fusion 9

03 Oct 2019 12:35 | Geplaatst door Marcel

The Stylo theme was a classic desktop theme for PHP-Fusion version 7 and 8. PHP-Fusion 9 comes with themes that are following the modern responsive design. Some users prefer the classic desktop design of Stylo, and in my experience it is mostly users on mobile who prefer Stylo.

On Github I placed a version of Stylo that works on PHP-Fusion version 9.
Take a look at Github for Stylo.

Wallpaper with the bridge for trains in Zwolle

29 May 2019 22:35 | Geplaatst door Marcel

I could not find good pictures of the recent train bridge in Zwolle, so I decided to make some pictures. And yes, I do know it is seven years after building the bridge :)

I could not find good pictures of the recent train bridge in Zwolle, so I decided to make some pictures. And yes, I do know it is seven years after building the bridge :)
Read more...

Updates for the Jednotka WordPress theme

17 Feb 2019 13:27 | Geplaatst door Marcel

The Jednotka WordPress theme was for some time quite a popular theme for WordPress. However, the last update for it was published in December 2014, and there were no more subsequent updates. That basically meant it wasn’t compatible with PHP 7, and it broke down on anything that recent.

Up untill October 2018 it was still for sale on that Envato website. To me that was quite in bad taste. People would buy a theme that wasn’t even working on current PHP versions. Apparently that is how you make money, by cheating people out of it.

Last October I met someone at a local WordPress meetup who was using the Jednotka theme on het website, but had problems with it. A lot of admin pages broke down and the WordPress dashboard was quite useless.

I helped her with a few bugfixes and updates for the this theme that make it work with PHP 7.1 and 7.2. You can find that updated theme over at Codeberg.

2x Peugeot demi-course

13 Aug 2017 17:43 | Geplaatst door Marcel

Since recently I own 2 Peugeot bikes, both demi-course, or halfway roadrace bikes.

The green one is probably a PL-50. I cannot find this specific model in the brochures, but looking at the decals it is probably from 1975, 1976 or 1977.
The handlebar with guidonnet brake levers is a bit remarkable. In France they used this type of brake lever more often from the thirties up untill the seventies.

The red model used to have a straight handlebar, which has been replaced by an eighties dropbar by Peugeot.

Both bikes ride nice and plush.

Since recently I own 2 Peugeot bikes, both demi-course, or halfway roadrace bikes. The green one is probably a PL-50. I cannot find this specific model in the brochures, but looking at the decals it is probably from 1975, 1976…
Read more...

How to create a personal calendar with WordPress

19 Apr 2017 14:00 | Geplaatst door Marcel

For the last few years I have used Owncloud, which is a full-featured hosting solutions for files, contact, calender, etc. It turned out I only use the calendar part of it, and found the complexity of that full suite a bit too much. Upgrading always gave me issues. I was planning to switch to Nextcloud, which is basically the same thing, but I decided against that. If I am switching anyway, I could just as well switch to something more to the point and with simplicity included.

First I played with a real calendering server, Radicale. I combined that with a web GUI in the form of AgenDAV. Both simple implementations and seemingly what I wanted. But I had some integration issues, not everything worked right, like moving items to a different day, or editing an existing item.

So I started looking for a WordPress solution. All I need in a calendar solution is:

Simple interface per month with tiles for each day.
Frontend editing.
Only one user.
Each item has just a day and title. A color per category would be a nice extra.
Authentication with a user/password form.

What I do not need:

Multiple users.
Public or shared calendars.
Contacts.
Vcards, caldav, ical integration.
Shared files.

Plugins

I found the Calendar Event Multi View plugin to best fit my needs. You can easily add a shortcode with a calendar to a page, in my case the frontpage of the site. It is also easy to enable frontend editing. It just works the way I was looking for.

Theme

The theme I made a child theme for was Twenty Sixteen. I called it Personal Calendar and it is available on Codeberg. It has some custom CSS and adds a grey Calendar color scheme to Twenty Sixteen.
The page template has a login form for non-logged-in users, and after login shows the calender.
Everything else has been stripped from the templates and it is all simply aimed at being a good calender theme.

Result

The result is just a one page design with a calendar on the frontend of that site. It lives on a personal subdomain.