Psychic Origami

Just upgraded the £5app site to include a blog. Pretty easy to throw together using Django. It’ll need some refining, but the site is proving to be a nice easy way to get familiar with Django.

Generic views (in particular the date views) helped a lot. Also managed to figure out the syndication framework some more. So now the rss feeds have proper pubDate fields and html text.

This update includes a fairly major refactoring of chrss’s chess engine. It should make it easier to add new features in the future.

Beyond that the only (noticeable) new feature is that you can now get the Forsyth-Edwards Notation (FEN) for a game. This is a standard format for describing the current state of a game and forms the start of an API for chrss - it would allow one (for example) to write a “widget” for viewing the state of a game.

For example the FEN for game 1 looks like:

r1bk1b2/ppp1q3/2np2Np/4p1nB/8/2N5/PPPP1PPP/R1BQ1RK1 b - - 0 11

You can access the FEN for a game by clicking on the “FEN” link at the bottom of each board.

In terms of an API I should next be tackling Portable Game Notation (PGN), which should also then allow one to import games into other chess programs.

With dConstruct just over a week away I’ve received my moo cards with plenty of time to spare.

All of the designs are from illustrations/paintings I’ve done, so at least they are nice and personal. I could have done with spending a bit more time in Photoshop before hand though, as the transition from screen to print is never quite as I’d like. I suspect also that as I was submitting non-photo images that I should maybe have kept the resolution a bit higher.

An assortment of sketches from my moleskine. In order - a sneaky sketch of my sister, several drawings from Istanbul (which I visited with a friend earlier in the year), a rough acrylic of Heather and a sketch of Lolita (Heather’s sister’s dog) from Barcelona:

Just a quick note. Chrss has now been moved to http://chrss.co.uk/. I’ve setup redirects from the old site on psychic origami, so it should just happen naturally. Thought I’d best just make note of it here though too (in case anyone was wondering).

After finding some more spare time fivepoundapp.com is now running on Django.

Features that can be seen include an rss feed for the next meetup and some microformats splashed around.

Beyond that the main reason for the move was to gain Django’s admin interface. Beats hacking html by hand any day. In the future it should also be very easy to add new features as we see fit.

This is my first use of Django and I’m quite liking it so far. There have been a couple of minor sticking points here and there, but I can’t wait for it to hit version 1.0 and for the book to finally be released.