GoGoD is back online

[John Fairbairn]

RE Magic Wand scanner: got one and it's very good, but it doesn't reach far enough in to the spine.

But all these "solutions" involve extra hassle for me, so they won't happen. Sorry. (There is a significant difference between hassle and work as far as I'm concerned.)

[RBerenguel]

[...] There is a significant difference between hassle and work as far as I'm concerned[....]

I isolated this line because I know a lot of people who don't see the difference between "working" and "doing stuff." It's a pity the part of distributing the work is not possible, though, but understandable.

[Boidhre]

[...] There is a significant difference between hassle and work as far as I'm concerned[....]

I isolated this line because I know a lot of people who don't see the difference between "working" and "doing stuff." It's a pity the part of distributing the work is not possible, though, but understandable.

Digitising older books and manuscripts which aren't amenable to normal commercial tools can involve anything from specialist equipment generally only found in universities and similar research outfits which is not open to public use normally or taking a book apart, scanning its pages one by one and then rebuilding and repairing its binding as close to the original as possible (obviously not suitable for many/most works and requiring some very skilled individuals) and even if you can get scans out OCR doesn't work that well so you need to go through any OCR output manually anyway correcting usually many mistakes (assuming OCR even exists for the kind of text you're dealing with).

I can understand why John is calling it hassle not work. I asked my wife about this as she works in a related area to the above and her opinion was that scanning is nice but you often end up having to manually transcribe it anyway and given macelee's point this doesn't help as much as one might like.

[RBerenguel]

Hi John,

a quick question, since I can't find the answer in the website: how many 9x9 game records are in the database? (yeah, I know it's a slightly weird question )

[daal]

My copy from 2010 has 117 9x9 games.

[RBerenguel]

Thanks daal, I don't think the current version will have many more. I have ~ 300 or 400, probably my collection (shared by a friend who searched all over the web many years ago, so technically is *his* collection) probably overlaps with these.

[Charlie]

I am also interested in the fate of the extra material that was on the disks of yore.

I was actually looking to buy a copy, today, and discovered the fate of GoGoD while struggling to find the site but I was looking to buy it specifically for the non-SGF material - the encyclopaedia, articles and wot-not - and hoping for game records as a bonus.

I see I missed the boat.

[Bantari]

I am also interested in the fate of the extra material that was on the disks of yore.

I was actually looking to buy a copy, today, and discovered the fate of GoGoD while struggling to find the site but I was looking to buy it specifically for the non-SGF material - the encyclopaedia, articles and wot-not - and hoping for game records as a bonus.

I see I missed the boat.

Which brings me to my question.

Is that material still available somewhere? I understand that it is not part of GoGoD anymore, which is fine, but its a lot of good stuff, and even if it is not updated anymore, why not sell/distribute/give it separately then? As a static content, with no updates, just pay, download, and enjoy. I think this would be sweet and would help whoever is running the show financially as well. Even if not many buy it, there is almost no overhead so its all pure profit pretty much. So why not?

[Uberdude]

Maybe GoGoD CDs will become collector's items. I think I have a few copies lying around somewhere...

[Bantari]

Maybe GoGoD CDs will become collector's items. I think I have a few copies lying around somewhere...

Nah. If they stop selling/distributing it, somebody'll put it on a torrent somewhere. Mark my words.

[John Fairbairn]

Is that material still available somewhere? I understand that it is not part of GoGoD anymore, which is fine, but its a lot of good stuff, and even if it is not updated anymore, why not sell/distribute/give it separately then? As a static content, with no updates, just pay, download, and enjoy. I think this would be sweet and would help whoever is running the show financially as well. Even if not many buy it, there is almost no overhead so its all pure profit pretty much. So why not?

It IS still part of GoGoD, and still copyrighted. It's just not available online at present as I gave priority to the database.

However, I am in fact making use of it myself, by preparing books from the material, which involves adding, updating and correcting - hence our strapline "From the GoGoD Archives" - and so prefer unupdated/uncorrected data to be left to stew and not act as a spoiler. Also, one important part of it, the Names Dictionary, is being updated and made available already via SmartGo Kifu (and I believe Anders has his eye on other material such as the tournament data.)

In addition, big chunks have been available for some time in The Go Companion, The Go Consultants, Gateway To All Marvels, etc, in paper and/or digital form.

Hence I have no immediate plans to put it back online. Another simple reason, of course, is:

Busy, busy are his hours
The gard'ner wi' his paidle.

[Uberdude]

Maybe GoGoD CDs will become collector's items. I think I have a few copies lying around somewhere...

Nah. If they stop selling/distributing it, somebody'll put it on a torrent somewhere. Mark my words.

Yes, but the more ethical among us may still like to collect the legit version. My point was more that if you can't buy it any more those of us with surplus copies may be persuaded to give/sell them to those who want it.

[RBerenguel]

Maybe GoGoD CDs will become collector's items. I think I have a few copies lying around somewhere...

Nah. If they stop selling/distributing it, somebody'll put it on a torrent somewhere. Mark my words.

Yes, but the more ethical among us may still like to collect the legit version. My point was more that if you can't buy it any more those of us with surplus copies may be persuaded to give/sell them to those who want it.

My biggest incentive to purchase GoGoD when I found the site dead was the side content. So... Agree.

[eyecatcher]

Hi!
First i have to say: I`m a big fan of the Gogod project and of all those related books like Kamakura etc. ... and i`m very happy that i own a CD ... yesterday i decided to purchase the newest version of the SGF Databse ... at http://gogodonline.co.uk/

First as a feedback for John Fairbarn: the website is not working very good!
I`m on a mac with newest OSx and i did tried it with Crhome AND Firefox ... it took me 10 minutes, and some attempts to finally get to the "shopping basket" section... i was clicking on the "click here to download now only 15 USD" button ... but nothing happened.
After some time it worked ... but that was really strange behaviour, people might go away before that... thinking: "oh, the site does not work" ... it was just before i decided to stop trying and leave te page when it suddenly did work...


Second: I made the payment via Paypal and there it was abd is still saying (after purchase history login) at GoGoD Website now:

Click the big blue button below to download your purchase!

But there is no big blue button below, and i can`t download the database ... that is really sad, and you should improve the website ... and maybe giving me a chance to get, finally, the database downloaded ... but i will wait until then...
So all the best to you and your go projects!
Hope you will improve the website ... (will give you more happy customers )

Amon

[John Fairbairn]

Thanks for reporting this.

I am told the problem appears to be that the server is running out of memory. This requires an upgrade, and so the site has been taken down for a short while to allow this to happen.

I won't pretend to know more than this, but I can tell that the workshop edition of the database now has 80,280 games. Next issue planned for end-June.