"Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!", said GBS, but typically there's not a lot of overlap between my day job in health and education and my pastime of chess.

Then two come along at once :)

My colleague David McGeorge called to my attention to some research about going second, which looked at penalty shoot-outs and the game of chess.

And then I recognised a face on the RSA website , former British Chess Champion Jonathan Rowson offering his tuppence-worth on social networks and the Big Society.