The New, New Thing

With the chess blog listing infrastructure rebuilt to accommodate my new approach, I've begun adding new chess blog finds again. Here's a round-up of some interesting recent additions:

• Chess Behind the Scenes at InstantChess.com has to be the most fascinatingly boring chess blog on the net. Post after post describes support interactions between users of the InstantChess site and the Admin. Here's a recent post on how to start a game:
  

  A player wrote in today and told me he didn't know how to get an opponent. I told him to click "play" or "start game". He wrote back and told me how much fun he'd had playing chess, and thanked me for helping.

  Each post follows this familiar format -- a player wrote in with a problem, I helped him, he thanked me. As a set of individual items, this blog makes a reasonable natural substitute for Rozerem. However, as a whole, I find this blog to be a fascinating study of the "life" of an Internet Chess Server Admin. He/she must answer both complex and simpleminded questions with accuracy and compassion and must accept grateful thanks as the primary reward. I, for one, would not make a great Admin.
  
  
• If there is anything rarer than a female chess player, it must be a female chess blogger. I'm sure many of us lament the day last year when Perceptual Pawn went silent (Of course for solace, one can still look at Cecilia's picture). Yet, as of late, this sub-segment of the chess blogosphere has been growing rapidly. There are three women listed in the GM section of the sidebar, Jennifer Shahade blogs at USChess.org, and the Diary of an Itinerant Chess Player and Chess, Goddess and Everything have been around for a bit less than 6 months.
  
  Now, you can pull up another chair to the coffee table for Castling Queen Side. Check out Polly's post on the top 10 signs that you're having a bad tournament.
  
  
• Have all the really creative ideas for chess blogs already been taken? Apparently not. Claywizard Chess Sets - How to make one offers detailed posts on how to make your very own clay figure chess set. Who wouldn't want to own one of these hand crafted masterpieces?
  
• Of local interest, our friends down the road at the Metrowest Chess Club have recently joined the blogosphere. In a related note, Harvey Reed's vision for intra-club correspondence server chess competition seems to be coming to fruition. He recently started a blog for the fledgling New Met League.
  
  
• Finally, don't be too disappointed when you discover that Affairs of Chess does not report on the personal indiscretions of chess players traveling on the international circuit.