I used to be an administrator at a MUD (Multi-User Dungeon) called Fox MUD. It's a network server program written in C that allows many people to log in and play a Role Playing Game (RPG) in text mode. Part Zork, part Everquest, it is probably one of the most addictive things invented on the Internet next to the World Wide Web. I gave up admining at Fox because it was affecting my school-work, and it faded away due to low popularity and a waning administration.
Another admin and I have started looking for our old backups of the MUD to perhaps bring it online again, just as a hobby/project. I know there were one or two things I wanted to try my hand at, such as interprocess communication, and exec'ing shells off the game to start child programs, funneling the input/output streams to the game....
I found a backup from 2002, but I'm working on getting one more recent than that. Wish me luck.

A news-worthy footnote: Buried within a news article regarding Israelite preparation for pulling out of the Gaza Strip, there was a secondary news item. It said that an army investigative team has recommended that Israel change its policy of demolishing the homes of the families of suicide bombers, because it believes that this action is only inciting them to more violence. Um.... duh?! It took an investigative team to figure out that class punishment only incites more rebellion? Granted, the shitty thing about suicide bombers is that you can't punish the assholes - they're already dead. But punishing their families won't bring them over to your way of thinking. That was just an assinine policy, my friends. The only way to punish suicide bombers is to ensure that they are not treated as heroes. To make them a martyr against viewed evil is to incite more to join their ranks. Turning the other cheek is not an act of cowardice, but the act of ignoring the actions of others who do not qualify for your consideration. The war of words is sometimes more powerful than the war of guns. I wish Ghandi were here.
The article said that Israel has destroyed 666 homes of Palestinian families, and that now they're going to stop. Well, here come the biblical prophets!!! Anyone who doesn't recognize this number from the Revelation of John? Does anyone think they stopped at this number on purpose? Perhaps some journalist is playing a joke on us? I'm almost tempted to write Sharon a letter asking that he destroy just one more house so that the number won't hang over their heads for the world to over-analyze.

I'm working on a second ASP.NET application (The first one is going to be my Pictures page redacted - Im moving the slideshow application into a SQL database backend with a DataGrid.. )
This second application grew out of Tic Tac Toe, but will eventually be a chess application - I'm going to create a centralized repository for the ultimate chess repertoire. Using the power of the Internet, I will offer a server-end repertoire that ppl can play against, and enter new moves to...with commentary, etc. It will be my gift to the Internet (heheh). Anyways, you can watch the application unfold at this link. Right now its a simple Connect-4 app, because I was working on analyzing diagonals.

Does stuff like this make you jealous? Why must we be stuck with average intellect? Why can we not key into what creates these abnormalities and train our own minds to follow after them? A 3-year old in Mensa - He is able to process information so quickly that in a few years, he'll likely have more knowledge than any of us reading this page... I've always felt competitive about the ability to quickly gain knowledge. It was the one thing that I could always delight in. Even for its own sake, with no applicability, knowledge has always been the one thing that I lust after, which is why I enjoy the ever-changing field of Information Technology. I'm so jealous of this kid. I can only hope that he uses his abilities to better mankind. Openly, I admit that bit of ego that I believe that I would use such skill more wisely.
Feelings of mortality and age overwhelm me. Reading about such a thing can almost bring me to feelings of depression, knowing that I will never be able to match the capabilities of this boy. Instead, I find myself less and less capable each day, having already peaked and begun the downward slide that will end in senility. Father Time, though art the cruelest of the gods.

Cure for Cancer is AIDS: Allow me to bring to your attention this article in Wired News: Altered HIV Attacks Mice Tumors - It seems scientists have genetically altered the deadly AIDS-causing HIV to attack metastisized melanoma cells in mice. This is some innovative stuff! Using the mechanisms of one deadly disease to attack another is an awesome prospect. I'm glad that the scientists who are working on this stuff are so innovative. Using one enemy to destroy another is something we're used to seeing in the political arena, but applying it to biology. Genetic research is really paying off!

My first ASP.NET Application: Well, GoDaddy offers SQL and ASP.NET, so I started playing with it last night - my first ASP.NET application is up here and will evolve as I do. Right now it connects to a database, offers a pull down box, and changes the image based on which one you choose. I haven't thought of what I want to do with this, but suggestions are welcome, just email me.
The only problem with developing the ASP.NET app is that I can't access the SQL server from outside of where the server is located, so I can't use the visual development tool in Visual Studio .NET to define the Connection object. For some reason, it won't let you set up a Connection object with the designer unless it can validate the connection. VStudio needs to be smarter and allow you to use the Connection designer with data that it can't verify. Tsk, oh well. I just hand-coded the connection object and it's working fine.

For all you Chess-heads out there - Mike's List brought up a link to a visual chess game on the web. It shows lines of influence as force waves on the board, and also graphically represents its own thinking as it evaluates moves. It's a neat project, and artistically pleasing. You should go check it out for yourself.... Since it's a Java Applet, its strength will likely be different depending on what computer you play on, but it was wise enough to grab a piece from me in about 15 moves even on this old clunker I'm using (1.5Ghz PIII) so the algorithms are reasonably smart. Of course, I'm no deep thinker, and am not well versed in many opening lines...so I'm probably easy pickings.

Well, looks like my transition is complete. I'll be making changes to some of the pages in the site, but not much will change on the main (blog) page. I may try my hand at some ASP.NET now that I have access to this, and that may change my slideshow page, and my Chess Games page. It may make for more notes pages, as well, with topics and comments stored in a database and with easy access for me to add stuff that I learn (like 802.11n should be added to my wireless notes page [see left] but I haven't had the motivation.)
Some work remains on getting Tripod pages out of Google and these pages into Google. I don't own the rgautier.tripod.com sub-domain [duh!] so I can't post a 301 permanent redirect on it, and of course Tripod won't be doing that anytime soon. Hopefully Google re-walks my site under the new domain name. I added links on all the old pages to here (thank god for templated pages, eh?), so Google might pick up on the recurring link and go ahead and walk me...one can only hope.

Watch this space: I am moving off of Tripod within the next 2 months. While they've been stable over the years, their support of certain functionality (such as .htaccess support and server side scripting) is overly limited. I have found a better deal at another web hosting company and will be redirecting traffic to http://www.richgautier.com once I have transitioned my code to their servers. The web host I have chosen is http://www.godaddy.com - a <$8/month deal with 2GB of storage space, ASP.NET support, SQL Server and 10GB of data transfer a month. Considering what Tripod charges, this is a hell of a deal. So, be on the lookout for the change soon.

PGN Errors and the state of Chess Software: I play Chess at Pogo.com and at the Free Internet Chess Server. Both of these services will email your chess games to you, in PGN format, so that you can create yourself a nice chess history. I then use Crafty to analyze my games, and try to learn from my mistakes (not necessarily successfully). Well, on my web page, I had added the Crafty analysis output of these games, but it was taking up too much space. So, I have moved to a Java applet that allows for commented PGN files to be posted. I got this applet, and its source code at www.mychess.com.
At first, the applet didn't understand the PGN output from Crafty because Crafty inserted comments before move 1, and the applet kept trying to add the comments to a non-existent move in the game. Then, it turns out that Crafty was having problems with the PGN files from Pogo - pawn promotions were annotated in the PGN, but without the necessary = sign in the string (e.g. c1Q, instead of the proper c1=Q). Crafty couldn't understand what it meant, and would create phantom games for each of the moves following the promotion.
So, I manually did a search and replace to fix the PGN file I had, and also modified my VBScript that scours my email so that it would automatically fix these problems when it pulls out the games.
Well, FICS is where I play more recently, and its PGN output seemed to be cleaner than Pogo's. So I downloaded those, and began the analysis of those games. Well, pawn promotions were handled fine, but it seemed that some of the games were causing problems and I was getting more phantom games in the output from Crafty. I went back and manually checked the files, and it appears that in some instances, there is a bug in FICS' code with their line-wrapping code. When the line wrap breaks in the middle of a move (after the first ply), it repeats a previous move, and creates a file that has a 3-ply move in it (the 2 ply it should and the errant ghost move).
This is getting a little exasperating, since it prevents me from easily posting my more recent games on my site. Although, I have implemented the Java PGN viewer and an older set of games that I had from Pogo. (see links on left). I modified the PGN viewer to ignore the errant comments, and also to automatically flip the board to see it from my own perspective when playing the game.