Mysterious Rook Moves

Welcome. Here’s a little bit about me and how I intend to use this site. For a living, I spend my days doing quant finance and general programming for a small Boston financial firm, but that’s what I do, not who I am. This blog/website will only rarely touch on issues of finance or economics (though I reserve the right to go there if I want to). Much more frequently I’ll be writing about photography, chess and books (both good and bad).

I’ve never attempted to write anything about a book I read outside of class assignments, and whatever I end up posting here won’t really be reviews so much as my thoughts on books I recommend, found interesting, or suggest that you not waste your time on. We’ll see how well that goes, as I’m not that experienced writing about writing and don’t read all that fast.

My exploration of photography began when I bought a Nikon D40 SLR before heading off to France in the summer of 2007. I’ve learned a lot, but still have a lot more to learn. I guess the idea that I’ll ever be done learning about photography (or any of the other things I do has hobbies) is ridiculous. I’m definitely still finding my footing as a photographer though…I enjoy it a lot, and it appeals to the side of me that wants to create something, which is something I haven’t done a whole lot of. I’m still figuring out what exactly it is I want to photograph, but so far it’s images of people that capture my imagination the most. I’ve been doing a lot of band photography at small clubs here in the Boston area and I’m looking to get into portraiture as well. I’ll be using this space to comment on my progress as a photographer and call attention to the works of other photographers that I particularly like or want to emulate.

I’ve been playing chess semi seriously since 2005. I’m ever so slowly getting better, but no matter how good I get, there will be plenty of people better than I am. As of fall 2009, my USCF rating is up to 1500, which is verging on respectable. As others who have taken the game up for real know: chess is a harsh mistress. The chess blogging that I do is mostly an exercise for myself. It motivates me to write out my thoughts about games and positions, which is an important part of the improvement process. I’m also going to write up some comments on various chess books, websites and software tools that I’ve found good or bad, which may actually be of use to some people out there.