Joe Harley's Homepage!

2024-01-10

Barbie was naff. Oppenheimer was great. Dial of Destiny was underrated and THE MEG 2 WAS THE BEST FILM OF 2023 FFS!!!

2023-03-26

Ok, so it's been a month! And I've finally done some stupid s**t worth blogging about: I bought a cheesy '90s computer chessboard. Yes, you heard me correctly - one of those old school '90s electronic chess games.

Basically, I got hooked a little while ago watching ASMR Chess on YouTube and also discovered that I enjoyed playing Chess.com during lockdown AND discovered that Chess is now hip and cool again for some bizarre reason, so I decided to get back into the game.

A few problems came up with this late-night, bound-to-become-an-awful-financial-decision line of thinkng: 1. I really don't like playing without physical chessboard, 2. I have very few people to play in-person Chess with, and 3. I don't actually own a proper full-size chessboard.

If you combine these three points with the fact I really enjoyed watching Mr. A-CHESS-MR play against a late '90s Kasparov Alchemist, you have the perfect cocktail for mildly interesting new blog content and a stupid Ebay purchase.

So I swiftly sauntered to Ebay UK (insert 1966 Batman transition here) to buy myself a second-hand Kasparov Alchemist. These boards were made throughout the late '80s and into the '90s by Saitek during the big electronic LCD game boom and ended up being endorsed by the legendary grandmaster for some (probably business) reason.

I very quickly realised that a boxed, complete Alchemist set goes for about sixty to seventy-five quid, way more money than I was willing to spend. I reckon this is probably because of it being the top-of-the-range model back in the day and it's newfound YouTube popularity.

In the end, I came to the conclusion that if you want an affordable, decent quality retro Saitek board your best bet is a Kasparov Atlas! So I bought one, boxed and complete but used for about twenty-three quid including delivery.

So there you have it! The first part of what *should* be an ongoing saga about a casual afternoon chess player constantly battling it out with a cheap '90s computer chess set.

Currently, the Atlas is winging it's way to me via Royal Mail 2nd Class Delivery (creme de la creme, I know) and should arrive in a few days! Well... unless Royal Mail decides to take further industrial action, in which case, it might take much longer! But I guess we'll see what happens.

Cheers!

-- Joe

2023-02-26

Hello! Welcome to my first journal entry! There will be more here soon I promise, but this is just a first post to get me started!