One lovely program substitutes quite nicely for the bowls of stones and board in case of an impromtu match with a fellow enthusiast, one who doesn’t mind passing the single phone back and forth or scrunching up with you over its screen like a tiny little magnetic set. It is charmingly called simply, “Stones.”  Some critique it for a lack of a computer player such as GnuGo, but I find it one of the best of the bunch based on its look and feel which is different from all the other apps.  Stones provides virtual bowls out of which you drag your stones onto the board for each move, an  adaptation of spatial reasoning that shines on the unique environment that the iPhone and iPod touch represent.

There are advantages, flaws, and features to each different implementation. The look and feel of an app also count a great deal in the final judgment because this is a game one pursued in one’s leisure, and must therefore be enjoyable to study and gain mastery in.  I would like to review each in more depth, but the executive summary for those who have not been following the development of the App Store ecosystem and iPhone coding tools is good:  plenty of software exist doing a variety of different related tasks, providing an ample number of niche applications that can be solved by different software developers.  There’s plenty of good code out there to learn from, and lots of evolving implementation ideas out there happening in indie gaming generally and iPhone app development specifically.

Other board games in the App Store are also bringing good new implementation ideas that would fit well with Go on the iPhone.  There is an app called “Chess With Friends” by Newtoy, which uses turn-based play which is reminiscent of the Dragon Go Server and of course, iShudan. The interface takes a quick reading of your current game in progress and the current move on opening and includes a running counter of the “moves served” via the app.

The concept of a turn-based game has value seperate from other implementations because it is asynchronous, and well suited for situations where players are working from disparate time zones and may otherwise have difficulty synchronizing their schedules.  Turn-based play offers different challenges to a developer than real-time play does in making the app useful and easy to continue using over time.  Turn based games come with an increased risk of wasted play effort due to abandonment, but offers in exchange source material for critique and self-study.

One of the areas in which most of the existing apps lack in are in the way they treat the users’ data. In a game that is suitably responsible for large volumes of ever increasing data, the output and input of these tiny tools should function like UNIX pipes: chaining together small single-purpose utilities to create more complex, highly powerful yet concise statements that focus on desired results with a laser-like focus. The reason that “Web 2.0″ craftsmen are crazy excited about things like mash-ups and XML and so on is because it makes the glue of all of these distinct tools interoperable and Open in a way that transcends simple commercial interests.

If the rise of Linux (both server and desktop) and similar Open Source poster children such as Firefox and Apache to challenge well-funded commercial interests no less than Microsoft teaches us something, it is that there is some kernel of magic inside this idea of opening or sharing our data, our constructs of ideas in the bare language that they work on our behalf.

The iPhone Go software marketplace, then, mirrors that of the larger game development community: our games should give us our data, export it, allow import and permutation, and creative enhancement or contribution back whether for individual achievement or commercial gain.

Our kifu, or game records, belong to the players in a game, similar to the performance of a musical art, and the results of playing in the game engine should allow the exit, and ideally the importation, of this data in ways that allow enhancement and interoperability that benefits all programs in the noosphere.

Perhaps some of my lacking as a go student can be excused by my new life as a go programmer, as I have managed to find myself involved in porting or writing code for 3 distinct platforms for playing and learning Go. My XO laptop from the OLPC Foundation has arrived, and already I have begun customizing and learning the unique interface so that I can begin a go-related project on there. And I continue, however haltingly, to work on iShudan as a web application for the iPhone. I have some designs on a 1.0 release soon, so that people can download a fully functioning release and install to a local server for starting their own Go Dojo with other internet connected go players. However geeky I may be, writing code is certainly not my primary skill set, so this is all a series of rather ambitious projects where I am learning a lot and each new environment brings certain advantages and disadvantages.

I have joined the fledgling Seattle XO Users Group to obtain assistance and support in working on the XO, and I hope I might even be able to contribute some documentation back to the community as well.

The laptop is a marvel of engineering and design, but also fails to achieve its potential without the necessary software and processes to use it in place. The promise of the OLPC project overall is incredibly powerful, and I hope that this seeding of units out to developers in the general public will vitalize the effort, validate the current progress, and bring in much-needed new blood to this idea.

This post was composed and written from the XO, where I have installed and am using a modified version of Opera. This brings the ability to use tabs, and custom key mappings that allow browsing with the screen folded into book mode. The experience is quite extra-ordinary.

I have also had some great games on iShudan, and someone new has started a game there with me. I am playing with my dad and Sam on an almost daily basis.

Good night, and good luck.

PS.  Waiting patiently still for my OLPC.

I often find that I am working in the morning, and this is entitled “Go In The Morning” by the artist, Nicholas Rougier. I think the tatami mats and the sunlight bring a particular restfulness to the scene, and I often imagine myself sitting there at the board instead of working late into the wee hours of the morning on a laptop. If I were to be able to construct a dream world where I could spend time and abide for a while, I would love for this to be a room in my house, sunlight streaming in a window and falling down onto a problem I am working through in the quiet morning hours. A mug of tea is warming my left hand and a go stone is held between the tips of my fingers on my right hand. The house is quiet and still on an early weekend morning, and I am the only one awake yet.

Sigh. I’m going on vacation today, so mostly just continuing my games on iShudan at the Dojo for a few days. Reading, family time, and unplugging from work for the holiday week. Have a good holiday if you are celebrating one, and have a pleasant week anyway if you aren’t.

I played a game this week that could have used this reference from Sensei’s List: The Bulky Five. There is also this link to an interesting video that was mentioned on a computer Go mailing list I’m on, where the presenter is talking to a non-go playing computer science audience about Go, and one method of searching move trees for a Go-playing program.

Exploration exploitation in Go: UCT for Monte-Carlo Go, Silvain Gelly

Ciao!

I’ve just been busy. Very busy at that, both over the board playing my favorite game, as well as at several of my other side projects such as iShudan and the iPhone unlocking biz. In fact, I’ve had many more games over the board in the last week than any in recent memory due to my increased mobility. This comes at the cost of time for writing or studying software. Over the last week I enjoyed a best-of-three match with David York, a fireside game at HotWire with Adam, and at least 3 separate games with the newest person at work to learn the game, Benjamin. I think we had more, but they were interrupted before completion due to time. Unfortunately, my games at David’s Go Dojo have slowed considerably, as I have few moves per day lately, if any at all. I welcome anyone who prefers the slow pace of “Go-by-email” to register an account and start up a board or two with me here.

Most of my non-playing Go time has been spent learning something completely tangential to Go, programming PHP and learning the basics of Cocoa. I have watched all five of the video podcasts that Apple released to iPhone developers to help make sites Compliant, Optimized, and then Native. I have been putting thought into the design and roadmap, and I hope to have a wireframe mock up soon that I can post and share with others that explains my vision for the future of iShudan as a project. I can say that I have a lot of lofty goals currently, as I accomplish these milestones I will write about them further.

And did I mention that my Regular Job has been really busy too?

c’est la vie, c’est la guerre!

Some of my teaching games at work I lost because of moving too fast after a distraction, as I would lose the tempo of what was happening, and when I came back and tenuki‘d away from an important situation the student would promptly pounce without remorse on the now reversed situation. Counting liberties sometimes gives you a confidence you don’t deserve because the local situation has complexities that are not at first apparent.

This weekend I plan to have a mini-ranking blitz on KGS to see if my skills have improved of late, barring any late invitations to an in person game.

I hope to also start studying for my FCC Amateur Radio Technician Class license this next week and on my upcoming vacation. This is just a side project of mine, perhaps a work related hobby. I have precious little time left over for new hobbies, heaven knows, but I find I enjoy a steady diet of new and interesting technical material. I have been assured by one of my friends that the first level exam is pretty easy to pass once you have studied, particularly since they have dropped the Morse Code requirements. I have a book here on loan from the library, as well as some online resources to study next week, I think that may be really all I will need to prepare.

I will post some Go-related study materials this weekend, as well as a kifu from a 19×19 game on the Dojo. I hope your own projects and goals are proceeding apace, and that this note finds you well. Namaste’.

I unlocked 10 iPhones for $50 apiece in a single weeks time,

in order to earn the money to purchase her phone. I used freely available software downloadable from the internet and directions posted in a variety of forums, bulletin boards, and at popular weblogs. Most imortantly, I used the contributed and open code published by groups dedicated to unlocking the potential of the iPhone. I even earned enough extra to be able to send a donation to one of the groups who created this code, the iBrickr team.

I am not usually blessed with the funds to be able to purchase most of the handheld devices made these days, but I have thus far not been tempted by the available offerings either. Until the iPhone was announced, I didn’t consider myself in the “smartphone” market. I was sort of interested in one of Nintendo’s handheld units for a while on behalf of a few popular brain games marketed for adults, and aware generally of the Sony PSP (another fiasco of manufacturer vs paying customers which resulted in a tit-for-tat game if you will that I would suggest nobody won.)

I submit the following blog posting from TUAW with the other Steve, known by many simply as Woz. From the original article, comes the following excerpt:

L: So you’re in favor of the unlocking and jailbreaking for third-party applications?SW: From a business point of view, Apple owns what they have done. They have a right to lock it. But I am really for the unlockers, the rebels trying to make it free. I’d really like it to be open to new applications. I’d like to install some nice games. Why in the world can I not install a ringtone that I’ve made? How would that hurt AT&T’s network? Here is Steve Jobs sending letters to the record companies saying [they] should provide music that’s unprotected, but here he is taking the opposite approach with the iPhone. I don’t know to what extent AT&T is involved in the thinking and direction.

I also had a gander at this article with the provocative title, “So the iPhone Is Unlocked Again – Who Cares?” I believe it is somewhat obvious how I feel about the thing, but now you can ask my wife now that she owns the one phone that allows her to synch up with iTunes. She has gone from two devices to one, and everything else is icing on top. Thus she joins me in unlocking her device to retain the freedoms usually accorded to one who has paid a lot of money to own something, the right to modify it after the sale.

We have updates now on the wiki at the iShudan page, have a look at the issues reported and the organization pages. There are contributions to the running server code and a wonderful new mode running now and ready for packing that allows players using an iPhone to get an optimized view of the two smaller board sizes 9×9 and 13×13. I am committed to fixing the proper view for the full 19 square board soon and adding that to the main tree.

I still need a mailing list server or something like that.I have 6 iPhone developer movies from the ADC synched to my phone for watching later, over an hour of introductory material. At this point, I am commited to learning Cocoa and more PHP so I have some resources available for both of those.

I was mentioned in a recent AGA newsletter in response to a question about Go on a blackberry. Does anyone have one they want to work with and try modifying the existing code to work for it? It looks terrible and unusable from what I’ve seen on Adam’s old blackberry pearl, but I have no idea how to work with a device I don’t own. I can however provide some good starting points and experience thus far with the iPhone work.

namaste. I have big important work project tonight, wish me luck and maybe i will have more time to play a game this weekend after its over…

By a single point. Black 66, White 65.

We are already on to two more games in rapid succession. But I am grateful to have a new game record, and a new idea for iShudan: submitting game records to the GTL for analysis. Perhaps also a URL export that allows anonymous visitors and not just dojo members to view a game in progress… Long term games have the luxury of being well considered battles, and members of a dojo already have their email addresses in the database. The submission to the GTL for review could be made on behalf of both players and then the response is instantly useful for both people, all using the built in power of people volunteering on the Internet.

To do this would depend on us finding out how to re-implement the SGF export that was present in the original PHPGo. The URL export I’m thinking of is also similar to one of the main changes from PHPGo to Benjam‘s version, where the URL held both the player name, game name, and password. Less secure for sure, but on the other hand no registration necessary to view someone’s game as it is currently in the unified database.

Aiden is up from his nap, so we are going for a walk in the brisk October air.

Jon and his wife Jessica don’t have much time or money to spend on entertainment, but they both seem interested in the possibilities of such a balanced board game, with each other if nobody else, as well as the mental challenge offered. I would be pleased to play more with them some day in the future, perhaps after they get around to getting some Internets…

I am also excited as I have received my copy of the GoGod CD and I look forward to exploring it more in depth and writing up a review, I purchased it with the prize from my entry to the AGA quiz, $15 off the full price for initial subscription. As was likely the intent, it was necessary to supplement the certificate with my own money, but the reduced cost was good nonetheless in prompting the purchase. I just managed to make it under the deadline for expiration, October 1st.

I am a bit further now in the Bruce Wilcox software which reads more like a book, Contact Fights. I am feeling very happy with that purchase for sure, as I feel a much more calculated appoach now in fighting with enemies. I have yet to prove its improvement on my game, but look forward to completing the study materials and quizzes soon. The style is very understandable, and straighforward. I will take screenshots and offer an analysis in the near future for others who may be interested in it.

I am at a pause with my game with Sam, I have resolved that I would like to fully play out the game upon my board and review the game so far. I was laying it out on my home board to renew my rememberence of the game and immediately found a few moves that I would play differently, so I suspect that hindsight will reveal more as I finish replaying the game to date.

I have also now helped two people get set up to use third party applications on the iPhone by loading the Installer application, and unlocked one of those as well from AT&T, and I’m committed to helping someone at work do the same to his phone. I’m thinking I might just set some kind of standard fee to do this, since it takes quite a while and although it is straightforward when you know how, there are some significant pitfalls and some of the people who have an iPhone just want it converted over to be able to participate in the bleeding edge without risking their $400 gadget. All of the stories about the iPhone bricking update have caused FUD that many non-technical folks interpret as bad things for the iPhone hackers. So the wheel begins to turn…

While I was away in Indy for the week, I had considerable opportunity to use and test iShudan using only the iPhone via EDGE. This experience should be written up into what is basically a use-case for the program and some of my reflections on the experience. The overall data usage is low, as expected, and the experience was overall quite positive. We already have a useful tool! There are two important things however that need addressed, and this is stressed by the remote experience: Takeback is vital, due to how easy it is to make a mis-move, and the export to SGF features are sorely missed from previous iterations. Now with the single database structure in place, it may be difficult to spit out a properly formatted SGF file of the game as it is, which makes it harder to use in other contexts such as review or posting somewhere else, such as to the Go Teaching Ladder or a review by another stronger player.

I will devote more time to writing and coding this week for iShudan, as well as studying my favorite game.

We currently have about 5 people with different specific itches to scratch who are all listed as admins on the project home page. This is in order to facilitate subversion access to the code, and these are known, trusted associates of mine. Since the big “G” is hosting it, there are a variety of different methods for checking out a copy of the code for inspection that will be familiar to anyone who has used Subversion in the past. Personally, I use IntelliJ IDEA for checkouts and edits, I have a registered copy but there are free trials available.

One of the first updates was against a type of SQL injection attack, contributed by my very remote friend Sam. My buddy Adam has been working hard in the background on adding in support for the Ext Javascript Library. Matthew, a classmate from UW who is currently expatriated to somewhere in TN is working on helping me with the SQL-related portions of implementing a “request takeback” feature so that accidental moves (which I have found are common to a novel mobile interface such Apple’s multi-touch screen) or rash overplays can be erased from the game in progress.

Matt also has noted a particular limitation of the current design: all the games are kept in a single game database, instead of as a separate instance for each person’s game. This means there is an upper limit of people who can be online using iShudan at the same time, since each re-display of the board reads from this single DB. Matt estimates this limit optimistically at around one hundred connections. I cannot imagine this type of activity short of a Denial of Service attack.

Currently, I am troubleshooting a particular odd behavior that makes the reminder emails sometimes use a broken URL. The simple fix for my public installation (the Go Dojo) would be to create a symlink on the host where the dead end points. However, I find it confusing that this appears to be intermittent, and so I’m stepping through it in more detail since I’d rather solve this than just patch the problem.

I have also noticed that someone added code that will send emails if a game is idle for a period of time, but I have not seen this triggered yet, so there may be some flow error or it was never completely implemented. It seems like a reasonable feature, so I will look more at this When There Is Time.

I’d like to make a mailing list but it doesn’t appear that Google includes the necessary tools for this on their hosting site. I will look about for something else to fill that need, so that interested parties can talk generally about the code amongst themselves or listen in to the current dialogue.  I have received a few notes of interest on the project so far, and I’d like to continue encouraging other people to participate.

The next thing to do quickly is to get autodetection of the iPhone or iPod Touch working.  Then we can start doing some smart resizing of the view portal to the known size of MobileSafari on these screens. There’s a good thread with techniques on this here.

One very amusing thing I have done this week is roll a .app “package” for installing onto an iPhone. This is basically just a clickable bookmark which appears on the Springboard with a custom icon, and takes you to the main play page for iShudan. It is not necessary to run a full unlock of an iPhone to install the .app file; you just have to be able to copy this file onto the iPhone and then make a few modifications to the files to have it show up. Therefore it would be available to anyone who can run Nullriver’s Installer.app on their phone.

(Installer.app is the single MOST useful application I have found. This one “mod” for the iPhone enables a full package management system, similar to apt-get or yum. Anyone with an iPhone should try installing this at least once to take a look at what the homebrew iPhone scene is doing.)

This “app” isn’t a big deal, but it allows iShudan to superficially resemble a native iPhone application. Local techie Wil Shipley writes a great entry here about why Apple really ought to release some kind of dev kit and allow this type of work to continue.  Instead it appears they would rather than engage in a tit-for-tat war against the rest of the human race. Some people know Wil as one of the authors of Delicious Library, which is a great application for the Mac that is very popular and rather unique. This guy has purchased no less than 19 iPhones (!!!), and owns a few hundred thousand dollars worth of Apple stock. He’s not just another whiny random blogger asking for His Steveness to bend an ear and listen to the outcry against the “sweet” dev system currently authorized by Apple.

Much thanks to both the authors of iPhone Apper and OpenURL , as well as to the entire iPhone Dev Team and all of the people working to make this marvelous device more useful for everyone. “I honor the place where you and I come together.”

Originally uploaded by davidplaysgo:

I’m testing out some updates and methods of posting pictures directly to the blog from my iPhone using Flickr. And btw, if you haven’t seen the new Touch iPods revealed yesterday, there are now even more devices out there for aspiring Go players to use to play Go almost anywhere…. Check em out at the Apple site, and if you are interested, join my project to get a Go game recorder on the iPhone via the internet almost anywhere.

Ciao.