Games / blogs
Might Requite
Might Requite is a simple online application built as an experiment in using Ruby on Rails.
It is a “crush” site that aims to unite people who perhaps have a secret attraction to each other, but cannot find an method of acting on this desire in an anonymous urban environment.
Users can sign up and enter in the email address of someone they are attracted to. If, at any time in the future, this person should also sign up and also enter in the email address of the first person, their mutual attraction is requited. They can discreetly send messages to each other, and perhaps meet up in the real world.
Otherwise, the initial request is left (confidentially) in the database and the attraction is sadly left unrequited.
Der Spiel
Der Spiel was a popular fantasy football game during the 2006 World Cup.
It took the usual fantasy football format but changed it for the tournament. Instead of putting players into specific positions and then gaining points when they score, users placed countries into their team, and gained points when their chosen countries scored (or retained clean sheets) during the tournament matches. As countries were knocked out in the later rounds, so users lost their players and the competition became a little more unpredictable.
The name is a deliberately comical take on the German vocabulary - it means “Fantasy competition prediction game”.
Phantasienkonkurrenzvoraussagenspiel
World Cup Hippo
World Cup Hippo was a successful football weblog with a surreal theme. At its core, it was a discussion area for all areas of the sport, although with a special interest in the World Cup finals in Germany 2006. But a humorous edge to its style and design might encourage casually browsing visitors to investigate further. The site was hugely popular during the tournament, and was even recommended on the BBC Sport website.
The site is a very simple blog, created using the WordPress application, with design embellishments to add to the humorous feel.
Most of the flexibility and added depth to the site was created for the sidebar navigation area. Here, there is space for live feeds of World Cup related news, and online advertising, and banners to promote other areas of the site, including games and a fantasy league.
La Mesangerie
My parents made the decision to buy a property in France and moved across to renovate it in 2004. They required a simple weblog to allow friends and family to keep up to date with their progress, and to record impressions and events in their new expatriate lives.
The site would be used mainly as a photo album, so a clear and simple design was used with Textpattern blogging software providing backend authoring and organisation. Of the many different blogging applications available, Textpattern is perhaps the easiest for non-technical users to work with.
The scope of the site was expanded by incorporating XML feeds to supply up-to-date weather and currency information.
Current projects
gaffr is the best way to analyse the beautiful game, share football opinions and collaborate on team selection. Know more...