Today was setup day for the Championships. at the time of writing we have 154 in the open section and another 60 odd in the juniors. What is really pleasing is the numbers from other shores. If you are reading this, welcome to Scotland!
9am, I arrive at the venue and we begin the task of setting up for 160 determined chess players. It isn't as simple as 80 boards and sets. God I wish it was. W e have 8 wireless and 35 wired DGT boards available to us and getting all that working is a mammoth task. To give an idea (and maybe dispel a few myths that it is easy to do this!) We have 5 computers driving the boards with a desktop driving the wireless displays. It feels like there is about 2 miles of cable and 38 connectors each having to be tested lest it brings down that particular string of boards.
Here is what the playing venue looks like at the start of the day
Nice and easy :D
When I arrived, I did a scan of the wireless frequencies to work out what channel to put the wireless boards on. Here is what I am faced with!
The channels are Zigbee channels which use the same 2.4GHz as wireless. Someone want to tell me where in the name of Iris I am supposed to put the boards?? I did a waterfall scan for an hour and worked out 15 was the least congested and improvised an aerial!
We have 5 arbiters this year. 2 from Scotland, 1 who is joint English / Scottish, 1 from Australia and 1 from India. Jamie (from Australia) is complaining it is too cold, and there is Alex and I sweating in the heat!!!
We needed to be clear by 5, here is how it looks at the moment
There is a mass of cables I need to tieup on Monday before play starts. Last thing we need is people tripping and damaging the boards, I mean hurting themselves. Will be in at 7am.
As always will be doing a daily blog with my usual twisted sense of humour so tune in.
Hope you all enjoy the coverage and will "speak" to you during the week :D
