Stuart Spence Blog

Computer scientist and educator. Creator of ChessCraft. Senior scientific programmer at Environment Canada.

Sat 05 March 2022

Training Video Philosophy

Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog   

Most training videos are really bad. This is troublesome to me because I must constantly re-explain my philosophies and processes to colleagues or volunteers. This page aims to help.

Over the years I've made over a hundred training videos for public servants, high school and university students, workshops, and the …

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Sun 24 October 2021

Patronware

Posted by Stuart Spence in ChessCraft   

I like that the full ChessCraft game is free and ad-free, and yet it is monetized. It has been a challenge describing this monetization strategy succinctly. I wish there were a word for it. In this post I'll explore how words like "donationware", "freemium", and "nagware" aren't a good fit …

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Sat 17 April 2021

Oh, Stallman

Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog   

Richard Stallman may be a legend in the world of software, but he also has decades of history promoting a toxic environment in software communities. Due to this, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) has been pressured to kick out Stallman from the board of directors, which they did, though he …

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Tue 01 December 2020

Bazaar

Posted by Stuart Spence in ChessCraft   

So... I bought myself a ChessCraft mug. Is that vain?

I'm really happy with this awesome mug!

chesscraft mug

In case anyone else is interested, here's a link to the new online store: ChessCraft Bazaar. Good to note: these are printed individually by Zazzle so they are quite pricey, and I hardly …

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Fri 04 September 2020

Ode to the Public Servant

Posted by Stuart Spence in Blog   

The privately employed

May say they're annoyed

about public servant perks.

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What they fail to note

(and it's fair that they don't)

is that zombification lurks.

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Zombies are not happy,

humans need to be scrappy.

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Hold on to your fire,

stir the pots and aspire.

-

Are you a zombie?

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