Life In 19x19

This book is the second book of a three book series written by Takagawa kaku, honorary honinbo. These books are about 35 pages each, and were orginally published as articles in Go review. The style used throughout the books is:

1. A main idea is set as a title

2. An example diagram and explanation shows the mistake, usually a very common mistake.

3. A few other mistake diagrams and explanations.

4. Correct diagram is explained.

5. Many possible variation diagrams are shown with in depth explanations.


There are usually about 4 diagrams per page with a paragraph explaining each one. The explanations are precise and cumulative. The variations shown leave the reader with no unanswered questions and the feeling of confidence in the concepts learned.

Some concepts covered:
-How to keep from over concentrating your stones (choosing correct joseki/not following jostling blindly)
-Defending in sente
-When to kick and how to attack a kicked stone
-When giving away a ponnuki is okay.
-Correct/solid moves (professional moves aren't about crazy ideas, but solid fundamentals)
-Peeps and asking moves
-Light play/sabaki techniques
-Why double wing from 4-4 is bad

I would say this book is for 8k-4D players. Very easy to understand, but difficult to apply if you are lacking in other areas already.

Sample page:


Where you can buy it ($4.50)
http://www.slateandshell.com/SSGR002.html

Wrong section can anyone move it? Sorry

[ADMIN: moved as requested]

Not to be overcritical or anything but please can you post a link to the publisher's page or somewhere where you can buy the book. Also, a better sample page would go a long way to making this review useful. (Rotate it, at the very least! Put it in a hide-block.)

Charlie wrote:Not to be overcritical or anything but please can you post a link to the publisher's page or somewhere where you can buy the book. Also, a better sample page would go a long way to making this review useful. (Rotate it, at the very least! Put it in a hide-block.)

Yea sorry, added publisher page and did the hide. What is wrong with the sample page though? I see it flipped the correct way.

I'm not able to use my pc ATM, so this was written on my iPod, part of the reason for these problems.

NoSkill wrote:What is wrong with the sample page though? I see it flipped the correct way.

This is a known issue with images from modern phones.

Basically, when you take a picture, your phone/ipad/ipod stores it in landscape mode, then adds an EXIF tag saying: Rotate 90 degrees clockwise before showing. But most browsers do not support that tag, so they just show the image as is, i.e. in landscape mode.

So what people see depends on their browser. Chrome, Firefox and IE do not support EXIF Orientation, so most people will see the sample page on its side. I think most phone browsers do support it, which is why it looks fine on your iPod.

See also e.g: http://www.daveperrett.com/articles/201 ... -a-ghetto/

Well...now I'll be sad in time for lunch, Herman.

Oh sorry guys. Did that fix it then ?

Yes, it's fixed.

HermanHiddema wrote:

NoSkill wrote:What is wrong with the sample page though? I see it flipped the correct way.

This is a known issue with images from modern phones.

Basically, when you take a picture, your phone/ipad/ipod stores it in landscape mode, then adds an EXIF tag saying: Rotate 90 degrees clockwise before showing. But most browsers do not support that tag, so they just show the image as is, i.e. in landscape mode.

So what people see depends on their browser. Chrome, Firefox and IE do not support EXIF Orientation, so most people will see the sample page on its side. I think most phone browsers do support it, which is why it looks fine on your iPod.

See also e.g: http://www.daveperrett.com/articles/201 ... -a-ghetto/

Thanks, Herman. I never knew what caused this. Is there reason to believe that EXIF orientation will be incorporated into future browsers?

wineandgolover wrote:Thanks, Herman. I never knew what caused this. Is there reason to believe that EXIF orientation will be incorporated into future browsers?

There's a lot of talk about it on the relevant issues in the issuetrackers, but nothing definite yet, as far as I can tell. I think it will be implemented, but it may take a while. There's also talk of partial implementation (e.g. implement it when a picture is viewed on its own, but not when embedded in a page, unless some CSS tag specifies that it should be)

So at the moment it is a mess. The Orientation EXIF tag has been around for a while (since the late 90s AFAIK) but a lot of software has had poor support. In some cases, that has had the result that someone took a picture in portrait mode, which got saved landscape with an orientation tag, which they then edited with some image editing software that didn't know the orientation tag, so they rotated it, after which the image editor saved it but kept all the EXIF tags, so now their picture is stored portrait, but has an lingering "rotate 90 degrees" EXIF tag. Joy.