Blog

This week has been a fervent flurry of activity as I prepare for <a href="/its-all-change-again" target="_blank">starting my new job next week</a>. So, here's what I've been up to.<h3 id="chip-shop-new-design">Chip Shop new design</h3> The <a href="https://chipshopgame.com/" target="_blank">Chip Shop website</a> has the beginnings of a new design that is supposed to represent an 80s retro computer, well sort of, I'm sure you will get the point. The site is also now generally responsive, but u...

The financial sector is an industry ripe for technical disruption. It is well-financed, has many multifaceted requirements and the vast majority of us need its services on a regular basis. The last couple of years have created a plethora of startups and product offerings to service the financial sector and the financial needs of consumers. It even has its own buzzword, 'FinTech', to really prove it has arrived. Finovate is one of the pre-eminent events for the FinTech space and holds yearly ga...

My plan for 2015 was to spend another few months working on my various projects and then start looking for new full-time work opportunities. In the past month I made a few casual enquires to get an idea of what might be out there and ended up getting quite a few offers very quickly. Many of these I considered but weren&#39;t compelling or different enough (from past work roles) to be worth putting a hold on my own projects. Then came an offer that was unexpected and was too good an opportunit...

Quite a lot of small updates, tweaks and additions to the various Gregarious Mammal sites, here they are. ### Contribution blocks If you like what I am doing and the projects I am undertaking, you can contribute what you feel to the projects. At the moment I am taking PayPal and BitCoin. I want to add more payment options as soon as possible but there are few payment processors that support 'pay what you feel' models, they all require actual 'products'. You may also notice some Amazon referral...

After some polishing, planning and technical tweaking the text version of my work of fiction is now online. This introduction aims to set the ground for the two main sections of the story, before the end of the world and what happens next. Each section is comprised of several parts and each of these could be stories that branch off in the future. Enjoy reading what's there right now and there will be more to follow soon.

As part of my research in projects odtwe I have been reading some classics of utopian and dystopian fiction. Most recently I completed Jack London's The Iron Heel. Reading thorough the reviews on [GoodReads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/929783.The_Iron_Heel), you can likely see that this novel of capitalist dystopia surpassed by utopian ideals splits opinion. Published in 1908, it's considered to be the first 'dystopian novel' and is very much of its time. About 60% of the book is a Socialist vs Capitalist diatribe wrapped in a loose plot. Then...

Yesterday I came up with the most phenomenal idea of how to get my writing workflow, ideas for ODTWE and tech stack in ‘perfect’ combination. Well, in theory (unsurprisingly). My intention with the ODTWE project is to have the <a href="https://rubyonrails.org/" target="_blank">Ruby on Rails</a> site as a repository of the content, perhaps with the bidding and payment functionality added on top, though this is yet to be decided. I want to have each story available in a variety of media formats,_...

Continuing my reviews of research I have just finished the classic "[Kobold Guide to Board Game Design](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1936781042/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1936781042&linkCode=as2&tag=gregamamma-20&linkId=VDVDMXBCCS3P2NGS)<img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=gregamamma-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1936781042" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" width="1" />" and can highly recommend it as a good overview of board game design advice. It is a collection of essays more than an end-to-end guide, so some essays will hold more relevance with you than others. However I pic...

Last week I spent time on creating some of the common elements that can be found across all of the Gregarious Mammal sites, this includes:<ul><li>Creative Commons notice</li><li>Mailing List</li><li>Financially contributing to projects</li><li>Git and version information</li></ul> The first two are complete and live, hopefully you can see them to the left. The second two are still in progress. I also fixed some layout issues, but they are not all live yet. So far, those built have been built a...

Somehow I forgot to post this here... The Android version of <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gregariousmammal.com.answersagainsthumanity" target="_blank">Answers Against Humanity is available on Google Play</a> now. And already attracting lovers and haters. :)

I have completed the iOS version of Answers Against Humanity, it is currently in the App Store submission process, but I am thinking it might be rejected due to the content. In the meantime, if you have Xcode and developer knowledge, you can <a href="https://github.com/ChrisChinchilla/Answers-Against-Humanity" target="_blank">download the swift code here from Github</a>. I found the iOS development harder than the Android version, which has traditionally not been the case. My main stumbling b...

I am currently open to opportunities for full-time and part-time work. Ideally with an enterprising startup or with a larger agency or internal development team. I am keen to build my general programming skills in some of the new languages I have been learning recently. My years of experience organising user groups, training days and managing small developer teams also makes me suitable for Developer Evangelist or Documentation roles. # Why Me? Whilst I have been a programmer for many years,...

I added a set of new categories and related resources to the Lean Traveller site yesterday including [Communication](https://theleantraveller.com/communication), [travel](https://theleantraveller.com/travel) and some resources under [archiving](https://theleantraveller.com/archiving). I reorganised the category structure somewhat and updated my Scrivener project set up to reflect these changes and better move forward with new topics and those in progress. The site is still a bit messy whilst I figure out quite what the direction I want to take it is, appropriately, I'm running things in a Lean and Agile way. I spent...

After visiting the Tate Modern over Christmas and seeing these two images (I've forgotten the artist):   I came up with the idea of having illustrations accompanying the text in ODTWE. I'm not the best illustrator, but enjoy drawing and have been pondering on what form these illustrations could take and looking into inspiration for them. So today I took a trip to the monthly free day at [Leipzig's Museum of Modern Art](https://www.mdbk.de/) to get some ideas and inspiration. Here...

I spent Christmas undertaking some more general board game theory and computer history research, this has been helped by a slew of book bundles over the last month covering the topic. First I read [this post on Tuts+ covering Board Game Design](https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/how-to-learn-board-game-design-and-development--gamedev-11607). It was a good introductory read and the main points I took note of were the following. > You should also try writing rules for how character stats should be generated, or how certain card types should work. And > One of the most useful game pieces in...

I have started building the site for the "One Day the World Ended" project in Ruby on Rails and thus needed some designs. Here are my rough ones so far. I doubt you can really see this, but it shows a typographical heavy white text on a black background with fixed header and footer for navigation.   This is the crowdfunding toolbar when readers can vote and bid on the stories they want to read.

I guess most of its stylistic inspiration comes from Kurt Vonnegut and to a lesser extent surreal dark British comedy such as Douglas Adams. It is about the end of the world, but that isn't the point, it's just a vehicle. The fact that the world is ending isn't relevant, it's merely a surreal vehicle to explore elements of the human condition. Wow, that last sentence sounded pretentious! Dismissing this major and significant event is intentional and draws inspiration from a strange book that I...

I have just finished getting in place the basic structures behind the sites for my new projects and redeveloping my older sites accordingly. The main reason behind this was that in the next couple of months I want to start looking for work again and was conscious of topping up my programming and tech skills with a real project. However each project also had it's own requirements in a site and I wanted to investigate more ideal solutions for each one instead of just doing everything in Drupal l...

This update is more behind the scenes updates I'm afraid, I have been working on the product release and event cards, making very good progress. However I am currently using real names in the cards and I have no clearance for any of them, that will be a big task in the new year, but for now it's easier to just keep them private. Sorry, but the research has been a lot of fun, follow the twitter feed to see a few highlights. Some of the other issues I have been wrestling with this week: ## Expa...

2014 was quite a year, especially for technology and how it affects everyone. Here are some of my highlights, lowlights and observations on the year and how it maybe affected developers.

I love Drupal and end up undertaking most of my programming projects with it. I have been using it for so long that I find it far easier to push out projects with Drupal than with anything else, despite it's infamous learning curve. Whether you want to call Drupal a CMS (Content Management System), a CMF (Content Management Framework) or a CMSomething, the 'C' always stands for Content. Content is where Drupal shines and is what it's designed for.

Chip Shop has had quite a busy week and I have a few updates to tell you about. <h2>New Website Design</h2> I’ve redesigned the website slightly and there will be much more to follow, it’s something of an ‘evolving’ site. A lot of the design change are due to me keeping an eye on how the game will grow and progress over time. <h2>Amended Core Concepts</h2> Whilst working on the manual and some initial cards for the game I realised I had hit a bit of an issue with representing real world Histor...

I've had Lollipop (Android 5) on my phone for about ten days now, so it seemed like a good time to report back on my feelings and experiences with this new, 'material design' laden Operating System. I received Lollipop early and due to the nature of Google's rollout strategy I have probably received a version buggier than others, for example, my Nexus 7 is yet to update. It is rough around the edges, but lets take a dig around. ## Material Design Speaking of Lollipop's new design, I personall...

Just a small update, with a much larger one coming next week. I have updated and refined the [costs](/manual/costs) and [card](/manual/cards) concepts of the game. I have also started drafting a manual which ties together the game into a sort or logic and creating the system that I will use (and the public in the future) to create cards. All of that will be reported back on next week!

Along side getting the Chip Shop website online (needing a lot more work of course!) I have started defining the core game concepts, i.e. what you are aiming to do in the the game and what components will help you achieve this. I have also spent some time trawling through 80s US computer history pulling out products, personalities and events that will form the game cards. Read more on the <a href="https://chipshopgame.com/" target="_blank">Chip Shop website</a>. Next up:<ul><li>Sketching draf...

I have just rolled it the first incarnation of <a href="https://theleantraveller.com/" target="_blank">The Lean Traveller</a>, with the first of the topics we will be covering, '<a href="https://theleantraveller.com/money" target="_blank">Money</a>'. We have the beginnings of a theme and structure, but there's much more to come in the next month:<ul><li>Adding images</li><li>Ratings and Cost comparisons</li><li>More Content</li><li>Project Management workflow behind the scenes for handling conta...

Are you looking for smart answers to dumb questions? Then you might enjoy 'Answers Against Humanity', based on that 'award' winning game, Cards Against Humanity. Code is available on [iOS](https://github.com/ChrisChinchilla/Answers-Against-Humanity) and [Android](https://github.com/ChrisChinchilla/AnswersAgainstHumanity), but you'll only find it in the [Google Play Store](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=gregariousmammal.com.answersagainsthumanity) as Apple said it was: > Too dumb for their store....

Now I live in a non-english speaking country, not only am I far more understanding of non-english speakers in English speaking countries, but I am also more conscious of providing content in multiple languages. The first point is something I would like to revisit in a future post, but for now lets look at a new option for providing content in different languages. I met the team from [wovn.io](https://wovn.io) at TechCrunch Disrupt and whilst I know it's by far not the only option for proving translations, I am a...

With a variety of our projects we have been looking into methods of how to provide easy and open access to documents produced that most people could understand how to edit and contribute. Initially editable pages inside a CMS or Wiki seem like a good idea, but HTML is still unfamiliar to many. Whilst you may end up with quality content, depending on your CMS setup you often end up with messy HTML output that someone needs to tidy up after a contribution. Despite their flaws, Word processors a...

We have been hearing about Drupal 8 for quite a while now and it&rsquo;s sounding increasingly exciting and close. After DrupalCon Amsterdam I was keen to get my hands dirtier with Drupal 8 and try building a website with it. I decided to use a practical example as that&rsquo;s generally a better approach than messing around with a fake idea. I decided to try and use the redevelopment of my Wife&rsquo;s site, &ldquo;A Travelling Cook&rdquo;, as it is a simple site, so seemed like a good case...