brainwagon

Milhouse utterly destroys kcheckers. This game is typical of the five I just played against it. [Event "KCheckers Game"] [Date "2009.04.29"] [Round "1"] [Black "*Master*"] [White "Milhouse"] [Result "0-1"] [GameType "21"] 1. 12-16 22-18 2. 8-12 24-19 3. 10-15 19×10 4. 7×14 25-22 5. 9-13 18×9 6. 5×14 23-19 7. 16×23 27×9 8. 12-16 26-23 [...]

I’m testing WSPR reception using some new hardware. It’ll return to active duty soon.

Project Blue Horizons is a group which is attempting an unmanned Trans-Atlantic balloon flight from the United States to Europe. They are estimating a launch around 0:00-3:00 UTC on the 30th of April and they are supposed to be sending telemetry on 40m. You can follow their updates on twitter. This will be PBH-10, you [...]

A while go, I posted a link to AA5CK’s website and his use of the iduino as a QRSS keyer. He used a little oscillator/buffer from Nightfire Engineering along with a home brew, single transistor amplifier. So, I ordered two. And built one. At $7, who could resist? It works, but it obviously isn’t very [...]

I decided to play a game against Chinook set on its intermediate level. It was lost before it even began. Fortman’s Basic Checkers lists 3. 16-19 … as the only viable move for Black, and the convincing way that Chinook took me apart is a pretty good ilustration that even with an 18 ply search, [...]

Oddly Chinook seemed to know the end was coming before Milhouse recognized it. But sure enough, Milhouse managed to navigate itself to a victory. [Event "Sparring Match"] [Date "2009-04-27"] [Black "Milhouse"] [White "Chinook (Amateur)"] [Site "Internet"] [Result "1-0"] 1. 12-16 22-17 2. 16-19 24×15 3. 11×18 23×14 4. 9×18 28-24 5. 8-11 26-23 6. 6-9 [...]

Well, I’ve mucked around a bit, and begun to add PDN (Portable Draughts Notation) logging to Milhouse. Here is a sparring match between the novice version of Chinook that you can play online versus Milhouse, running at around 15 ply search with a six piece endgame database. It seemed clear that the position was a [...]

I’m kind of old school. I tend to write a lot of programs with character, line oriented interfaces. Part of it is sort of an organized laziness: I’d rather spend my time working on “the real” part of the program. But sometimes, you realize that your program could be enhanced by a little nicer look. [...]

Well, I got move ordering implemented, and the performance on my two previous test cases seem much more comparable. And with this addition, milhouse is able to solve some fairly subtle problems, not just the toy one’s from Pike’s book of Checkers puzzles. For instance, consider this position: Red is to move and draw. Only [...]

So, I was doing some more testing this morning, and noticed an anomaly in my checkers program, Milhouse. Consider the following position: LOADED puzzle 177: Testing move ordering.. Color is set to red. White +——–+ | R – - R| |- – - – | | – - – -| |- – - – | [...]

I finally got around to totally ripping out the old implementation of transposition tables, and installing a new one based upon hints I read about on various web pages, mostly originating with some of the ideas for cache management that Ken Thompson implemented for his chess program Belle. The idea is to implement two caches, [...]

There, did I get your attention? So yesterday was a really warm day, the first of the new year really. According to weather.com, temperatures in Emeryville reached a high of 89 degrees. Pretty darned nice. In fact, actually hot. After work, I hopped into my car (around 6:30PM, well past the heat of the day) [...]

Here are some interesting kits, all designed to use the 1 Wire sensor bus. In theory, the Open Tracker can use these directly. Perhaps the barometric pressure sensor would be useful on my balloon project. Weather : Hobby Boards : Complete 1wire Solutions

Yep, I’m still working on my balloon project, and part of it is still scoping out the flight hardware. I found this library for interfacing a GPS to the Arduino, and it looks like it could be quite useful. TinyGPS « Arduiniana

So, I’ve spent a few hours over the last couple weeks to try to debug milhouse, my computer checkers program that I tinkered together over the last few years. It’s kind of maddening, because in so many ways it seems to work, but it has a number of rather maddening behaviors which can only be [...]