Member details, picture, country flag

[boybawang]

Hi chesstempo creator!

I should have known this great site has existed earlier

I suggest a better Member details which allows us to include our picture (avatar), country flag, and much more!

It'll make this site more fun and alive with all the socializing activities

[richard]

Hi boybawang,

You should be able to create an avatar for the forum. I'm hoping to have the forum much more integrated into the rest of the site in the future, including better member profile integration and an ability to embed problem positions into forum posts.  At the moment I have a number of improvements to the tactics part of the site I need to get to before I can start working on forum integration, so these changes are still a while off.

Regards,
Richard.

[boybawang]

Hi richard!

I didn't mean this forum.  I was pertaining about the main chesstempo itself.
Wouldn't it be fun to see the top 100 tacticians along with their Picture, Country, Online Status, motto, RANK, etc and drop them a note or ask advice.

I believe our strength can improve further from accumulating clues about how others do it.  Also add an ability to search a particular player.

Currently all players look the same because no distinction between them aside from ELO. It doesn't have to be that boring 

Lastly, aside from displaying the current top 10 ratings, also display the Top 10 ALL TIME RATINGS.  It will avoid the tendency to become less active once a high rating is achieved because their highest performance is always displayed.

regards and keep up the good work! 

[richard]

Hi boybawang,

When I said better integration with the forum I meant in both directions.  So the avatar  and personal message features of the forum would be available in the tactics stats page, this would become a mixture of a user profile AND stats page. In the other direction, problems would be available for display directly in forum posts.

The issue with the top 10 all time ratings is that the problem set has changed a lot over the past year as has the rating system for blitz and overall problem selection algorithm.  I might add a top 10 all time list after these types of changes have settled down a bit.

Keep the suggestions coming :-)

Regards,
Richard.

[boybawang]

It's good to hear that

So addicting I just can't stop solving! I'm now 2314 after 110 problems

Somewhat Off Topic but I have one issue in the timed Blitz Mode.  I simply don't know what time to beat because the target duration is not indicated. At what point of time will I start loosing points If I won't move immediately?  I don't have idea whether I'm thinking too long or too fast. That way we can't develop the art of time management which is vital in chess competitions.

One idea is to make the time digits Descending instead of Ascending because Descending better simulates a real chess competition.  Ofcourse the problem need not terminate if time reaches zero. It can continue with negative digit. But it gives us idea that we exceeded the desired threshold which affects points.

cheers!

[richard]

Hi again,

I have considered indicating how much time you have  before you lose points, but I think it gives away too much information about the problem.  While time management is important, when you look at a position in a real game, you don't have a little voice tell you, "The average time to look at this position was x seconds". If x is 5 seconds then you know to look for a very easy move, if you know x was 2 minutes then you know you are looking for a much harder solution.  For the same reason ratings are not shown before you've solved the problem I think it would be less realistic to give an indication of how long you have to solve the problem.

Regards,
Richard.

[texian]

i agree with keeping problem details like time and/or rating hidden before solving .. i use both CT and CTS frequently .. at CTS a rating is provided with each problem from that a user can estimate time allowed .. i can't help looking at it before i solve a problem, but now i have found it is often revealing to solving the problem, particularly problems rated at less than 1000 .. while i find this a handy way to avoid missing a really easy problem, i am teaching myself chess "puzzle" tactics, not chess tactics .. until i learned to slow down on standard problems here at CT, i found myself often missing similar under 1000 problems here .. thus, CT has begun teaching me to really look at the problem before jumping to a careless choice which is well worth learning

btw, Ricahrd, i've tried uploading an avatar and can't .. i get a message indicating my account or user name doesn't exist .. yet, id do - don't i?

[richard]

texian: Re: The avatar, strange , a few other people have uploaded avatars, but maybe I broke something recently.  Please try and again and give me the exact error message you get and I'll have another look at it.

Regards,
Richard.

[texian]

thanks for the prompt response, Richard .. from my browser (IE 7) i get an  HTTP 500  error code (The website cannot display the page) .. when i hit refresh, i get the following Forum generated message:

An Error Has Occurred!
The user whose profile you are trying to view does not exist. 

i've got a cool image, circa 1861, of a real deal Texian who strongly resembles my chess game circa 2008  .. it is a JPEG thumbnail image (101 x 129 about 4 Kb) .. thanks again

[richard]

Hi Texian,

There does appear to be something broken here, and not just for IE either.  Until I get time to look at this the easiest workaround is to have use a URL to refer to your image instead of uploading the file.  If you don't have a web page you can upload the image to then please send it to me via email and I'll upload it to chess tempo.

Regards,
Richard.

[texian]

Richard, thanks for installing my avatar - i like him .. he and his pony look a little squatty to me, but will do for now as my game is a little squatty, too .. when i get my rating to a more respectable level, maybe we can fix his aspect ratio

for anyone interested in Texas history,  check out the properly sized image here it is pretty cool .. the image is an illustration from an 1861 Harpers Weekly Magazine of a Texas Ranger, the original state police and militia .. a description accompanying the image describes him well:

“Imagine two hundred men dressed in every variety of costume, except for the ordinary uniform, armed with double-barreled shot-guns, squirrel rifles, and Colt’s six shooters, mounted on small, wiry, half wild horses, with Spanish saddles and Mexican spurs; unshaven, unwashed, undisciplined, riding pell-mell in pursuit of the Indians.”

Pike, James. Scout and Ranger: Being the Personal Adventures of James Pike of the Texas Rangers in 1859-60.  Princeton University Press, 1932.  Pg. 21-22, as quoted in Arnold, James R. op. cit. Pg. 271.

i like to think of him with a whittled chess set in his saddle bag along with a portable board made from an old rain slicker .. i'd have a backgammon board on another slicker,  checkers, and dice .. don't get me started, Texas history was formerly a full-time avocation, as was backgammon .. i don't have time for either anymore now that i'm trying to re-learn chess .. in fact, "unshaven, unwashed, undisciplined, riding pell-mell" is a pretty good description of me these days in pursuit of chess - besides all the Indians in Texas moved to Louisiana to work in casinos