It's time to face the truth

I've been running Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2 for a few days now on the laptop. I've got to say, it's pretty nice. The interface takes a little getting used to, but it's not so bad. I can't say it is actually "better" than any of the others. I don't like how the "favorites" work as much as in IE6, and I don't like the tabs as much as in Firefox, but I really like that IE finally has tabs. So at least it's something. It's been enough to keep me from switching back and forth lately. We'll see how it goes.

Now that my presentation is done, maybe I needed a little break. I've got to say, motivation wasn't that easy to find tonight. Still, I managed to fix the two major bugs in the engine that were causing illegal moves. I say major, but they were small things in reality. One of the bugs was that White's ability to castle queenside would be mistakenly set to false because I actually had Black's inability setting White's by mistake. The other was that the engine would try to make illegal enpassant captures. This happened because when it received a move from the gui, it was only checking that the pawn move was to the 4th rank, not where it's source was. So many pawn moves that dont get the distinction of being able to capture enpassant were able to. Not anymore! I might try to find another engine and have it play a long match against mine tonight or tomorrow when I'm away just to see if any more illegal moves come up in the countless games they'd be able to play. That would definitely be preferable to me sitting here playing game after game against it.

I've got a busy weekend ahead, and a lot to do. I may go play in the club tournament being held on Sunday (I think it's in Athol, and a bunch of clubs will be there competing against each other). We won last time I went, but I really haven't played much the last 2-3 weeks as I've been focusing on my project... so I'm sure that I'm a bit rusty. I'll have to evaluate tomorrow after seeing how much I can manage during the day. I don't think a lot, because as I mentioned, I won't have a lot of time. I have a chess game at 8am, I'm bowling with Adam at 11:30, I have to help my sister with a tree in the afternoon, possibly be at the bowling alley in Chicopee at around 5, then the chess club at 7 or 8. And somehow I need to write a paper and finish the engine? I lot of tomorrow I really can't cut out, but I may need to skip the Sunday event. It would probably be a foolish thing to do at this point. We'll see.

Enjoy your weekend.

Ed.