Experimental Projects
Stellarmap Chess
A simple online chess board which allows you to play against someone else over the internet.
This is primarily an experiment in using javascript and a central hub for sending messages between two browsers. The basic board functions ok and seems fairly reliable but the clocks don't work correctly and needs more work...
To play, enter a name, the colour you wish to play with and click "New Game". Then ask your opponent to go to chess.stellarmap.com and click on the link to the game you named.
Recipes
Much to my satisfaction, my wife is a keen cook and keeps several reams of recipes in a collection of binders that are slowly taking over the house. So, as a fully paid up geek I've knocked up a simple website for her to record, list, search and rate recipes - of course there are a number of these out there, but this one is "hers".
There's also a recipe tag-cloud which I think is quite interesting - right now you can see that her preference is for "quick", "easy", "chicken", "family meals" - guess that tells me what to expect for dinner tonight!
Photograph Colour Isolator
Bad technology for the web... Java Applets! Bbrrrr....
Ok, they have their uses; such as when you want to do some complicated stuff on the client, but it really is clunky technology which we'd be better off avoiding. Anyway, here's one which tries to do colour isolation in pictures (if you can make it work!).
My Dots
An interesting program on the BBC some time back discussed how children's ability at basic maths can be estimated using a quick fire "count the dots" game. The idea is to quickly guess which coloured dots appears most frequently and the better you do, the better you're likely to be at maths.
I have no idea if this game works or is complete nonsense but ho-humm... An experiment in client side XSLT!