Nova Daily - 22 June 2025: Airplane mode (Recap week 25)
Hi!
When I looked back through the posts that I made this week, somehow many of them happened to share a common denominator. From the posts about the chess celebrity plane, the bandwagon effect, and the train travel yesterday (and back today), they all appeared to have something to do with travelling.
Travelling is a very common reason why people would start a blog. And in a way, so did I when I started my blog. I've called it "Nova's Journey" for a reason.
In recent times, the All Blogs page sustained infringement from a set of notorious spammers who kept posting small dumb blogs. The accounts were sometimes created aeons ago but only now turned active in order to frustrate the blog page. It's been highly annoying on many levels, and I'm glad to see that things have turned rather more quiet in the blog section as of late. @JustGettingThisOffMyChess suggested that something may have been up, and I decided to name today's blog for it.
Airplane mode
Airplane mode is a specific setting on your device that cuts it off from all external signals: phone, bluetooth, wifi; you name it. It's so named because when you're travelling by plane, phones are supposed to be switched to this setting.
Why is that?
The main reason often given is that the wireless signals from your devices interfere with the signals on the plane. I'm in no position to confirm or deny this claim because I'm no expert in this field. I simply don't know. I can only read what I find and see what to make of it. This article indicates that research has been done into this that found no interference when the plane is airborne.
The article also mentions that interference may take place during takeoff and landing, which are the two parts of the flight that require the most precise handling. This sounds very plausible to me, based on how wifi signals works. Interference with ground stations because of a sudden overload of extra devices that seek a connection with the same source sounds just the thing to avoid.
Next to these technical explanations, I've also once heard a more down-to-earth (pun intended) explanation: "The signals don't interfere but that it's just insanely annoying for the flight personnel." This must be it: just sitting in a room with 10 people who all have different TikTok and YouTube videos on speaker makes me go nuts. So this must be the reality of the matter. (Technically this explanation probably doesn't hold true: I trust that the research is likely correct.)
The below video likely explains things accurately.
The only thing that I do know is that for laptops, airplane mode is when the fans within the machine go on steroids and your laptop sounds as if it's going to take off any moment.
The week in chess
I spent some time looking into a few holes in my opening repertoire, and I've increased my understanding in these areas. I only played one rapid game this week, but I've yet to analyse half of it. That'll be a good job for tomorrow, before I set to embark on a new rapid game to play and analyse, which I also aim to do tomorrow.
So, quite some work ahead of me.
The only stat that dropped this week is my Puzzle Battle score. Part of this is because I was hit with the out-of-bounds bug at one point, which caused my run to collapse. Something for chesscom to fix. If anything, I have something extra to do.
My current scores:
- Rapid rating: 2273 (+8)
- Blitz rating: 2448 (+12)
- Bullet rating: 2547 (+6)
- Survival: 63 (=)
- Puzzle Battle: 2052 (-18)
- Puzzles: 3521 (+13)
- Repertoire: 4353 moves (=)
For next week I'll be planning to do a rapid game on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, with source analyses following the day after.
Blogs:
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-15-june-2025-cerca-trova-recap-week-24
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-16-june-2025-which-seat-on-the-airplane-would-you-pick
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-17-june-2025-not-tb
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-18-june-2025-the-bandwagon-effect
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-19-june-2025-my-seat-on-the-plane
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-20-june-2025-one-year
https://www.chess.com/blog/nova-stone/nova-daily-21-june-2025-a-fly-on-the-wall
