Uncategorised
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Experience Korea festival
Hey all! Just a quick note that this weekend (the 23rd of April, 2022) I will be teaming up with the Queensland Go Society to have a stall at the Experience Korea festival at Kuraby from 10am to 3pm. I will mostly be teaching people about go (well, baduk), but also – because I’m a filthy capitalist who likes paying bills – will be selling go sets to innocent passers-by new players! The event looks like it’ll be a lot of fun – if poorly publicised – so drop by and say hi!
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DAKTECH Cup 2022 Announcement!
The 2022 DAKTECH Cup is now open for registrations! Run in order to raise money for Rare Cancers Australia, this is a tournament open to players from Australia or New Zealand – always fun, I like playing players from different clubs and regions – they have new tricks to learn, and my old tricks sometimes even work! This tournament is conceived and managed by Townsville Go Club convenor (and personal friend) Colton Tinkey, who is an absolute stand-up guy, so go and support his efforts to help the world! Entry is a minimum $15 donation to Rare Cancers Australia – the link above is probably the easiest way. There have…
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Biggest Tournament Blunders?
One of the things I like about online tournaments, especially organised by clubs or bodies like the QGS or the New Zealand Go Society, is that you play against people you never would otherwise. I was watching such a game today. The New Zealand Digital Tournament is on currently (and I’m participating!), and a friend of mine (a 40+ year old living in Brisbane) had their match against a 10 year old from New Zealand. The 10 year old (who I’ll call Felix, and was playing White) had my friend (who I’ll call Horatio, playing Black) dead to rights – he was up by about 40 points, and Horatio had…
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Facebook Update & QLD Open
Hey all! Just a quick couple of updates. First, and most important, the QLD Open will be happening at Comics Plus in Annerley on the 12th and 13th of March from 10am. Handicap division (2d and weaker) will be on the first day, with the Open division (2k and stronger – so yes, if you’re 1k you can participate in either. We do not recommend both, but I don’t know if there’s a rule against it) being over two days, because you strong players actually think while playing so take a lot longer :p This will also include the QGS AGM, so if you want to rise up against my…
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Aesthetic Go
So, you have probably noticed there’s a fair amount of go media on the Interwebz – between go channels like Dwyrin and Haylee, forums like Life in 19×19, journals like The American Go E-Journal, we’re kind of spoiled for choice. Only I’ve noticed something. Maybe this is just my bias talking, but it seems to me that the vast majority of that focuses on the more cognitive aspects of the game – solving problems, understanding sequences, order of play, basically “how to play go well/better”. Which is obviously fine and dandy, nothing wrong with that at all, it’s a legitimate part of the game and culture. But as any go…
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Privacy Concerns Continued
So you may have seen the last post I made, where I talked about my concerns about what some have called “privacy capitalism” or “surveillance capitalism“, in which our personal data is viewed as valuable by a range of entities, most of whom do not have our best interests at heart. And as happens in an economy, if something is valuable, people figure out ways to get it, usually as cheaply as possible. While this is perfectly normal, even desirable, when we’re talking about wheat or entertainment or medicine, when it come to personal data, there’s another element – the desires for the data inherently conflict with desires of us…
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Privacy Concerns
Reviewing how we do privacy - suggestions invited!
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Spreading the Love Update
Hey all! A while back I talked about wanting to spread my good fortune from having this business, while balancing my need to, you know, eat and such. Complicating factors are my obvious desire for some privacy especially online (post about that coming soon), but also wanting to be transparent and accountable – we’ve all seen companies claim to want to help, but shroud the process in such obscurity that who knows. So, while accepting that this is an imperfect system, this is how I’m going to move forward with this. While this policy might change in the future, this is how I see it going for now. Basically, I’m…
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2021 Australian Digital/Australian Open Tournament
Hey all! This year, due to reasons I cannot possibly guess at (taxes? No, I think something happened at a zoo… or was it a dentist? That’s right, I think a dentist didn’t pay his taxes or something) we’re not allowed to travel without doing six months community service painting park benches. So, because apparently not everyone enjoys that kind of painting like I do, the 2021 Australian Open Tournament, the premier national tournament, is being merged with the Australian Digital tournament, the premier international online Pacific-region tournament. In an attempt to spread the love of bench-painting, we are very happy to sponsor this tournament, so entry is entirely free!…
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Vacation
Hey everyone! Just a quick note that I will be out of town for a week or so from the 29th of July. So orders will still come in, they’ll just need to wait until I get back to be processed. My apologies for the delay!