Go Tools

I was talking with my brother-in-law about a gadget to make playing Go online a bit more like playing it in person. The feel of the board and the THWACK! as you plunk down stones adds a lovely touch to the game, but you don't get that when clicking on the cgoban window. We talked about using a real Go board at each end, pointing a camera at it to figure out where you've just moved and relay it to the server, and using a targettable laser pointer (on a pair of servos) to point to where your partner has just played.

I ran into this blog today about a guy who's interested in part of this problem, specifically using image-processing software to create a log of a game in progress. He also has a link to a japanese academic paper about doing the same thing (specifically creating a game log, aka Kifu, from a recording of a TV program).

I visited the SF Go Club for the first time last week, and had a great time.. looking forward to going again next week.