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Coffee Machine
    Keywords: Ko, Shape, Tactics, Strategy, Problem, Question, Rules, Theory, Culture & History, Go term, Proverb

Taking a break? Go ahead and add what's on your mind right now.

Alternatively, take a look at some go humour.


Motto for today:

"Experience is that marvelous thing that enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again."

- F. P. Jones

(You may change the motto of the day, but please save the old motto in Old Mottos.)


2003 Nov 15

Naustin Thanks to both of you for your comments. I started up acrobat reader and left it open before I went to [ext] http://gobase.org/studying/articles/matthews/shape_up and then when I clicked on the chapters they opened just fine. Thanks again.

2003 Nov 14
Naustin--I'm not sure this is completely appropriate here as it's more of a computer question but it has to do with me using computers for go stuff so... On gobase there is a book there by Charles Matthews called Shape Up. This was set up so you could look at chapters individualy. It probably still is for everybody else but awhile ago I downloaded a client program for KGS and since then I haven't been able to view any of the chapters. Part of why I think it has to do with that client program is because I had to download this whole special java package that I guess handles java differently than how my computer used to. It was alittle too complex for me. Anyhow every time I try to look now I get the message "Plugin Error: The plugin did not initialize properly." I have emailed gobase to see if they have any suggestions but they never responded. I am wondering if anyone has encountered a problem like this before and/or has any suggestions. I have tried fiddling around with the Java programs control panel but I really don't know what I'm doing and I never seem to have any effect. Thanks.
wms: Can you give me the URL? If the page requires the original java component of MSIE, then right, you may be in trouble. But this would be unusual. The java system that KGS asks you to install is very new, and should be able to run all the programs that the MSIE builtin java plugin can. I mean, you could if you wanted write a program that only ran on the older one, but I can't see why gobase would do that! If I can see the page I can find out exactly what plugin they are looking for and talk to them about filing a solution.
gimpf: This does not look like a Java problem to me - more that IE cannot start Acrobat Reader anymore. You should still be able to view the pdf-Files by downloading them and start them via Explorer - and first you could try just to reinstall Acrobat Reader too.

2003 Nov 11

Neil: I'm beginning to wonder if SL is capable of catering to a diverse audience. Is this a site for Dan-level players playing chilled go or what? :-)

Charles Does the coffee machine only serve iced tea? Not true - all tastes catered for here.

2003 Nov 9

Naustin-Hi, yes, I was wondering if anyone could direct me to the instant 9p page?

2003 Nov 7

Tristan: Another update to A Cautionary Tale. Caitlin arrives in Japan.

2003 Nov 6 KjeldPetersen I have a question, and I hope that someone could help me. Somewhere on the internet there is a pdf-file with a whole 19x19 board diagram in correct scale. I have earlier located this file, but now I cann't find it. Are there someone who know the link to the page where I can find this file?

Icepick Google knows all: [ext] http://www.geocities.com/goswanseaweb/downloads.html

David: I've made one too, in PostScript, which you can convert to PDF. It uses the dimensions at Equipment Dimensions by default, but you can edit it to use different ones, or to change the size of the board. [ext] It's here.


2003 Oct 20

Chris Hayashida: What's the etiquette/copyright for e-publishing problems or things like that from Sensei's? There's the SL Copyright page, but I don't understand it.

I just want to send an attachment to my weekly newsletter with a beginner's problem. Would I need to include something in the .sig of the e-mail? Or would merely citing the problem as "coming from Sensei's Library" be enough?

Morten: Here is the key extract from SLCopyRight which should answer your question:
You may copy and distribute exact replicas of the OpenContent (OC) as you receive it, in any medium, provided that you conspicuously and appropriately publish on each copy an appropriate copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty.
In practice, this means that you can reproduce SL content in any form you want, as long as you attach a copyright notice and the 'no warranty' warranty. The copyright notice could be e.g. "Copyright Sensei's Library (SL) [ext] http://senseis.xmp.net/" An appropriate warranty could be "Reproduced under an Open Content License - [ext] http://opencontent.org/". I like adding the URLs but there should be no need to do so if you don't want to.
You cannot charge a fee solely for the reproduction of material from SL.

What do you guys think about the coup in the AGA? I'm getting a lot of e-mails this morning, and I have no idea what's going on.

Malweth: I think it's all just crazy politics. And the repercussions? Well... for one, everyone who gets the AGA newsletter has lost a lot of faith in the organizational leadership. Additionally, nobody in the leadership will be able to think their position is safe until the next elections- which inhibits their ability to do their jobs. The real question I have is why the impeachement occurred. It sounded like it was simply a difference in style or opinion.

JohnAspinall At the risk of injecting US state and national politics into SL, and trying to keep my opinion of those politics in the background, it's hard not to draw parallels between what's happening in the AGA, and what's happened nationally in the past few years.

(Sebastian:) Parallel, maybe. But there's one deciding difference: The AGA is a relatively young organization, and is excused for having problems growing up.

Morten Many people would say the same about the US of A .. ;-)


2003 Oct 16

PurpleHaze: Why do some pages never show up in RecentChanges? For an example InfluenceGo. Is this a bug or is there some tag set on the page?

Sebastian: That's my fault. I set InfluenceGo to be an ongoing game so that it shows up in that list before I was aware (well, duh) that this takes it out of the normal Recent Changes list. Maybe we should move the game into a separate page InfluenceGoGame1?.

malweth: I'm looking for players/groups in Rhode Island. The closest is Somerset, MA - which is ok for tournaments, but a long way for weekly meetings! I wouldn't mind starting a club, but I'm fairly on the weak side.


2003 Oct 11

Phlegmatic: I've had a few handicap games recently where my White has attached to my 4,4 stone at the 3,4 point. There don't seem to be any pages discussing this move and its continuations. Could someone please point me in the right direction, or perhaps start a page detailing any relevant Joseki?


2003 Oct 08

RafaelCaetano: Very interesting [ext] article about Cho Hun-hyeon at Gobase.


2003 Sep 29

Scryer: I didn't want to deface the Go Proverbs section with this question, so I'll ask here -- can anyone tell me where I read this one? "What manner of go player is this who does not know whether his stones are alive or dead?" It might have been in my copy of Smith, which hasn't turned up recently, but it's certainly not in Go Proverbs Illustrated -- it's more of a meta-proverb, I suppose.

Yes, scryer, it is Smith's book, page 52, a poem.

                      "Iki shini wo
                      Shiranu nonki no
                      Go uchi kana"

compliments of HAL9000.

Scryer: Excellent, thank you. I'm not crazy after all! A followup for someone who knows Japanese: the form is evidently a Haiku, but I count only six syllables in the second line. Is one of the vowels long?

Nonki is 3: No-n-ki.

2003 Sep 27

Kungfu: Hi, just checking in. I fixed two gobase.org links where the tail was "...stories/#.html", the links were changed to the new format "...stories/?id=#". I'm unsure of how many other links on the site need to be changed, perhaps someone can look into this. - kungfu

Deebster: I could only find one, which I've now changed.

kungfu: Thanks. And here is something from my page which I have moved here:

mAsterdam: Hi, Kungfu. Maybe Smart Go Format should be an alias to SGF?

kungfu: I don't know how to change that.

mAsterdam: Done. I added your links to the linklist. (also added Smart Game Format.) Ok?

2003 Sep 12

Tristan: More additions to A Cautionary Tale. Is Caitlin falling in love? I know my prose is poor and that the story is moving too quickly, but with your help I can improve it. And at least it's fun.

2003 Sep. 09

Can go be combined with GoMoku by stating that one may win either as in go or as in gomoku? (that is, a regular game of go, but 5 stones in a row (including diagonally) wins)? -Juuitchan

HolIgor: As far as I know in GoMoku Narabe the black has very tough time to defend against. So, the game you propose would degenrate into gomoku very fast. But try make it 6 in a row (rokumoku narabe) and you can have a variant of the game that could be interesting. Yet, my own feeling is that go is too good as it is.

Juuitchan: I wonder if there are T-shirts that say: "Who needs girls when you have GO?" I think that those would be cool.

Charles They might ensure that you don't have the difficult choice in future, certainly.

Fhayashi I don't know why, but I really like the British sense of humor. Or humour. On a separate note, why was the Go section of the MSO World website discontinued?

Charles The company MSO Worldwide Ltd. was wound up in May 2001.

RafaelCaetano I guess I´m not so fanatical about go as Juuitchan, but SungHwaHong´s proverb doesn´t seem so far-fetched: "you can't reach first kyu until you've lost three girlfriends to Go". :-) Here 1-kyu is in the Korean sense, that is, the top of the amateur scale.

2003 September 05

Similar to the current motto:

"Good judgement comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgement."

Dang, KGS is down... - Fhayashi

2003 September 03

Nico: On the same idea, I cannot access the BigTitles page from my office.

2003 August 13th

Zarlan: That is the most stupid kind of way to classify things. It often tends to classify things falsely. On an online-game I used to play, they have a similar system to censor stuff. My brother once had the word "sluta" in his sentence (a swedish word. basicly the same as the english verb stop). It came out as ****a.

2003 August 12th SiouxDenim: Dieter, sorry to change your comment below about male chickens ever so slightly, but your chosen word was causing my office's firewall to classify the SL site as pornographic. Without SL I'll actually have to do work. Not desirable.

2003 August 11th

Tristan: Please have a quick look at my new picture. Can you tell which Buddha is which? :-)

2003 August 1st

DJ: No one is playing On Going Games anymore... Let's say it's because of summer vacations, but next September I'd like everybody back in the classroom!


2003 July 28

Tristan: Have been making some more additions to A Cautionary Tale. There will be a pause of nearly two weeks soon, since lucky I will be going to Japan on Wednesday (provided that British Airways are still in business!). Anyway, I would like some advice please. When Caitlin becomes an adult and professional go player in Japan, should I use real-life characters of the time such as Sakata and Takagawa? Or should I make up entirely fictional characters? Or thinly-disguised real-life figures? Cheers!

Dieter: Enjoy Japan, my man !

Charles A normal method in novels is to combine identifiable characteristics into composite figures.

Blake: I'm not sure where to put this, so here goes. I have been going through and replacing old style 'black 1, black 2, ...' with B1, B2, etc. However, I have come to the conclusion that there is one place where this is not aesthetically pleasing: at the beginning of a text block or paragraph. In these places, I have left it as: Black B1, or White W4, whatever it may be. Also, anywhere it says "If white plays 5..." or something similar, where 5 is a black stone, I recommend: "If white plays W4 at B5..." to avoid confusion. In a page where numbers continue above 10 (W10 and B10 being the highest numbered small stones), I don't replace anything, as I find the old style more aesthetically pleasing than a mixture of old and new. Comments?

Charles I'd generally agree. The point about not starting a sentence with a symbol is in accordance with a criterion of good style; I would sometimes add a 'Now ...' or other padding word. It is readable just to leave it as 'B5 next is forced ...', and I do that too.

My philosophy of editing is that it takes a number of passes to get the desired effect.

Dieter: You mean, tenuki ?

Charles Not in that sense. To get a book into a good state, one often has to go through half-a-dozen stages of corrections. One can't say that each individual 'pass' has a noticeable effect; that comes from the combination.

2003 July 27

mgoetze: Charles, why don't you just killfile jb like the rest of us?

Charles Now, do you really want to bring all that rec.games.go discussion here?

2003 July 26

Tristan: If you have been following my story, A Cautionary Tale, you will find that I have made the opening chapter somewhat less Hikaru No Go-like. I've also finished the third chapter. I hope you enjoy it. A big "thankyou", too, to everybody who posted comments. I will try to make it better.

2003 July 23

mgoetze: I hope I'm not boring anyone with my contributions about Go in Germany. ;) So anyway, I guess there's been a go periodical in German for longer than in English? Fancy that...

Velobici: Not boring at all! Please continue. it is very interesting to read information regarding Go in other areas of the world. As a member of the AGA and a reader of Go World, I have some information regarding what happens in Go in Asia and in the US, but next to nothing regarding Europe. Please keep going. I am sure that there are many others in the situation.

Charles No surprise (about the DGoZ) for those who know some of the history of go in Europe.

2003 July 19

Hmm. Text which begins with spaces doesn't look monospaced in my browser. I am using Netscape 7.02. Anybody having a similar problem? (For an example, see SpankASpammer, where my alphabet should be monospace -- but isn't, at least in this browser.) -- Blake

Hu: Monospaces just fine in my Netscape 7.02.

Something is happening here. The last 30 edits were done by more than 20 people. SL seems to get over the phase where a few people monopolize the discussion. The rate at which pages are created and edited seems to increase too. This probably means that those who are bound to stick around, have to find a new way to deal with all the material.

Only a few weeks ago, it looked like SL was to remain the playground for a cockrel and a few chickens, but the latest development is very promising. Dieter

2003 July 18

Fhayashi: Is it my imagination, or are there relatively few middle game (chuban) pages? I only noticed because I seem to be lacking in chuban-skill, and I'm looking for enlightenment.

Dieter: There is little theory? about the middle game altogether. There is however, a lot about technique. Good technique often reduces the headaches over the middle game.

2003 July 16

AvatarDJFlux: Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears. And read my brand new rant...

Hu: There seems to be a database error of some kind in the Sandbox page. If diffs are done or views of old versions, there are error messages like this: "ERROR: 221 -- 1ERROR: 219 -- 1ERROR: 221 -- 1ERROR: 219 -- 1ERROR: 218 -- 1" that appear at the top and the content is messed up.

2003 July 15

mgoetze: Wow, Dieter is on a new page creating spree. :) I bet this will be some nightmare for the Recent Changes Junkies not on now....

Dieter: Stop me, stop me, if you think you've seen this one before.

unkx80: Recent Changes Junkies nightmare, this is what we are. =PPP

Dieter:

OK. Enough for today. I've done a massive update of the technique subject. The creation of advanced technique is the center of it all. Next to that I have relisted a couple of techniques on separate pages, such as Killing techniques. Much of it was already listed at shapes and connections or tesuji, but I felt that it was not enough organized and that there were a couple of completely uninteresting pages mixed up with fundamental techniques.

mgoetze: Oh come one, Dieter... you could at least create a noncontroversial Tewari example while you're at it. *g*

Sariyu's [ext] commentary on his recent game against breakfast has an example of tewari actually, maybe someone could put it up here with some more elaborate explanation.

Tristan: Congratulations, Dieter, on a truly heroic effort. I counted at least 19 new pages today from the pen of Verhofstadt. You're beginning to rival Charles for prolificity.

Phlegmatic: When Charles gets back from Uganda in a few days he'll have lots of catching up to do! I wonder if he's been able to keep in touch with SL over there, or whether he'll have to go on an overnight, caffeine-fuelled, Recent Changes bender to get back up to speed....

2003 July 4

I have heard of "Living Chess" (chess played with people as the chessmen). Has there ever been "Living Go" (with people as the go stones)?

Dieter: Yes. One of the recent Ranka yearbooks cover features such a picture.
I think that they did not use people as go stones. I also think that the game was not played out with those huge go stones, but rather on an ordinary goban, and shown on the large grassy field with the huge go stones.
I read in an article (I forget where) that once, it was played on a dance floor, with men and women as the "stones", but the game had to be aborted for lack of stones.

Also, why do the numbered stones in this Wiki only go up to 10?

Dieter: A decision by the makers which has been questioned and answered in the past, IIRC at Guinea Pigs Feedback.
Confused: With only single digit stones (10 is 0), in the diagram each stone is represented only by one character and no blanks are necessary for parsing (although they make the diagrams more readable.
mAsterdam:If that is the main reason, and maybe another reason is that the sequences in one diagram shouldn't be too long, then maybe it is possible to add a 'startnumber', like so: '$$W11' which would render 1 as White 11, and 2 as Black 12. '$$B91' would render 1 as Black 91, and 2 as White 92. More stones.

2003 June 9

Does anyone own the 2-inch Agathis table board that is sold at Samarkand? Would like to know if it is any good. Maybe a Go Product Reviews? page would be interesting? - Fhayashi

I own that board. Mine (like most/all table boards) is made of 2 pieces of wood seamlessly joined in the middle (you can't tell from the top of the board). The top of the board is lightened by some sort of stain/wash (common on Korean made boards). I don't mind but if you do you might want to look into the Japanese made boards. The 1" slotted boards are quite nice, Samarkand has Hiba boards in stock now and had some katsura or shin-kaya (I forget which) boards which they seem to be sold out of at the moment. -- StormCrow

4th June, 2003

Does anyone else find that, after browsing SL, they reach for the edit button on other (normal) sites?

So far, the furthest I've got is a small twitch of the arm...

June 3rd, 2003

Frs: [ext] AOL rates Go as adult content and blocks a Go server for young teenagers [ext] ...

April 27th, 2003

Arno: Useless fact of the day: SL recently passed 3 million page views. On average a page has been viewed every 26 seconds since October 2000. There have been about 56000 edits - so on average each version of a page has been viewed 54 times :o)

April 25th, 2003

Hi! I'm very new to the site (and the game :p) so apologies if this is just me not being able to find my way around but I can't seem to find a forum section. If there isn't one I feel this could be a valuable addition to the site? If there is one it should be a little bit easier to find as I couldn't find it in MostPopular or with a keyword search. Anyways, thx in advance for any replies :). Regards, LovedInEmerald.

Charles Matthews: Metadiscussion is often used - also Messages to people currently present in the Library. For technical issues use Guinea Pigs' Feedback.

Morten: The whole site is sort of a forum, really. Deshis and/or Regular Users keep constant track of RecentChanges and are sure to respond to any changes anyone makes anywhere on the site :-)

Grauniad: It seems the Library Lobby is intended to be a discussion forum, but is not very active. However, why does SL have Coffee Machine and Metadiscussion and Messages to people currently present in the Library? And Future use of SL? (And others?) Don't they all really serve the same purpose: discussion about Go and SL and its content and organisation? Any distinction between them is far from clear to users. (Guinea Pigs' Feedback is an exception in discussing the implementation and detailed structure of SL.) I suggest just one of these discussion pages be promoted on the front page and starting points and the others left to whither away.

Charles What Library Lobby does at present is to index discussion pages. Dividing up the various forum pages is supposed to keep traffic on each to reasonable and readable, I suppose.


April 18th, 2003

Congratulations, Sensei's Library: 6000 pages! Hu


April 12th 2003

Phlegmatic: Is it possible to upload sgf's to SL, or do I have to do it the long way? I have an interesting life and death problem from a recent game that I'd like to share...

Hyppy: There is a [ext] tool for converting SGF files in ASCII format to Sensei's Library format. For future reference, a link is located on the Edit Page as well.


April 5th 2003

Hyppy: If anyone is interested in the HNG Anime, head over to HikaruNoGoArchive. A discussion has started there regarding releasing the episodes on CD/DVD for other fans to see.


March 28th 2003

Icepick If I modify Recent Changes will it create an endless loop?

No. It will be registered as a change. If changes to RecentChanges made endless loops, so would changes to any other page --Morten

Icepick Shucks.


March 13th 2003

exswoo I'll be in Tokyo from March 14-23 and I was wondering if anyone knew of some good Go related places I could visit. I was planning on going to the Nihon Ki-in, but I'm still looking for some decent Go books and very few bookstores in Japan seem to have a decent section on Go (well...at least in the Kansai area).

Charles Typical large bookstores in Tokyo do have a go section of a few shelves. At Japan cool places I mention the major second-hand book store: the prices are relatively high, but the number of titles is of the order of 1000.

exswoo Thanks :)


February 28th 2003

Phlegmatic - As a beginner I've found the Killing Shape page very useful, but its links are a bit confusing.

The page states that if you almost fill a group's eyespace with the shapes under discussion, a kill will result. So far so good.

However, follow the links and you'll see they don't really reflect this string of thought - e.g. it references the straight three page, which doesn't show this as a killing shape, but rather shows an eyespace that's a straight three and discusses life and death of that.

Subtle difference I know, and smart people can work it out for themselves, but as it's such a useful basic page, would someone (who is better than me at these things....) be willing to inject a note of clarity into proceedings and tidy things up a bit?

Hyppy - Done.


February 27, 2003

Fhayashi - anyone else concerned that if Charles Matthews keeps writing his wonderful stuff here, he won't get more real books written?


previous versions (before WMEs):



This is a copy of the living page "Coffee Machine" at Sensei's Library.
(OC) 2003 the Authors, published under the OpenContent License V1.0.