2048 Chess

2048 Chess:

I know I am about two years late to the 2048 Clone Wars, but I finally got around to finishing my variant, 2048 Chess.  Originally I wanted to have multiple chess pieces on a larger 2048 board.  What I ended up developing was simply the kings.  The gameplay doesn’t lead to terribly interesting strategy.  It’s ultimately a game of button mashing and luck.  Whatever, I’m calling it done: http://danielbank.github.io/2048-chess/.

Making a GitHub page for a forked repository that already has a gh-pages branch:

My biggest hurdle in finishing this project was when I attempted to view the GitHub page for the repository. GitHub was overriding the game’s index.html with an automatically generated GitHub page.  I found this incredibly useful StackOverflow question for fixing that problem.  The prescribed steps were to:

  1. Make a file called index.md.
  2. Edit the contents of index.md to be:
    layout: index
  3. Make a file called _config.yml.
  4. Edit the contents of the _config.yml to be:
    markdown: redcarpet
  5. Create a _layouts folder.
  6. Move your index.html into the _layouts folder.
  7. Commit the changes and push them to the gh-pages branch of your repository on GitHub.
  8. The automatically generated page should be replaced by your page when Jekyll generates it.
2048 Chess
2048 Chess

dog shaman

Shaman Khorolkan of the Kambaghir tribe of the Evenk, first quarter of the nineteenth century (Illinois State Museum)

dog shaman gnaws his soul to the bone,

his is not the highest, his is but to roam.

Does he ever make it home?

For him there is no grandeur,

he sleeps on the kitchen floor,

wags his tail then is no more.

Mighty Eagle and Bear don’t care,

They can go anywhere,

but They don’t know what it means to share.

Well, who knows what we’ll be in the end,

so from one dog to another, i’ll miss you old friend.

Trying to get to Transylvania

Weeping Willow by Willowomoon
Weeping Willow by Willowomoon

Frankenstein was a Jewish Transylvanian, I knew this because I heard his Hebrew name being sung sadly. I was watching a movie about an actor who was going there as a con artist. As a disguise, he bought a top hat and a cane. He had a meeting with some doctors after which he would be able to go to Transylvania. During the meeting, I took the actor’s place: now I was the con man. I didn’t know what to say. The doctors were talking about different kinds of thrombosis. The doctors discovered I was a fraud and told me to leave.

I realized my top hat was actually the hat of a civil war soldier. Walking the streets homeless, I wondered how I would get to Transylvania. There was a child playing in the street and I saved his life by pushing him out of the way of a car. I saw lots of Transylvanian symbols at a street shop. Nearby there were dancing gypsy women and I recognized that they were from Transylvania. My hat had a symbol of Frankenstein on it.

As I continued walking, the street became an ominous path by the sea. It was dark, there were drooping willow trees on the left side and the sea on the right. The ground was wet with many puddles. I kept walking hoping that this path would take me to Transylvania. A young boy came from behind and called to me saying that the road was dangerous. His teacher had been knocked over by a wave and pulled into the sea. Suddenly, a raging wind lifted me and the boy. I no longer saw him, I was being whisked away to Transylvania. There was a moaning gypsy woman calling as I tumbled through the air.

Returning to the Ruins of My Apartment

Overgrown Ruins
Overgrown Ruins

I was driving around when I came across a familiar neighborhood. There I found an apartment complex which I somehow recognized as the location of an old home where I once lived. I went inside to visit. The whole apartment complex had largely been reclaimed by nature. Plants and trees grew wild through the apartments and the halls.

I visited what was supposedly my old apartment. I went out to the backyard where there were many feral cats and dogs.  They were all vicious and aggressive. There was also a pool with a great white shark inside. I fell into the pool and the great white came after me. I used a pool floaty as a buffer between me and the shark. I had to constantly swim to maneuver the floaty between myself and the shark. He would come ramming against it full of force. Eventually, I got out of the pool and looked in. Now there was a cat on the floaty. This time the shark jumped from the water and ate the cat and floaty effortlessly. I was relieved it wasn’t me.

I went to the common pool area of the apartment complex and found a couple people relaxing in lawn chairs. I was surprised that they still inhabitated these abandoned ruins of an apartment complex. They seemed to scoff at me for thinking it was wild at all.


Hey, I’ll explain the world that I see;

The events that transpire, and why to me.

Well, I’m a follower of great Δt;

which makes what’s past out of what will be.

And I’m enslaved by cruel mean Δt;

because what’s mine is mine just momentarily.

But I’m liberated by pure true Δt;

learning takes time to forget and be free.

Yeah, I’m just me thanks to Δt;

finding in a moment of forever, harmony


Imperial Japanese Navy oiler Irō under attack on 30 March 1944, Palau, photo by United States Navy

Among gnarled and twisted branches, small fish on display.

During the quiet afternoon, us humans come for play.

Beneath our playground, a dark labyrinthine tomb.

This wouldn’t be our playground, but for your horrific doom.

I do not come for the fun and play anymore, if ever I visit this site.

I just come to watch the daring fish, all fighting the good fight.

Thoughts and Musings by Daniel Bank