Huo Chess is the world’s smallest open source chess program that is ideal for educational purposes.
The Java edition of Huo Chess has been released at GitHub.
This brings the total number of repositories at GitHub to four: HuoChessDV (C# .Net Core), huo-chess (C# .Net Framework), HuoChessQB64 (Quick Basic 64 bit) and the latest Huo-Chess-Java (Java).
Free Blogging Advice: Writing is hard. And easy. The goal of the Free Blogging Advice (FBA) series of short articles is to provide some free advice on… blogging! All you have to add is some time and effort. And love. Lots of love.
Now that we have decided to start writing (see previous episodes), we need to develop the story of our site.
Story: The narrative that describes the intent of your blog. The story will explain to the visitor why he or she is here, what they should expect to read and what the blog will offer them.
You need to publish the story in your About page. In that way you will establish the identity of your site for anyone to see.
But what should a story look like? First of all it needs to be simple. If you do not have it clear in your head then your readers will be confused as well (and most probably will not come back to you site).
Secondly, it needs to be emotional. Emotions is what drive the world around and you need to invest in the emotions of your readers to capture their interest.
Last but not least, your story needs to be a… story! What I mean by this is that you need to convey your message to your readers through an actual story, i.e. an anecdote, a tale that will have a hero, a problem that her or she needs to overcome, a climax and a resolution. This is easier said than done. But you need the story element in order to reach to your readers with a compelling and attractive way. Just stating what your site is about is not enough. If you just just wrote down the goal of your site like a corporate statement then it would look like a… corporate statement. You need more than that to engage with the visitor of your blog.
Stories captivated us when we were children. And still do. Everyone likes a good story. It is more probable to remember something that you heard in a story than something you just read.
As an example you can read the story of Harmonia Philosophica here. It is a short one, as a story for a site must be. And it tries to convey the message of this site, i.e. that being irrational and non-thinking is the best way to think.
Free Blogging Advice: Writing is hard. And easy. The goal of the Free Blogging Advice (FBA) series of short articles is to provide some free advice on… blogging! All you have to add is some time and effort. And love. Lots of love.
The world is split in two categories of people: Creators and consumers.
You chose to be the first. Good for you!
But now that you did, there comes the first big decision that you must make: What to write about?
There exist millions and millions of possible things that can be the subject of a good blog/ site. From philosophy to cooking, from military aviation up to jokes for atheism and religion. How do you choose?
The answer: You do not!
If you already have made up your mind to write (see Episode 1), it is most probable (almost certain actually) that you have already made that decision without knowing it!
Wanting to write is always accompanied by the urge to write about something specific. Do not try to analyze what will have the greatest potential for more readers, or what is more viral these days. Don’t lose time trying to figure out what subject is the most promising when it comes to attracting viewers in your site and do not spend time thinking what subject would be more amazing to show to your fiancé (or fiancée).
Creating content is all about you!
And your heart already knows what it loves.
Just stop thinking and listen to your self.
(I know what I like…)
This is your subject!
No matter how weird or niche this subject might be, the basic advantage is that it is what you like! And this makes it not only an excellent choice but also the only choice at hand! You can only sustain writing about what you really love. Anything else is just work. But with blogging you want to enjoy yourself! And what better way to do that than by writing about things you enjoy writing about? (Yes, this is a tautology and that is why it is true – read more Harmonia Philosophica about this)
And who knows…
You passion for what you love might one day convert that small blog into a multi-million dollar business.
(Although I would never recommend that, but we will speak more on that in another episode)
Free Blogging Advice: Writing is hard. And easy. The goal of the Free Blogging Advice (FBA) series of short articles is to provide some free advice on… blogging! All you have to add is some time and effort. And love. Lots of love.
FBA Episode 1: The beginning
How does every journey starts but with a first step? And how important that first step is cannot be exaggerated enough. Whether you do it or not will determine whether you will be called a writer or not. Whether or not you take it will determine if you will be a creator instead of just a consumer of creations.
So before everything else, one should do the obvious: Start writing!
It is as easy as it sounds. And exactly because of that, it is so difficult!
Many people dream of writing but never do. There exist a ton of excuses not to. It takes courage to overcome that first hurdle and doing so is solely on you. There is no magic pill, no magic recipe, no magic advice. If you cannot just open your computer and start writing then this series of articles is not for you. If you cannot open Word or any other writing application and start producing content then there is no need to discuss advice in good blogging and writing.
So that’s it.
If you have already started writing and you have content already created then you have successfully passed the first stage for successful blogging.
2021-02-14: Updated phrases the AI uses. Added more comments to make the code more readable and easier to configure new phrases.
Goal
The goal of Huo Writer is to be a program that thinks philosophically. By getting user input on a specific topic, it can generate phrases with deep philosphical meaning so as to trigger thoughts on the human user.
The goal of the article is to serve as a simple tutorial on how to build a program that can have a conversation with a human, for people with limited or no programming skills.
An Appendix describes how the program can be enhanced with neural network capabilities, by showing a totally primitive way of helping the program improve its responses based on human feedback.
Go directly at the end to get the code of the program.
It is easy in the sense that all you have to do in order to do it, is… do it! As in all things. There is no magic words to use, no secret key, no hidden doors to unlock. Simply open your computer and start programming. As simple as getting up in the morning and making coffee.
Of course, you must know how to make coffee.
That is the difficult part of programming. But do not worry. As in all other programming tutorials in our portal, we will try to keep it simple.
First of all, we will use the simplest high-level language for our tutorial, i.e. QBasic (and in particular, the 64-bit version which can run in any modern Operating System, QB64). BASIC is, as the name implies, basic. Very easy to learn. There are tons of resources in the Internet on the language; be sure to search for QB64 (QBasic 64 bit) mainly, so as to make sure you search for the right thing.
Secondly, the program itself is ultra-simple. The code is based on a very limited set of commands (mainly PRINT, IF, CASE, INPUT, RANDOMIZE) which you can easily learn. And even if you don’t you are able to understand what they do by reading this article!
Huo Writer on faith, problems, helping…
Yet and despite the above, the actual result is very good! The program actually does sound like a philosopher and writes deep stochastic phrases which will trouble you and invoke thoughts.
Look at the text below…
Never do faith supports us. Would faith exist without you? Ignorant men. Others create reality. Don’t you remember? Stop thinking. And you will see…
~ HUO Writer, 2020-09-01
It was written by the program when discussing about the tags faith, helping, problems. Taking into account how simple and ultra-light the program is, it is really good! Don’t you agree? (Note the small gramatical errors, these are still part of the problems still to be solved)
Is it Artificial Intelligence though?
Well, surely it wasn’t created on its own, so yes it is artificial. And it does include some very basic rules to randomly generate what it says. Last but not least, the result seems like it is intelligent, so that is the greatest argument in favor of answering yes to this question. After all, how to I know that you are not robot?
I. How the program works
The program works in the following simple steps:
Ask input from the user: The program needs from the user to enter some tags related to topic of discussion. For each tag, the gender (male, female, neutral, adjective, indifferent) and the number (plural, single, indifferent) must be defined. Note that some of the values are not exactly ‘correct’, for example the ‘adjective’ is not a gender. The values entered are then used by the program to properly formulate the phrases it will generate to speak with the human.
Generate the phrases to say, by not-fully randomly combining the tags provided by the user with specific words and phrases in the database of the program.
Simple huh?
Well, it is!
The most difficult part is to enter meaningful and cleverly selected words and phrases in the database so that the phrases generated by the program can sound as philosophical and meaningful. As in any other thing, the ‘Garbage in-Garbage out’ principle stands strong.
II. Step 1: Get user input
Getting user input is as simple as using the… INPUT command in QBasic and ask from the user the input.
Just see the code below on how the program asks from that input.
PRINT "What is our theme of discussion to-day?"
PRINT ""
INPUT "Number of tags: ", tagsNo
PRINT "Thank you"
SLEEP 2
PRINT "": PRINT "Now…": PRINT ""
SLEEP 2
PRINT "Please enter related tags one by one…"
SLEEP 2
PRINT "One word only per tag please. All in small letters."
PRINT "Enter Bye or just press Enter to exit."
'Read related tags for the subject of discussion
FOR I = 1 TO tagsNo
PRINT ""
INPUT "Enter Tag: ", Tags$(I, 1)
IF Tags$(I, 1) = "Bye" OR Tags$(I, 1) = "" THEN END
TagGender:
INPUT "ENTER THE TAG'S GENDER (m, f, n, a, i) : ", Tags$(I, 2)
IF Tags$(I, 2) <> "m" AND Tags$(I, 2) <> "f" AND Tags$(I, 2) <> "n" AND Tags$(I, 2) <> "a" AND Tags$(I, 2) <> "i" THEN GOTO TagGender
TagNumber:
INPUT "ENTER THE NUMBER OF THE TAG (s, p, i) : ", Tags$(I, 3)
IF Tags$(I, 3) <> "s" AND Tags$(I, 3) <> "p" AND Tags$(I, 3) <> "i" THEN GOTO TagNumber
NEXT I
Initially the program asks for the number of the tags to be entered and then, for each tag (hence the FOR… NEXT loop), the user is asked to enter the parameters (gender, number) of the tag.
As you can see, all the tags entered as placed inside the Tags$ table. This table will be then used to generate the phrases.
The tag itself is stored in dimension 1 of the table, while the parameters of the tag are stored in the dimensions 2 and 3 of the table.
Tags table dimentions
Dimension 1: The tag itself
Dimension 2: This stores the gender
Dimension 3: This stores the number
These parameters will be used later on in validation rules necessary for the correct creation of the phrases.
III. Step 2: Generating the phrases
Based on the input of the user, the program combines the tags with specific phrases or words in the database of the program.
The program generates the following phrases:
Phrase H.1: The first phrase, combining phrases from tables H1$, H2$, one of the tags and a phrase from table H3$.
Phrase H.2: The second phrase, combining a phrase from table H4$, one of the tags and a phrase from table H5$.
Intermediate phrase 1: A connecting phrase, which includes a phrase from table I1$.
Phrase K: The third phrase, combining phrases from tables K1$, K2$ and K3$.
Intermediate phrase 2: A connecting phrase, which includes a phrase from table I2$.
Terminating phrase: The closing phrase, which includes a phrase from table T$.
As mentioned, the elements used for each phrase as documented in the program’s database. By ‘database’ we do not refer to a relational database, but to tables (e.g. tables H1$, H2$, H3$ used for the first phrase) which are populated with data with the code of the program.
As you can see, as with tags, dimensions 2 and 3 are used to store the gender and the number of the elements.
The tables documented above are for the creation of the K Phrase (i.e. the third phrase). The program randomly selects an element from each table and finally creates the phrase to show to the use.
The phrases are generated, by generating random number and then using these numbers to get the relevant entries from the tables defined above.
An example of the code used to get random numbers and create the phrases (the example is from Phrase K) is depicted below.
'----------------------
'Generate third phrase
'----------------------
PhraseK:
RANDOMIZE TIMER
A = INT(RND * 9) + 1: B = INT(RND * 7) + 1: C = INT(RND * 9) + 1
IF C = A THEN GOTO PhraseK
'If number is not equal (plural with plural, single with single) or the number of the next element is not indifferent, then generate phrase again
IF K1$(A, 3) <> K2$(B, 3) AND K2$(B, 3) <> "i" THEN GOTO PhraseK
As said before, the code is simple. In most cases it is. It is the idea that could be complex either in percieving it, implementing it or both. (or selling it I would say, but that is part of another bigger discussion)
Phrases generation rules
There are some basic validation rules applied for the phrases generation. As the program progresses, these rules will be amended and improved.
One rule for example is the following: the number of an element must match with the number of the tag combined with that element. The code below does exactly that thing: If the number (i.e. the 3rd dimension) of the first and the second element do not match, then the program is instructed to go back and generate the phrase again.
IF K1$(A, 3) <> K2$(B, 3) AND K2$(B, 3) <> "i" THEN GOTO PhraseK
If the validation fails, then the program generates a new phrase.
Printing the phrase
After the phrases are generated, they are printied on the screen. With what else than the… PRINT command.
Voila!
A philospher at your own hands!
APPENDIX I – Neural Network
Neural networks are all about having a program learn from its mistakes. Usually this happens with feedback from its user, while the most advanced programs have the ability to learn also on their own. I attempted to start implementing a primitive type of neural network capability.
If the user activates the Learning Mode, the program asks for input after each phrase it produces. If the input is negative (i.e. the user says that he did not like the phrase generated) then the program stores the combination in a table storing ‘bad’ combinations with the code below.
PRINT "": PRINT "Was this sentence a good one? (y/n)"
e$ = ""
DO
DO
hyn$ = INKEY$
LOOP WHILE hyn$ = ""
SELECT CASE hyn$
CASE "y", "Y"
e$ = ""
CASE "n", "N"
BadCombinationsK(Kcounter, 1) = A
BadCombinationsK(Kcounter, 2) = B
BadCombinationsK(Kcounter, 3) = C
CASE ELSE
e$ = "A"
END SELECT
LOOP WHILE e$ <> ""
PRINT "Thank you for your input.": PRINT ""
The next time the program speaks with the user, the bad combinations are not used in the phrase generation. In that sense, the program learns from the human input. One can visualize the nodes and their combinations are human brain neurons – the neurons which are not used often are gradually disabled while the neurons which are used often are strengthened. Now the program only has the capability to totally ‘delete’ one set of nodes from the possible responses, but future enhancements could see it behave in a more elaborate way.
An example of the code doing that is depicted below.
'Neural network: Check if the combination selected was discarded by human previously. If yes, generate a different one!
FOR I = 1 TO Kcounter
IF BadCombinationsK(I, 1) = A AND BadCombinationsK(I, 2) = B AND BadCombinationsK(I, 3) = C THEN GOTO PhraseK
NEXT I
As mentioned above, this is the simplest form of a neural network: The program ‘learns’ from human interaction and adjusts the ‘nodes’ (elements used for the phrases) inside its ‘brain’ (tables holding the elements used for the phrases) accordingly.
Note that this works only inside the same instance of the program. Whenever you restart the program the ‘bad nodes’ are forgotten, since they are not stored permanently anywhere.
Improvements that are coming soon
Make the learning not only disable nodes (0 or 1), but also decrease the likelihood of a node being used (with probability values between 0 and 1).
Store what the program has learned into a txt file, so that the next time you execute it, it still ‘remembers’ what it has learnt.
APPENDIX II – The source code
You can click at the link below to get the source code.
Simply copy-paste it into a QBasic editor and execute.
APPENDIX III – How to configure the program
The program is easy to configure. And that is why it is so fun! I have added phrases which are related to my personality and the way I am thinking. You can alter them to reflect yours!
You can also add new elements for the phrases! Simple go and add new elements in the relative tables. When doing that, rememeber to also define the gender and number of the element.
After having added the new element, do not forget to increase the relative constant which defines the size of the table! The constants defining the size of the elements’ tables can be found in the beginning of the program.
