Pleasant View week Seven

This week 14 people showed up to our library, six of whom are students at Pleasant View Junior High School. The newcomers off-balance the loss of players due to the new school year.

Hazel came back to Toronto and visited us, she brought more candy supplies for the kids. Thanks Hazel.

As more people from Pleasant View came, the skill level of the competition has increased. I personally think that we should teacher/ask the participants to record their games(it's Hazel's idea, I felt the obligation to credit her for it). Their recorded games can be of great use for maybe posting them on the website. Thus making a game of the week kind of thing. This way the players will be more encouraged and this will attract more visitors to the site(mind the pun).

The bag of candy hasn't been very generous lately as the puzzles are getting harder! Due to me forgetting to bring the puzzle book(oops), we made our own puzzle and it's apparently pretty hard to solve!

Helping me this week was(in alphabetical order of first name), Aaron, Hazel, Kelly, and Sam.

That's it for this week, see you next week.

Pleasant View meeting

This week the school has taken its toll on the program as this time 12 people showed up. But I am optimistic that it will get back to normal next week. Thanks to the staff who are working in the Pleasant View Junior High School for advertising the program there. This time there are several high school students who came and played. Also there was adult players too.

I am glad that people of higher ages are starting to join this program and I am certain that this will improve the skills of the participants.

I want to welcome Kelly Zheng to the volunteering team here at the library. Kelly joined last week and has been a great help to the program.

Week FIVE

Interestingly the number "16" seems to be haunting us, as this week, again 16 people showed up. The puzzles activity again proved it's popularity as this time we almost had a puzzle "shortage". I am to be honest impressed at how fast the kids solve them. It seems that the younger the participant the faster he/she solves the puzzles. I was constantly summoned to change the puzzle.

This week is also the last week that Hazel's gonna be here. I wanna thank her for her contributions.

I have talked to the library leader about the room, she said she's booked the room for our program. I hereby thank her and announce that our players could come play again next Saturday 10-12 am.

It's here it's finally here!

http://www.chessinthelibrary.com/

It was a dark and stormy night when Yuanling and I have decided to make a website.

To be honest there was a lot of hard times making the website. From editing the content, to flash, to photoshop, and to confusing html, yet we did it. At times we thought that we could never do this or is on the verge of giving up. But after 1 and half month of hardwork it has finally arrived.

Everything you see is designed by me your humble webmaster. The only thing that isn't "homemade" is the feedreader(it was way beyond my level).

Thanks to Yuanling for this great opportunity to show off my web skills and thank TechForceOnCall for donating the webhosting server. Thanks to Macromedia flash for its wonderful functions and thanks to Macromedia dreamweaver for it's ease of control. Also thanks to Adobe photoshop.

Also thanks to inventor of the computer and internet and HTML for making this all possible.

PleasantView Branch week 4

This week, all our "regulars" have returned, sustained from last week is the number of people, as this week "16" people came again. As four weeks have passed, between the members and the organizers grew a great harmony. This week Aaron, Hazel and me were helping out, Sam couldn't make it because he was sick.

Business as usual, we played casual chess and with the great puzzles activity players were kept busy. The puzzle activity again proved its popularity as our players displayed strong interests.

After the rounds Aaron and I with 2 players played double chess together. It was a lot of fun. Other kids who also enjoyed this variation of chess played it as well. Maybe next time we will host a double chess tournament.

Another great idea came up by Hazel is to teach the players to write their moves down. This way we could put their games online, or even analyze it with them. Having the players writing the moves down could bring us a lot of benefits.

The website(made by me(not showing off or anything)) is upon completion. Hopefully you guys could see it by this very AFTERNOON!

www.chessinthelibrary.com ! it should work once Yuanling upload it.

Pleasant View Branch week 3

Our third meeting was held last Saturday at ten again. This time due to other appointments of Hazel's students, 16 people showed up. Which is still an optimistic number. Each week we have a steady "supply" of new members joining our program. And this time we had improvements to the program as well.

This week we set up another activity for the kids and that is puzzles. We had three boards(including a big instruction board that Hazel brought) and set up chess puzzles for the kids. One is for beginner, one is for intermediate, and the really cool instruction board was for advanced. Hazel also brought some candies and we used them as prizes for solving the puzzle. If one person solved it then we set up another puzzle. Hazel brought(yes she brought LOTS of stuff) other interesting puzzles, as well as scrap paper and scrap pens.

This time things went smoothly. The kids who are finished their games are invited to solve the puzzles. Ironically, advanced and intermediate was easily solved whereas the beginner puzzle stayed unsolved until i showed them the answer.

The puzzles activity is a big success as suprisingly people stayed longer and some of them still didn't leave even until almost 30 minutes after 12.

I thank Hazel for all her wonderful contributions.

And it was a great turn out for the program.

That's all for this week, see you next!

Pleasant View Branch week 2

Today we had our second meeting of the Chess in the Library program. It was great. There were almost 20 people here this time. We had a lot of fun. Because of a printer difficulty we had, we decided to hand the certificates from last week next week. I think the winners didn't mind at all.

Overall it was great, we've came across some very interesting games. But because the more players we had and Aaron's absence, we didn't have time to record interesting positions.

As Hazel mention in her blog, we are planning for some more activities, as some players in our Branch has finished 3 rounds in only 30 minutes while other players take 1 hour to complete a game. There is a strong demand of something else for them to do. In the brookbanks library we put chess books for the players to read, I have talked to the Librarian about it. We've decided that we should also put interesting puzzles or even use the television we have in that room for some chess movies.

The puzzle activity will be hosted by a organizer(me), with candy bars rewarded. I'll put up easy 2 move tactics and whoever solves it first gets a candy bar.

That's it for this week, see you next week!