Making a Walking Stick

Louise and I went for a little walk around Hinton Ampner, and whilst on our travels we saw a little stick on the floor. We took it to Devon, through the New Forest and all the way up to Jedburgh. It only seemed right to look after it, spruce it up (see what I did there) and make it look good.

Louise when we found the stick

In Devon, I removed the moss, the twigs and began smoothing it down by filing and sanding it down. Some of the harder or bigger knots I had to cut out with a whittling knife but nothing is better than whittle wood in the sun.

Whittled, Filed and Sanded Down

Next I gave it a little varnish with a clear satin wood varnish. Though apparently, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzlAEtQBd5M this chappy says I should have used an oil with a wool cloth for spreading.

Varnishing

Three coats later and we now have a walking stick. I wrapped some string around the top to make it a bit nicer to walk with and now here we have it.

A bit sad, but it looks nice and I'm proud of it.

Russia World Cup 2018 Simulator

With the World Cup upon us, this year being hosted in Russia I decided to take the hard work I did in making a football simulation engine: available here and discussed in this blog and put it to good use in a real life scenario.

What better way to test the module and see if it is anywhere near accurate then to simulate each result in the 2018 World Cup. At the same time I've been ironing out some issues and we are - at the time of writing - onto version 2.0.1 and the modules working a charm.

I have decided to host the nodeJS application on IBM Cloud, which gives 255MB free nodeJS deployment especially for this type of development work. Whilst it wouldn't be enough to handle Sky Sports Super 6 traffic, it should be enough for the numbers I'm expecting over the World Cup.

Bored of me talking, go try the simulator for yourself:
                   https://worldcup2018simulator.eu-gb.mybluemix.net/home.html (no longer available)

First pick your two teams (I've gone for Tunisia vs England) and click select teams.
Hint: If you don't pick any teams or only pick one, just click "select teams" and it'll randomly pick two teams. 

Select your team

This dynamically generates 11 selection boxes with each countries squad displayed in each box, ready to pick your team. You will also need to select your formation or it won't work!

pick your players

Not sure who to pick? Just click random select and it will pick a formation. This will fill in each position with either a Goalkeeper, a Defender, a Midfielder or a Forward depending on the formation and the players preferred position.
Hint: Not all player of a certain type will be put in their best position i.e. an RB in a CB position!

After you hit "Simulate Match" you'll see a screen with all the players selected and the positions they were put in. At which point you can either do a "Quick Match" which simulates the match with updates to the statistics or you can "Watch Match" which will give a graphical view.
Hint: Mobile Phones should be held in landscape mode

Ready to Play

Watch Match

Quick Match

Best of three has it. Tunisia will win 1 - 0.

Let's hope not

Let me know how you get on via email or comments below.