Stuart Spence Blog

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


Sat 27 May 2023

Goodbye MongoDB

Posted by Stuart Spence in ChessCraft   

After years of strange problems and bad performance with MongoDB, this week I successfully migrated chesscraft.ca to PostgreSQL. This took lots of preparations, went smoothly, and is performing great, so I thought I'd write about it. Writing here is cathartic. Also, others might find it useful.

Performance

Look what …

Read more...





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 …

Read more...




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 …

Read more...