The original aim of this blog was to show the process by which I changed from being an aspiring writer to the point where I became a professional author.   The idea behind this is simple: There are many aspiring authors out there.  By sharing, I hope to help and encourage others who are involved in the same activity.

Over time my personal goals have remained the same, but the methods of achieving them have changed.  For instance, most of my writing these days is freelance and this is an unexpected direction for me to have taken.  While I will always consider myself a “wannabe” author until my first book is published I can no longer say that I am inexperienced as a writer.  So, progress has been made, but is it in the right direction?

Freelance Activities

Most of my recent activities have involved either writing “copy” for others, or developing websites – which is really also copywriting, but with me as the client.  Writing copy as a freelance is actually more dependable than any other form of writing I have tried so far.  Even though I feel my standard of English and grammar usage is still lacking, it is possible to make some money.  The income is small, but at least it is there.  It will no doubt grow over time.

I still want to be a science fiction author, but I really have no control over when this will occur.  It depends on when an editor thinks my work is worthy of publishing.  So, unless I want to write a blog about rejection letters received from publishers, there needs to be content produced on other subjects.

This is a Science Fiction Writing Blog, or is it?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I recently changed a number of things in order to speed up page load times and make the blog more user-friendly generally.   While I was carrying this out I had a look at the blog using Google webmaster tools.  This tool gives you an idea how Google sees your blog and thereby how likely it is that folks interested in the activities of an aspiring science fiction writer will find your site.

What I found out shocked me.

This site ranks best in Google for…chess clothing!  OMG!

(I don’t normally use net abbreviations while writing this blog, but here it is probably for the best.  What I actually said is unprintable.)

How Can Science Fiction and Chess be Confused?

So how can a science fiction writer’s blog rank best for chess clothing?  Well, quite easily apparently.

I allowed myself to go off topic in two areas:  I posted about the subject of chess clothing a few times and secondly I have more chess links on the site than writing links.  [Note: Shortly after this post goes live I will be removing the offending links.]  The reason I included them at all (before I knew better) was that I wanted to show other aspects of who I am.  A pure writing blog seemed a bit one dimensional.  I now realise that writing about wider areas has a strange effect on Google’s search bot.  Alas, although the search algorithms in use by Google are designed by highly intelligent people, there is still no AI – it remains science fiction!

New Computer Chess Blog – Coming soon!

During recent weeks I have opened a number of new websites and so the process has become increasingly easy and straightforward.  When I realised that my interest in chess was taking the site “off message”, as the politicians are fond of saying, I decided to correct it by opening a new blog site about computer chess.  The cost of doing so is merely the price of a domain registration as I already pay for hosting.

This new site should mean that I can still say the things I want to on the subject of computer chess, but this blog will be better focussed on what it was originally set up to do:  Detail the process of growing from a science fiction “wannabe” into a full-time, professional writer.

Of course, right now the site is merely a few lines of blue text, but then this page started life like that too.

Wish me luck.

Dave Felton

I don’t mind the VAT on the item, even though, bizarrely, the package apparently wouldn’t have been eligible for it if the T-shirts had been sent separately.  (If you intend to place an order for more than one T-shirt, email John and ask for separate delivery.)  How Royal Mail can charge an extra £8, in addition to the VAT, to deliver a parcel well over week late I have no idea though…

Anyway, all four are now here and I am a happy man.

What were the final two?  Horsey and Wandering King (my girlfriends favourite).

http://endgameclothing.com

Roll on having enough time to go back to chess club!

Dave Felton

The two t-shirts that arrived were:

Pieces Fall

Wandering King

I am impressed by the quality of the printing on the t-shirts.  The material is lighter than I expected (my fault) but is not flimsy, so I have high hopes for the future durability of them.  It is also a good sign that the chest area is one piece and not two, so they won’t twist out of shape when washed.

They are both XXL as I was concerned about finding a t-shirt that would be long enough as I am 6’5 and quite long in the body.

In case you are wondering, they fit great!

It will be great to wear something that looks good and has a chess theme.  Many people see chess as “geeky” and so it is nice to have a t-shirt that definitely is “cool”.  It is a shame that the first person to see them will probably be my doctor!

As only two of the t-shirts have currently arrived I will cut this post short and will post more when the rest get here.

Dave

For anyone that has never heard of such a thing I assure you it exists.  Although chess clothing is not quite the same thing as clothing for many other sports eg Karate.

I tend to prefer to dress casually, T-shirt and jeans type casual if I am given my choice, although I do possess three suits and some other “normal” clothing.  Every now and again my girlfriend looks at my *ahem* selection of clothing and goes mental; telling me that some treasured family heirlooms t-shirts and other stuff must be thrown out.

As I suspect that she has a better grip on this thing called “social reality” than I do, I tend to give in and jettison some clothing on condition I can replace it like for like.  It was under this detente process that I recently went looking for new t-shirts and came across a really great website called Endgame Clothing.

I am 6’5” and pretty long in the body for my height so sometimes t-shirts resemble belly tops on me, especially after a few washes.  For this reason I e-mailed the company to enquire about length, received a polite reply and have since placed my order. Although it is quite unbecoming for a guy at 40+ to be excited by such an order I admit that I am…a little.  The t-shirts look really good and most American T’s I have bought last really well, not at all like the low quality stuff generally sold in the UK (2-3 washes and throw it away as it is so far out of shape).

I ordered four T’s but to save space here is an image of one of them:

When they arrive from the US I will post again and let you know if I am still as impressed.

Even as a kid I just didn’t understand the value of winning a game where there was no real world gain for a victory.  Winning a game because you had followed someone else’s instructions (from a book or personal instruction) seemed a bit hollow.  What I did understand however was that having someone practically go into paroxysms of ecstasy because they had beaten me with the assistance of some cheap prepared opening trap was frustrating.  I therefore resolved to learn more about the game and stop these displays.

It is the nature of chess that if you play enough you tend to get better.  By the time I reached 16 I was top board in the school chess team and had won a few minor regional competitions – all of it sort of by accident.

For various reasons this was my chess playing zenith. Other commitments meant that I did not play with regularity although I did make a small effort to address this by purchasing what was then a top of the line chess computer. Over the next few years even this fell into disuse due to a working week that was in excess of seventy hours.  Basically when I came home, intellectual exercise was near the bottom of my list of things to do.

Well, all this is over 20 years ago.  My memories of chess are positive and so I recently decided on impulse to buy a chess engine from Amazon while browsing.  Oh my!  How chess engines have advanced!  If I played against the engine on an unrestricted setting it would slowly crush me over and over again. Playing against it was such a shock I decided to go on the internet and research them.

Chess players in general are rated using the Elo system and it turned out that the engine I was trying to defeat had a rating (unofficial) of over 2900.  To put this in perspective, the current world champion is Viswanathan Anand and he is rated around the 2800 region (giving a precise rating is pointless as it changes frequently). Most top Chess Grand Masters (GM’s) have ratings in the 2800 range and certainly over 2600.

This monstrous playing strength of course explained my difficulties in defeating my new found chess companion. To make matters worse a short search on Google showed me that not only could I have downloaded a free and legal engine that was a stronger player than the one I had purchased (so much for impulse shopping!) but that these newer engines were playing in the region of 3200 Elo.  This Elo rating is truly amazing.

To help a none-chess player understand how impressive these ratings are:

A player facing an opponent a mere 50 Elo stronger might only be expected to win 43% of games.

A player facing an opponent 200 Elo stronger can expect to win a mere 25% of games

And finally,

A player facing an opponent 400+ Elo stronger can only expect to win roughly 8% of games played.

Remember a gap of 400+ Elo is a decent rough estimate of the current gap between the World Chess Champion (human) and the top chess engines.

So what is the point of all this?  Well, for a guy interested in the future implications of computer development and the human role in this process the vein is a rich one, especially in the area of near future SF writing.

For instance:  Can you imagine competing for a job in a cerebral environment when the best person in the world in that particular field can be out thought by a computer better than one in ten times?

Now it is true that there are those that will argue that chess is an extremely limited arena and is therefore easy for a programmer to deal with rules and variables etc. and thereby use the computers undisputed ability to number crunch and so extract a victory.  “Real life is different” so these folk say.

This argument can be basically summed up by stating that the world is massively more complex and the tasks required to live in it more diverse and so computer intelligence is no threat to humans except in limited areas of competition where the environment is simple and lends itself to reduction to a simple heuristic.  Further, that if computers do become better than humans in these simplistic areas then this can only be a good thing as it will relieve us of the boredom and drudgery of having to complete these tasks ourselves.

The only difficulty with this idea is that if you break everyday life down into a number of discrete tasks the performance of these many tasks becomes a memory/processing problem and is far from insurmountable in the longer term (due to Moore’s Law etc.).  We just need a better computer and that item will definitely come with time.

Well, whatever the future holds, I am back involved with chess and enjoying it for its own sake.  It is a real treat to play a game and win or lose be able to have GM strength engine go over the moves and check for blunders etc.  The availability of this quality of analysis is definitely rapidly improving my game and I can’t help but think that in the future when we will have not only more powerful computers, but hopefully artificial intelligence to assist us, this process will be even more effective.

May that day be soon!

Dave Felton