text:
UN officials urge support for integrated strategy to tackle crisis in Africa's Sahel region
"The warning lights for the Sahel region continue to flash," Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Council, as it met to discuss the situation in a region that stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea, and includes Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and parts of Sudan, Cameroon and Nigeria.
In addition to political instability in Mali, the region – particularly in its west – suffers from extreme poverty, with human development levels among the lowest in the world, porous borders that present significant security challenges, as well as human rights problems.
"The governments and people of the Sahel region need our full support," Mr. Ban said. "The United Nations has mobilized over $1 billion to support the countries of the region respond to the immediate needs of affected populations.
"The recent rainfall promises a better harvest season, which should help ease food insecurity. However, much more needs to be done," he added. "We must strengthen resilience across the region."
In September, the Secretary-General appointed former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi as his Special Envoy for the Sahel, and tasked him with shaping and mobilizing an effective UN and international response to the crisis in the region. Among the envoy's priorities is finalizing and implementing the UN Integrated Regional Strategy for the Sahel.
"I intend to exert all possible efforts to mobilize what is needed," Mr. Prodi told Council members, adding that he plans to travel to the region for the third time next week. Together with the Secretary-General's Special Representative for West Africa, Said Djinnit, he will meet key actors to discuss security, political, humanitarian and development issues facing the governments in the region.
He noted that resources are key to tackle all the challenges facing the Sahel. In this regard, a meeting will be organized soon to mobilize the necessary funds for urgent humanitarian action. A multi-donor trust fund for the Sahel is also being considered.
Both Mr. Ban and Mr. Prodi acknowledged the need to address the crisis in Mali – which has been dealing with a range of security, political and humanitarian problems since early this year – as part of international efforts for the Sahel.
Fighting between Government forces and Tuareg rebels broke out in the country's north in January. Since then, radical Islamists have seized control of the north, where they have imposed an extremist version of Muslim Sharia law, as well as restrictions that target women in particular.
The renewed clashes in the north, as well as the proliferation of armed groups in the region, drought and political instability in the wake of a military coup d'état in March have uprooted hundreds of thousands of civilians this year.
UN military and police planners have worked closely with the regional grouping known as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union, in consultation with Malian authorities, in developing a framework for possible military intervention in the north.
At the same time, the UN has stated that a military force may be required as a last resort to deal with terrorist and criminal elements in northern Mali, but the priority must be on supporting the national authorities to restore constitutional order and reach a political settlement to the crisis.
"I would like to echo the views of the Secretary-General that any military effort in Mali must be undertaken after careful analysis and thorough preparation and that these efforts should be part of an agreed political process that tackles the roots of the conflict," stressed Mr. Prodi.
The number of Malian refugees in neighbouring countries is now estimated at more than 140,000, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, who said his agency is facing "significant" challenges in assisting this vulnerable group. Most of the refugees are hosted in remote, arid areas, and it takes several days of driving on poor roads to provide them with food, water and medical supplies.
"The refugee-hosting States need and deserve much stronger international solidarity to help them manage the additional strain created by the refugee influx," Mr. Guterres told the Council meeting.
Going forward, he said that Member States must give full consideration to the humanitarian dimensions of the crisis as they consider the appropriate international response.
He also urged all actors in the conflict, including a potential international force, to protect humanitarian space and ensure agencies have unhindered access to affected populations. In addition, planning for the political transition and post-conflict recovery must take into account those who have been forced to flee.
During today's meeting, the Council issued a presidential statement in which it, among other things, voiced serious concern over "the insecurity and the significant ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Sahel region," which is further complicated by the presence of armed groups as well as the continued proliferation of weapons from within and outside the region.
"The Security Council also recognizes the importance of a comprehensive approach encompassing security, development and humanitarian issues to address the immediate and long-term needs of the Sahel region," the statement added.


text:
Vaughan Williams wrote the Tallis Fantasia in 1910 for the Three Choirs Festival. He revised the work twice - in 1913 and in 1919. Many consider the work his first indisputable masterpiece, although I can find even earlier ones. Certainly, it is one of the most popular pieces in his catalogue.
Vaughan Williams had been thoroughly trained as a composer under Parry and Stanford (he also read history at Cambridge). His name, especially as a song writer, had begun to become known when he was asked to assume the musical editorship of The English Hymnal (he had previously edited the Welcome Odes for the Purcell Society). Under his editorship, the hymnal became the single most influential musical force not only in the English church, but in several American ones. Later hymnals routinely plunder the tunes found, arranged, composed, and commissioned by Vaughan Williams. Interestingly, he hesitated before accepting the position, since he knew that he would have no time for his own composition. It turned out, however, that years' immersion in some of the greatest tunes in the world had salutary effects on the composer. One of them was his acquaintance with the 'Third Psalter Tune', associated with Addison's hymn "When, rising from the bed of death" (No. 92 in the English Hymnal). This became the basis of the Fantasia.
In 1908, although Vaughan Williams had some important works to his credit, he took three months to study with Ravel (a younger man, by the way). This led, not surprisingly, to a new interest in sonority. Evidently, Ravel also took a few ideas from Vaughan Williams. Pre-Ravel Vaughan Williams orchestrates like Parry, who orchestrated like Brahms. He also studied Elgar's Dream of Gerontius intently, even though he later reacted against that piece in his own oratorios. After Ravel, we get an interest in the juxtaposition of distinct colors, as opposed to the "kaleidoscope effect" in Elgar, a line that constantly shifts colors, or the "black-and-white" high relief of Brahms, used mainly to clarify inner-voice counterpoint.
Given the new interest in color, Vaughan Williams seems almost perverse in writing a piece for string choir, usually thought of as homogenous. He also eschews the flashier string effects of col legno, glissando, martellato, and so on. He gets most of his contrast by dividing the strings into three groups of unequal strength:
1. A general choir - designated as orchestra I
2. A smaller group of 9 players, consisting of 2 first violins, 2 second violins, 2 violas, 2 celli, 1 bass - orchestra II
3. A string quartet
He may have gotten the idea from Elgar's masterful Introduction and Allegro for string orchestra and string quartet (1905), a work Vaughan Williams certainly knew. However, the two works sound nothing alike, and they take from different sets of procedures. Elgar embraces the language of the late nineteenth century - deriving from Wagnerian and Brahmsian chromaticism. Vaughan Williams finds in the old church modes (also found in folk and Elizabethan music) an escape from what he considered a harmonic cul-de-sac. Elgar uses the forms of the Classical and Romantic Central European tradition: sonata-allegro, overture with two episodes, and fugue. Vaughan Williams bases his piece on the Elizabethan fantasy - an instrumental form which develops, primarily contrapuntally, several related themes in independent sections.
Despite its instrumental incarnation, the fantasy derives from the sectional and contrapuntal nature of madrigal. Basically, what we will hear are the announcement of themes and then their elaboration in more or less independent sections. The kicker and the stroke of genius lies in the difference between the sound of Elgar's and Vaughan Williams' string orchestra. It comes down to Vaughan Williams' second group, which generally provides a dying echo to the first group or acts as the "halo" of the sound. The richness and intense sweetness of the strings carries over into other works of this time - the Phantasy Quintet, the Five Mystical Songs, and the Symphony No. 2 "London." As Vaughan Williams' career proceeded, the string sound became leaner, more athletic, mainly because the music had changed. I wouldn't wish his compositional journey to have been any different, but I must admit an especial fondness for this sound - a fondness mixed with the regret that he had to move on.
Many people regard the work as grave or emotionally cool, and I must confess I find myself in the opposite camp. The score is full of directions like animato, animando, cantabile, espressivo, and molto espressivo. In fact, I'm surprised there's no appassionato. It may begin small and fall back, but only to provide a place where it can turn up the intensity a notch or two. To me, it shares the structure of a great sermon, starting with daily life and leading you to heaven by degrees.
The following guide uses timings (usually noted in parentheses) from the London Philharmonic Orchestra performance conducted by Sir Adrian Boult (EMI CDC747213 2). I do prefer Barbirolli's performance, but people in the U.S. may have trouble obtaining that particular CD. I emphasize that this is a listener's guide, meant to be followed as one listens to the piece. Unless you already know the work fairly well, the description alone makes little sense.
Someone jokingly remarked to the composer, "You know, VW, all your best-sellers are not your own," referring to works like the English Folk-Song Suite, the Fantasia on Greensleeves, the Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus, and this one. But the work is Vaughan Williams' as much as the Cantata No. 140, based on a pre-existing chorale tune, is Bach's. In fact, the tune is interesting mainly in the way Vaughan Williams elaborates on it. Also, despite the title "Fantasia," Vaughan Williams has composed a very tight work, with almost no wasted notes.
The Fantasia consists of the following large sections:
1. An introduction, where Vaughan Williams hints at 3 major themes (0:00)
2. Full statement of all themes (1:15), repeated at 2:31
3. First Episode (3:57)
4. Second episode (6:10)
5. Third episode (8:46) – the major climax of the work occurs here
6. Transition - or fourth episode – (12:15), leading to
7. Restatement of all themes (13:05)
8. Coda (14:50 to the end)
In other words, the overall form corresponds roughly to the Elizabethan fantasia for viols, the music the composer seeks to evoke. But the composer doesn't indulge in antiquarianism. He writes a thoroughly modern work. You wouldn't find, for example, section 6 or the elaborate transitions throughout the work (not to mention the extreme tempo and dynamic changes) in the older music. The harmony, though modal, is really a Vaughan Williams invention (with a little help from Debussy). Long before Stravinsky's neoclassic essays, Vaughan Williams reaches out over the centuries to shake hands with the Tudor composer Tallis. Unlike Stravinsky, however, who creates artistic tension between two eras by keeping past procedures and present distinct, Vaughan Williams, like many good Romantics, essentially incorporates the past to reinvigorate the present.
The Fantasia uses two main themes:
The Tallis hymn: A "swaying" subject (Michael Kennedy's phrase), first heard at 0:37. This generates many of the subsidiary themes in the work.
The swaying subject initially doesn't sound all that promising. Essentially, it centers around one note. But Vaughan Williams finds remarkable uses for it. The subject functions in several ways:
1. As a response to the "call" of another theme
2. As a transition from one theme to another, or as an approach to or departure from a climax
3. As a theme in its own right
Vaughan Williams also breaks up the hymn into its constituent phrases, so that we really have a set of subthemes:
A1. A rising theme beginning with an identifying minor-third interval, first heard plucked by the lower strings at the beginning of the work (0:27)
A2. An answering phrase in the same rhythm as A1, first heard at 0:48, again plucked in the lower strings
A3. A dotted rhythm in triple time, on a rising, yearning phrase in Phrygian mode (on the piano, play e-f-g-a-g-f-e), heard in its full form at 1:49. This phrase apparently meant a great deal to Vaughan Williams. It stays with him throughout his career and culminates in his opera The Pilgrim's Progress, in the entrance into the Celestial City, where it is set to glorious alleluias.
A4. Yet another dotted rhythm in triple time (2:07), which moves like a galliard and usually is reserved for climaxes and backing off to quieter levels. It generally moves down in pitch.
We'll see how this plays out.
The Fantasia begins with a series of descending 'magic chords' (the melodic outline resembles that of Vaughan Williams' song, "Bright is the ring of words," from Songs of Travel) (0:00). At the time, Vaughan Williams was interested in unusual chord changes. You find the same thing introducing the slow movements to the Symphony No. 1 ("Sea") and Symphony No.2 ("A London Symphony"). In the low strings, we hear an adumbration of A1 plucked out softly (0:27). This is answered by the sway (0:37) under a held note from the high strings. The low strings now pluck out A2 (0:48). The sway rises to a shortened A3 (1:05), which abruptly cuts both itself and the introductory section off.
(1:15) The Tallis themes sound in their full forms: A1, sway, A2, sway, A3, and A4. All strings play in the first statement, with the second violins, violas, and first celli handling the melody in unison, for an incredibly rich string sound. Rising arpeggios from low to high in the upper strings (2:26) lead to a restatement of the theme (2:31) in the first violins and first violas (you shouldn't forget the theme). There's much octave double-stopping (each string player sounds two notes at once), a higher dynamic, and - guess what? – an appassionato marking after all! This reaches a climax, which dies in more magic chords, caught from the tail of A4.
A2 and A3 explored. A declamatory, abrupt statement of A2 (3:57) alternates with the sway (4:09). At 4:56, A3 alternates with the sway. We then return to the introductory "magic chords" (5:07) in the smaller orchestra II, alternating with the sway in orchestra I. The sway reaches a small peak in both choirs, then dims as it alternates between orchestra I and orchestra II.
A3 explored. The solo viola leads off with a variant on A3 (6:10). This merges with the sway and an abrupt statement of A3, which the string quartet takes up (6:55). The sway begins again in the small choir and larger one joins in with another declaiming of A3. The string quartet continues its polyphonic meditation on the subtheme (8:11), and the full orchestra again declaims A3 (8:31) before it falls and dissolves into the sway of the string quartet (8:46).
Explores the swaying subject. The small choir extends the quartet's sway and takes off down new melodic bypaths, with annotations provided by the quartet (8:55). At 9:15, large and small orchestras embark on "the chant of pleasant exploration," to borrow Whitman, and begin to build (9:57) to a huge climax, culminating in A3 (11:12). This dies down to an "afterglow" in the small choir (12:00).
For me, this is the "deep heart's core" of the entire piece - a miracle of the imagination. The sway tries to start again, but doesn't seem to be able to get beyond two notes (12:15). It begins with a huge push and dissolves into fragments of "magic chords." This leads to
(13:05) The lower strings begin to pluck out Tallis's hymn once more (A1). The orchestra provides a featherbed of sound, and the solo violin and viola duet on A2, A3, and more sway. Everybody joins in on A4 (14:08), which loses heat and leads to more "magic chords" at 14:34.
At 14:50, the strings carry the sway to the end, with a short benediction.
I've known this work for almost forty years. I treasure it. I'm quite aware that understanding the skeleton says very little about the miracle of its life. If I knew how that were done, I wouldn't be writing prose.
Copyright 1995-2000, Steve Schwartz

subset: commoncrawl


text:
A pirate ship owned by the notorious Blackbeard is being investigated by archaeologists, who have just retrieved one of its anchors.
The Queen Anne's Revenge, was grounded in 1718 while trying to enter Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina. Blackbeard had just come from blockading Charleston until he received a ransom. Currently the wreck lies in only 20 feet of water, as easily accessible to archaeologists as Captain Kidd's pirate ship, which will soon become an underwater museum.
The anchor, which is 11 feet long and weighs 2,200 lbs, is only one of thousands of artifacts recovered from the ship in recent years.
While Blackbeard transferred to another of his ships and continued pirating, he didn't survive for long. He was hunted down and killed in a fierce fight in late 1718, shown here in a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Blackbeard was decapitated and his head hung from the bowsprit.
Blackbeard was one of the kinder pirates. There's no record that he hurt his captives or his crew. He could be violent when opposed, though, and in reality no pirate fit the heroic adventurer stereotype of Hollywood and Johnny Depp. That's just a romanticism. One wonders what tales people will spin about the Somali pirates 300 years from now.
For more information about this amazing dig, check out The Queen Anne's Revenge Shipwreck Project's website.


text:
Email: arthur DOT huillet AT free DOT fr
Location: Grenoble, France (CET)
Inactive nouveau developer
Hardware : NV04, NV05, NV11, NV15, NV15GL, NV18 - probably dead, not sure -, NV25, NV28, NV30GL, NV92
2007 summer project, as part of X.org's Vacation of Code : improve XVideo support in nouveau.
Topics tackled : Xv (see below), XvMC (not written by me, not quite interested in the topic either), sending commands to the card (objects, channels, subchannels), context switching (I rewrote the page ContextSwitching), DMA, DRM pre-TTM memory management, EXA, XRENDER, NV04 3D engine, NV10 3D engine, register combiners.
This page tries to explain a little bit the things that I learnt, in order for everyone to be able to follow my work, and hopefully to be a useful resource.
I have detailed my work in chronological order, starting from "Activity report" below.
The XVideo extension (a.k.a. Xv) provides a means for media players to output video directly onto the screen. Xv itself is described at several different places, no details about that here, just notes and comments about the topics I had trouble finding information about.
We are only interested in XvPutImage (function to put a frame of video on the screen). Video IN (XvPut / GetVideo) is not on my todo list.
A definite reference : http://people.freedesktop.org/~mhopf/fosdem_2007_xvideo_opengl.pdf
Blitter, overlay, texture ...
Three ways to put a video frame on the screen
Overlay : fill in the screen portion with a colorkey (usually blue), copy the frame in an offscreen portion of video RAM. The CRTC will jump to this zone upon encountering the colorkey. Supported : NV04 (specific overlay) and NV10 - NV40 (only the first NV40s, others have to use blitter/texture).
Blitter : copy the frame in an offscreen portion of the video RAM. Then the card will blit the data to the framebuffer (VRAM->VRAM, that's fast). Supported since NV04.
Texture : draw a textured quad. Possible to use shaders for format transformation. Supported : NV17+
The nv driver, as a 2D only driver, implements blitter and overlay, with YUY2 pixel format only. Nouveau used the nv code : slow (CPU data copies) feature limited Xv.
YUV formats
Videos are usually not in RGB, instead they are [shot and] encoded in YUV, where Y stands for luminance and UV for chrominance = color. Resolution of the eye is smaller for chroma, so less chroma samples are taken : e.g. YUYV. Those formats need to be converted to RGB colorspace before being displayed. This involves re-finding all YUV samples for a given pixel, and multiplying by some matrix (RGB -> YUV is linear). The colorspace conversion is done by the card, which receives either RGB, either YUY2 format (http://www.fourcc.org/). Update: in fact the overlay is able to receive YV12 format, which is the most common on this planet. See below in the chronogical progress reports.
Video data transfer
As mentionned above, the card accepts RGB or YUY2 format, this means that any other pixel format such as YV12 (mpeg) has to be converted. This is currently done in software. Nvidia cards support YV12 natively, and old Xv code didn't have that. The reverse engineering of YV12 overlay was done, documentation is further down.
The data is transmitted by the CPU (iterate over dst=src). While this would be fine for small chunks of data, this is unacceptable for things as large as video frames that are transmitted around 24 times a second. To lower CPU usage and increase performance, DMA transfers have to be used. See below for more details.
Context Switching
I tried to document it as much as possible : ContextSwitching. This is not related to Xv in any way but is an important topic to understand.
Activity report
My plans are the following : at first I want to implement, by copypasting nv_exa code, AGP DMA. The reason behind that is that it can be done easily, directly from XVideo code, while helping me fully understand and structure the code correctly.
The very first thing is to clean up the current code : right now, the NvCopy* functions do two things at once - convert YUYV to YUV, and copy YUV data to the card. The conversion part will be kept in software, because, for now, I don't know if the card can do it, and it's probably easier to keep software conversion for a while. So what I'm going to do first is to make the driver convert to YUV format in AGP memory, and then DMA it to the card.
Current behavior : YUYV data in system memory - - - - -> YUV data in VRAM, copy being done by the CPU
Target behavior : YUYV data in system memory -- - - - -> YUV data in system memory (AGP memory actually), copy done by CPU, - - - - - --> YUV data in VRAM, copy by AGP DMA
At that point I expect to have working DMA transfers for at least AGP cards. This won't last though: the second step will be to make use of DMA functionnality provided by the DRM - I will have to change a few things because currently the DRM doesn't support page table DMA.
In the first step I won't have to wonder (much) how DMA works with Nvidia cards : I expect that copypasting EXA's UTS code will be enough. I'll have to manually create DMA objects and all when I'm at the second stage working on page tables.
I do know you won't like this idea of implementing AGP DMA first, but I really need it for my understanding of things, besides, it's better than nothing and the very first thing to do (restructurate the code to separate conversion and copy to VRAM) is to be done anyway.
This step is done. Just to comment : actually the conversion is to YUY2, not YUV that seems to be unsupported.
Now that I have AGP DMA working, I will be modifying the DRM to support PCI DMA. This will be done by creating a software PCIGART.
I am going to allocate some RAM space in the DRM (say 4MB), and get the DDX to allocate its GARTScratch zone in here. I will create one PCI DMA object that contains all the pages from the mentionned RAM space. ---
Answered questions
"TT", when referring to AGP memory, means "Translation Table" (TTM terminology).
I will create pci_heap, separate from agp_heap, so that AGP users can access this PCI zone as well, e.g. when doing 3D.
Objects are specific to the fifo they were created on, so practically the DRM creates one AGP and one FB DMA object per FIFO. However, before NV50, objects created on different FIFOs are not technically separated - an AGP object is 16 bytes large so we can create one per FIFO, but PCI objects, due to the page list, will be much larger, and for < NV50, I will create only one and add only the RAMHT entries, in order to not eat up all RAMIN space, especially since older PCI cards may be quite limited RAMIN-wise.
The PCI buffer would be created using the existing DRM semantics (create pci_heap, use drm_sg_alloc, etc.)
There is no GART in PCIE as there was in AGP, because there usually is an IOMMU (the same thing, but available to the whole bus). Early Intel implementations did not have such IOMMUs. (http://lwn.net/Articles/91870/) For now, we will not use the IOMMU of PCIE. Talked with marcheu about it, the conclusion is that using a GART or doing sgDMA probably doesn't differ much for Nvidia cards, but this is something that should be measured. I will do this once I have sgDMA working.
The memory allocation logic in the DRM uses an offset inside a given block to address a portion of memory. The offset in the case of PCI DMA is the kernel virtual address of the block start, minus the kernel virtual address of the sg zone start.
Now we have PCI DMA integrated upstream. At the time of this writing, PCI DMA object creation works only on x86 and x86-64, and someone seems to be working on it for PPC64. PCI DMA reportedly sped up EXA on PCI-Express machines, according to some gtkperf results. My own tests showed that AGP DMA was slower than PCI DMA for gtkperf, though we were not able to figure out why. This is an important point, that I consider low priority for the time being, because I want to finish my Xv stuff.
Current status is that my work improved things for PCI-Express users, except for people with NV50s because those don't deal with DMA objects the same way as other Nvidia cards.
With help from a lot of people on #nouveau, and oprofile, we did some profiling of Xvideo to find out why it was so slow. We made some interesting discoveries. The test results (you're only interested in system.symbols in each directory) are here : http://people.freedesktop.org/~ahuillet/xvtest/ The xvtest program is Keithp's xvtest modified to display a given number of frames (5000 in the 256x256 test, 10000 in the 800x600 test) as fast as possible, either in YUY2 either in YV12.
p0g profiled the blob on xvtest program, both for YUY2 and YV12. The results are that the blob is a little faster than nouveau Xv for YUY2 (10% of difference), and 25% faster on YV12 data than on YUY2, which exactly corresponds to the difference in size of pixel data (16bpp against 12bpp), which makes us think that the blob does no software conversion. This will have to be checked.
The conclusions are the following:
- The DMA transfers are slowed down by the busywait for the DMA notifier. This slowdown is 10% for AGP, and more than 50% for PCI. Removing the wait brought AGP and PCI DMA to the same performance level, with text corruption obviously.
- Blitter is slowed down by the NVSync call, that could probably be removed.
- We will need to valgrind-mmt the blob to find out whether it's doing YV12 -> YUY2 conversion, and find out how to avoid it, if relevant
We have DMA working for everything, and did some profiling. The results were not very good, and more improvements must be made to unleash the full potential of DMA. (now this sentence rocks !)
Implementing fencing based on interrupts would speed up 2D a lot, but I will not be doing that because things as unclear now as to whether we will be using TTM or not. This means status quo on fencing for some time. Instead, I have started work on host-side double buffered Xv (2 host buffers per Xv port), which will eat more memory but can be a lot faster, because we are not going to wait too long. It turned out to significantly improve performance.
2007-07-29: I have fixed a bug reported by pq, that my Xv code broke display of tvtime (a TV receiver software). This was due to me blatantly ignoring a few things regarding how X expects Xv implementations to behave. It turned out that there are use cases (tvtime with overscan enabled), in which the data transmitted to DDX's PutImage implementation is not to be displayed entirely (e.g., you only have to display a part of it). In this case, the way I was doing DMA transfers broke everything, because I was copying all the data and pointing the card at the wrong place.
In fact, the memory layout of the data transfer as it was done before (read: in nv) and now (read: in my code) are probably not so easy to understand, at least for beginners. I do not know how you do, but I usually have a pen and a lot of paper around my computer, and I use it to clarify my thinking. Also, I talk to myself, a lot, which surprises many people. I ended up with a schema that is not too bad to explain the memory layout of the different things, I will therefore re-do a more readable (and english) version, and upload it right here, it will spare me lots of lines of text. Update: the document can be found here. It's not too readable but it explains how things work. Note: the overlay/blitter are pointed at the place where there would be data if we copied everything we are handed by the X server, that is, they are pointed right at potentially (though usually not) untouched VRAM - garbage. The hardware probably expects it this way, so I imitated the behavior.
Long time since the last progress report. I have worked mostly on reverse engineering the YV12 overlay, and implemented it in our Xv. I will not write about it here because I did it extensively on IRC and in the actual Xv code, so refer to one of those, or contact me directly if you have questions.
Let me do a quick bit of documentation of the YV12 overlay, for later reference: the card defines registers at PVIDEO + 0x800, 0x808 and 0x820, that follow the semantics of those at PVIDEO + 0x900 (BASE, LIMIT, and OFFSET_BUFF), but treat of the color plane. The FORMAT registers uses bit (1 << 0) to denote usage of a separate colorplane. So, you'd set (1 << 0) in the format register, write the correct things in 0x8xx registers, and the overlay will read your planar data. The planar data actually is NV12 or NV21, that is, one luma plane (with a pitch aligned over 64 bytes boundaries), followed by one chroma plane of alternating V and U (VUVUVU) (pitch aligned over 64 bytes boundaries as well).
I've run into a bandwidth problem with the overlay when playing Elephant's Dream 1024p. I can work around it by reducing the size of the source image to only what's necessary = what will go on screen. I implemented that and this indeed got rid of the bandwidth problem. Xv is pretty much done now, and ready for wide testing on NV10 - NV40 (included) chips. NV04 will be done later when I get one of those cards, and NV50 will have to wait a little more because of the necessity to implement a texture adapter, my next target being NV10-NV20 EXA.
EXA Composite profiling - gkrellm, firefox, xchat, fluxbox menus, rxvt Results http://people.freedesktop.org/~ahuillet/EXA_profile.txt http://people.freedesktop.org/~ahuillet/EXA_profile2.txt Here we see what operations we need to support in Composite.
I discussed the technical issues with marcheu, relevant to my forthcoming EXA implementation. We took some decisions regarding card classes.
Things have changed due to some problems I experienced, the lines below are no longer relevant. NV04 and NV10 share a common NV04_DX6_MULTITEXTURED_TRIANGLE (0x55/0x95) implementation. This is motivated by the possibility of sharing the exact same code for those cards, thereby providing fast EXA on NV04 and NV10 in one shot, the easiness of use of NV04_TRI (which is an important factor for me ATM).
Note that to date, the chosen approach has a little problem: while we know NV04_TRI can work on NV10 cards, I did not manage to successfully run nv04_demo on my NV18 (the demo works but no triangles are drawn).
I received hardware donations from two people - I now have NV04/NV05 hardware as well as NV1x class cards for later testing. Due to NV04_TRI not working on NV10 yet for unknown reasons, I'll be starting my work on NV04. Unfortunately, X is unable to start with this card - before anything gets on screen, X exits, apparently because of some FIFO problem (it looks like we "loop" and joyfully overwrite the previous commands which have not made it to the card yet - unconfirmed). Reason is unknown, but getting NV04 to work is critical before I can do much EXA stuff. Marcheu and I are to investigate and fix this.
We still have some bandwidth problems with NV12 overlay, reported on a NV30 card. The bug exists in "nv" as well. Reported and unfixed (yet) in "nv".
Long time no report, because school began again. Two topics today : NV04 sw methods and NV10 EXA.
NV04 seems to lack the SET_CONTEXT* hw methods, as nvsdk suggests they are implemented in software. The card issues a PGRAPH NOTIFY interrupt, with ILLEGAL_METHOD. Offsets < 0x200 are software methods. I generated mmio dumps of my NV04 starting with the blob in order to see what those methods did, and tried to make sense out of it. It took me about one week of work before matc made me realise that I had been mistaken in my interpretation of the dump, and provided what seems to be a sensible explanation of what I had to do. The code needs to be ported to this "new" interpretation, and tested.
I wasted a lot of time due to something apparently related to my test system, which would boot the card only 50% of times - the card hung on the SKIPS at the very beginning of the FIFO. Changing the system (motherboard, CPU and RAM) to the one I found in my building's dumpster seemed to "fix" the problem. (note: it happened to me both with NV04 and NV11)
NV04 EXA turned out to be difficult because as my testing in nv04_demo and other investigations showed, the card does not seem to support untiled (non-swizzled) textures. Currently, tracking the swizzle/unswizzle state in the DDX is out of question so NV04 EXA idea is dropped, at least for now. It is noteworthy that pq managed to get nv10_demo to work on a NV2X card, so we'll be doing a one-shot EXA implementation for both NV1x and N2x classes using NV10_TCL. Due to my struggling with NV04_TRI (I did the work on my NV05 btw, since NV04 doesn't start), and with NV04 software methods, I was slow starting NV10 EXA, and marcheu did it for me. It is not complete right now since it lacks proper register combiners setup for no mask (single texturing) and masked (2 textures) drawing. I have been unsuccessful as of today in getting NV10_TCL to texture a triangle/quad for me, presumably due to incorrect register combiner setup - I can get plain quads (matchin vertex colors), or plain black quads when I try to set up the combiners. They seem a bit difficult to use anyway even on GL_NV_register_combiners side, so it will take some time. I hope init and all are fine, because I'm starting to be a bit fed up with all the recent failures.
Gave up NV04 sw method for now, will wait for some success to raise my motivation. What's next? Working NV10 texturing
NV04 sw methods are now "mostly" in - they are implemented and allow the card to properly start X, however I get caught in a STATE_INVALID interrupt storm for 0x5f (IMAGE_BLIT) : 0x308. So X starts and works mostly, but it's not perfect. 3D sw methods are not done just yet. Stopped work on NV04 for now, as it is "mostly functional" (= you can start X and watch a movie, which is about all you should be doing with this card anyway).
hkBst started work on documenting PVIDEO registers in rules-ng with my help. NV10+ PVIDEO regs are almost done, left are NV04 PRAMDAC overlay regs, and maybe the TEXTURE_FORMAT bits that I found in DirectFB. Those guys seem to know a lot about nvidia cards... Marcheu wants to race with NV30 EXA and jkolb against p0g and I on NV10 EXA. Pray for us :) Our current status is that while TCL seems to work fine enough for 2D stuff, we could not get a correctly textured quad.
The last month has seen a lot of work on NV10 EXA. We managed to get textured quads and then worked on implementing various Composite operations. As source and mask formats, we support A8R8G8B8 and X8R8G8B8 (cheating with register combiners), and A8. We can support R5G6B5 for 16bit formats. As destination we do what the card can do : A8R8G8B8 and (potentially) R5G6B5. No A8 destination is supported, which makes it very difficult to accelerate A8 + A8 operations which are heavily used in text rendering. We have no support for ABGR Over ARGB with a mask either, because of a lack of register combiners. I spent one week trying several hacks for A8 + A8, without success. AndrewR provided some profiling data: http://people.freedesktop.org/~ahuillet/NV10_EXA_accel-2007-11-08 http://people.freedesktop.org/~ahuillet/NV10_EXA_fallbacks_synthetic-2007-11-08
As we can see on the second file, we "only" have A8 + A8 and ABGR over ARGB with mask to support, then we're supposedly done.
== 2007-12-03== Late update of this page. N1x EXA is now ready - we do A8 + A8, but as I said above ABGR over ARGB with mask is not possible to do, except maybe on NV2x cards which have more regcombs, but it would require using NV20_TCL which implies doing a separate implementation. So not on our plans ATM.
As far as A8 + A8 is concerned, the details are in nv10_exa.c. I still have a little PPC endianness-related bug to correct (the masked out bytes for left and right borders are not computed correctly).
So NV1x EXA is done and I'll be moving on to NV2x randr12 as soon as possible.
Long time no update, for various reasons. I'd like to keep this habit of writing progress reports from time to time because I think it can be useful and interesting to newcomers and people who care about what I'm doing on nouveau (Xv, EXA...). I have to make this one very short though. I don't remember what was done in the past six weeks exactly, but it's mostly nothing. Notably, I haven't been working on NV2x randr12 because it is stillunknown and malc0's territory, and they are doing very well. There have been a few troop movements on Xv front though - image quality improvements and cleanup of source code. Following stillunknown's and marcheu's NV40 texture adapter were some questions about the image quality, which lead me to working on the blitter. Our YV12 to YUY2 conversion, inherited from nv, was doing a mere copy of chroma samples, whereas a linear interpolation could easily be done. I implemented that and got confirmation that it was better than before. The speed impact is unknown, reports appreciated (contact me on IRC to ask for the procedure). I also did a bit of cleanup on Xv code, removing useless stuff and moving every adapter in its own file (nv04_video_blitter.c, nv04_video_overlay.c, nv10_video_overlay.c, nv40_texture_adapter.c). What's coming next? Nothing on my todo list, as NV1x 3D seems not too possible right now...


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Home Page Chess Life Online 2011 January The US Chess School Comes to Los Angeles
The US Chess School Comes to Los Angeles |
By Elizabeth Vicary | |
January 26, 2011 | |
The fourteenth US Chess School, the latest in a series of free training camps for America's top juniors, was held Dec 26-30 in Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, CA. GM Melikset Khachiyan and camp organizer IM Greg Shahade team-taught the sessions, using their own games, student games, and classic games to explore topics that included "making concrete decisions," "endgame calculation," "prophylaxis" and "typical mistakes when playing against higher rated players." Normally, Greg invites 8-12 students of approximately the same age. This time, while keeping their strengths similar (2100-2300), he invited a much wider range of ages, which made the group dynamics more varied. The younger students tended to be quicker at tactics and more competitive than the older ones, but the older students were often more patient and less often wrong, so both groups could learn from one another. The youngest participant was nine-year-old superstar Samuel Sevian (2206), the youngest master in American history (he turned 10 at the camp). Samuel charmed everyone with his energy, extroversion, and enthusiasm. Watch him playing blitz with Greg Shahade in this "classic" video. The oldest student was 17-year-old Konstantin Kavutskiy (2252), who is already a senior in college, graduating this spring from Cal State LA with a major in Business Administration. Kostya is a member of the United States Chess League's LA Vibe, and writes about the USCL for Chess Life Online and at his blog. Yian Liou (2298, 13 yo), is the 2010 US Cadet co-champion (with Michael Yang). Yian also plays in the USCL, for San Fransisco, and was the 2009 USCL 3rd Team All Star Board 4. When not playing chess, Yian enjoys sprinting (Greg's reaction on hearing this was an immediate "I'll race you later."). Will Fisher (2245 16 yo) is remarkable for his recent improvement: in 16 months he's jumped from 1800 to 2275. Along the way, he won clear first in the Under 2100 section of the Philadelphia International last April, a whole point ahead of second. Kayden Troff, (2241, 12 yo) recently won the Silver Medal for Boys Under 12 at the 2010 World Youth. He has a blog here and another at chess.com (with great instructional articles) here. Daniel Gurevich (2232 USCF, 12 yo) was one of the sharpest students at camp: he won the camp-long question-answering point-earning competition. (Keeping track of these points became one of my main jobs during the camp: I've never been so thankful for a spreadsheet.) Daniel is also an accomplished piano player and an excellent writer. He wrote a detailed, highly instructive article on the 11th US Chess School last year, and his his recent CLO article on Breaking 2200 contains fascinating descriptions of his two coaches, Roman Dzindichashvili and IM Kirill Kuderinov. Nick Thompson (2228 USCF, 17 yo) is a member of the 2010 USCL Western Division Champions, the Arizona Scorpions. He is also an excellent breakdancer. Michael Bodek (2228 USCF, 12 yo) and Michael Brown (2178 USCF, 13 yo) are both blitz lovers: they played each other almost every break and it became the camp's favorite joke that Michael B would probably win. Micheal Bodek did tie for first in the blitz tournament (with Yian Liou). That won him the right to play a 2 game match with Melik, and he beat the grandmaster in one game, which you can see below. Both Michael Bs are also avid ping pong players. Justus Williams (2218 USCF, 12 yo) of The Bronx, learned chess in his third grade class, through the non-profit Chess-in-the-Schools. Justus plays in the USCL for the New York Knights and attends IS 318 (I'm his homeroom teacher). I was happy to see how much being around other strong young players seemed to motivate Justus: on the plane ride home he was talking about switching his openings to more theoretical lines and rearranging his schedule to allow more time for studying. I think this is a really important side benefit of the US Chess School model: in addition to making our top juniors stronger, it helps them become friends and even role models for each other. Most participants already know some of the others from playing at National Scholastics, but at the USCS, they study together intensively all day, then hang out together at night playing blitz. Varun Krishnan (2176 USCF, 13 yo) of San Diego had a great tournament right after the US Chess School, drawing IM Cyrus Lawdawala and achieving a 2532 performance rating. He is also an excellent tennis player. Greg showed three of his games: a loss against Novikov, in which his fear and respect for the grandmaster caused him to play badly; an intricate, study-like draw against Ehlvest in his pet line of the Dragon, and this Karpovian schooling of GM Boris Kreiman. 5273 1.c4 This is one of my all-time favorite of Greg's games. I watched it being played in the last round at the 2005 US Open in Phoenix, Arizona. The winner earned a ticket to the 2006 US Championship. (Greg eventually declined the invitation, which went to the junior Sal Bercys; Boris eventually did qualify, but only after some difficulties.) Greg had just been elected to the USCF Executive Board, and consequently was playing the long schedule: juggling politics and meetings in the day with chess at night. I mention this because it may have contributed to his playing philosophy at the time: don't think too much. Greg felt that spending too much time and energy at non-critical moments would lead to exhaustion and time pressure later, and that most long thinks are unproductive anyway. Because of this, the game is more prophylactic and strategic than tactical. 1...c6 2.e4 g6 3.d4 Bg7 4.Nc3 d6 5.Nf3 Nf6 6.Be2 0-0 7.0-0 Nbd7 8.Be3 e5 9.d5 Ng4 10.Bg5 f6 We were going quickly through the opening, which is a fairly standard King's Indian Defence, when Justus suggested an interesting line that Greg had not considered: 11.Bh4 Justus: 11.dxc6!? bxc6 (11...Nc5 12.c7) 12.Qxd6 fxg5 13.Qe6+ Kh8 14.Qxg4 Nc5 (14...Rf4) 15.Qxg5 11...c5 12.Ne1 Nh6 13.Nd3 g5 14.Bg3 f5 15.exf5 Nf6 16.Qd2 Nf7 Black is about to recapture on f5. What would you do here for White? 17...Bxf5 18.Nf2 Nh5 19.Bd3 Nxg3?! 19...Bd7 The black knight should go to f4 rather than taking the bishop. 20.hxg3 Bd7 21.Nce4 White needs to blockade the e pawn immediately, or Black will sac it to open up his Bg7. 21.Qc2? e4 22.Ncxe4 Bd4 23.f4 gxf4 24.gxf4 Qh4. 21...a6 What should White do here? 22...Rb8 Where should White move? 23.b3 23.b4 is interesting and possibly the best move, but white needs to be careful of black locking up the queenside entirely. 23...b6 24.b5? (24.a5 cxb4 25.Qxb4 bxa5 26.Qxa5 is good for white) 24...a5; 23.a5 Many students chose this answer, but after 23...b6 black gets pressure on the b file and b2 pawn. For example: 24.axb6 Rxb6 25.Ra2 Qe7 26.Rfa1 Rfb8 27.Nd1 Bc8 23...Qe7 24.g4 h6 How can White improve his position? 25...h5 What's the most solid way to react? 26...h4 White could play actively with 27. b4, but instead he's determined to improve his position as carefully and solidly as possible. What consolidating moves are useful here? 26...hxg4 27.Nxg4 Bxg4 28.fxg4 Nh6 29.Qe2 (29.Ng3? e4) 29...Rf4 30.g3 Rxg4 31.Qg2 27.Ra2 This move is is exceptionally cautious: getting out of any possible tricks on the long diagonal, and possibily preparing to double rooks. Greg described this as a "multipurpose, prophylaxis type torture move." 27...Bh6 28.Bb1 White could start playing actively with 28. b4, but since black lacks a real plan, Greg patiently improves his position. The bishop retreat creates the possibility of a queen and bishop battery with Qd3. 28...Nh8 29.Nh3 To threaten the g5 pawn and tie his pieces down further. 29...Rf7 30.b4 b6 31.Bc2 Again, a5 is pretty good here, but the idea of this move is to improve with Rb1. 31.a5 bxa5 (31...cxb4 32.Qxb4 b5 33.Nxd6 Rff8 34.c5) 32.bxc5 dxc5 33.Qxa5 (33.d6 Qe6 34.Nxc5 Qxc4 35.Rc2 Qd4+) 33...Bxg4 34.Qxc5 Qxc5+ 35.Nxc5 Bxh3 36.gxh3 Rc8] 31...a5 Black sacs a pawn out of frustration. It's amazing to me to see a game where a grandmaster gets beaten so seemingly easily: all game he has struggled and failed to come up with an active plan. [31...Ng6 32.Rb1 Nf4 33.Nxf4 exf4 34.bxc5 dxc5 35.Rab2 Qd8 36.Nxc5 32.bxa5 bxa5 33.Qxa5 Rff8 34.Qc7 Nf7 35.Qxd7 1-0 We continued by looking at three examples of prophylaxis (or the need for it) in students' games. The student examples are my favorite part of the US Chess School - what could be more instructive than seeing how you could have used a technique in one of your own recent games? Fisher,William (2247) - Mandizha,Farai (2431) [E11] National Chess Congress (4), 27.11.2010 White to move 33.Qd4? 33.h3! Black threatens Nf6-g4-e5-f3, and White must prevent it. 33...Ng4 34.h3 Ne5 35.Qc3 White has one last chance to save the game: 35.Rxh6+ gxh6 36.Rc5 f4 35...Nxc6 36.Be2 Qxe2 37.Rxh6+ Bh7 0-1 Kavutskiy,Kostya (2249) - Gupta,Ankit (2324) 5271 annotations by Kostya Kavutskiy 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.Nf3 d6 5.e4 0-0 6.h3 Nbd7 7.Be3 e5 8.dxe5 Nxe5 9.Nxe5 dxe5 10.Be2 c6 11.0-0 11.Qa4 is what I should play next time. 11...Qe7 12.Qc2 Be6 13.Rfd1 Nd7 14.Qd2 Rfd8 15.b3 f5 16.f3?! 16.exf5 gxf5 17.Bg5 Nf6 (17...Bf6 18.Bxf6 Qxf6 19.Qd6 I completely misevaluated this position thinking it was at best equal) 18.Qe3 I evaluated this position as unclear, overestimating the strength of Black's pawns. 16...f4 17.Bf2 Nf6 18.Qb2 b6 19.a4 Nh5 20.a5 Ng3 21.Rxd8+ Rxd8 21...Qxd8 22.axb6 axb6 23.Rxa8 Qxa8 24.Bxb6 I didn't think Black would have enough compensation for the pawn here. 22.axb6 axb6 23.Bxb6 Rb8 24.c5 My opponent missed this move, otherwise Black is doing well 24...Qg5 25.Bc4± I think this is the best move, because it eliminates all of Black's counterplay. 25...Bxc4 26.bxc4 Qd8 27.Rd1 Qc8 I wasn't quite sure how to proceed here. Obviously Nd5 is begging to be played but I wanted to exhaust all other possibilities first, The problem for me was that any endgame I went into would be tough to win--with heavy pieces on the board I would always have to worry about my back rank, but with only minor pieces then my extra pawn is irrelevant and Black's king can defend his weakness on c6 28.Qd2 Qe6 29.Qa2 Bf8 30.Qa7 Re8 31.Qa2 Be7 32.Kf2 Bh4 33.Kg1 Be7 34.Nd5 OK, I saw no other option here. 34...cxd5 35.cxd5 Qf7 36.Qb2 36.Qc2+- 36...Qf6 36...Bf6 37.c6 Rc8 38.Kh2+- 37.d6 Bd8 38.Qb3+ 38.c6 Bxb6+ 39.Qxb6 Ne2+ 40.Kh2 Nd4 41.d7 Rd8 42.Rxd4 I did not really look for opportunities to give up the full rook because I thought they wouldn't be necessary 42...exd4 43.Qb3+ Kg7 44.c7+- 38...Kg7 39.Bxd8 Rxd8 40.Qd3 Kh6 White to move 41.c6 41.Kh2!+- Black is threatening to play Ne2+-d4, establishing an outpost and blocking white's heavy pieces from defending his pawns. Meeting ...Ne2+ with Qxe2 allows black to take the d pawn. So white should play Kh2 prophylactically, getting out of the knight check and of later checks by the black queen. 41...Nh5 42.c6 Ng7 43.c7 Ne6 44.cxd8Q Nxd8 45.d7+- 41...Ne2+ 42.Qxe2 42.Kh1! Nd4 43.c7 Rc8 44.Qa6 Qe6+- 42...Rxd6 43.Rxd6 Qxd6 44.Qc2 44.Qb5 Qd2= 44...Qd4+ 45.Kf1 45.Kh2 Qe3 46.Qd1 Qc5 47.Qd7 Qf2 48.Qg4 Qc5 49.Qc8 Qf2 50.Qf8+ Kh5 51.Qb4 Qe3 52.c7 Qc1 53.Qa5 45...Qa1+ 46.Ke2 Qg1 I spent around 20 minutes here, calculated all of my options and offered a draw--probably my biggest mistake of the game, because after 46...Qg1 47.c7 Qxg2+ 48.Kd3 Qxf3+ 49.Kc4 Qxh3 I am winning after 50.Qd2 The key move that I missed, pinning the f-pawn and winning in the critical line: 50...Qc8 51.Qd8 Qa6+ 52.Kc5 Qa5+ 53.Kd6 Qb6+ 54.Ke7+- ½-½ Rosenthal,Nick - Liou,Y (2211) 5272 USCL ICC INT (10), 25.10.2010 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d3 Nc6 4.g3 d5 5.Qe2 Nge7 6.Bg2 g6 7.0-0 Bg7 8.Re1 0-0 9.e5 Nf5 10.c3 f6 11.exf6 Bxf6 12.h4 Bd7 13.Bg5 Qe7 14.Bxf6 Qxf6 15.Nbd2 Rae8 16.Nb3 b6 17.Ne5 Nxe5 18.Qxe5 Qxe5 19.Rxe5 Nd6 19...Ne7 20.Bh3 Nc6 21.Re2 Re7 20.Rae1 Choose between the moves 20...Rf5, 20...c4 and 20...Kg7. 21.dxc4 Nxc4 22.R5e2 22.Rxd5? exd5 23.Bxd5+ Kg7 24.Rxe8 Rxe8 25.Bxc4 Re1+ 22...Kf7 23.Nd4 Nd6 24.Nf3 24.Bh3! Nf5 (24...Ne4 25.Kg2 Re7 26.f3 Nc5 27.b4 Na4 28.Bxe6+ Bxe6 29.Rxe6 Rxe6 30.Nxe6) 25.Bxf5 gxf5 26.f4 24...Kf6 25.Ng5 Rh8 26.Bh3 Nf5 27.Bxf5 gxf5 28.f4 h6 29.Nf3 Bb5 30.Re3 Rhg8 31.Nd4 Bd7 32.Kf2 Rg6 33.Re5 Kf7 34.a3 Rf6 35.R5e3 Ke7 36.Rd1 Rc8 37.Nf3 Kd6 38.Ne5 Ba4 39.Rd2 Bb3 40.Re1 a5 41.Nf3 Ba4 42.Rc1 Bb5 43.Nd4 Ba6 44.Ke3 Rg8 45.Rg1 Rfg6 46.Kf2 Re8 47.Re1 Reg8 48.Re3 Rf6 49.Rd1 Rgf8 50.b4 a4 51.Rde1 Bc8 52.c4 dxc4 53.Rd1 Ke7 54.Nc6+ Kf7 55.Ne5+ Kg8 56.Nxc4 b5 57.Nd6 Rd8 58.Rd4 Rff8 59.Nxb5 Ba6 60.Nd6 Bc8 61.b5 Rd7 62.Rxe6 Rfd8 63.Rxh6 1-0 This last problem reminded the class of a position we had seen the day before in one of Daniel Gurevich's games. 5274 Benjamin Finegold - Daniel Gurevich Thanksgiving Open, 26.11.2010 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 g6 3.c3 Bg7 4.d4 cxd4 5.Bc4 d6 5...d5; 5...d3 6.0-0 Nc6 7.Qxd3 d6 8.Bf4 Nf6 9.Nbd2 0-0 6.Qb3 e6 7.cxd4 Ne7 8.Nc3 0-0 9.Be3 Nbc6 10.Be2 d5 11.e5 Nf5 12.0-0 f6 13.exf6 Bxf6 14.Rad1 Qe7 15.Bb5 Bd7 16.Rfe1 Nxe3 I don't like this move at all...the knight on f5 sort of ties things down to defense of d4 and the bishop on e3 blocks the e-file and is busy defending d4. 16...Qg7 17.Rxe3 Qd6 18.Bxc6 Should Black recapture with the pawn or the bishop? 19.Na4 Rfb8 19...Rab8 20.Qc2 Rb4 21.b3 Rxa4 22.bxa4 Rc8 20.Qc2 Rb4 21.b3 Rc8 22.Nc5 Rb5 23.Ne5 Bxe5 24.Rxe5 Rf8 25.Rde1 Rf6 26.Qe2 Rxc5 27.dxc5 Qxc5 28.h4 Qd4 29.h5 c5 30.Rd1 Qf4 31.g3 Qb4 32.Rg5 Kf7 33.Qe5 Qb6 34.Rg4 Qa5 35.hxg6+ hxg6 36.Rh4 Ke7 37.Rxd5 1-0 In both Yian and Daniel's game, they made an active looking pawn move that lost control of important squares. Khachiyan is known as a dynamic, attacking player, and his lessons focused on his strengths: attacks, concrete calculation, and unbalanced positions. He showed us the below game against Kretchetov (The annotations in quotation marks are direct quotes. Annotations without quotation marks are reconstructions of Melik's comments, but not their precise wording.) 5269 Kretchetov,Alex - Khachiyan,Melik [E90] Gufeld Memorial, 2003 1.c4 g6 2.Nf3 Bg7 3.e4 c5 4.d4 d6 5.d5 Nf6 6.Nc3 0-0 7.Bd3 e5 8.a3 Nh5 9.g3 f5 10.exf5 gxf5 11.Nh4 "What move here exactly matches the requirements of the position from the Black point of view, 11...Nf4. 11... e4, 11... Qe8?" 11...e4 I felt it was time for me to use his king in the middle. To me it was the only move, e4. 11...Nf4 12.Bxf4 exf4 13.Qh5 Qe8+ 14.Qxe8 Rxe8+ 15.Kf1 12.Qxh5 exd3 13.0-0 Melik asked the same question: "Which move matching exactly the requirements of the position? While students were thinking, he began talking out loud about the position...."There are advantages and disadvantages to my position. My pawn structure is destroyed -- especially the d3 pawn is separated from my other pieces-- and my king is open. At the same time, I have two bishops, the white king is exposed and his kingside is really missing his light squared bishop. Because the position is unbalanced, you cannot take the game by normal playing, so whatever you do, it must be concrete. . We will really worry about material when game goes to endgame, but in middlegame, sometimes dynamic things are more important. Try to understand the imbalances and come up with great idea to take the initiative." 13...Nd7 Sacrificing the f pawn for rapid development that turns into a dangerous attack. The knight is going to e5, from where it threatens f3. 14.Nxf5 Ne5 14...Rxf5 too much 15.Nxg7 Bg4 16.Qh6 Rf6 17.Qe3 only move 17...Nf3+ 18.Kh1 Kxg7 19.Ne4 Nd4 20.f4 "Which black piece is the most aggressive here?" 20...Be2 "I must take care of my pawn; I do not care about my rook on f6. The Nd4 is much more aggressive than the rook." 21.Bd2 "My opponent also understands this: if he can take care of my bishop, black's position falls apart." 21...Nc2 22.Qf2 "Because of my next move, this game appeared in magazines. If you can find this move, it is a sign of being a future grandmaster. It's all about your concrete thinking, right here, right now. I didn't play Nc2 to fork the queen and rook; I played Nc2 for another reason. What keeps white in the game?" 22...Qe7! I want to eliminate white's most active piece, the knight. It's a very hard move to find because it means I will have to recapture with my king, and see my king is safe in the middle of the board. 23.Nxf6 Kxf6 23...Qxf6? 24.Bc3 24.Bc3+ Kf5 "I stop all possible active moves from white side. f5 is not possible; g4 is not possible. The king blockades the light squares." 25.h3 h5 26.Rg1 Nxa1 27.Rxa1 Qe4+ 28.Kh2 Qxc4 29.Re1 Rg8 30.Qe3 Qe4 "White has no space." 31.Qf2 b6 "Just because i wanted to secure the entire area and make sure there is no b4 break. I knew white was completely squeezed." 32.Bd2 a5 33.a4 Rg6 34.Rg1 Qf3 35.Qe1 Ke4 "My king will collect all pawns." 36.Qc1 Kxd5 37.Qc3 h4 38.Be1 Bf1 39.Qb3+ Kc6 40.Qf7 hxg3+ 41.Bxg3 Qe2+ 42.Kh1 Rh6 "He made time control and resigned." 1-0 The round robin blitz tournament was won by Yian Liou and Michael Bodek, with Daniel Gurevich coming third. All three won the right to play blitz games against Melik and Greg. Yian drew Greg and lost one game and drew one to Melik; Michael beat Melik and lost to Greg; Daniel lost his single game to Greg. The US Chess School is made possible by the generous support of Dr. Jim Roberts, in conjunction with the AF4C. Additional sponsorship was provided by the Schein-Friedman Foundation. Michael Yang's article on the US Chess School in Seattle was just recognized as the #6 article in Best of CLO 2010. See an index of articles on the USCS including many pieces by Vicary on uschessschool.com. |


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Text information from John Bradford and Dr. Jeffrey Brain
Images from Maine State Museum and Maine Maritime Museum
In August 1607, about 100 men arrived at the mouth of the Kennebec River on the ships, Gift of God and Mary and John, hoping to trade with Native Americans, find gold and other mineral riches, and discover a Northwest Passage to the Pacific and Asia. George Popham was the leader and Raleigh Gilbert was second in command.
The Virginia Patent, a grant signed by British King James I in April 1606, set up a South Colony to go to Jamestown and the North Colony headed for Maine.
One group of the Popham Colony immediately started building Fort St. George while another explored inland and along the coast.
Under Master Robert Davies, Mary and John left for England in early October carrying a daily journal he had written, but with little good news for the men who had invested in the colony.
A harsh winter set in, and with supplies running low, Gift of God left with half the men in December 1607 to return to England. Part of their goal was to save on the food that was left at the fort.
In February, leader Sir George Popham died. Raleigh Gilbert, 24, took over. However, he was not a good leader and did not get along with the Natives in the area.
Still, work continued. The men built a storehouse, along with other buildings, including a house for Gilbert. They explored, got food from the Natives, fished, and searched for gold.
They also built a 30-ton pinnace, the Virginia, under the guidance of their shipwright who was referred to in documents as "one Digby of London." By early July the men finished building the small vessel to help with their explorations and trading. This pinnace was the first English vessel built in North America.
The blacksmith shop they set up smelted local bog iron ore, as well as pig iron they had brought with them, into the wrought iron used to form the hardware they crafted for the vessel.
Mary and John returned in late summer 1608 with supplies for the Popham colonists, but also with news that Raleigh Gilbert's brother had died, leaving him heir to much of the family estate. Gilbert had to return to England to claim his inheritance, and lacking his leadership and still remembering the previous horrible winter, the colonists decided to shut down Fort Saint George and return to England.
After making changes to meet the challenges of deep sea sailing, and accompanied by Mary and John, Virginia made her first Atlantic crossing.
In May 1609, carrying "sixteen proper men more," the Virginia left England, joining a supply convoy headed to Jamestown. She completed her second Atlantic crossing in September. Although she is rumored to have made more crossings, no documentation has been found.
Other English colonists gained important information from the Popham experience.
In Phippsburg are the remains of this one-year colony buried from 1608 until 1994 when archaeologist Dr. Jeffrey Brain with help from a copy of the 1607 plan of "St. Georges Fort," uncovered the first construction feature of the Popham Colony to be seen in almost 400 years.
Students from Morse High School along with volunteers from Maine's First Ship, a non-profit with a dual-mission of education and tourism, created this exhibit. Maine's First Ship is dedicated to the reconstruction of the Virginia , built in 1607-1608 by Popham colonists in present day Phippsburg. Maine's First Ship
(Source: Fort St. George: Archaeological Investigation of the 1607-1608 Popham Colony, Jeffrey Phipps Brain, from "Occasional Publications in Maine Archaeology," Maine State Museum and Maine Historic Preservation Commission, #12, 2007)


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How Has Relief Society Blessed Your Life?
Because Relief Society is divinely designed, it blesses not only women but the family and the Church.
Looking back on his life, a man recently shared this tender story with me: "When I was growing up my father was less active in the Church. He struggled with alcohol and in his darkest moods could become harsh and accusing. He normally didn't object to Mom serving in the ward. She worked in Primary for 38 years, and during much of that time she served in Young Women. She carried a heavy load. Her marriage was difficult, and I now know that she was discouraged at times, but I didn't know it then.
"I didn't realize until later that the sisters in our ward were her strength. She didn't work in the Relief Society leadership, but she always attended the meetings, and she loved her friends there. I never thought of them as the ladies of Relief Society; they were simply Mom's sisters. They cared about her and loved her. She had all brothers and all sons. She found the sisters she wanted and needed in our ward. I know she shared her feelings with them—feelings she couldn't express anywhere else. None of that seemed 'Relief Society' to me then, but I understand now that it was."1
This son's memory of Relief Society touched my heart. Yes, Relief Society's members are women, but Relief Society does not bless only the women; it blesses each one of us.
How has Relief Society blessed your life?
I asked this question of President Hinckley. He responded: "Relief Society has blessed my family and the family of my dear wife for some seven generations. Since the earliest days of the Church, our mothers and daughters have been taught of their obligations to those in distress. They have been schooled in the finer points of homemaking, encouraged in their spiritual development, and guided in the realization of their full potential as women. Much of this has taken place in Relief Society and has then been brought home to bless the life of each member of my family."2
I have my own sweet memories of playing under my grandmother's quilting frames as she and her Relief Society sisters stitched. I was young, but I knew that this was part of Relief Society—blessing the lives of others. I was mentored with love for Relief Society by my mother and my grandmother. I love Relief Society—I think I always have. Relief Society has helped me know the Savior and has strengthened my love for Him and my Heavenly Father. My belonging to Relief Society has provided me with many opportunities to learn, love, serve, and be filled with the love of the Lord in my life as I strive to keep my covenants, exercise charity, and strengthen my family.
So I ask again, how many ways has Relief Society blessed your life?
Visiting the Missionary Training Center in Brazil, I said to the missionaries, "Tell me what you know about Relief Society." One elder said, "Casseroles!" Another added, "My mother and sister belong to it." Finally, one declared, "It's the Lord's organization for women." He was right, but there's more. Relief Society is "a fundamental part of the gospel."3
The year 1842 was extremely difficult for the Prophet Joseph Smith. Former friends had turned on him. Other enemies wanted to abduct him from Nauvoo and blunt the growth of the Church. That same year he organized the Relief Society to care for the poor and needy and "to save souls."4 President J. Reuben Clark Jr. observed that amidst these trials, Joseph Smith "turned to the sisters for the consolation, for the uplift of which he stood in such sad need at that time."5 This is a moving and humbling thought: a prophet of God seeking the solace of his sisters—women to whom he had given the charge "charity never faileth."6 To me this has echoes of those women who mourned with the Savior on Golgotha.
Relief Society has blessed prophets' lives. How has it blessed yours?
President Boyd K. Packer has said, "The defenses of the home and family are greatly reinforced when the wife and mother and daughters belong to Relief Society."7 Why? Because women are the heart of the home.
My belonging to Relief Society has renewed, strengthened, and committed me to be a better wife and mother and daughter of God. My heart has been enlarged with gospel understanding and with love of the Savior and what He's done for me. So to you, dear sisters, I say: Come to Relief Society! It will fill your homes with love and charity; it will nurture and strengthen you and your families. Your home needs your righteous heart.
During a recent assignment to Peru, I visited the humble home of Brother and Sister Morales. It was filled with love. They are the parents of three children and have been members of the Church for four years. Sister Morales has learned much in Relief Society. To help provide for their family and their missionary son, she took in washing and ironing. She helped with two children of a neighbor who had to leave home to work. She supported her husband, who is struggling with kidney failure and was serving in the elders quorum. They discussed the Heber J. Grant lessons together in preparation for his teaching the lesson.
I asked her, "Are you a visiting teacher?" With a smile on her face she responded, "Oh, yes, Sister Parkin. I visit four sisters. Two are less active, but I will love them back."
Leaving their home, I noticed a hand-drawn sign above the door. It asked, "Did you read your scriptures today?" Relief Society is blessing this home, this ward, this neighborhood. How has it blessed you?
Belonging to Relief Society is critical for newly baptized sisters and, by extension, their families. While serving with my husband as he presided over the England London South Mission, I met many new converts—like Gloria, a single mother. When she joined the Church, she joined Relief Society. It was a safe place where she could ask questions about her newfound faith. She heard women openly share their experiences, which led her to experiment upon the word of God.8 She's received her patriarchal blessing; she's been to the temple; she serves in the Church. I think of President Hinckley's counsel to me: "[Women] need to be together in an environment that bolsters faith."9 Relief Society provides such an environment.
I thought of the stripling warriors when I heard the son of a Relief Society sister say: "I have been blessed by the faith and example of my mother. By the time I became a priesthood holder, I had learned as much about home teaching from my mother's visiting teaching efforts as by my father's example of home teaching. … Her faith in the priesthood affects my faith and strengthens my desire to be [a] worthy … elder."10
Brothers and sisters, I am changed and blessed, I am better because of Relief Society. And I believe we all are.
I pray that mothers and daughters will participate with more vigor, that husbands will support their wives, and that both mothers and fathers will prepare their daughters for Relief Society. I encourage priesthood leaders to shepherd God's daughters, young and old, into Relief Society—one of the many miracles of the Restoration. As we take these steps, we will be overwhelmed with gratitude for this sacred organization.
Because Relief Society is divinely designed, it blesses not only women but the family and the Church. I testify that it is a fundamental part of the Lord's restored gospel because it abides in charity—His pure love. Of this I bear witness, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.


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Gold Still Appears To Be the Ultimate Currency
Gold Still Appears To Be the Ultimate Currency
The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed a steep wall of worry and last Tuesday returned to its all-time high from late 2007. The Dow finished at 14253.77, topping the previous record set in October 2007 and is already up 8.8% for the year. The Fed's expansive monetary policy to prop up the economy has kept stocks climbing higher despite a less than glowing global economy. By pumping trillions into the financial system, the Fed has convinced investors it will provide a safety net for future shocks. In addition, by keeping interest rates extremely low, the Fed is forcing investors to seek higher returns in the stock market.
The financial press is hailing it a historic day.
But we suggest stopping a moment before chilling the champagne. Despite reaching its all-time high, the stock market has provided investors with zip, zilch, zero return over the last five and one-half years. The Dow has just gotten back to where it was in October 2007 and many investors are still struggling to make up their losses after the credit crisis that erased $37 trillion from global equity values. When the housing bubble burst in 2008 the DOW plunged 34 percent in 2008 for the worst performance in 77 years.
During the five and a half year period since the crisis, gold has provided a return of approximately 119%.
We don't mean to dump cold water on the celebration. We just want to keep things in perspective. Once we factor in inflation over the past few years, the all-time high looks less convincing. With consumer-price increases removed, the Dow has not been in real record territory in more than 13 years. A Wall Street Journal article contends that the last real, or inflation-adjusted, Dow record was on Jan. 14, 2000. Since then it looks like the Dow has risen 22% if you don't take inflation into account. But if you do, Tuesday's high is still more than 10% below that record.
Tuesday's close is just 9256.38 once inflation is removed. That doesn't even match the inflation-adjusted high of 10194.80 hit in 2007 – and we're only taking the official inflation numbers into account here. And it is far from the real record of 10424.28 hit Jan. 14, 2000, according to calculations by Bespoke Investment Group.
Inflation is definitely something to take into account when investing to meet future needs. Central bankers can print all the fiat currency they like but they can't manufacture gold. Its supply is more or less fixed (discoveries are made, but you can't suddenly increase gold production by 500% and you can do that in case of fiat currencies). It cannot be inflated by central banks, which is why it is considered an inflation hedge and the ultimate alternative currency (or the only true one). The reason a glass of soda cost a penny in the beginning of the last century and now costs several dollars is not that soda water was cheaper then, but rather that the dollar had more value.
Some of the big hedge funds still are betting on the price of gold, even though a large number have sold most in the last quarter of 2012 (who knows if that happened in the past few weeks when volume was so high…), if not all, their shares in SPDR Gold Trust ETF (GLD -0.09%). Hedge fund manager John Paulson and his firm, Paulson & Co., remain solidly in the gold camp. Paulson continues to hold the largest position in GLD with nearly 22 million shares, worth an astonishing $3.344 billion.
Let's see what's next. We'll start the technical part of today's essay with the analysis of the USD Index medium-term chart (charts courtesy by http://stockcharts.com.)
The important thing to discuss here is the head-and-shoulders formation. This trading pattern has bearish implications for the USD Index and the question now is whether the formation is still present given the recent rally. We feel the answer is "yes", because even though the index is now higher than the level of the left shoulder, the full formation is simply a bit skewed.
Local bottoms have been a bit higher each time so it is perhaps quite natural for the second shoulder to be above the first shoulder. Consequently, the formation could still be completed – though not yet – the other shoulder has yet to form. Declines in the index are needed for this to happen, and we feel this could still be seen.
Let's take a look at the intermarket correlations to see how this rather bearish outlook for the dollar could translate into gold and silver prices.
The Correlation Matrix is a tool which we have developed to analyze the impact of the currency markets and the general stock market upon the precious metals sector, (namely: correlations between gold and other assets). The precious metals and the USD Index show a strong, negative correlation for the past 30 days. In the last several days however, gold prices did not continue their decline, that is, did not respond to the USD Index strength. This is a bullish combination and provides an indication that gold prices will rally if the dollar declines significantly (!). It also suggests that additional small (!) daily rally in the USD Index may not really hurt the price of gold (just like it was the case on Friday).
Speaking of gold, let's take a look at the yellow metal from the long-term perspective.
In this chart, very little change was seen, compared to two weeks ago. Gold's price moved $0.10 higher last week, an increase of 0.01%, basically flat. With USD Index values moving up a bit last week, the situation isn't all that bad here. It seems that gold prices bottomed in late February by correcting to the declining support line seen on the above chart.
RSI levels continue to describe the situation as very similar to 2008 when a major bottom formed. Back then, it took just a few months for gold to rally from about $700 an ounce to $1,000 an ounce. If a similar percentage increase is seen this year, gold could rally to $2,250 in just a few months (that's not our official target, though). This appears possible based on the long-term cycles still present here as indicated by the vertical lines in our chart.
Summing up, although the cyclical turning point has passed for the USD, it still seems as though the index will soon reverse and move to the downside as it is now considerably overbought on a short-term basis. If the coming decline turns into a bigger one and the medium-term head-and-shoulders pattern is completed, it will likely translate into higher gold and silver prices. For now the bullish piece of information is that gold doesn't seem to react to daily rallies in the USD Index.
Gold appears poised to move to the upside but the exact timing of such a move is still not crystal clear. Some indicators point to higher prices quite soon, there's a possibility of a very sharp rally over the next few months, and it's also possible that nothing major will happen for a week or two.
To make sure that you are notified once the new features are implemented, and get immediate access to our free thoughts on the market, including information not available publicly, we urge you to sign up for our free gold & silver newsletter. Sign up today and you'll also get free, 7-day access to the Premium Sections on our website, including valuable tools and charts dedicated to serious Precious Metals Investors and Traders along with our 14 best gold investment practices. It's free and you may unsubscribe at any time.
Thank you for reading. Have a great and profitable week!
Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA
Founder, Editor-in-chief
Gold Investments & Trading Sunshine Profits
* * * * *
About Sunshine Profits
Sunshine Profits enables anyone to forecast market changes with a level of accuracy that was once only available to closed-door institutions. It provides free trial access to its best investment tools (including lists of best gold stocks and silver stocks), proprietary gold & silver indicators, buy & sell signals, weekly newsletter, and more. Seeing is believing.
All essays, research and information found above represent analyses and opinions of Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA and Sunshine Profits' associates only. As such, it may prove wrong and be a subject to change without notice. Opinions and analyses were based on data available to authors of respective essays at the time of writing. Although the information provided above is based on careful research and sources that are believed to be accurate, Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA and his associates do not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the data or information reported. The opinions published above are neither an offer nor a recommendation to purchase or sell any securities. Mr. Radomski is not a Registered Securities Advisor. By reading Przemyslaw Radomski's, CFA reports you fully agree that he will not be held responsible or liable for any decisions you make regarding any information provided in these reports. Investing, trading and speculation in any financial markets may involve high risk of loss. Przemyslaw Radomski, CFA, Sunshine Profits' employees and affiliates as well as members of their families may have a short or long position in any securities, including those mentioned in any of the reports or essays, and may make additional purchases and/or sales of those securities without notice.


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Essentials partial planning services
Osceola, United States of America
Do you want all of the details taken care of, yet still be very hands-on in the planning of your wedding? Then this package is for you. With this option you can plan your day with guidance from a professional. Giving you peace of mind that everything is done just as you want it. With this package you get the Wedding Day Coordination plus...
Planning sessions (in person or via telephone) each month, serving as logistical and creative assistant.
Unlimited access to planning professional via email or phone.
Wedding budget management.
Vendor referrals & pre-screening.
Attend vendor meetings with couple, if needed.
Contract and pricing negotiations with vendors.
Assist with selection of all rentals.
Create and maintain monthly task list with reminders via email.
Keep an updated list of confirmed guests.
Develop wedding day itinerary for couple, wedding party & immediate family members.
Create ceremony and reception room floor plans.
Attend final meeting at reception venue.
Assist in stuffing, addressing and/or mailing wedding invitations.
Arrange accommodations for out of town guests.