Alexis Harakis – About me

I’m a Londoner of Greek/Irish descent.

You’ll find some chess, tech and maybe travel pieces here and anything else unique that I come across and feel motivated to write about.

What do I know about chess?

Chess is a passion and at the time of writing I am around 2260 Fide > see my rating card on the official FIDE (Federation International des Echecs) website. My latest Fide and national ratings put me in the top 100 English players on both lists for the first time. Hallelujah.

I’ve been playing for nearly 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 and may cause offence:)).

Why Zeitnot?

It’s a German term oft used in chess to describe a phenomena known as time trouble, which is usually the most interesting part of the game for spectators. 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-awareness has established itself as integral part of the ‘online experience’ in the last few years.

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 and 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.

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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