Not out and about in Spain

[lovingboth]

As previously mentioned, I have been interested in computer chess since the 1970s. This year sees the 50th anniversary of the first tournament.

An email comes in saying that this will be marked at the last World Computer Chess Championships (they've got too good for the results to be useful or particularly interesting) with a half-day event - Chess History, Experiments and Search Symposium ('CHESS', groan) - featuring many of the big names in that time.

Oooh. Oooh. Oooh.

It's in Santiago, Spain. A quick look shows that I can find some very cheap accommodation there on Airbnb. Staying for a week would be easily affordable.

One tiny problem is that it's co-hosted with a fucking expensive AI conference and while the championships are somewhere that's free to access, the CHESS event is part of the conference and it takes far too long to get confirmation that you don't need to pay to attend that bit. The organiser eventually posts that they'll get badges that will allow admission just to that bit.

Another problem is that while I can fly there for an appallingly low amount, that's using Ryanair. Once was enough with them - they have been on my 'never to be forgiven' list for twenty-something years. (They caused me to miss something I also really really wanted to go to.)

So I um and er about it until it turned out it would be streamed.

Part of me would still like to have gone - there's one programmer there I'd totally fanboi over - but I'm watching it online.

Ken Thompson is online at it too, along with various others...

Comments

[lovingboth]

Totally unsurprisingly - to me, if not the organiser - it overran and one bit still got cut.

Still fascinating and very amusing in places.

Someone went from using 5 bit paper tape (complete with having to splice it to change their program, something I never had to do!) to.. using 8 bit paper tape early on in their career.

Someone they'd met at a computer chess championship was so fascinated "they told their wife, 'this is better than sex!' They weren't married for very long..".