DIY chess clock

I have been playing chess with my son quite a bit lately. It happens from time to time that one of us will take quite some time between moves so we thought it would be nice to play with a clock. Which of course we don´t have and it makes no sense to buy one.

However it is easy to create a simple one so I just made an app exactly for this. I know, there are already many apps doing the same. However I know this one is not tracking me, not trying to sell me anything and not selling my data to third parties.

If you want to give it a try (Android), the app is available in the MIT´s App Inventor gallery

PS: Updated so that each player has different starting times and also to make it more obvious whose time is still running (button shown as red)

PPS (10th Feb): Updated with Pause and Continue buttons as some times we are interrupted while playing. While paused, Light and Dark buttons show in orange and have no effect until you press the Continue button.

MIT - Stata Center

Visiting MIT...

On the way back to the airport a few days later, and as you can see from the photo above, I had a bit more luck with the weather. I stopped by in Cambridge once more, as Prof. John Guttag at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory had kindly made time on his schedule to meet me. We talked briefly about my experience taking the 6.00x course and he gave me a signed copy of the Spring version of his book, the one which includes me in the acknowledgements.

Just by chance, I had bought the big book "The Human Face of Big Data" a few days earlier in Hartford (seriously, it´s really big and won´t fit on my shelves!). John Guttag and fellow researcher Collin Stultz appear in this book and their photo was actually taken in the Stata Center. As I needed a photo for an internal newsletter from my company, John agreed to have one taken and he suggested that we do it in the same spot as the one in the book. Quite memorable!

Finally, I also found time to visit the edX offices, just a few hundred meters away. I just showed up to the entrance and asked to see one of the staff, whose name I could remember from the forum discussions. Luckily she was there and, surprised as she was, she took some time to show me the offices and talk about MOOCs and the challenges they are facing. All in all, a great experience before rushing to the airport for my flight back home.

I am very grateful for the effort that goes into making these courses freely available, so when edX asked for stories from students, I sent mine hoping it would be useful. I don´t usually post photos of myself, but I felt this was worth it and I am very happy that my story has been featured on their facebook page.

If you have not done it yet, have a look at edx.org or any other of the platforms offering MOOCs. You will be stunned by the quality of the courses.

Massachusetts Avenue

I had a quick lunch at the Stratton Student center (not pictured above!) and when I came out, the weather had not really improved much. Initially I had planned to go to the MIT Museum, but seeing that the weather was not that great and that I did not want to drive to Hartford in the night, I decided to skip that and go straight to Harvard for a quick walk.

MIT - Lobby 7

MIT - Under the Great Dome

MIT - Infinite Corridor

I often post panoramas like the one above, stitched together using a demo version I once found of a program called Autostitch, by Matthew Brown and David Lowe from the University of Columbia. I recently was reading how the panoramas are created and found it very interesting. Many thanks to Jan Erik Solem for making the book "Programming Computer Vision with Python" available with a CC license.

MIT - Great Dome

I spent most of my Sunday morning inside this Building, walking up and down the Infinite Corridor and waiting for the snow storm and the wind to finish. I was lucky to find an open door on one of the wings, so I could take this photo of the Great Dome. One of the few places where I have seriously considered having somebody take a photo of me with this as background. For comparison, this idea of having a photo of myself taken did not occur to me in places like Tokyo, Hanoi, Xi'an, NYC, Christchurch or Beirut, to name a few I have visited in the last few years. So finally I kept to the side of the camera that I know best. At least this time as the return trip had a nice surprise waiting for me a few days later...

MIT - Wright Brothers Wind Tunnel

First stop at MIT, battling the wind and the snow (not a good day for outdoor photography). This reminded me of my time as an intern in the aerodynamics lab in my college a long time ago, working with other fellow students to determine the drag polar of a model aircraft. I have very fond memories of that time.