Exotherm - Time to learn Python

Two unrelated things happened recently:

1. My lab supervisor suggested that I learn Python
2. I started wanting to write a chess engine for the FICS

So the obvious thing to do is write the engine in Python.

I know there are tons of very strong computers on the FICS already, but as far as I can tell there are no active computers that play the "atomic" variant. In that chess variant, captures trigger an explosion that takes out all surrounding pieces (except pawns) and the capturing piece as well. Therefore, the amount of material on the board tends to go down fast, which I think should make computer analysis easier. Inspired by the "atomic" term, I'm going to name the engine Exotherm.

I've read a bit about Python before, but haven't written anything in it yet. So the first thing to do was get a Python 3 environment on my server so I have a place to run the bot. That appears to be working. Now I need to make a program that connects to the FICS. I successfully did that in the interactive prompt using the built-in, convenient telnet library.