Friday, March 9, 2007

Day 20: Your job must be fun!

This is a thing I've been told recently at one of our regular meetings. Doesn't it sound good? I think alle tammos (all employees of Tam Tam) are following very well this advice. These "tammos" to the left are enjoying the new Nintendo Wii platform and a game in tennis.

Playing this is quite a fun - you have to use a remote device and wave it in the air as if you are hitting the ball with a real tennis racket. (Those who are not attracted in TV games try to crush the office by playing football in it).


EXACTLY at 17:00 alle tammos throw away their keybords, mouses and headphones, pull up a mobile table to the center of the Information Worker Solutions(IWS) department and begin to drink beer(with or without alcohol), eat chips or yellow cheese(kaas).


"Hey, gringo, you are playing some dirty tricks! Get your hands off the table or get ready for a duel!"






The poker game is a great attraction. I think if we put some real money, Western style clothes, cigarettes, play the soundtrack of "The good, the bad and the ugly" ... we can call Clint Eastwood to shoot his next movie.


Girl power: ladies are playing bowling in "spreekkamer C" carefully observed by Kwoh-Ho(Developer). From left to rigth: Annelies(Interaction Designer ... gave me a microwave and drove me to buy a blanket), Lucy(SharePoint), Jaqueline(Human Resources), Patricia(Staff).



a bad day for Dutch chess

Thursday, March 8, 2007

The 8th of March: Happy holiday to women throughout the World!

Greetings, ladies!

In The Netherlands they don't celebrate it. Obviously it's popular only in the "post-communist" countries. Anyway, it's a nice tradition.

Nothing special these days. After solving the issue with the Web Service, InfoPath Forms Services, MOSS and Forms Authentication got involved in another project. By the way, developers, take in mind this article if you are going to host the InfoPath Environment. It's very useful to know that you can interact programmatically with the underlying xml form from your custom application.

I have two new tasks: to customize the HTML rendered by Content Query Web Part and import MOSS profile information for 1500 users defined in Excel file. Deadline for the first task: next Thursday. I think I'll get ready with both tomorrow :)

The Content Query Web Part is one of the cooliest things I've seen in SharePoint so far. It allows you to pull information from any source within your site collection and later define how it is displayed.

To change the "look & feel" you need to "touch" some files(ItemStyle) placed in The Style library and configure(intuitively) a few XSL transformations. Invest 20 minutes in this article also. It can save you hours later. I think this is really a powerful web part - "get the information and display it as you like for seconds".

Tot morgen!

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

Day 16: First game First win!

"Здравствуйте, дорогие зрители! С вами за пультом управления вновь гроссмейстер Сергей Шипов - работаю для вас из своей московской берлоги ... ". In this way starts his analysis my favorite chess commentator - gm Sergey Shipov. After exactly half year and the special tournament in Istanbul I sat again behind the board, this time some 3000 km away from Turkey. The drawing said my opponent was a very friendly(as every Dutch I've met until now) old man - Mr Jan van de Donk. We exchanged a few words, drank a coffee and then started the game.

Lyubomir Mishkovsky(BUL) - Jan van de Donk(NED)
Delft, March 2007

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nc3 Bb4 Mr Donk chose French defence as a reply to my 1. e4 and looked happy of life. After 3. .. Bb4 I stopped for a while and decided to continue with a rare variation I know from the game Alekhine - Nimzovitch: 4. Ne2?!(see diagram 1) de 5. a3 Bc3 6. Nc3 f5 7. f3 ef 8. Qf3 ... so far we repeat the afore mentioned game. White is a pawn dawn but with active pieces. Now it's dangerous for black to take pawn 8. ..Qd4 because after 9. Bg5 and 10. Rd1 white is clearly better. 8. ..Nf6 9. Bf4 c6(9. ..Qd4 10. Nb5) 10. O-O-O O-O(see diagram 2)

Another intersting point - now I was thinking over 2 variations. First 11. Re1 Nd5 12. Bd5 ed 13. Re5 Re8 14. Rde1 Re5 15. Re5 with some positional advantage for white and chances for kingside attack or 11. Bxa6 ba 12. Qxc6 Bd7 and gaining back material. Took the second line 11. Ba6 ba 12. Qc6 ... and missed the move 12. ..Qb6. It's quite a simple move but I totally excluded it from calculations, had in mind only 12. ..Bd7 13. Qa6 with an advantage for white. With 12. ..Qb6 black offers his two rooks for the white queen 13. Qa8 Bb7 14. Qf8 Kf8 ... and a win for someone at move 95 :)) I declined this unclear position and found a beautiful place on c5 for my knight.

13. Qc4 Bb7 (13. .. Bd7 14. d4 Rac8 15. Qd4 Qd4 16. Rd4 ed 17. Nd5 Nd5 18. Rd5 Bc6 =) 14. Na4! Qc6 15. Nc5 Nd5 16. Bd2 Kh8 17. Rde1(the right rook!) Rfe8 18. Rg1(not only defending g2 pawn but preparing an attack with g4) 18. ..Rac8(better to place rook directly at b8 since the c-file is well blocked by the knight and leave the c8 square for the bishop defending the e6-square). 19. Qb3 Ba8 20. Re5!(see diagram)


As Nimzovich says: "The object of your attack must be fixed!". So lets fix the e6-pawn. This move prevents black's e5 and undermining the white's knight at c5. Also after c4 and g4 combined with queen on h3 this rook can attack through h5 the black's king position. 21. .. Rb8 22. Qa2(22. Qh3 Qb5 23. b3 a5 24. a4 must be checked) 22. ..Rb5??(решаюшая ошибка) 23. c4 Rc5 24. dc Qc5 25. Rge1 Qd4 26. Rd5(see diagram)


After calculating for several minutes 26. cd and 26. Rd5 decided that the later is the closest path to victory. 26. .. Bd5 27. cd Rc8 28. Bc3 Qf2(28. ..Rc3 29. bc Qc3 30. Kd1 Qd3 31. Qd2 +-) 29. Re6 Qf1 30. Kd2 Qf2 31. Re2 Qf4 32. Kc2 Qf1 33. Rd2 Qf4 34. Qb3 Rb8(see diagram)

A nice finish of the game: 35. Qb8(the pawn is unstoppable) Qb8 36. d6 Qb7 37. d7 Qe4 38. Kc1 Qe1 39. Rd1 Qe3 40. Kb1 1:0

So, this was my first tournament game in The Netherlands. The club is nice. The members too. (Forgot to tell you that before the tournament a teenager beat me 3:0 in a blitz match).

The game started at 19:45 and the time control was 1:45 gillotine. We finished around 23:15 and I headed home. Midnight Delft is cool :)) /if only it was not so windy, wind all day and night, pfuu/. The town is so calm that even if you want to be robbed by some criminals ... you can't have that fun :)) I walked for half an hour and couldn't see a man. /Maybe I'm the only criminal here :)) and people know I'm in town and are scared ... like in old Westerns :)) hahaha, this is a script for my friend - Qncho - the movie maker / Nothing bothers these people. Every house looks like the previous one. It's strange that you can see through the window of every home(I'm not doing it deliberately) - and all is the same - a car, a house, 2 well-educated kids watching silently TV, dad reading, mom wandering ... or a house, 2 old people ... a house, a table, some fruits on it ... a house ...

This is the real MATRIX not the one with
Keanu Reeves :))

Goedenacht.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

Last days in Bulgaria

Bulgaria, Sofia, Students' town, "Stroeja", 2am, 5 hours before the airplane. Thanks a lot to my friends in BSH who organized this party for Velimir, Stoyan and me.




How can I forget these lunches - as Nasko says "the climax of the day" :)) Now at Tam Tam the lunch starts exactly at 12:00 for all 70 employees and lasts 15 minutes.




Bulgarian Software House waiting for the meals. Some are lucky - already exploring their big pizzas :))






Another thing I'll miss a lot - the football matches two times a week with colleagues after work ... and of course the beer and jokes after games. "Qnchooo, spish!" :))




My chess friends I have smiled crazily with and been to so many tournaments in Bulgaria ... aaand Istanbul. Hope I'll join you again this summer.





... for those who think chess is not a real sport. Can you feel the tension? I got another white hair on my head after Peter's game :))





... Sweet home Alabama ...

Day 15: Some photos:

The place in Haarlem I slept for 10 days. It looks similar to my room in the "Students' town" in Sofia. You can see the flower(zdravec) my grandma gave me in Bulgaria.




The famous bed begins to look like a real bed.








Saturday Delft: heyyyyyyyyy finally people on the streets :-)) Hm, this town might not be so boring ... even the opposite, there is a nice walking area in the center.




Still don't know what's the name of this big church and the story behind it. It's right in the center, in the so called "Markt" square.






The chess club in Delft - DSC Delft. It took me one free weekend to find it. I'll take part in a small competition on Monday.




I suppose this cafe would be the place I'll spend my summer nights. It's beautiful and cosy in winter, I can imagine how it would look in June.