Downtime

My buddy Sam had kindly given me an account on his Linux box to test GRAY MATTER. Sadly, yesterday, someone started pounding away at his bandwidth; he had to take his box offline. He’s still trying to diagnose and solve the problem.

In the meantime, I have no way to test GRAY MATTER (without scorching my testicles). If someone has a Linux box and wouldn’t mind giving me an account to test GRAY MATTER, I’d be most grateful.

Update 1: No one was pounding away at Sam’s bandwidth. Runaway GRAY MATTER processes were pounding away at his CPU and RAM. It was my own dumb fault. He discovered the problem and got his server back online. I’m sorry for the trouble, and thanks, Sam!

Update 2: Song has given me an account on his FreeBSD box as well. Thanks, Song!

Next Steps

GRAY MATTER finally plays a decent game, but she’s not quite ready to enter a tournament. To be tournament-worthy, she must:

• avoid stalemate and pursue checkmate,
• more intelligently allocate thinking time, and
• use an opening book.

Mailing List

I’ve created a GRAY MATTER NewsGroup. It allows you to follow changes to the code online or through email. It also allows you to post questions, comments, flames, and pornography.

History Heuristic

I’ve re-implemented the history heuristic. It shouldn’t interfere with MTD(f).

Automata

I haven’t had much time to work on GRAY MATTER. I’ve been working on this instead:

I’ve also codified what I humbly call Raj’s Law. For two sets, A and B:

A – B = A ∧ A ∧ B

I’ll get back to GRAY MATTER soon.

Dwandy

“It continues to amaze me. The same people who accept that their computers crash for no reason also accept that anything that their computers print is pure truth.”