Alexis Harakis – About me

I’m a Londoner of Greek/Irish descent.

You’ll find some chess, tech and maybe travel pieces here and perhaps something else unique that I come across and want to share.

What do I know about chess?

Chess is a passion and at the time of writing I am around 2200 Fide > see my rating card on the official FIDE (Federation International des Echecs) website. This is Candidate Master standard which is decent without being World-beating. It is comfortably above a generally accepted expert level and I’ve seen chess authors who are lower. An International Master needs to make 2400 at which time it *may* be possible to earn some small fees and concessions for tournament participation.

I’ve been playing for 30+ years now and have also worked in the chess world, so I know a lot about the game and also some of the politics behind it (mess).

Some posts in this blog are our team reports from our 4NationsChessLeague endeavours. You need a password to view these, as they are mainly for the team’s consumption only (our captain’s writing style is forthright and uncompromising – may cause offence:)).

Why Zeitnot?

It’s a German term oft. used in chess to describe a phenomena best described as time trouble. I didn’t want to call it me when some of the content isn’t from me (my team reports for example).

What about Maps?

I’ve seen a lot of digital maps in the last few years as it has been part of my job. Location-based-services are big and will only get bigger and bigger. The map is an accepted paradigm for the search interface, sometimes the default.

Am I techy?

Well kind of. I have been working in the world of the web for 10+ years now starting with making my company’s first website in 1997 and soon after covering the IBM Deep Blue – Kasparov match live in concert with IBM, the same year (Kasparov lost!).

I am not a programmer, but I can cut a few lines of code and have built a number of websites over the years and still edit code regularly, albeit mostly basic stuff. If there is ever anything complex to do I definitely defer to an expert. I love the new world of APIs, blogs, twitter, social networking and location-based-services. The sky is the limit and I believe in open development and open data wherever possible. This gives the best long term results and provides the most fertile ground for innovation.

Anyway, I have been involved on the product, project management, technical and design side of a large number of different-sized web projects for a lot of years now, and that definitely gives me some perspective.

What else do I like?

Lots of stuff. I have a kid which brings me new challenges every day and gets me to places and events I would never have considered otherwise. I love languages and wish I could speak more and better, still I definitely have a knack for picking up foreign language. I can speak a little of a lot of European languages, Polish being my best after English. Have often wondered if I should try for an audition on Europa da sie lubic.Like most, I love travel, nothing better than waving goodbye to the London smoke and English shores for a while and disappearing off somewhere completely different.

I have taken up Poker lately which I have found to be rather compelling and at times expensive but very rewarding other times…..

Am I a FanBoy?

I’ll come clean. I worked for Microsoft for a year and at the time of writing am still closely involved with MSFT in my day2day job, but I am not a FanBoy. This is a personal blog, although I will highlight items that may come to my attention through the course of my work. I guarantee you no ‘sycophantry’ here (I also like making up my own words).

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