Wouldn’t it be fantastic if there was a way to use all our knowledge of cognitive science to leverage chess training such that progress came in a more rewarding and rapid fashion?

Of course it would, and that’s the goal of this project:

Fast Chess Improvement

This will be a series of posts that will ultimately lead into a full chess training system that (hopefully) provides optimum results.

In order to come up with an optimal training system we must first understand what chess skill is all about. So let’s backtrack a little bit and go to the origins of the matter: Intelligence and learning.

Low level cognitive skills

Back in 1995, when I was deeply interested in the subject of intelligence metrics, I developed a piece of software for the measurement of intelligence.

What set this software apart from known methods was that it used a fundamental chronometric approach instead of trying to measure high level skills. Standard intelligence tests ask the subject to perform high level cognitive tasks, like arithmetic, language comprehension, pattern matching and projection, etc. Low level skills like reflexes, simple decision making, short-term memory, and others had only been measured with very rudimentary tools.

Enter the mind storm

My software, named MindStorm, would put the subject through a series of tests that involved very simple tasks like responding to a stimulus on the screen, or memorizing a random dot pattern. The subject was pushed to solve more and more difficult versions of the same task, which would still remained cognitively simple, and would determine what was the highest level of correct responses achieved by the subject, and how fast those responses were. It turns out that there is a correlation between performance in those simple tasks and the general intelligence factor g, and by using this correlation one can estimate intelligence level after putting a subject through the series of chronometric tests in MindStorm.

Short-term memory and focus

After some time of experimentation with many subjects it was clear that the most highly g-correlated tasks were short-term memory and attention span. All other tasks, like simple reflexes, cognitive reflexes, long term memory, integration, etc. had lower correlation scores.

Since then I had been pondering a lot about short-term memory, attention span and their role in human intelligence. Well, actually I had been pondering about them for a longer time, but now I had some experimental evidence and not just speculation.

Abstraction Levels

Back when I was a youngster, a very bright friend of mine, a fellow by the name Armando de la Torre Mothelet, in one of our many discussions about the make-up of human intelligence, brought up the subject of abstraction. Today, I believe that the most important component of intelligence is the capacity to handle several levels of abstraction. The more levels you can handle, the smarter you are. And this capacity has a lot to do with both short-term memory and attention span. The longer you can focus the more levels you can handle. The more you can store in short-term memory, the more levels you can handle.

Improving memory capacity: Chunking

While there is probably an innate limitation to our individual short-term memory capacity, it is well known that this capacity can be artifically enhanced by the use of chunking. Chunking is a mechanism through which we group together individual pieces of information to form a larger block or chunk of information. Once chunked, many pieces of data become one and instead of occupying many short-term memory compartments, they take up only one.

For example, if I want to remember the number:

33,901,205,672,561,080

it would take 17 memory slots and that’s probably beyond the normal human capacity (6-10). But If I group the string of digits differently:

33, 90210, 567, 256, 1080

Now I can use chunking to remember 5 chunks of information easily. In this highly manufactured example, I would have to remember:

• 33: repeated digits
• 90210: beverly hills
• 567: consecutive digits
• 256: RAM
• 1080: HD resolution

So with that use of chunking it is possible to store large amounts of data in short-term memory. Chunking is the link between long-term and short-term memory as far as intelligence performance is concerned. So in a way learned skill can make us perform smarter, even if our innate intellectual ability remains unchanged. And that is exactly what we want to achieve with chess training.

Chunking and chess

In the next post I will introduce the link between chunking and chess, as found by psychological studies, and continue our exploration of the constituents chess skill.

In terms of aesthetics, I love the Omega Studio timer, but it offers very little in terms of functionality. It would serve the purpose if it could be activated using the keyboard (and yes I know I could simulate mouse buttons using the keyboard and some software but the hassle is unnecessary) but as it stands, it is not what I want.

So I decided to make my own, just like I do all the time. Something nice, simple and with recording capabilities.

Here is what I made:

It can be activated using the mouse buttons or the keyboard. To start the timer press and hold a key or button down until the green light turns on. When you release the key, the timer will start moving.

To stop the timer just hit any key or button.

Once the timer stops, the time is recorded, unless you click on “Discard this time”.

On the bottom there is a random scramble in standard notation to get your started with the next solve. Left-click or any key-press will generate a new random scramble.

To exit any window and the program itself just press ESC.

If you open the Performance window, you will see a nice graph of your times. The blue line represents the actual times, and the red line a 5-point average. By doing it this way you avoid having to do 5 solves each time you want to keep a record (which is one disadvantage I found in other timers). Now I can just do 1 or 2 solves and they will be recorded and my current average is computed automatically.

In addition, you can chose a date-based graph so you can see which days/months you have practiced more intensely.

The charts are fully featured:

• Mouse-over to view time, average and date.
• Zoom In by dragging to the right-down
• Zoom Out by dragging left-up
• Scroll/pan by click&drag.

I have more features for the graphs saved for future versions.

If you want to look or remove some of the recorded times, use the Edit Record window. Uncheck the times you want to hide from the performance graph, and that’s it.

Finally you can pick the color of the timer 7-Segment display by clicking on Color repeatedly.

The Bellon Cube Timer is completely free, but I reserve all rights to it.

DOWNLOAD THE LATEST VERSION OF THE BELLON CUBE TIMER

The software is portable so just put it inside a folder and it will run from there, without messing with the system. You can even keep it in a USB stick and use it anywhere.

If you have suggestions, comments and compliments, please leave a note below.

P.S. Soon to come, more puzzle scrambles, sounds, selected range charting, step timing (to measure time spent at each step), and a metronome for practice.

UPDATE v. 1.1.1

• New 10-avg Graph (shows the average of 10 times from 12, by discarding lowest and highest)
• New Stats Digest in the main window (shows current 10-avg, best 10-avg and best time ever)
• New Settings window (controls LED display size, color, stoplights and inspection time)
• New Inspection Time Countdown ( When enabled, first key release will start the countdown. Once the countdown gets to zero, the timer starts. If you interrupt the countdown, the timer will start upon key release)
• New a Beep is heard when 5 seconds are left in the countdown
• New a Beep is heard when the timer starts aftr the countdown is done
• New Options for disabling sounds and stoplight delay
• Fix Display bugs (The timer display is now rendered with my own engine, and not using Windows. The display should now look nice on all screen sizes)

NOTE: I am told that on one system the seconds digit is misplaced with respect to the unlit LED segments underneath. This is happening because, for some reason, that computer insists on displaying the font using variable pitch and not fixed pitch (mono-spaced). I have no idea why that is happening, since I am forcing the display of fixed pitch.

If your system is displaying the seconds digit in this manner, please let me know so I have more data to investigate.

This doesn’t have the fancy stuff like the LED based output or the external audio jack or the low/hi gain switch, but it should get you started. The probes are connected to a telephone pickup coil (can be purchased at radio shack) or any other coil. Make sure you use shielded cable for the probe.

To make the +9 -9 battery just take two 9V battaries and connect the + side of one to the – side of the other, that will be ground, and then you will have a +9V and a -9V terminals.

Also you will have to bypass the battery using a couple 10uF capacitors. Just connect the +9 and -9 terminals to ground using the capacitors (this is not shown in the schematic).

Once I have more time I will reverse the design to provide a full schematic of the whole device.

Electromagnetic Field Pollution!

Have you ever wondered what the electrical activity around your house sounds like? Once you have listened to all the EM pollution around, you really wonder about all these waves.

I got some recordings of a few EMF sources around the house:

Quartz Watch EM Pulse

Even a small quartz watch gives out large pulses each time the seconds hand moves.

Neon Lamp Ballast EMF

Incandescent Light-bulb

Sony DVD/VCR LED Display EMF

Refrigerator LED Display EMF (or something more)

The fridge LED display really is strong, I could pick it up several meters away from it. I wonder if the source of the radiation is more than the display. The oscillations that sound like a lightsaber are due to my moving of the probe around the area.

Microwave Oven LED Display EMF

900Mhz Wireless phone in base EMF

When I moved the probe over the area with the phone the signal changes and you can hear static and a solid pulse every second or so. The base just gives out a more high pitched sound also with a periodic oscillation.

Being able to know the day of the week for any particular date is a handy ability. In our times, a cellphone or computer can answer the question in seconds, but it is more handy to just know.

Above all, being able to do it is impressive, which is of course the main reason for learning how to do it.

All methods involve the simple notion of counting by sevens from a date where the day of the week is known. The issue is complicated because calendar dates are not just consecutive numbers but a series of month days which alternate between 30 and 31, except for February. Then you have the added complication of leap years.

To make the method practical people have devised lists of numbers to assign to years and lists of numbers to assign to months. With a few rules and 4 mental computations the day of the week can be determined.

Over the years I have tried several variations on the methods, and found them all to be too cumbersome to be practical. So I created my own method.

The Bellon method

in 2 steps

If you can remember you will be able to tell the day of the week for any date in just seconds. The number sequence 033614625035 represents each month of the year (a month per digit).

1. First you take your date, add the month digit,  and add 2 (for the year 2008, explained below).
2. Now all you do is obtain the remainder of your total divided by 7.

Once I got the month digits memorized, it takes me 2-3 seconds to come up with the answer. It’s really easy.

Examples:

What day of the week was the 12 of November of 2008?

1. Take 12 and add 3 (november digit) add 2 (year digit) = 12 + 3 + 2 = 17.
2. Now divide 17 by 7, and you have a remainder of 3. The 3rd day of the week is Wednesday.

What day of the week was the 25 of May 2008?

1. 25 + 1 (month) + 2 (year) = 28
2. 28 / 7 = 4 with a remainder of 0. The zero or seventh day of the week is Sunday!

Reference:

Months (This is the only real memorization)

• January = 0
• February = 3
• March = 3
• April = 6
• May = 1
• June = 4
• July = 6
• August = 2
• September = 5
• October = 0
• November = 3
• December = 5

Days (Just in sequential order, where monday is 1 and sunday 7)

• Sunday  = 0
• Monday = 1
• Tuesday = 2
• Wednesday = 3
• Thursday = 4
• Friday = 5
• Saturday = 6
• Sunday = 7

Years (Just remember the current year number and go backward or forward as needed. Once it reaches 7, it resets to zero)

• 2006 = -1
• 2007 = 0 (I started using my system on this year so I set it so that 2007 was 0)
• 2008 before Feb 29 = 1
• 2008 = 2
• 2009 = 3
• 2010 = 4
• …

Recently, Nate True of Cre.ations.net posted a very nice project involving some water, some electronics to provide the illusion of time distortion. (Time fountain)

I have been long since interested in high-speed photography. Many years ago I built a very simple device using some aluminium foil, an air rifle, a couple of ligth triggered Flash units and, of course, a camera.

The basic concept is this: You are in a dark room. If you synchronize a flash of light with the occurance of an event, you will see that event “suspended” in time without th need of highspeed photographic equipment.

In the case of the Time Fountain, as Nate likes to call it, it has been always an interesting and fun phenomenon to watch at museums, or at home if you own a strobe light.

We start with a water stream or constant rate. Imagine we are able to detect drops of water falling, and we trigger a flash of light slightly after each drop is detected. If the drops are coming at a fast enough rate, we will see a shining drop of water suspended in mid air, in an otherwise dark area. We are obviously not seeing the same drop of water, but different drops of water that are “caught” by the flash of light at exactly the same position each time, giving the illusion that it is the same dropplet. Because we are triggering the flash events with the dropplets, the flash rate is equal to the dripping rate , i.e., both will coincide at every time step.

Now, if we want to give the impression of time moving forward but in slow motion, all we have to do is record the time between drops and slightly increase it by a time delay [pmath\delta t[/pmath] for each consecutive drop. The time between flashes is then , where n is each time step. That way each flash of light will show a droplet at a position slightly further down the path, giving the illusion of it falling down at slow rate.

Nate has done this using a trigger mechanism based on an OP AMP comparator circuit and an PIC microcontroller to provide the flash timing. Simply flashing the light in synch with the dripping water will “stop” time. And by altering the pulse frequency linearly (ramp like) will create the slowmotion, or even backward motion effects.

There is a shortcut.

Option #1
Start with a constant water dripping stream. Then blink really really fast. Ok, just kidding (or maybe not).

Option #2

Since we are not after the precise location of a given dropplet of water in space, we can forego the synchronization mechanism and just flash the light (LEDS in this case) at a constant rate. It doesn’t matter where in space we catch the dropplet, as long as we catch it consistently.

If the dripping rate is a multiple of the flashing rate, the flash of light will catch the droplets at the same position each time.

But what about slowmotion and backwards motion? Well it’s easy as too.

Imagine the drop rate is the same as the flash rate. Now we make the flash rate slightly slower, in other words we increase the time between flashes just a little bit: . The first drop will be caught at a certain point, but the next drop will be caught a point further down because we had some time left over from the previous flash. By adjusting the delay we can effectively change the rate of apparent fall. If the time between pulses is shortened we will catch the droplet at a higher position each time, giving the illusion of it moving backwards in time.

We have limited the discussion to a single flash of light during the whole length of the falling trajectory, but in practice, due to the periodic nature of the experiment, we will see at least two droplets of water along the path if we adjust the flash frequency to something other than the dripping rate. Usually the time it takes for a dropplet to fall all the way down is much larger than the time between drops, therefore we will see several dropplets suspended in mid air along the stream.

Now, how do we do this for real?

The simplest way to provide a series of pluses where we can control both the pulse duration and the frequency independently of each other: a 555 Timer chip and some LEDs.

The 555 circuit is used in an astable oscillator configuration but in an non-obvious way. If we just go ahead and build a traditional 555 oscilator circuit and try to adjust the frequency of the pulses, we will find that we will be adjusting the pulse width as well. If the pulse width, or pulse duration, is too long, instead of seeing a single droplet, we will see a streak of water, which is not very interesting since it is very similar to the way we are used to experience water streams.

Instead, we hook up the LEDs to the output and the +V so that we can fix the pulse width to a very short duration, and use the other resistor in the circuit to vary the frequency. Because the LEDs is ON for such a short period of time, we don’t even need a current limiting resistor, but I will leave that as optional in case you think you may burn out your LEDs (they do not burn for me, but do a test with 1 LED first).

Here is a version of the circuit which I have used and tested. You may want to add a transistor buffer at the output in case you have lots of LEDs. I tried 4 super bright white LEDs and they work fine without the need for a transistor buffer.

Lighting considerations

Shining light on transparent water has its own subtleties. Nate solved this by the use of UV LEDs and fluorecein, and it works fantastic. Luckily I had some fluorescent green dye stored in my lab. But there are other options.

Vegetable dye (food coloring dyes) work well, so does koolaid. These won’t need UV LEDS. Milk on a black background gives fantastic results and it is my favorite so far. Milk is organic so it will spoil and the smell won’t leave you any motivation for playing with the fountain. So we either innoculate cows with preservatives, or we can use certain varnishes and resins that look white when mixed with water. Whiteout or white paint is another option, we just need to make sure we add plenty of water to it so that it doesn’t clog the system.

If the liquid we use is semi-transparent the best lighting may probably come from either the side or the back, as can be appreciated in those gorgeous glassware product shots we are acustomed to seeing.

Frontal illumination at 45° from each side is probably the dullest (it’s the no shadow scheme used in TV studios).

Once I have some photos (tonight) I will post what the effect looks like. Also I have an idea for a simple rig with no motors needed.

The Drip Source

The best solution is possibly the use of a small fountain pump and some tubing. But if you want to make some quick tests, a simpler device may be used.

A container with a hole won’t work because the dripping will be very chaotic since the water will adhere to the walls of the container in an unpredictable way. This is easily fixed by gluing a piece of aquarium tubing to the container wall.

The best container is one that has a large surface area so that the water level changes slowly enough to be able to synch to the dripping rate. A bottle will not work as well. Also, the hole is better placed on the side wall (vertical wall) instead of on the bottom, and the tubing works best if held somewhat horizontal.

The hole in the container will need to be adjusted until the drip rate is fast but not too fast, so that the drops can be easily separated by the light flashes. I started with a small hole and expanded it with the tip of a pen until I got a good rate.

The effects of Galvanic Vestibular stimulation have been known for quite a while. But it was not until recent years that the phenomenon has picked up quite some interest in the scientific community and the public eye.

I read the papers, saw some videos from japanese researchers, and thought to myself… this can’t be that hard. And it wasn’t.

So I took a 9V battery, a pair of electrodes (the same I had made for my GSR-Lie Detector) stuck them to my Mastoid Processes (the conic bones that end behind the earlobes) and presto. In no time I was leaning to one side or the other as my vestibular system was affected by the galvanic current.

Once I was convinced it worked, I designed a circuit to be able to regulate the current (to about 2-3mAmps) and a 4 switching transistor system for easy polarity reversal.

I ended up with a box with left and right buttons and a dial for adjusting the current (via a 10KOhm Pot). Looks sort of like a nintendo controller. Perhaps in the future I will build the first video game console where you will be able to play Mario Bros. WITH your parents, instead of a tv screen.

Here is the schematic. To set the inputs to high you can just hook a couple switch buttons (like the ones I used) to the 9V battery. Pressing a button will set that input to high, and thus bias the corresponding transistors. Pressing the other button will reverse the polarity. The variable resistor is a potentiometer, a 10K worked fine for me.

I am still missing the Magnetic Field sensor, but that will have to wait until I have some time to test the Hall Effect sensors and figure out which one is more useful.

At this point the meter has extremely good sensitivity to charge when the antenna is fully extended.
Also, the EMF sensitivity can be toggled between 20x to 200x. The output signal is displayed by two blinking LEDs and heard though an internal speaker that can be turned on or off. The signal can also be fed into a voltmeter, oscilloscope or any other data acquisition system via the external plug on the bottom of the unit.

I also added a floating and fixed ground toggle. Fixed ground picks up high current signals, and floating ground is fantastic for sensing the tiniest signals like that of a quartz watch.

The EMF probe is a telephone pickup coil, and the charge probe is just a telescopic antenna.

I will post the schematics when I have time.

It is much fun listening to EMF activity around the house. Talk about pollution! It’s just amazing how much radiation is around us.

The task of making a usable 35mm DOF adapter is simple yet contrived. The actual crafting offers little challenge, it is the design and the selection of appropriate components that makes it both interesting and complex.

After reading all I could find on this topic I realised that this is a type of device that has not matured enough yet to be offered to the consumer at an affordable price. It either is attainable at really high prices (several thousand USD) or at a lower price (sub 1000 USD) but built by enthusiasts; something which is by no means a bad thing.

Because of the state of the market for this type of product there are uncountable attempts by do-it-youself adventurers that will try just about anything to get a better picture from a device like this.

So I thought I would join the crowd.

Note. Joining a crowd is something that sends shivers down my vertebral column, so I must have been really curious about this.

The elements that I could isolate as being important when constructing a 35mm adapter for my camcorder were:

I solved quite a few of these issues by realising that basically I could modify a slide viewer for my purposes and then mount it on a base of some sort that would be attached to my camcorder via the tripod screw-in mount.

The black rectangular area on the left is the viewing area, it is covered by a large lens and is where one would look at a regular 35mm color slide. On the right side, I cut a circular hole such that I could fit a 35mm lens (as shown).

What was missing now was the screen.

One of the important visual differences between something shot on video and something shot on film is the different depth-of-field (DOF). A film camera lens focuses onto an image of 35mm square (the size of the film frame), while a prosumer camcorder will focus to a much smaller 1/3″ square (8.4mm) CCD element. This allows the film lens to exhibit a smaller DOF, which means that one can choose what to focus on. In contrast, a camcorder will have a larger DOF, so everything in the shot will be in focus.

The use of selective focusing is one of the hallmarks of current filmmaking (a bit overdone and a bit of a fad at the moment as well). And this selective focusing is an important aesthetic component and powerful artistic tool in the crafting of a visual story.

So how exactly can we make a camcorder exhibit a shorter DOF?

Simply screwing on a 35mm film camera lens will do no good, as the projection area of the CCD sensors has not changed. What we need to do is to be able to project the image from the 35mm lens onto an intermediate screen and then acquire the image from that projection into the camcorder.

Thus the 35mm DOF Adapter was created!