TudoRama

The Creative Process In Chess and Everyday Life.  A training podcast by Tudor Rickards

This podcast is offered as an overview for aspiring chess players. I hope it is of particular interest to students of chess of all ages, and perhaps to a wider group of people interested in creativity in everyday life. 

I’ll summarise the key points in time- honoured style at the start and in the conclusions. Its main messages are based on those of a leading trainer, Mark Dvoretsky. His system encourages development of skills of finding candidate moves and selecting a pr...

England v Spain

The Christmas Lottery in Spain, known as El Gordo, the fat one, believed to be the biggest in the world, with payouts approaching two and a half billion euros, but with ways of sharing prizes to community levels. If Spain wins today their Christmas lottery win will have come early.

Sunday 20 August

I have to search hard in the print media for detailed background analysis of the Spanish team. I remember the team’s  4-0 loss against Japan. Like England, they scraped through qualifiers, and improved as the tournament prog...

England Lionesses v Australia’s Matildas.  A Sofa Drama

Wednesday 17 August, 2023

A sofa saga as England’s Lionesses face up against Australia’s Matildas in the quarterfinal of Football’s World Cup. Matildas after the famous Ozzie folk song Waltzing Matilda.

It seems that in Australia, Matilda Mania has its grip on that sport-loving country.

All is ready in my solitary fanzone. My phone is on silent ring. Lunch has been pre- preprepared. Beverage to hand. A water bottle. It is, after all, 11am in England.

It is 8pm in Sidney...

Donald Trump and the Georgia “Witch Hunt”  

Tuesday 15 August, 2023

With the reluctance of a strip tease show, a list of a criminal charges against Donald Trump appear on a Fulton County, Georgia website this afternoon local time, and is then whipped away. The court is still reaching its conclusions. 

This is the criminal case being prepared by State Prosecutor Fani Willis, centred around Trump’s recorded phone call in January 2021 which urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes, the number he would have required to win the presidential election there. 

...

Trending. Bibby Barge Bingo, a game played with up to five hundred players.

Congratulations! You have been selected from over a hundred thousand applications we have received,  all seeking admission on our unique new floating accommodation, ton His Majesty’s luxury superbarge, the Bibby Stockholm.  You have won one of the first five hundred pioneering places.

Another win. You lucky channel crosser. You have been identified as being among the fortunate first fifty on board, with incredible access to the nearly empty craft.

Yes, you have already successfully avoided the clutches of the desp...

I had to check that the story is not a deep hoax. But apparently not, if we can accept The Tampa Bay Times as a reliable source, as reported by the political website Occupy Democrats. I quote their entire post published Wednesday 9 August, 2023: 

Florida Republicans go completely off the deep end with their deranged MAGA book bannings as William Shakespeare gets banned by certain schools in the Ron DeSantis-controlled state.

The reason for the ban? Just about the stupidest thing you can imagine.

According to The Tampa Bay Times, the works o...

My message is for inexperienced chess and tennis players. Maybe it will be of interest to those of riper age and greater experience as well. It is an introduction to further podcasts on the subject.

The advice comes partly from my own painful attempts at improving my performance in each of the two games. It’s backed up by serious research into the nature of performance and development by coaches and highflying professionals, and discussions with a few of the same.

There is plenty of evidence that progress can be made by anchoring learning of so...

Twitter wit and humour. Obituary edition, July 2023

@NicholasTyrone
@tomhillier
@EvLenz
@orridge_anna
@dontbrexitfixit
@deelomas
@Hepworthclare
@ChillaxBcn
@RCdeWinter

Comments on Brexit, Barbie, and a 1980s Business Guru during the last weeks before Twitter became X and the old brand name declared X tinct. 

@NicholasTyrone
My daughter is 11 and for kids her age, “Brexit” has become a pejorative adjective. So, a kid who comes to football practice with beaten-up looking trainers gets them called “Brexit boots”. I don’t think Brexiters consider the degree to which they’ve los...

Trump’s latest and potentially most serious indictment on August 1st 2023, places far more than the former President of the United States on trial. Arguably, the whole political process is under severe scrutiny. 
I examine the indictment as analysed by journalistic investigative reporter James Ball. He considers the persistence of belief in what the President calls the great steal, illustrates a form of mental pandemic, spreading globally through the internet ...

<...

Where to begin? Where better than at a thinly-disguised hairdressing salon deep in the heart of leafy Cheshire.

For reasons mostly due to demands on her time, my appointment with Mandy, my beauty consultant and coiffeuse, had been delayed beyond acceptable limits. I entered her establishment accompanied by my shaggy locks, rather like the famous etching by William Blake of the ancient of days.

In hindsight,  I trace some of my disorientation to my arrival. A distinct and unusual absence of staff. With due caution I allowed myself to be guided by Mandy t...

Don Drake, an advertising executive in a remote office off Soho,  is struggling to reach a deadline for the Daily Truth a syndicated social media newspaper reaching around the world mostly on the dark web. His boss Harry is increasingly frustrated with his habit of last-minute rescue through his creative genius

Come on Jon we need something to get the Greek inferno headlines off the front page. And soonest, goddammit.

I’ve got it Harry, a breaking news story about some Greek geek.

Shoot.
Aristotle Onassis.  He’s won some award...

Submitted to Twitter by @RCdeWinter, 
 attributed to Jill Thomas Doyle

I’m afraid you may need to play some of the examples more than once to enjoy the delightful humour and grammatical subtleties.

A grammar book walks into a bar

 * A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly. 

 * A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

  * An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

* A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all...

Nigel Farage, Coutts, and a tale of biometric mishaps.

Friday 21 July

I am not alone in having a problem with my biometrics. Or, more precisely, the fancy system installed on my National Westminster banking app to protect me from a world crammed with scammers intent on electronic theft.

By one of those coincidences, my irritation with Nat West this week coincided with that of the politician Nigel Farage whose ire was directed at its subsidiary 
Coutts. 

A year or so ago, I finally gave in to the  bank’s  urging for me...

Sunday 16 July

My review as the tournament reaches a breathtaking finale.

Wimbledon began with a tweet from Green MP Caroline Lucas objecting to the Tournament’s sponsorship by Barclays Bank, as an exercise in greenwashing. 
As you will hear, it ended with a tweet from Louis Vuitton, for reasons which will eventually become clear.

The first week is fast becoming a faded memory. After traditional gallant performances, British favourites drop out towards the end of the week. After his loss, Andy Murray was dismissed as boring by a non tennis-playing journalist.

BBC news over the last 24 hours seems to be in a state of shock, in which rational decision-making has disappeared. It reminds me of the communication confusion I personally experienced at the time of the soviet invasion in Czechoslovakia, in August 1968.

The current confusion was triggered a week ago by  an article in the Sun newspaper. The article had been in typical Sun hyperbolic style, announcing  that an unnamed BBC personality had payed tens  of thousands of pounds for explicit images, starting when the recipient was aged 17. The article was justified as being in support of the fam...

I have mithered too long. Yesterday, I passed the very shop from which I bought my once and only favourite pair, so many years ago. Something stopped me entering. Cowardice? Maybe. A feeling of apprehension, certainly. No time in a busy schedule? Not really.
I hurried past to the nearby car park and home.

An email awaited me from Geraint ap Wrecsam, commenting on my earlier lament for trousers past. He shared my pain.

Thanks for inviting me to assist with your undoubtedly tricky issue. I know exactly how you feel.  Parting with f...

Thursday 6 July 2023.

Possibly a momentous day for social media. Elon Musk’s new plaything Twitter lurches from sick into to intensive care.  Mark Zuckerberg launches a rival platform Threads as part of his futuristic and gigantic global operation Meta Platforms Inc, (Meta for short). Meta sprang into life in 2021. It did do, according to its PR as a reaction to

‘the company's shifting long-term focus of building the Metaverse, a digital extension of the physical world by social media, virtual reality and augmented reality features’. 

The rebranding was to integrate the sprawling and expandin...

I have a pair of favoured trousers. They are brown corduroy, accidentally matching my favourite slip-on brown shoes.

 I vaguely remember buying the trousers some years ago, and then having the length of their legs reduced to meet my personal requirements. 
I noted recently that the cords they have become increasingly faded around the knees and seams. 

They have received brutal treatment,  partly because of frequent washing, necessitated after excessive stains (yoghurt, and Magnum ice cream mishaps most common).
Sadly, a time is approaching when they will be have relegated to lower status, as r...

Wimbldonitis is a temporary  condition afflicting people as we approach the British Grand Slam of tennis, held at its fabled home of Wimbledon.

Curiously, the illness does not affect ordinary club players throughout the county. The majority of these are completely immune, continuing with their regular social games, perhaps watching the highlight programmes on the BBC  in the evenings. And, yes, I am among that majority, although I have thoroughly enjoyed my infrequent visits to Wimbledon over the years.

Those most seriously afficted seem to be celebrities who have been granted admission to the Royal Bo...

Part 1. A nostalgic train journey

I leave my retirement home in Woodford Garden village and take a rumbling suburban train into the metropolis of Manchester. I am in search of times gone by. In particular, I want to find out what happened to a place where I spent a large proportion of my working life ...