Best Free Chinese Chess Game Program - HOXChess

HOXChess is an open source Chinese Chess (i.e. Xiangqi) program and so far it is the best free Chinese chess program that I have played. There are few Chinese Chess program that I have played before, their algorithm are not as good as HOXChess. lol, basically the rest I can win easily except for HOXChess.:D

You can either play with computer for practice or you can also play with online real players through the server. For playing with computer, you can select different A.I. algorithm. Some A.I. algorithms are pretty stupid too, not all of them are smart. Go to "Tools -> Options -> AI" and you will see the following screen:

You can set different difficulty level range from 1 - 10 while you're playing with computers. You may need to wait a little longer if you set the difficulty level to 10.

The most awesome feature about this program is you can also play with online random players! There are 2 online server websites:

• www.playxiangqi.com
• www.chesscape.com

You can go to "File -> Connect Server" and you will see these 2 websites. What you need to do is go to the website to register a user name. After that, you can login with your user name and password. When you first login, you will see a list of tables. You can either join the existing table or create a new one. The screen that you're seeing is very similar to the one that you play with your computer - just without the "LOCAL_" prefix in your opponent's name.You can also be a watcher and not playing. Anyway, the GUI is self-explanatory and very user friendly. Enjoy!

There are Windows, Mac OS and Linux version. Here is the download page of HOXChess. It also available at iTunes. You can just do a "HOXChess" search in iTunes or AppStore, you should able to find it and it is completely free.

Fastest Way to Check Currency Conversion with Google

Do you know that we can use "Google" search engine not merely for searching purpose? You can use Google for dictionary and also use Google for world time clock. Cool isn't it? There are a lot more other cool stuff in fact and what I want to share with you today is "Currency conversion with Google".

For example, if I want to check 1 USD equals to how much of MYR (i.e. Malaysia Ringgit). I just need to search for "USD in MYR".

If you want to check how 1MYR equals how much of USD, you can just do the reverse "MYR in USD".

 

I find this the fattest way you check for currency conversion especially if you know the currency symbol. Hope you will find this useful! :)