A long week

This week has been really long and I hadn't got time to do all the things I was planning to. I havent even started on the GUI for my project.. then I was planning to study some of the subject which I'm not too clear. I fortunately made it into the B.tech basketball team and we have a match tomorrow.. hope we do well. Also the chess engine is playing on FICS pretty well. I haven't got a registered computer account , so it plays on a guest account.

Watching ..

Watching the computer beat other humans is eye candy.. except when the opponent is yourself...

Jumping horses.

The whole day was spent in testing, fiddling and playing with the chess engine. I decided to call it BlueFlash. I was able to remove some of its problems but there are still some issues which remain unresolved. It played some games on FICS (unrated) and it did win some of them... mostly by the opponent forfeiting on time.. but it did play well. I right now am collecting some mate in two/ three move puzzles which I may use in the demonstration. I also applied for a computer account on FICS ( I hope I get one).

Frankenstein

"It was on a dreary night of November, that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs."

So today, I lent a brain (pronounced as alpha beta pruning) to my creation (also better known as a chess engine) and it played its very first game against me. To my surprise it was actually beating me. I didn't like it so I quit the game halfway and went to tell Rahul what had just happened. Rahul, suggested that I match it up with crafty. I took that suggestion and ,as expected , crafty won. But I'm pretty happy that v1.0 of the chess engine is almost out. I am right now thinking of a good name to give it. BTW Frankenstein is out of question ;-)

The project gets a tiny brain.

I made a static evaluation function for the program, and now it doesn't play randomly.. it now plays stupidly.. Which is progress ( I guess).

The random chess engine.

We had class in the morning ... we bunked the last two hours but some suckers stayed back .. dunno why ..and we lost our attendance. I went to play Basketball in the evening.. After coming back, I started working on my project and I was able to make it play a random game of chess. I could also interface the chess engine to XBoard. The chess engine also played an extremely poor game against crafy on FICS (and lost, obviously). I guess I will start working on the thinking part now.

Work and play

I had class in the morning and in the afternoon (as usual). I came back and started debugging the move generator. I removed some of the bugs but I still am not getting the right result for the position:

r3k2r/p1ppqpb1/bn2pnp1/3PN3/1p2P3/2N2Q1p/PPPBBPPP/R3K2R w KQkq -

perft(1) is correct, but above depth 1 I'm getting incorrect results.

I and Anshul went to play basketball in the evening and after that we all went to Pizza hut.

I returned and have implemented the setBoard function which takes in a FEN
string and sets up the board according to it.

I should probably stop worrying too much about the bad perft results and start working on the other parts of the project, or maybe I should just go to sleep.

Perft debugging.

I said yesterday that the move generator was complete. Well, not quite. I wrote the perft test, for move generation,today, and found a lot of bugs. Right now I'm testing the perft values for other test positions so that I can remove the bugs. Really frustrating.

Project progress

Fortunately the project has picked up some pace in the past few days. I completed the move generator for the chess engine today. Which is almost one third of the work done. The other two third being the brute force alpha beta search and the static evaluation function. I am now planning to also design a java based GUI for the chess engine so that players can play the game online through a web based interface. If I am able to accomplish that, it would make for a good presentation.

A bit of work ..

My project ( a chess engine) which had been lagging for a while has finally taken off.. I did a bit of work on it. Although it is far from over..I should be able to get the move generator working before the end of this week, which means I will have a random chess engine. The search and evaluate part should take a bit more time. I was also planning to make a web interface for it (using java). It would be much cooler and I think the teachers would prefer that rather than just the command line.

The finals

We had class whole day.. I slept for most part of that. In the evening we had the basketball finals with IT. We played okay but lost 18-38. I was guarding Pylee, it was tough (he is quite tall) but I did my best. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the coordination right. Anyway ..life goes on..

The basketball match

We had a strike again today, so there was no class in the morning ( like the past few days ).
We had a basketball match with Mech in the evening. It was a really hard fought match. In the first quarter we were down 7-0. I scored 3 baskets after that and got our team close to their score. The match was too close for comfort. At the end of each quarter the scores were level. In fact we had 3 overtimes. In the first overtime the mech guys had a lead of 5 points. I scored a 3 pointer and then Diaz scored another 2 so we were level again. In the end we won the close fought battle by just 3 points. It was one helluva match, with all the crowd support and the resistance given by the opposite team. For us it was a real team effort, with each guy pitching in. The positives were that we never gave up at any point in the match. The only con was that, we could have converted a few more free throws. At the end of the day... I'm a happy man.

Another day...

Like the past 4-5 days we had a strike today also so there was no class. Which meant that we got to play age of empires again..I did a bit of work for my project.
We had a basketball match today..Electronics versus Safety. EC lost a match which they could have won.. My match is tomorrow with Mechanical. I hope that goes off well.

Long time

Well it has been ages since I wrote something.. I returned from Delhi around a week ago, a week were there were more strikes than classes.
I attended a project management symposium in Model Engineering college yesterday (in hopes that it will help me in my forthcoming project, which is going at a very slow pace ). We had a nice lunch buffet there and slept through the latter half of the symposium.
These days I am playing a bit of basketball in the evenings, which should help me decrease my increased waistline.
Today was wasted in playing age of empires on the LAN.

Does your car have enough personality? Can it do the jig?

Does your car have enough personality? Can it do the jig?: Really nice robo-car dance.. reminded me of the cartoon transformers ;)

2005: Happy new year

errr.. Nothing creative coming to my head right now.. I guess "Happy new year" should be enough, rather than doing recollections of what I have been doing in 2004 (the archives are there for that)

Number 20

Happy birthday to me.. I turned 20 and am no longer a teenager (who cares)..Morning I had my friends wishing me (some did forget about it.. and haven't calleda yet). In the evening me and my friends went to eat out. Had a nice time and got to click some photos with the new nikkon coolpix digi cam.

Tsunami hit India and other parts of South East Asia. Many people lost their lives and their homes. Hope their souls rest in peace and may god help those who survived this tragedy.

My first day.. in Delhi

I reached Delhi yesterday, the train journey was pretty boring. In fact the Train was delayed for 4 hours ( to add to the boredom ). Today, I went to Gurgaon with Mom, Dad and my brother. It is 40Km from my home place and I got to drive, so that was nice. We went to one of the malls to have lunch. The food was good and the place was designed with a retro North India touch. For example the place had an Auto Rickshaw inside the restaurant (granted, that autos can be seen everywhere in India,but this one was the kind which you see here.) My brother had a new nikkon camera so he took some snaps. We came back around 7:00 in the evening. Everyone else was very tired, but I went to see my other old school friends. It was a nice busy day.

Leaving for Delhi.

I have Christmas break and I'm leaving for Delhi today. I'm going alone.. (as rest of the guys have already left) the two day train journey promises to be a big bore (as always). I have packed everything.. and nothing left to do..

Microprocessor lab over

Today I had my Microprocessor lab. Although I was a bit apprehensive, the lab exam went on pretty smoothly. I got a comparatively easy question ( To generate two square waves depending on a mode bit 90° and 180° out of phase). Others were not as lucky as me.
One truth about lab exams is that, they are 70% luck and 30% hard work.
Well, it is a big relief that all my exams are officialy over now. I'm leaving for Delhi tomorrow. I hope I have some fun there. I'm really looking forward to driving the car and meeting my friends.