I found a great open source javascript called JSPgnViewer that give me a very functional PGN game viewer to build on. For those of you unfamiliar with “PGN,” that is the standard format (notation) that chess games get saved as. It is basically just text that shows the moves of a game. With the heavy lifting of creating a PGN viewer already finished, I was able to focus on building the customizable skins for the chess pieces and boards. Another feature that I am pretty happy with is the ability to add your games through a Wordpress quicktag. All you have to do is click on this button in the HTML side of your Wordpress editor and paste in your code. More information about the chess game viewer plugin is available here.

I will wrap this up with a quick demonstration of the plugin in action. Here a few of the games I have enjoyed recently:

In the game above I was down a two major pieces and preparing for a loss until the water parted and I ended with a nice combination.

I almost took a draw in the game above at move 27, but then I saw a way to get my second knight involved to force checkmate. Move 30 puts my knight in harms way as a cocky way to finish the game. I am a jerk that way.

Sometimes your opponent just doesn’t want to win and they let you checkmate them with just a single knight.

Above is a terrible move at 27! Luckly, I still had a little life left. I love this ending.

CodeWeavers,

I was disappointed to learn that I will be charged for an upgrade from version 8.01 to 8.03 of crossover. If this had been a major new release, I could understand charging for an upgrade, but as far as I can tell the latest update is addressing compatibility and stability issues, not introducing new features. Charging for extending a license just to get minor updates is a bad business model. Before I become a very vocal and visible anti-crossover customer, I thought I would give you a chance to remedy the situation. Thanks in advance for giving me access to your product upgrade.

Adrian Hanft

Adrian,

Interesting e-mail. Its a bit early for threats, isn’t it? Before you chastise our business model, I’d ask if you know our business model? Here’s the deal. When you buy CrossOver, you are really purchasing support. With Pro and Games, you get 12 months of support. With Standard, you get six months of support. Support includes all software updates, software upgrades, and help desk support. When your time runs out, you have the option (YOUR OPTION) to renew your support. We don’t charge for any one particular update. We don’t charge for any one particular upgrade. We don’t charge for creating a help desk ticket. We package all of that into your support that expires on a specified date. When your support expires, you need to renew support regardless if the next update is major or minor. That’s our business model, and our customer tend to appreciate the way we do business.

So let me review your situation and clarify a couple of points…

1.) YOU NEVER PAID FOR CROSSOVER. You got a free subscription to CrossOver during our Lame Duck Challenge. You took advantage of our promotion, and you received one year of support. You upgraded your software accordingly from 7.2 to 8.0 so that you would have the ability to run on Snow Leopard. So to clarify, you haven’t paid for anything to date and gotten 15 months of joy from the software. And we fulfilled all our obligations as stated in this free promotion.

2.) HOW BAD OF BUSINESS CAN IT BE TO GIVE AWAY YOUR SOFTWARE? If you do decide to be very vocal and visible anti-CrossOver, I’d ask that you at least tell people that you got the software for free. That you received two minor updates and one major upgrade over the course of 15 months. Then, you threatened the company that gave you the free software and free support with bad PR when you were told it was time to pay for future support. After all, fair is fair.

3.) YOU KNEW THIS DAY WAS COMING. Everyone that took part in the Lame Duck Challenge received e-mail (most would say too much e-mail) with notices, special pricing, deal codes in regards to renewing their support. At some point (well before you tussle with Jack), you were notified that your support had expired or was about to expire. The timing of your support expiring had nothing to do with a minor upgrade to 8.0.3 and was going to happen at some point. It just so happens that your support expired on November 9, 2009.

4.) YOU NEED TO RENEW YOUR SUPPORT. The only way for you to acquire 8.0.3 (and the major 9.0 release) is to renew your support. Threatening me with being very vocal and visibly anti-CrossOver will do you no good. Actually, I find your comments to be quite incredulous considering you received the software and support for free (even more so when I go out to your website and see how you interact with your customers). Being that you have an illness that prevents you from being happy unless you are creating something, I hope that you can appreciate that for my developers to keep their hands busy and create new updates to our software they need to get paid. This is how our software improves which hopefully creates a better experience for our customers.

5.) STILL A CHANCE TO SAVE MONEY. If you wish to renew your support of CrossOver and support our business model, I’d ask you to use SPECIAL DEAL CODE: DEADDUCK this will save you 50 percent on your purchase of CrossOver Mac. That’s roughly the cost (actually a few pennies less) then what we ask people to pay to renew their annual support. For $35.00 (USD) per year or less then $3.00 (USD) per month or less the $.75 (USD) per week, you can continue to receive our software updates, software upgrades, and help desk support. And with CrossOver 9.0 scheduled to be released by March 1, 2010, you will receive one of the better software upgrades as part of this support (no additional costs to upgrade to a major release). Just enter the SPECIAL DEAL CODE in the Special Deal Box in the cart screen (has to be the cart screen) of the order process. You’ll see the discount applied before you complete your transaction.

That’s the best deal that I can provide to you. If you don’t like the deal or feel that we’re still being unreasonable, I guess I’ll read about it on your many blogs (I’d just ask for you to spell my name right… its R-A-M-E-Y (pronounced RAY-me, not RAM-ee). Thank you again for your e-mail and interesting comments. My very best regards to you (and your father and son both named Adrian).

James B. Ramey
Vice President, Sales
CodeWeavers
[edit: contact info removed]

Dear Mr. Ramee,

Thanks for the email and personal attention. My email wasn’t meant as a threat as much as an attempt to show you the mistake you were making. You may not be aware that happy customers spread the word about great products. Disappointed customers complain and promote alternatives. That’s why most companies actually care about customer satisfaction. Word of mouth has the power to sell (or slow the sale of) products.

When I first emailed you I was on the fence about CrossOver and looking for a reason to get behind it. That’s why I tried your software in the first place. And yes, I tried it for free thanks to your promotion. (Actually, a friend referred me to you because he was a impressed with the concept of CrossOver – an example of word of mouth marketing in action!) Had it not been free I wouldn’t have tried it at all. So since it was free, I tried your software. And honestly, it is okay. I use it occasionally when I need to test a website on IE and I don’t have access to a PC. If you guys work out the kinks I would probably pay for the next major release. If you can get IE8 to run I definitely will. However, I will NEVER pay for support. Most people, like me, expect software to work – without needing technical assistance. Call me crazy.

The really funny thing about your business model is that it is almost the opposite of the traditional “free trial” concept. Instead of offering an enticing sample for free that persuades potential customers to part with their money, you guys are just giving your goods away and charging people for support – banking on what I assume is your inside knowledge that most people won’t be able to get CrossOver working. Why would a company base their pricing on support as their main product? Could it be that the software is so buggy that there is more money in helping people get it working? That is the only logical conclusion I can come to.

You can run your business however you would like, but here is some free advice. I owe you after all, for the 15 months of support that I didn’t use…

1. Don’t pull the plug on legitimate customers and hold them hostage with something as minor as basic performance upgrade.

2. Dont’ charge for customer service. That’s really what your support package is (and your thorough review of my billing records will show that I used exactly zero of it!) If you are losing money because you are spending too much time helping your customers, then take the product offline and put it in beta.

3. Sell software. Your products are your most valuable product, so sell it! If people need support, sell that separately.

4. Make it easy to upgrade. The majority of your users are Mac users after all, and they are used to user-friendly software experiences.

5. And most importantly… Oops, your subscription just expired. If you would like more free advice you will have to pay me for it.

Sincerely,
Adrian3

P.S. You probably didn’t spend enough time on my website to realize that I am not selling anything there. I contribute freely to several open source projects. I alone handle all support issues for Font Burner, a free service that asks nothing in return of my users. I actually feel guilty when I am unable to serve people as well as I should – even though I owe them nothing. I would never insult my users with the type of email you sent me.

Adrian,

Sorry to lose you as a customer. Best wishes to you in all your endeavors. Thanks for the advice. My best regards.

James B. Ramey

The first product I am proud to announce is a Wordpress plugin called “Daily Chess Puzzle Widget.” The plugin is a simple way to add chess puzzles to the sidebar of any Wordpress powered website. The only prerequisite is that the theme you are using needs to be “widgetized.” The official home of my plugin will reside at adrian3.com/projects/wordpress-plugins/daily-chess-puzzle-widget/

The Daily Chess Puzzle widget pulls its puzzles from shredderchess.com, a website that offers the puzzles for free. Each day they deliver an easy, medium, and hard puzzle. My plugin gives you a dropdown menu where you can choose the size of puzzle you want shown.

While this chess plugin is a relatively simple project it did teach me some valuable lessons that I am planning to build on in future releases. For example, this is the first “widget” I have created and that will be a valuable tool to have in my arsenal going forward.

The next chess plugin I am working on involves a chess game viewer that allows you to post a games into your blog post for people to replay. It will allow you to customize the style, color, size, and features of the chessboard. I am pretty happy with it so far and plan on releasing it in the next week or two so stay tuned.

Not sure how long I will stay in the chess plugin phase, but it has been fun so far!

I have been playing chess online a bit more lately and have been looking for ways to incorporate chess into my blog a bit more. I don’t know what form that will take, but one of the things I have been experimenting with is a Wordpress plugin called “Chess by Blog.” This Wordpress Plugin allows you to paste a chess game in PGN format into your web posts. For example, the example below shows a game I played last week.

Here is my initial results from trying to use the Chess By Blog Wordpress plugin. The plugin seems to work after a little bit of trial and error. For example, I had to manually surround my PGN code with the div class of “CBB-board” to get the game to show up. Perhaps I am missing something. In the HTML tab there is a “Chess By Blog” option that I couldn’t get working, either. I am in Safari right now so maybe I should try it in Firefox. It looks like you can create custom styles and themes for your board, which might be fun to play with. I will add to this post more as I figure out more features/problems with the plugin. In the meantime, enjoy the game below…

This was a fun game. I started out aggressive, but played sloppy leaving myself down several pawns and then a knight. Luckily I was bailed out in the end because my opponent didn’t see the checkmate coming. I plugged the game into the computer at move 37 and was surprised the computer gave me a draw despite being down so much material. I find that some of the most enjoyable games are the one’s where victory is snatched from the clutches of defeat. Of course it is never fun to be the person on the other side of the board when this happens.

There are a few bands that I am fanatical about. A quick look at my last.fm charts shows these bands to be Iron & Wine, Eels, Simon & Garfunkel, The Shins, and Ben Folds. When it comes to these musicians I will buy every track they put out, I will see them in concert, I will insist that friends listen to them, I will track down rare bootlegs, and I anxiously await their future releases. This last part, waiting for new releases, is the hard part.

For example, the latest Shins album isn’t a Shins album at all. It is a collaboration between Danger Mouse and James Mercer, the Shins frontman. They are going by the name, Broken Bells. I have known for months about the album, and waiting for it to come out in March is excruciating. Like most music, the Broken Bells album was leaked months before its release date and can be found on the Pirate Bay and other less than legal places. It is virtually impossible for a true fan to resist the urge to grab this music as soon as it becomes available. A true fan sincerely wants to give money to their favorite bands and the guilt that accompanies stealing music is extra heavy in this case.

I can only assume that the delay in the release of an album has to do with the music label wanting to reduce CDs on the same release date as digital files. The printing, packaging, and production of the CDs must delay the release.

I can tell you that the Broken Bells album is going to be worth the purchase. Here is a video of the first single:

If you can wait until March 9th, you can pre-order the Broken Bells album  from Amazon. I plan on buying it on Vinyl since I don’t really listen to CDs.

The truth is that, yes, I take my writing very personally. The writing that I admire the most is from authors who aren’t afraid to let their emotion carry over to their written words. For example…

Some authors are visionaries.
Some are great teachers.
Some are prolific creators.
Some do it with humor and logic.
Some do it with honesty.
Others are articulate.
Some are fanatics.
Some do it with insightful commentary.
Some are trendsetters.
Some are committed to excellence.
Some are consistently random but fascinating.
Some are just experts.

Is there something that all these authors have in common. If I had to guess at the source of this talent I would put my money on passion. When you are truly passionate about something it is very hard NOT to let your passion show through in your writing. The opposite is definitely not true. If you don’t care about a topic it is impossible to write a compelling essay about it.

The question that this leaves me with is whether or not the world needs another lifeless web design blog. How many CSS galleries, Photoshop tutorials, top ten lists, and free font/icon/theme blogs do we need? At what point will the pendulum swing back to the side of truly passionate discourse about design? Will there be a resurgence of critical thinking similar to the days when BADG and SpeakUp dominated the design blogosphere? I truly hope so. In the meantime, I will continue to strive toward writing passionate and personal posts.

Over the next 56 years R. Buckminster Fuller would live an extraordinary life that did change the world. If you are unfamiliar with Fuller’s life and his work, I would like to give you a brief introduction to the achievements of a truly fascinating man.

Buckminster Fuller is best known for designing the geodesic dome. Actually, Fuller only popularized the dome which was invented 30 years prior to Fuller’s work. Nevertheless, his contributions to the geodesic dome, including some patents, will probably be the most visible part of Buckminster’s legacy. You know the iconic sphere at Epcot Center? It is also know as Spaceship Earth and is probably the most prominent example of Bucky’s geodesic structures. The thousands of domes in existence are fascinating structures, but they aren’t the most interesting of Fuller’s ideas in my opinion.

There are three words that Buckminster Fuller invented that pretty much sum up his design philosophy. Those words are livingry, tensegrity, and dymaxion. The fact that all three of these words get flagged by spellcheck is by itself a testament to Fuller’s personality as the definition of a non-conformist. If you read his writing you will probably laugh at some of the sentences he concocts. Not only did he make up words, he would write the longest run-on sentences you have ever heard. My point isn’t to ridicule his writing, but to point out that Buckminster had no use for the conventional obstacles that humanity had built around society. When language was insufficient for his purposes he would invent new words. When traditional rules of English limited his ability to explain his ideas, he unapologetically broke the rules. But I digress. Let me get back to the the concepts of livingry, tensegrity, and dymaxion.

Livingry
Livingry is the opposite of weaponry. Fuller believed that the goal of all professions should be in the support of life. His term for the world is “Spaceship Earth,” a term meant to recognize that our planet has a limited amount of resources. We are hurdling through space without an instruction manual and we need to learn how to best manage life here. Indeed, Fuller was in fact an environmental activist long before that term was perverted into the modern day stereotype.

Tensegrity
The word tensegrity is a combination of the words tension and integrity. You may have seen sculptures made of only steel cables and long metal rods. Without any outside support, these structures seem to defy gravity as they rise into the air.

Dymaxion
While the word dymaxion comes from “dynamic maximum tension,” it really is just a brand name that Buckminster used for several of his projects including his dymaxion car and the dymaxion house. Buckminster’s ideas about housing and the car were decades ahead of their time. The dymaxion house was designed for energy efficiency. The plan was to make the house easy to ship and assemble on any terrain. The three wheeled dymaxion car was fuel efficient, fast, and seated 11 passengers. Unfortunately, the world wasn’t ready for these inventions and both the dymaxion car and house never went into production. Here’s a video of the dymaxion car in action. Note the amazing turning radius:

Perhaps the world wasn’t ready for many of Fuller’s ideas. He has a great quote that says, “This is the real news of our century. It is highly feasible to take care of all of humanity at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever experienced or dreamt of. To do so without having anybody profit at the expense of another so that everybody can enjoy the whole earth. And it can all be done by 1985.”

Buckminster Fuller died in 1983. His gravestone says “Call me trimtab.” This is a reference to an interview where Fuller observes how a tiny rudder (the trim tab) can change the course of a giant ship. Bucky said “The little individual can be a trim tab…If you’re doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and [change the direction of] the whole big ship…”

If you are interested in learning more about Buckminster Fuller, I encourage you to read his books, especially “Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth
.” The Buckmister Fuller Institute website is also worth a visit.

As I look back over the years the thing that stands out are a handful of friends who have influenced my life significantly. I don’t make friends very easily, and I don’t think I realized how lucky I was to spend time with these people. So here is my 2000-2009 timeline. I am sure I forgot plenty of events and facts, so I might have to come back to this later as I remember things. Here it goes:

2000
Lived in: Seward, Nebraska
Worked for: Concordia University, local gas station
Drove: 88 Toyota Pickup
Favorite possession: Specialized mountain bike
Most influential friend: Jason Simanek
Art shows:
Midstates Graphic Design Competition, Concorida University
5th Plains States Undergraduate Exhibition, Emporia State University
Nebraska Annual Student Art Competition, Wayne State
Watched: Cast Away
Was listening to: Beastie Boys

Big events:
Living off campus
Summer painting class with Professor Bockelman
Dating Betsy Hanft
Playing doubles with Brady Gurganious

2001
Lived in: Nebraska and Colorado
Worked for: Costco, Front Range Community College, Focus on the Family
Drove: 88 Toyota Pickup
Art Show: Painting/Prints by Adrian Hanft, Senior Exhibition, Concorida University
Most influential friend: Paul Maurawski
Favorite possession: Power Mac G4
Watched: The Royal Tenenbaums
Was listening to: Oh, Inverted World, by The Shins

Big events:
Senior Art Show
Kicked off tennis team
Graduation from Concordia University
Got married to Betsy
Moved to Colorado

2002
Lived in: Colorado
Worked for: Nelnet
Drove: 88 Toyota Pickup
Favorite possession: Nikon Coolpix 5000
Most influential friend: Gary Meyer
Watched: Spider-man
Was listening to: The Creek Drank the Cradle, by Iron and Wine

Big events:
Got a job at Nelnet
Betsy pregnant
Moved back to Nebraska

2003
Lived in: Nebraska
Worked for: HuebnerPetersen
Drove: 2001 Toyota Tacoma
Favorite possession: iPod 3G
Watched: Lost in Translation
Was listening to: Beulah

Big events:
Rian is born
Got a job at HuebnerPetersen
Moved to Grand Island

2004
Lived in: Colorado
Worked for: HuebnerPetersen
Drove: 2001 Toyota Tacoma
Art Show: Recent Works on Paper, three person group show, Hastings University, Hastings, Nebraska
Favorite possession: Our house
Most influential friend: Bennett Holzworth
Watched: Kill Bill 2
Was listening to: Black Keys

Big events:
Award of Excellence, website design, AIGA Nebraska Annual Design Competition
Started Be A Design Group
Moved back to Colorado
Bought our first house

2005
Lived in: Colorado
Worked for: HuebnerPetersen
Drove: 1996 Toyota Tercel
Favorite possession: Sony Turntable
Most influential friend: Travis Gray
Watched: Batman Begins
Was listening to: Blinking Lights And Other Revelations, by Eels

Big events:
Official Bloggers for the 2005 HOW Conference
Interviewed on Design Matters:
Be A Design Group website featured on HowDesign.com’s “HOW’s Top Ten Sites”
Found Photography photo blog launched
Lego Camera on Digg

2006
Lived in: Colorado
Worked for: HuebnerPetersen
Drove: 1996 Toyota Tercel
Favorite possession: Sennheiser HD580 headphones
Watched: Battlestar Gallactica
Was listening to: Rodrigo y Gabriela, by Rodrigo y Gabriela

Big events:
Best of Flickr, The Blink of an Eye Flickr Photo Contest and New York Exhibition
Launched Adrian3 blog
Timelapse Construction Movie on YouTube
Betsy in car accident

2007
Lived in: Colorado
Worked for: HuebnerPetersen
Drove: 1996 Toyota Tercel
Art Shows:
Weld County Annual Fine Art Exhibit
Modern Portraits of Christ, Hastings University
Most influential friend: David Fotherby
Favorite possession: MacBook Pro
Watched: Mad Men
Was listening to: The Shepherd’s Dog, by Iron & Wine

Big events:
Art Show sharing gallery with Robbie Conal

2008
Lived in: Colorado
Worked for: HuebnerPetersen
Drove: 1996 Toyota Tercel
Favorite possession: iPhone
Most influential friend: Tony Splittgerber
Watched: Dexter
Was listening to: Orakular Spectacular, by MGMT

Big events:
The end of Be A Design Group
Font Burner Launches
Disney Cruise
I turned 30

2009
Lived in: Colorado
Worked for: Red Rocket Media Group
Drove: Still driving the 1996 Toyota Tercel
Favorite possession: Panasonic Lumix LX3
Most influential friend: Chadd Bryant
Watched: Twin Peaks
Was listening to: Song Up In Her Head, by Sarah Jarosz

Big events:
Left HuebnerPetersen after 5 years
My sister got married
I wrote 4 Wordpress plugins
Started new job at Red Rocket Media Group

2010
I have high hopes for the coming years. Blessings to you in the new year and beyond.

The Top Ten Albums of 2009

1. Manners, by Passion Pit
MP3: Sleepyhead

2. Song Up In Her Head, by Sarah Jarosz
MP3: Shankill Butchers

3. Around the Well, Iron and Wine
MP3: Belated Promise Ring

4. Merriweather Post Pavilion, by Animal Collective
MP3: My Girls

5. The Crow: New Songs for the Five-String Banjo, by Steve Martin
MP3: Pitkin County Turnaround

6. Hombre Lobo, by Eels
MP3: In My Dreams

7. Troubadour, by K’Naan
MP3: Bang Bang

8. Doves, Kingdom of Rust
MP3: Kingdom Of Rust

9. Fantasies, by Metric
MP3: Help I’m Alive

10. What Will Be, by Devendra Banhart
MP3: Angelika

Download zip file of all 10 songs.

Honorable Mention:
11. Keep It Hid, by Dan Auerbach
12. Grizzly Bear, by Veckatimest
13. Monsters of Folk, by Monsters of Folk
14. My Maudlin Career, by Camera Obscura
15. Sea Sew, by Lisa Hannigan
16. Divided by Night, by Crystal Method
17. Reservoir, by Fanfarlo
18. Veckatimest, by Grizzly Bear
19. God Help the Girl, by God Help the Girl
20. 11:11, by Rodrigo y Gabriela
21. Actor, by St. Vincent
22. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, by Phoenix
23. It’s Blitz!, by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
24. Middle Cyclone, by Neko Case
25. Dark Night of the Soul, by Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse

Albums On My List to Listen to:
White Water, White Bloom, by Sea Wolf
Mumford & Sons, by Mumford & Sons
Phrazes for the Young, Julian Casablancas
Ambivalence Avenue, by Bibio
Post Nothing, by Japandroids
Technicolor Health, by Harlem Shakes
Family, by Le Loup
Psychic Chasms, by Neon Indian
Time to Die, by The Dodos

Shawn Blanc has an ongoing blog series about “Sweet Mac Setups” and I am honored to be featured this week. I have also posted the images used in the article on Flickr adding notes pointing out the highlights of the images. My home setup can be viewed here, and my setup at work can be viewed here.