Greetings! My name is Daniel, aka Halfjack. Here's a little bit about me.

I'm no Master, but I've been a chess player as long as I can remember, I study from a small chess library of 9 books, and have been teaching my three sons (and others) for many years. I've also been playing with computers and reading Science Fiction for almost as long - hence the graphic and the name 'Halfjack'. It's always been my regular handle (or alias) for BBS's, video games, and the internet (BTW: It's circa 1984 SciFi slang for a cyborg).

I've had a chess site up from '97 to 2002 called "En Passant". In 2003 I brought it back to the web as "Finite Chess". I've gone to a title of "Finite Chess" because of my personal conviction that too many young players concentrate on tricks and traps, but barely understand the far more important positional realities of space and movement - the "Finite" concepts. These concepts, as well as an exploration of openings and endgames make up the philosophical emphasis of this site.

I have a vocational background in electronics, but have comfortably shifted my career into an obscure art/science called "technical writing". For me that means I create and control a lot of documentation and graphics, play around with HTML and some databases, and generally sit at a computer all day. This is much to be preferred to hanging sheetrock.

I hand code my HTML in Notepad, primarily because I'm a control freak and I haven't had many good experiences with HTML editors. I code my HTML to standards version 4.01, using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and JavaScript, and so my pages can properly be referred to as DHTML. I am very much aware of industry usability standards and design with this in mind. I am also examining the XHTML standard, ("extensible HTML") but this is not a current priority.

I also do a lot of graphics processing and a fair amount of photography. Almost all of the graphics on this site are either my own creations or have at least been "tweeked". I generally use Paint Shop Pro 7 with Animation Shop 3, by Jasc, but have also used many other products...