RF Connector Chess Set

*no comment* writes "Some clever bloke has come up with his own chess set using a standard chess board and RF connectors." This sort of thing pleases me greatly.

Where there's images, there's...

[daveschroeder]

Internet Archive mirror [archive.org]

Google cache [google.com]

But yeah, it is really neat.

Google doesn't cache the images..

[Shimmer]

Sorry.

The Internet Archive does..

[daveschroeder]

Sorry.

Re:Where there's images, there's...

[Anonymous Coward]

Talking of images, have you seen the guys lab? It's even fuller than mine.
http://www.leapsecond.com/images/LabJan2001r.jpg [leapsecond.com]

It's neat...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but it doesn't make the game any less boring...

*dodges*

Re:It's neat...

[Anonymous Coward]

*picks brick from the ground*
*aims carefully*
*throw*

Re:It's neat...

[Anonymous Coward]

*picks brick from the ground*
*aims carefully*
*throw*
*misses*
*hits his chess game*

Re:It's neat...

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Shouldn't you have a *rolls twenty sided dice* in there somewhere?

Re:It's neat...

[Zorilla]

"*bang* You're dead!"
"But this is freeze-chess!"
"No it isn't. Just de-erasey me!"
"Dude, there's no double-erasies!"

well..

[the arbiter]

The pieces are kinda subject to some artistic interpretation, but on the whole this is pretty cool. Especially if you have a lot of electronics crap lying around like I do.

Nice work!

Re:well..

[mrseigen]

Not to mention it looks prettier than most chess pieces. Ooh, shiny!

Re:well..

[oexeo]

> Not to mention it looks prettier than most chess pieces. Ooh, shiny!

I have a shiny spoon, should I post a story?

Re:well..

[devilspgd]

And then dupe it a week later.

Ob. Family Guy Quote

[Zorilla]

Bruce (As kid wearing Zelda hat): "In England, everybody only has one spoon!"

This guy has a lot more electronics crap than you

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out his whole website [leapsecond.com]. This guy has atomic clocks that rival those in national laboratories! But we're Slashdotting him and congratulating him for building a chess set. Slashdot hurts my brain.

Nixies!

[empaler]

Let's do a story on his nixie tube clocks... Gotta love the tubes...

Re:This guy has a lot more electronics crap than y

[itwerx]

Hey! This guy lives near me!
I feel geekier now just by proximity!

Re:well..

[vsprintf]

The pieces are kinda subject to some artistic interpretation, but on the whole this is pretty cool. Especially if you have a lot of electronics crap lying around like I do.

I thought the knurling on the pieces was a great touch for power players. During a hot and heavy chess game, you don't want to lose your grip during a move. :)

Re:well..

[Crudely_Indecent]

I don't know many people with these kind of connectors 'laying around.'

With 6 wireless towers, I use many of these types of connectors frequently. At $3-$14 each, this could very well be a $200+ chess set.

I'll stick with my glass pieces and wooden board. Besides, it's not the type of pieces you play with, but how throughly you can crush your opponent.

Looks like something out of Star Wars

[OneNonly]

"These are not the Chess pieces you are looking for.. Move along.."

MOD PARENT TWO SQUARES RIGHT AND ONE FORWARD!

[Trikenstein]

Check in 3.

Re:MOD PARENT TWO SQUARES RIGHT AND ONE FORWARD!

[bladesjester]

That's it! I've had enough of this for one knight!

Re:MOD PARENT TWO SQUARES RIGHT AND ONE FORWARD!

[micromoog]

Your spelling needs a check, mate.

Re:MOD PARENT TWO SQUARES RIGHT AND ONE FORWARD!

[OneNonly]

Obviously a Rookie...

Re:MOD PARENT TWO SQUARES RIGHT AND ONE FORWARD!

[TheSpoom]

Hehe, this almost made me laugh out loud while giving phone tech support to a great grandmother. Alas, I have no mod points left for you.

I like the fourth picture

[mytec]

The kid looking at the camera is thinking, "Dad is the geek and he is making us do this!"

Re:I like the fourth picture

[iocat]

He didn't make that kid wear a cape. One of the funniest (in an endearing sense) things about kids is the way they will happily wear pieces of their Haloween costumes for months after Haloween.

Re:I like the fourth picture

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

One of the funniest (in an endearing sense) things about kids is the way they will happily wear pieces of their Haloween costumes for months after Haloween.

I can tell you're not a teenager's father yet. When you are, you realize your kids still take to wearing the same rags for months on end, only it's not funny anymore.

Finally!

[Neil Blender]

Some front page news we can all talk about.

Christmas Present!

[trs998]

early post?

would make a damn fine geek christmas present!
*looks through box of old bits*

Re:Christmas Present!

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

You must be kidding: offer that, erhm, thing to your wife for Christmas and you've got a recipe for divorce. It's just too ghetto to be appreciated by anybody but a cable worker with a big sense of humour, who also happens to like chess.

Re:Christmas Present!

[hlh_nospam]

Here's a idea for a chess set along a similar vein [iamanangelchaser.com]. Scroll down to the last entry on the page...

Missing a couple pieces

[fred_sanford]

Looks like he didn't make any extra queens.

Weird pieces

[Quill_28]

While cool to look at, I always hated playing chess with
non-normal pieces.

Your post: The Haiku

[carpe_noctem]

While cool to look at
I always hated chess with
non-normal pieces

Yes, I -am- bored at work waiting for this last 30min to be done with..

Re:Your post: The Haiku

[micromoog]

Yes, I'm bored at work Waiting for this last half-hour To be done with. Shit.

Re:Your post: The Haiku

[daeley]

Yes, I -am- bored at
Work waiting for this last thir-
ty minutes to...DAMNIT!

Re:Your post: The Haiku

[caveat]

Yes I am bored at
work waiting for this last thir-
ty minutes to end. ...is it cheating if I paraphrase?

Re:Your post: The Haiku

[caveat]

awww, wtf, it put all the other line breaks in!

Re:Weird pieces

[selderrr]

in that case, this set [lovechess.nl] will provide you with double distraction :-)

Re:Weird pieces

[dr_davel]

Parent is exactly right -- it turns out that serious chess players are never interested in goofy (i.e., non-Staunton) chess sets that other folks seem to think are nifty. An analog would be goofy fonts, any person who likes to read text in the Latin alphabet probably isn't seeking out works set in Old English Text MT or Magneto.

Which means that non-Staunton chess sets are designed by and for non-chess players.

Cape Boy

[barryblack]

*IF* I ever did let my son wear a cape (see article pictures), I certainly wouldn't plaster his picture up on the internet. How bad is that kid going to feel in 10 years when his friends google him and find that picture. Not only will be be labeled a chess geek, but he'll be cape boy forever. Sad.

Re:Cape Boy

[theanonymousbrit]

Capes are dangerous. Just ask Syndrome.

Re:Cape Boy

[Fizzl]

but he'll be cape boy forever

No, just the few years of immature pestering of fellow youngster.

Re:Cape Boy

[Just Some Guy]

I'm in my 30s and I still call my best friend "Asscrack". I'm sure that "Cape Boy" (and its many variants), on the other hand, will be respectfully discarded when he turns 18.

Yeah.

In reality, he'll be "Cape Boy" until his wife quits letting him hang around with that group of friends.

Re:Cape Boy

[Kenja]

"Not only will be be labeled a chess geek, but he'll be cape boy forever."

But if he hooks up with the Umbrela Man when he grows up Paul Simon will write a light opera about his killing spree.

Re:Cape Boy

[pipingguy]

Couldn't be much worse than this: http://www.pipingdesign.com/cj/halloween.jpg

Re:Cape Boy

[thelenm]

Well, it is good cape weather. Cool. Breezy.

Slow news day Taco?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

In other news: area man puts corks and beer bottle caps onto a chessboard, cleverly sorted by their sizes and colors to evocate actual chess piece, thereby creating an astonishingly surprising post-modern chess game!

It is rumored our clever friend is doing some rummage in the attic to find bits and piece to create more chess games. News at 11...

Thickwire ethernet

[uid100]

Finally, a good use for all thos 10 base-5 connectors I've saved!

Obligatory mangled movie quote

[quamaretto]

"I can't see it."

"Here, let me help you. Ow, my goddamn hand!"

Re:Obligatory mangled movie quote

[base_chakra]

Okay, I'll bite. From what film is this?

Screw the chess set...

[Anonymous Coward]

Where can I get one of those capes!?

Superhero Kid?

[cephyn]

Uh oh, watch out, next thing you know, marvel comics will sue this guy and his kid for impersonating copyrighted superheroes.

Other stuff on the site...

[daveschroeder]

Actually, some of the other stuff on his site [leapsecond.com] (Internet Archive mirror [archive.org], Google cache [google.com]) is really sweet. He's got all kinds of time and frequency equipment, an atomic nixie tube clock, and a bunch of other cool stuff, all with pictures.

Re:Other stuff on the site...

[nocomment]

I liked his atomic wristwatch.

http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/index. htm [leapsecond.com]

Re:Other stuff on the site...

[sremick]

Finally found the price. That's a $50K watch, dude.

Ouch.

Next time..

[oexeo]

I know this is gonna sound like I issues, but, next time (and it's just a thought) he could just use real chess pieces.

This is nothing...

[Octos]

Compared to my Go set made from RF connectors.

Dorkiest thing ever

[micromoog]

This is officially the dorkiest thing ever made. I expect this to stay on top until someone comes up with a way to make a ham radio boot FreeBSD.

Re:Dorkiest thing ever

[Boarder2]

I thought so too, until I looked at the rest of his site and saw this:
http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/atomic-bill/index. htm [leapsecond.com]

Re:Dorkiest thing ever

[thebra]

Mod parent up! How did that not get posted instead of the chess board, that is the dorkiest thing ever!

Re:Dorkiest thing ever

[Rorschach1]

Hey, if FreeBSD can be made to run on ARM7, I might be able to help you out there. Give me a couple of months.

Re:Dorkiest thing ever

[dougmc]

make a ham radio boot FreeBSD.

It's probably not as far-fetched as you may think. If any ham radio is ready to do so, it's probably this one [icom.co.jp]. In case it's not obvious, those gauges and displays and such are all one big LCD display.

Oh, and the list price? I've heard $11,000.

Finally

[JavaNPerl]

a chess set that the Franklin Mint doesn't yet produce! Cool novelty, but most serious players I know use a Staunton [geocities.com] style set.

Custom Chess Sets

[stoolpigeon]

I had a friend in the Navy who would make his own chess sets using lead figurines. He always won because I'd forget which pieces were which.

At least this set it doesn't seem that it would be too difficult to keep track of who was what.

I hated it when I'd move my 'orc w/wolves' piece and he'd say - 'You can't do that with a bishop.'-- 'A bishop?! I thought that was a knight!!' -- 'It doesn't matter you'll be in check mate in a minute anyway.'--'How?'-- 'You left your king wide open in that corner.'--'My king? That elf is my king?'-- and so on.

Re:Custom Chess Sets

[AmigaBen]

I love the sig, man :)

Mod me offtopic if you must. I've got a weird spot in my heart for Better Off Dead.

Re:Custom Chess Sets

[el-spectre]

A buddy started to make a Battletech board with similar figures. Problem is, he decided to paint the figures _correctly_, and after 2 pawns (Locusts, naturally) and 6 hours, he called it quits.

Plus. BT figures were like twice the price of D&D figures... must be inflation in 3050.

Re:Custom Chess Sets

[drinkypoo]

You can use any appropriate-scale figurines for D&D. FASA has copyrights on the likenesses of their mecha (except the ones they stole from anime series, most of which came from macross - they have a veritech-styled craft and IIRC all of the destroids (I know, this is robotech terminology) except the Mac II Monster. They're expensive because they can be, because they have a monopoly. Unless, of course, you're happy using similar figurines to represent your 'mechs.

Cool, but I prefer this one...

[slusich]

http://www.shotglasschess.com/ [shotglasschess.com]

Geekness Factor Exceeded. Must Destroy Earth

[Tablizer]

I have not seen such a geeky prank since the dude who made his own Tron costume [tronguy.net]. But, this is a close second. Play this board game at the mall and pretty women will be repelled for hundreds of meters. It would be interesting to compare this to the repel range of the Tron costume. We could then put the bar graphs up at the mall, and measure their repel range also.

Re:Geekness Factor Exceeded. Must Destroy Earth

[93,000]

Actually, we need to put this at one end of the mall, and the guy in the Tron costume at the other, and see if the women (those who don't escape) form a sort of frenzied herd in the middle.

Female Knights!!

[essaunders]

He's got an equal opportunity army: Gold (Black) has two female knights, silver (White) has one male, one female.

this guy is amazing

[MEGAMAID]

full of great [leapsecond.com] ideas

New Chess lingo

[suso]

BNC2 takes UHF3

not worth writing home about.

[Brigadier]

With all due respect save stories like this for the local hobby shop. No i'm not trolling it's just this is one of those, 'ok cool' lets move on stories.

Re:not worth writing home about.

[vsprintf]

With all due respect save stories like this for the local hobby shop. No i'm not trolling it's just this is one of those, 'ok cool' lets move on stories.

With all due respect, I found it more interesting than many of the "Delta-MRX team releases pre-Alpha of Bugslogger plugin for Lynx" stories that get posted. To each his own. I don't comment in discussions about articles that don't interest me -- I go find something that does.

One night on Slashdot

[Tackhead]

Slashdot, geeky internetting
And your server don't know what your server is getting
(The creme de la creme of the geek world
In a show with everything but Natalie Portman.)
Time flies, doesn't seem a minute
Since your hosting company had your web site in it?
All change, don't you know that when you
play at this level, there's no ordinary venue
It's on somebody's blog, then Fark... or... or this place!

One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
If you're unlucky it goes to goat-se.
(He can fit an angel - and the Christmas tree.)

One box's very like another,
When your server's fallen to pieces, brother.
(It's a drag, I'm a whore, it's really such a pity
To see a site 404, not lookin' at the piccies)
"Whaddya mean? You've seen one set of polished BNC connectors..."
(T-1 lines, smokin' with heat - heat!
Some are set up in the server room's bomb suite)
"Get farked, you're talkin' to a tourist,
whose every click's among the purest.
I get my hits above the bandwidth limit, sunshine..."

One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman walkin' next to me.)

Chessboard's gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of server room fitness
This grips me more than would a Slashvertisement or duplicate posting.
Thank God I'm only posting on here, trolling it.
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of posts I'm contemplating.
I'd let you mod, I would invite you,
But the links we use would not excite you.
So you'd better go back to your Fark, your Onion, your BBSpot, your autopr0n...

One night on Slashdot and the world's your oyster,
The blades are temples, but the bits ain't free,
You'll find a God in every cached site pointer,
A little chess, a little history.
(I can get the hot grits, where's my Natalie?)

One night on Slashdot makes your host site humble,
Not much between hot grits and ecstasy,
One night on Slashdot and your server crumbles,
Can't be too careful with your company.
(I can feel Ms. Portman trollin' next to me.)

Re:One night on Slashdot

[Smallpond]

awesome

Never be the first to believe, never be the last to deceive.

Re:One night on Slashdot

[dswensen]

Awesome work, sir, I salute you!

(For those of you who don't know, this is a take-off from the 1986 musical Chess [amazon.com]. And shame on whomever modded this as Troll.)

Re:One night on Slashdot

[MorboNixon]

Wow...

That's the creme de la creme of the Slash world
with a post with everything but Rob Malda.

Dual use is great for the environment.

[Sai Babu]

If you live in small quarters, NYC, Honolulu, Tokyo, Hong Kong.
AND
you like to mess around with RF stuff
AND you like to play chess
it's a great way to reduce the problem of TOO MUCH STUFF

An added bonus is the ubiquity of the pieces. Should one of the kids swallow an SMA connector, you can pull a spare out of your parts bin or pick on up in Akihabara for peanuts relative to what an equally cool 'real' chess piece might cost, if you could find a match.

A /. participant research project into other dual use scenarios might prove interesting and entertaining.

Damn, my company will host the world championships

[i_r_sensitive]

We must have enough BNC hardware left in the ceilings to make *all* the required pieces for many simultaneous matches...

Next thing you know, RISK

[Man in Spandex]

will be made out of flapjacks.

Even better, his clock collection..

[musselm]

http://www.leapsecond.com/ [leapsecond.com]

From the intro:
"Ten years ago I wanted to build a LED digital analog clock that would be accurate to better than one second per year -- so I would have the fun of adjusting it when a leap second occurred."

"Nixie" clocks are explained, along with a clock displayed using an oscilloscope.

Nice lab!

[Jaeger-]

Great pic. You win biggest time geek award. :)

http://www.leapsecond.com/images/LabJan2001r.jpg [leapsecond.com]

Blue Caped Avenger

[jinxidoru]

Anyone else notice that the kid in the blue cape doesn't seem to like the idea of his picture being taken (it's the picture where they're actually playing chess on the floor). I think it's the look of a child who is just starting to understand the concept of public education "coolness" and having your picture displayed on Slashdot in a blue cape while playing RF connector chess with your Dad is not very high on the list of "cool" right now. My heart goes out to you little buddy.

Re:Blue Caped Avenger

[mindbomb33]

A good dad would get him a blue-foil hat to wear on his head ;)

Nickel vs. Gold

[Vadim Makarov]

At the first glance I thought it was a "BNC vs. SMA" chess set, but upon a close examination of the pieces it turned out to be just a "nickel vs. gold" chess set. For an unexplicable reason, the set has become much less fun to me when I realized it.

Expensive chess set

[elgatozorbas]

Cool as they may look, I would never use these pieces to play chess (although I have them lying around). Can imagine the cost of this chess set, if bought new, is well over $100. Moreover, I am a bad chess player as it is. Playing with non-staunton pieces doesn't help (having to think 'what did the N-connector represent' all the time).

Z

Blast from the past...

[argent]

I remember seeing pictures of this chess set doing the rounds years ago. Nice to get an update.

Don't we have anything else to do?

[uberjoe]

As I post this there are 180 comments attached to this story.

It's a CHESSBOARD!

Yeah It's pretty cool. Would I want one, sure. But is this news worthy of 180 (181 now that I've joined the fray) nerds chattering about it?

Those things are expensive

[StikyPad]

I'll stick to legos.

I'm sure he didn't steal those from work either. *cough*

Re:lame

[peculiarmethod]

so if they matched, it would be??

Re:Nice work, but the guy seems way too gleeful...

[93,000]

Cape? That, my friend, is the Satin Indigo Cloak of Ancient Wisdom, with which he will finally vanquish the parental oppressor! (in case you are wondering, it also grants +10 knight dexterity and -5 hit points from bishops)

Re:Nice work, but the guy seems way too gleeful...

[B.D.Mills]

I guess that explains why "Dad lost the first game".

Re:Degree of pleasure

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

I on the other hand, could unpossibly care less.

I would unhit the submit button so fast if I were you...

Re:Huh?

[N0TVQ]

Definitely not a true /.er...

Re:Huh?

[dreamchaser]

You're right, I've been here for many years but I'm not a mindless follower like most here are.

Go ahead...I have far more karma to burn than you can take away from me :)

Re:Cost?

[El]

Not if you steal them from work instead of paying for them yourself... of course, if I was wasting lab resources like this, I wouldn't be bragging about it on the web!