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Community Chess Club
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Why did you start this website?
I wanted a serious website for the CCCR, publishing a membership list, bylaws, news, tournament announcements, cancelations, and members' games. The local chess community needed a more reliable, timely source of information. I sought CCCR accreditation for this site and appointment as CCCR webmaster and Director of Media. At that time the CCCR's website was not actively maintained. But Mike has improved it and it looks passable now. But there is one problem.
Running a local chess website requires the participation and cooperation of local organizers. Collecting needed data for publication proved to be initially problematic. In hindsight it's clear that establishing and maintaining website content is better left to the official powers that be.
And the concensus was that my motives were somehow malevolent and that my calls for rigorously open, honest club government were "too negative." It's true that I come from a different era, ex-military. My values center on morality, literacy and excellence. Today that passes for "negativity."
In fairness they postponed judgement, and later advised me that an official CCCR web site could not include public disclosure of complaints. Completely understandable. It upsets the pansy of fraternity when one of their own is caught. Which used to be regularly.
What's not true is the rumor that I am airing negative aspects of the CCCR without cause. Progress occurs gradually as CCCR reads my commentary and makes improvements. For example, club memberships now expire six months or a year from the date of payment, not universally on 12/31/2018 as before.
The membership list is quite an eye sore and you will not find many games in the games database.
At any rate, on September 30, 2008, about
9.81 years ago, I took the plunge and registered this domain. And I was stuck with the name.
"When you absolutely don't know what to do anymore, it is time to panic." (John van der Wiel)
Do you compete with the CCCR?
Mike and I have different styles of webmasterin'. He prefers to do everything himself. That way he knows everything will get done. As a tyro, I rely on a coterie of helpers and assistance in a wide range of areas: layout, color selection, dhtml, gamescores and analysis. But, yes, we compete. Check out this googlefight with the CCCR Official website or the one with the CCCR Blog.
Mike ain't much of a coder. Takes major exception to guys ragging on him about how CCCR should be run. But he's a good guy and we all love him because he's brought stability and structure to our chess community.
"I like the moment when I break a man's ego." (Bobby Fischer)
Chewy Verdugal's tech notes
I started with a CSS framework called Twitter Bootstrap. I then moved to Zurb Foundation which I liked a little more.
Current PHP version: 5.4.26 The pgn parser was chesstempo pgn-viewer, now I use pgn4web. The free chess diagram generator is from ChessImager.
The games table uses advanced interaction controls by datatables a jQuery plugin.
JPG's are prepared for the web with gimp and imagemagick. HTML, javascript and css files are edited with Komodo Edit and some are minified by YUI Compressor. Some find the Google closure compiler does a better job of compression.
Tool tips are by qTip2, a fine product. Progressive disclosure is by Zander Labs - Wagstaff. Hyphenation is by hyphenator. The email contact form is filtered by Dominic Sayer's RFC-compliant email address validator php script. Limiting Textarea Text by Stephen Chapman helps protect the contact form from over-zealous posters. Andy Langton's show/hide/mini-accordion is used to show and hide text. CDN Content Delivery Network is by Amazon S3 cloudfront. Fades are by onextrapixel. The HTML template I used is designed by Luka Cvrk, Solucija. I use a Corporate Gibberish Generator™ to help me explain the purpose of this website.
The modals are by Eric Martin's simplemodal and Cody Lindley's jQuery-swip and TinyBox2.
101 Fun Things to Do to Freak Out Your College Roommate! provided snippets of useful humor. The list of things to do while bored helped a bit, too.
This is a Microsoft-free web site. Not a single line of code was written here using any Microsoft product. Instead various flavors of Linux were used, mostly Debian and its derivatives. All but Komodo Edit are open source or GPL. You can have them for free and use them however you choose.
Since the internet itself runs on Linux and 91% of supercomputers run on Linux, a web developer's rig should, too. The best and fastest computers are Linux computers.
"Human affairs are like a Chess game: only those who do not take it seriously can be called good players." (Hung Tzu Ch'eng)
Webmaster of communitychessclub.com
Is this the official CCCR website ?
Well, no. I'm 69.13 years old and a second-rate web developer. Too feeble to produce quality html code. In fact, under the aegis and expertise of the great Mike Lionti, the real CCCR website was honed to exacting W3C fidelity and top-notch creative standards. There's also the Rochester Chess Club Blog, which is excellent!
Most agree that his CCCR master site has a human touch that reveals a warmth, humanity and down-home, caring honesty. The sheer beauty and seamless eye-candy woven into the modern chess tapestry that becomes the perfect website is quintessentially bedazzling.
Did you know that the CCCR website contains some excellent chess poetry?
"Chess is no whit inferior to the violin, and we have a large number of professional violinists." (Mikhail Botvinnik)
Rochester's best chess organizer
Michael Lionti is the guiding force of chess in Rochester. Thinking critically, he contributes to innovation. Communicating clearly, he solves complex problems. Working seamlessly with club members from diverse cultural backgrounds, his inclusive policies, ethical judgement and integrity endear him to all. And with a capacity for continued new learning and an indespensible familiarity with computers and technology, clearly .. one couldn't ask for a better person to run this or any chess club.
What I learned from Mike was that it is not innate abilities, IQ or affluence that accounts for success in life. Rather the keys to achievement are perseverance, curiosity, conscientiousness, optimism and self-control. Mike personifies this grit.
