April 3, 2023

So one of the things lost in my move back to Portland was this childhood stuffed animal: a unicorn with a music box that once upon a time played Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

This was a 1980s toy only briefly manufactured ever, so it took years to track down the manufacturer, the name of the toy, the year, etc. It was also one of my few remaining things from childhood, so I was a bit upset when it vanished (especially considering how much of my childhood is fucked and out of reach).

Anyway, I finally found one last year, and ordered it. While at Christmas, friend L and I were splitting a hotel room for one night - our hostess had lost power during the storms. She pops a dino out of her go-bag, and we get to talking about stuffed animals and how this one was a gift from her partner David, who got it for her after a really bad panic attack. She then named it David.

Anyway, she also let on that she had multiple Davids now, because they brought her so much peace. Davids at home. Davids in her car. Davids in her go-bag, etc, etc. A platoon of dino Davids. This convinced me I should get more of my imaginatively-named Unicorn.

The thing is, the wind up music box in these toys are incredibly cheap plastic things. Mine hadn't worked for more than a month or two after it was given to tiny Auspice. The first one I ordered was just flat out broken.

I found another on EBay recently, and it's sitting on top of a shelf in my bedroom, next to a sweet printer's chest I also obtained recently. I just picked it up and wound it and amazingly, the music box works!

I am surprised and pleased, and for being such a dinky little plastic mechanic inside of a stuffed animal, the music box sounds surprisingly sweet.

My friend told me he would buy me dinner at any restaurant if I can win a game of chess while blindfolded. There are a bunch of terms that we hashed out. All in all, I am hopeful. My theory is that, if I train for an hour a day, I'll be able to win against a low-level bot by the end of the year. I'm already at the point where I can tell you any given square is light or dark based on its coordinate. Lichess opened a feature up to beta testing recently, in which a person can dictate the moves they want to play. I have played entire games without touching my keyboard or mouse. I simply utter "pawn takes e5" and, boom, the move is played. I think playing a game or two with coordinate dictation each day will get me to master coordinates, which is the first step. Once I master coordinates, which I anticipate probably taking a month or two, my next step will be trying to visualize my games by having them dictated to a blindfolded nicolasstag, but peeking when I struggle.

I've been playing around with the English Opening. I'm so used to opening with e4 and it's a bit different, but after c4 I can just play e4 and then d3... nc3. Or I could do nf3 and d4, but I like d3. Don't ask me why, because I don't know.

To my immense displeasure, I still can't get Chessmaster 6000 to work. It has been my quest for the holy grail/computer for quite some time. It won't run on a Windows 95, 98, or XP VM. It won't run in compatibility mode. I've acquired a couple of old computers but neither of them had a working hard drive, among other issues. I guess even hard disk storage goes bunk after a couple of decades. I even tried it on Linux with WINE and Lutris, just desperately hoping that an emulator would run Windows software better than Windows could. No luck. I suppose it's possible that my CM6000 disc is bunk somehow, but it has no scratches so I'm inclined to believe that it's okay. Sigh. Someday... someday I will find the holy grail, and I will be the happiest person on earth. Why? Because I will be able to follow the training regimen detailed in this node. This guy got from beginner to blindfold in a year. It can be done. If only...

In other news, I got a new phone. It is the first nice phone I've ever had -- the iPhone 11. It's got 200-whatever gigabytes of storage and it's in great shape. It's used, but it's still an upgrade for me. There are only two things I don't like. One, an app I had for FREE on android costs 3 dollars on the iPhone. Same app, same developer. Eugh. Two, there is no app to redshift my screen halfway to hell like there is on Android. I'm guessing Apple doesn't let apps use whatever permissions are necessary to make that happen.

My five-week trigonometry class started Wednesday. For comparison, a full semester is 15 weeks. I had to buy a new calculator because my TI-84 isn't allowed for the class. Scientific calculators have gotten a lot more beefy since I was in highschool. This new calculator can store variables, use trig identities and various math functions, it's crazy. It was only $20!!! The calculator I had in highschool did a FRACTION of those things and it was so much more money.

I came up with the idea for a screenplay. I think it would be an amazing movie. I don't know if I'll ever write it, or if I start if I'll ever finish it, but I want to try my hand at it over the summer. If I can just churn out a first draft and let the second draft stew on the backburner of my mind, I will be content. I won't share anything here yet about it, but if I do start working on it I'll post updates in my future daylogs. It's pretty exciting, at least to me.