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RF Connector Chess Set
*no comment* writes "Some clever bloke has come up with his own chess set using a standard chess board and RF connectors." This sort of thing pleases me greatly.
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But yeah, it is really neat.
...but it doesn't make the game any less boring...
*dodges*
The pieces are kinda subject to some artistic interpretation, but on the whole this is pretty cool. Especially if you have a lot of electronics crap lying around like I do.
Nice work!
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
"These are not the Chess pieces you are looking for.. Move along.."
that way I can watch all of your games from afar...
The kid looking at the camera is thinking, "Dad is the geek and he is making us do this!"
Some front page news we can all talk about.
looks fun :)
early post?
would make a damn fine geek christmas present!
*looks through box of old bits*
Looks like he didn't make any extra queens.
...stomping his children at chess. The one kid seems so dejected, he's taken to wearing blue lame' capes.
so if they matched, it would be??
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
While cool to look at, I always hated playing chess with
non-normal pieces.
*IF* I ever did let my son wear a cape (see article pictures), I certainly wouldn't plaster his picture up on the internet. How bad is that kid going to feel in 10 years when his friends google him and find that picture. Not only will be be labeled a chess geek, but he'll be cape boy forever. Sad.
--------------------------------------
in a world without bounderies or fences, who needs Gates anyway?
In other news: area man puts corks and beer bottle caps onto a chessboard, cleverly sorted by their sizes and colors to evocate actual chess piece, thereby creating an astonishingly surprising post-modern chess game!
It is rumored our clever friend is doing some rummage in the attic to find bits and piece to create more chess games. News at 11...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Methinks the king/queen mismatch might get annoying...
and yes, this is not news... why does this stuff push importnat news (like ballmers linux sued threats) off the main page. a curiosities secion would be the ideal place IMHO!
I prefer to play tridimensional chess.
Finally, a good use for all thos 10 base-5 connectors I've saved!
...yup...
Turns out all-pawn games were rather limited.
stuff that metters
Stuff that matters? Like proper spelling?
So that explains why I had trouble finding connectors on ebay, this guy bought them all to play chess.
"I can't see it."
"Here, let me help you. Ow, my goddamn hand!"
*is run over by rotten tomatoes*
Where can I get one of those capes!?
So does the queen have the female end of the connector pointing up?
Uh oh, watch out, next thing you know, marvel comics will sue this guy and his kid for impersonating copyrighted superheroes.
Moo.
Actually, some of the other stuff on his site (Internet Archive mirror, Google cache) is really sweet. He's got all kinds of time and frequency equipment, an atomic nixie tube clock, and a bunch of other cool stuff, all with pictures.
Here is yet another mirror of an image of the chess set in question, since the site hasn't been slashdotted...yet.
But if your deparate and need something to do you can make anything out of chess pieces.
During first gulf wars we used 9mm, 223 and other small arm ammunitions for chess pieces and black marker on a sheet of cardboard for the chessboard.
I know this is gonna sound like I issues, but, next time (and it's just a thought) he could just use real chess pieces.
Check in 3.
so your opponent can not reconfigure the connectors and turn 2 pawns and a knight into a queen
Compared to my Go set made from RF connectors.
"I am not a number! I am a free man!"-- The Prisoner
This is officially the dorkiest thing ever made. I expect this to stay on top until someone comes up with a way to make a ham radio boot FreeBSD.
a chess set that the Franklin Mint doesn't yet produce! Cool novelty, but most serious players I know use a Staunton style set.
I had a friend in the Navy who would make his own chess sets using lead figurines. He always won because I'd forget which pieces were which.
At least this set it doesn't seem that it would be too difficult to keep track of who was what.
I hated it when I'd move my 'orc w/wolves' piece and he'd say - 'You can't do that with a bishop.'-- 'A bishop?! I thought that was a knight!!' -- 'It doesn't matter you'll be in check mate in a minute anyway.'--'How?'-- 'You left your king wide open in that corner.'--'My king? That elf is my king?'-- and so on.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
http://www.shotglasschess.com/
DeviantArt Page
NSFWI have not seen such a geeky prank since the dude who made his own Tron costume. But, this is a close second. Play this board game at the mall and pretty women will be repelled for hundreds of meters. It would be interesting to compare this to the repel range of the Tron costume. We could then put the bar graphs up at the mall, and measure their repel range also.
Table-ized A.I.
He's got an equal opportunity army: Gold (Black) has two female knights, silver (White) has one male, one female.
Just wash the board afterwards...
Seems to be doing fine, but just in case...
Coral Link
Ouch 1 - I didn't think of this!
Ouch 2 - Do you know how much those connectors are worth?
full of great ideas
Waking Up - There must be a better way to start the day.
Cool.
But chess board and pieces should not be shiny
as it's to hard to the eyes.
BNC2 takes UHF3
While cool to look at
I always hated chess with
non-normal pieces
Yes, I -am- bored at work waiting for this last 30min to be done with..
"Quoting famous computer scientists out of context is the root of all evil (or at least most of it) in programming." - K
With all due respect save stories like this for the local hobby shop. No i'm not trolling it's just this is one of those, 'ok cool' lets move on stories.
Sorry.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
you would have thought the king deserved a 10base2 t-connector for a crown?
I on the other hand, could unpossibly care less.
I would unhit the submit button so fast if I were you...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
*nuff said*
...This sort of thing pleases me more than greatly. A quick search of the tech shop reveals more than enough connectors...
;)
This will make the perfect retirement present for a friend of mine. I'll post photos if I finish today
And your server don't know what your server is getting
(The creme de la creme of the geek world
In a show with everything but Natalie Portman.)
Time flies, doesn't seem a minute
Since your hosting company had your web site in it?
All change, don't you know that when you
play at this level, there's no ordinary venue
It's on somebody's blog, then Fark... or... or this place!
One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
If you're unlucky it goes to goat-se.
(He can fit an angel - and the Christmas tree.)
One box's very like another,
When your server's fallen to pieces, brother.
(It's a drag, I'm a whore, it's really such a pity
To see a site 404, not lookin' at the piccies)
"Whaddya mean? You've seen one set of polished BNC connectors..."
(T-1 lines, smokin' with heat - heat!
Some are set up in the server room's bomb suite)
"Get farked, you're talkin' to a tourist,
whose every click's among the purest.
I get my hits above the bandwidth limit, sunshine..."
One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman walkin' next to me.)
Chessboard's gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of server room fitness
This grips me more than would a Slashvertisement or duplicate posting.
Thank God I'm only posting on here, trolling it.
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of posts I'm contemplating.
I'd let you mod, I would invite you,
But the links we use would not excite you.
So you'd better go back to your Fark, your Onion, your BBSpot, your autopr0n...
One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
A little chess, a little history.
(I can get the hot grits, where's my Natalie?)
One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman trollin' next to me.)
Fat man and little boys.
NERDS!!!!
If you live in small quarters, NYC, Honolulu, Tokyo, Hong Kong.
/. participant research project into other dual use scenarios might prove interesting and entertaining.
AND
you like to mess around with RF stuff
AND you like to play chess
it's a great way to reduce the problem of TOO MUCH STUFF
An added bonus is the ubiquity of the pieces. Should one of the kids swallow an SMA connector, you can pull a spare out of your parts bin or pick on up in Akihabara for peanuts relative to what an equally cool 'real' chess piece might cost, if you could find a match.
A
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
I cant win at chess for the life of me.These chess peices would just make the game much harder for my tiny mirobrain.
Check out his whole website. This guy has atomic clocks that rival those in national laboratories! But we're Slashdotting him and congratulating him for building a chess set. Slashdot hurts my brain.
Boot Radio
CQ DX
Already? ...I'm just checking to make sure the connectors mate.
We must have enough BNC hardware left in the ceilings to make *all* the required pieces for many simultaneous matches...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
will be made out of flapjacks.
Glad someone was able to come up with a use for all those old BNC network supplies. I wonder if I could make a game of Settlers out of a pile of old Ts and Terminators...
You can pick your nodes, and you can pick your friends, but you can't pick your friend's nodes
http://www.leapsecond.com/
From the intro:
"Ten years ago I wanted to build a LED digital analog clock that would be accurate to better than one second per year -- so I would have the fun of adjusting it when a leap second occurred."
"Nixie" clocks are explained, along with a clock displayed using an oscilloscope.
those are RF connectors? When I saw the first pic I thought they were a bunch of metal pipes like the ones you see at head shops. :(
Definitely not a true /.er...
I've been dreaming of RF integration with warhammer figures with some kinda of postioning system.
Warhammer without the rulers.
Off topic (apologies,) but lurked the site and.... check out his http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/geowrite/stuff. (way off topic-- slay me): Reminds me-- anybody do any cam-caching lately? Kinda like geocaching, but requires traffic cams and a buddy... Other nerdly hobbies: what about those college kids in that commercial that try to touch squirrel tails in the park... Or photo scavenger hunts... Anybody have a price estimate for this chess set? Maybe I shoulda done all these posts separately. Maybe I'M the one that needs the hobby.
You're right, I've been here for many years but I'm not a mindless follower like most here are.
:)
Go ahead...I have far more karma to burn than you can take away from me
Let's do a story on his nixie tube clocks... Gotta love the tubes...
Why?! Isn't two-dimensional chess good enough so you try to destroy it with some trekie version?
4Z5TX
It looks like those pictures were shot on film-- the ones of the board (without the caped youngster) are particualrly nice. Way to go, dude-- keepin' the film alive...
He'll never get above 40 GHz without a 2.4 mm connector.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Great pic. You win biggest time geek award. :)
http://www.leapsecond.com/images/LabJan2001r.jpg
E V E R Y T H I N G I W R I T E I S F A L S E
Anyone else notice that the kid in the blue cape doesn't seem to like the idea of his picture being taken (it's the picture where they're actually playing chess on the floor). I think it's the look of a child who is just starting to understand the concept of public education "coolness" and having your picture displayed on Slashdot in a blue cape while playing RF connector chess with your Dad is not very high on the list of "cool" right now. My heart goes out to you little buddy.
At the first glance I thought it was a "BNC vs. SMA" chess set, but upon a close examination of the pieces it turned out to be just a "nickel vs. gold" chess set. For an unexplicable reason, the set has become much less fun to me when I realized it.
17779 eligible voters in a district, 17779 'vote' as one. This is Russia.
very witty.
in case you don't know, this is a spoof of a song from the musical "chess"
Cool as they may look, I would never use these pieces to play chess (although I have them lying around). Can imagine the cost of this chess set, if bought new, is well over $100. Moreover, I am a bad chess player as it is. Playing with non-staunton pieces doesn't help (having to think 'what did the N-connector represent' all the time).
Z
Sorry.
Even dorkier, but still cool - does he buy an airplane seat for the thing every time he takes a long airplace flight, so he can see first hand the effects of relativity. I mean, what's the point of making it portable otherwise?
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Hey! This guy lives near me!
I feel geekier now just by proximity!
I've only worked with these briefly, but there are 48 total RF connectors, granted the BNC are cheap, but I thought N & SMA go for $20 a piece. So wouldn't this also be an expensive, nerdy chess set?
I remember seeing pictures of this chess set doing the rounds years ago. Nice to get an update.
I work in RF design and the connectors and adaptors in our lab have a life-span of about 2 days before they 'walk'. Now I finally see what the connectors do when set free!
Well, thanks for stopping by.
do you think you're clever?
Friends don't give kids to young to remember One Night in Bangkok mod points.
Yeah, all those Stone Age poets. This was top-shelf troll, you really put your back into it.
Nice try, asshole!
It's a CHESSBOARD!
Yeah It's pretty cool. Would I want one, sure. But is this news worthy of 180 (181 now that I've joined the fray) nerds chattering about it?
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
I'll stick to legos.
I'm sure he didn't steal those from work either. *cough*
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I was kidding, mate. I love chess, somewhat constrained to 2D though it may be.
"Honey, come here... theres something wrong with the TV, all I get is static..."
Bruce (As kid wearing Zelda hat): "In England, everybody only has one spoon!"
It would be cool if it didn't suck.
Its always nice to see a smart guy come up with a new way to play an old classic. Chess is still my favorite all time game.
Out of 762 eBay feedbacks, he's got 99,9% positive ratings.
d back&userid=tvb&items=25
Here is his eBay member profile:
http://feedback.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFee
All the comments are like this: "I don't know how it can be any better! Excellent,, fast, done! A++++=".
What does he do...
When I was a lad we couldn't afford chess sets. You had to play on imaginary chess boards and remember where the pieces were. Kids today!
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Too bad there isn't something as devilishly clever as unbirth...
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Anyway, anyone looking for inexpensive chess junk should look at www.wholesalechess.com. I teach my 7th graders how to play chess each year, and we've ordered over $750 worth of chess junk from them. It's a good way to get fairly nice chess pieces and boards into kids hands who otherwise would only ever see the sorry "board game" pieces that everyone has in their closet.
This is somewhat cool, but the bishops should be taller than the knights and rooks (as anyone who's played with a few irregular sets would know).
Buckets,
pompomtom
"There's an exception to every rule. Except for some rules"
"Here's an unusual photo of the event - unusual because the time display shows the time in fractional MJD (Modified Julian Date). The date is 2002 20/02 and the time shows 20:02:20 UTC which is noon here in Seattle:
:20.02 2002 -- but even I have my limits."
:)
Although the 2002 20/02 20:02 is a triple palindrome observe that MJD 52325 is also a palindrome. Perhaps we should have celebrated at the double palindrome MJD 52325.52325 (which was earlier this morning at 12:33:29 UTC)."
After reading that I was horified thinking that this man was unstoppable, that there would be no end. Thankfuly I then read the following:
"he 1PPS output from the Trak 6460 could be used to generate a pulse at 22.002 milliseconds past 20:02:20 creating a quintuple palindrome 2002 20/02 20:02
And I feel so much safer that even he knows he has limits.
On a more serious note...on the page with the atomic wristwatch it says that the atomic clock comes with a keypad to set the time. My question is how the hell do you set the time that accurately with a keypad. I'm mean, how fast can you hit the button?
--HC
So I'm jump'n up and down screaming show me the money.
give me one side of shotglasses full of vodka and one side of shotglasses full of sambuca any day.
Bwahaha
Yes, I -am- bored at/ work waiting for this last thir/ty min to be done/
with.//
I'm in auburn, where are you?
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
My brother built a chess set with nuts and bolts, many moons ago, it is probably still at the cottage - Marines with too much time and not enough pay for real chess sets...
Oh well, what the hell...
insert witty comment here
Ahh....
Too bad there isn't something as devilishly clever as unbirth...
Wow, way to miss the linguistic shift. The commentary was directed towards the move from contracting "foo not bar" (e.g., "would not hit") as "foon't bar" (wouldn't hit) to "foo unbar" (would unhit) instead. While I'm sure many will say it is doubleplus ungood English, I do unhave a problem with it. It gets rid of the pesky apostrophe and, honestly, does unscrew up the language anymore than it's already screwed up. Now if we could just take care of this "it is" contraction vs. possession mess . . .
...the fourth photo down on thie page shows a young Kreskin frustrated after an unsuccessful attempt to remove this poor man's "geekness".
Anyone priced these connectors lately - that thing's gotta be 50 bucks / piece
It also helps to find the pieces after the loser knocks down the board...
I like the pieces, but the overall effect would be much better if he made a similiar silver and gold metal board as well. The cheap plastic board is the type you buy with travel chess and looks crap! Aw damn there goes my karma again...
Chess is to complicated to play drunk, i have a shotglass checkers set i got at boston store, nice glass board, frosted and clear. 12+ 1oz shots make for a decent evening.
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I don't like wearing a watch on my wrist, and I'm not really comfortable with the idea of an atomic pocket watch, so I think I'll stick with my timex, thank you. :P
If they were to find out, woudln't they be the nerd to be made fun of? :P
How about some substance in the writeup? How about some detail? How about .... err, what's the point?
> I on the other hand, could unpossibly care less.
With all respect, that response needs to be taken out and shot.
"Stuff that metters"? Ooooh, hark at her, coming over all posh! She'll be calling a bath a "barth" next .....
You can also made an edible chess set by cutting up a Battenburg cake into sixteen slices, to make the board; then moulding the pieces out of the marzipan from around the edge. Dip one set of pieces in food colouring {or just read a newspaper before you mould the black pieces!}
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
No wonder he lost! In the second image, the 'black' queen is on a white square! I'm sure that this affected his strategy.
int 20h
That set is extremely HamSexy!
http://www.hamsexy.com/
Someone should develop a /. quiz to see how much of a ./er one is or isn't. There was a nerd quiz some time ago in a "popular" computer magazine (I believe they do it every year,) and I won't say I failed miserably, but I certainly didn't pass. There's such a thing as obsessing about computers, and I'm glad my home and family still has place in my life. Though I'm sure the chess thing took like what, maybe 5 mins to assemble, and 1 hour to photograph? (had to find just the right cape for the photo op -- Apparently that kid hasn't seen the Incredibles yet!!!! Capes are bad!)
Don't get it!
Are you all waiting for HL2?
it must really be a slow news day. even for /.
this sig has been discontinued.
Suppose I'm a nerd, and thus I have a high tolerance for geeky things like this, however: This is sooooo over the top, which results in the folling statement:
GET A LIFE!!!!
:P
Slashdot hurts my brain.
I couldn't agree more.
Thanks for drawing my attention to the site... those nixie-tube clocks are a real treat.
Also, take a gander at this.
I am humbled by the utter geekery of such a sight.
Seattle :)