Open Office 2.0

Totally off-topic - or maybe not: Open Office 2.0 has been released. It's not quite as off-topic as it may seem: CheckerBoard is freeware, and so is Open Office. I'm always on the lookout for decent free software, and Open Office certainly belongs into this category (much more so than CheckerBoard). If you're tired of paying Micro$oft for annoying you with talking paper clips, try this!



While I'm at it: If you're looking for a decent program to create installations, try Inno Setup.

On my computers at home, I also use free antivirus software: Anti-Vir personal edition on my desktop computer and AVG free edition on the laptop. I haven't made up my mind as to which one is better.

When it comes to graphics, I use XnView.

I edit my website with Arachnophilia. But I'm not 100% satisfied with it - it's very no-frills, and you need to know your HTML to use it.

How about you? What free software works well for you? I'm only interested in productive software like the above, not in games like CheckerBoard :-)
If you know of a great free program (no NagWare or trial versions!), please add a comment!

CheckerBoard @ Wikipedia!

I just noticed that CheckerBoard has its very own Wikipedia entry. Wikipedia is one of the best things I've ever seen on the net, and I'm flattered to see my humble program being mentioned there :-)

ISCA world championship games

I went over the games played between George Miller and Yuri Sorkin with Suicidal Cake. George has started publishing those games on the ISCA message board. The comments by Suicidal Cake are not on yet, but will be soon. Analyzing human games is one of the few things that I can do with Suicidal Cake - the players don't want to see it published :-(

What's the fastest loss in suicide checkers?

The title says it all: I want to go looking for the fastest loss in suicide checkers with the help of my Suicidal-Cake-generated opening book. Any guesses?

ICSA world championship

Over the last days, George Miller and Yuri Sorkin fought for the suicide checkers world championship over the internet. George won a very close match with 6.5-5.5. I had Suicidal Cake look at the games, and have a small challenge for you: in the following game, Yuri missed a win very early in the opening. What should he have played here?

[Event "3rd ISCA World Championship Match"]
[Date "2005-09-30"]
[Black "George Miller"]
[White "Yuri Sorkin"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. 12-16 21-17 2. 9-13 24-20 3. 8-12 25-21 4. 16-19 {already a loser! 5-9 instead is probably a draw} 23x16 5. 12x19

White to move and win!