Subject: Site review - Historia Ajedrez (column) Date: 1999/10/24 Author: Mark Weeks <100046.2106@compuserve.com> The next review, following the Chess History bookmarks, is for Historia Ajedrez (Chess History), a Spanish language column by Ricardo Calvo. The address that I used when I started to prepare this review now defaults to http://www.terra.es/deportes/, which is the sports section for the site. I discovered that the new chess history address is http://www.terra.es/deportes/ajedrez/historia/portada.htm & updated the corresponding bookmark for this discussion group. I don't speak or understand Spanish, so I used the 'Go' translation services at http://translator.go.com/ to read these pages. This is my preferred service, because it doesn't stop the translation after an arbitrary number of characters or words like the AltaVista service (http://babelfish.altavista.com/) does. It also sets up most links on the translated page to invoke the next translation automatically, which makes it much easier to browse a site. I have no particular problem with these translation services. In addition to helping me understand something which would otherwise be incomprehensible, the translations are a source of amusement. Not everyone agrees with me. I use the Go service on my own site & know from the email I receive that some people are irritated by the many mistakes in the translations. There is certainly room for improvement. As I was finishing this article, the translator.go address started giving me a 'Connection timed out' message. It was a Sunday morning (GMT+2) & I have often noticed that Web services disappear temporarily at this time, probably for maintenance reasons. I didn't wait to verify this for the Go service & trust that it is also temporary. In addition to his work as a chess historian, Calvo is a good player and earned an International Master title in 1973. He also played a formative role in chess history when he was declared 'persona non grata' by FIDE in 1987. The reason given by FIDE was an article he wrote for 'New in Chess' magazine which was critical of FIDE administration. The real reason may have been his support for the candidacy of Lincoln Lucena against the incumbent FIDE President Florencio Campomanes. The text of Calvo's 'One Bridge Too Far' article (New in Chess Magazine, 1986, No. 8) may be found at http://www.samsloan.com/one-brid.htm. He discusses the resulting FIDE action in 'On the Nature of FIDE Legitimacy' at http://www.shamema.com/fide-leg.htm. When I first looked at the 'Historia Ajedrez' page in June, there were four articles. Now there are seven, as well as a selection list with twelve articles. Six articles linked from the main page are also included in the selection list -- only the most recent is not included. This makes a total of 13 articles available from the page. Unfortunately, the selection list still uses the older http://deportes.ole.es/ addresses. Until this is fixed, the older articles are only available by entering the URL directly, for example:- (OLD) http://deportes.ole.es/espdep/articulo/articulo.cfm?ID=DEP1078 (NEW) http://www.terra.es/espdep/articulo/html/dep1078.htm Seven of the articles cover the history of computer chess:- - Leonardo Torres Quevedo & his machine to play K+R vs. K endgames - Alan Turing & the Enigma project - Claude Shannon & his classic 1949 paper - Software developments from the 1950s through the development of Belle in the 1970-80s - The rise of the microcomputers - Deep Blue - The importance of chess to research in artificial intelligence The other six articles cover topics from medieval chess history:- - Codex of Alfonso X - Edward I of England - Edward I of England & Leonor of Castile - Origins of chess - The lost book of Vicent - Don Miguel de Unamuno The last article ('Unamuno') was authored by Luis Alvarez Fernandez rather than by Calvo. The articles are published irregularly, the last one dated 1999-09-08. Calvo also has a personal page at http://www.chesstv.com/ricalvo/, which is a small site marked 'EN CONSTRUCCIÓN'. The pages have an outline of Calvo's activities & links to a few more articles repeating material from Terra Deportes. -- Respectfully, Mark Weeks