I’ve been running a free Sudoku game for a couple of years at www.grantgibson.co.uk/sudoku. It’s available to play in desktop and mobile formats as well as on widget sites like Netvibes.com.
The Flash part is really my area of expertise, but I also had to hack together a PHP script to generate the puzzles. I found a script that does the right sort of thing, and modified it to output in my required format. However, over the years I’ve had a few people complain that it produces puzzles with multiple solutions (and then only accepts one of those solutions as the ‘correct’ answer).
I don’t know enough mathematics or PHP to correct the problem, so I’m putting out an appeal. If anyone wants to have a go at correcting the problem — or rewriting the script — please do so. You’ll be helping me and thousands of other Sudoku fans around the world.
Requirements
Input parameters (via GET URL):
- Difficulty [currently 1, 2 or 3, but can be tweaked if necessary]
- Random [currently a six digit integer, but can be tweaked if necessary]
Output format (plain text):
puzzle=<TITLE>
Daily Random Sudoku: Medium
<AUTHOR>
Your Name Here
<COPYRIGHT>
Your Name Here and Grant Gibson
<DIFFICULTY>
2
<GRID>
.ooo..o..
o.o..oooo
o.o…ooo
o.o..oooo
oo.ooo.oo
oooo..o.o
ooo…o.o
oooo..o.o
..o..ooo.
<ANSWER>
528631974
163974285
497285631
235716849
671849352
984352716
859123467
312467598
746598123
… where answer is the unique grid solution, and grid represents the intial state of the puzzle - dot for blank, o for a displayed number.
I’ve attached the Current Grid Script here. If you’d like to suggest any revisions, or post up an alternative version of the code please do so — either as a comment here, or directly to me by email. See my contact page for email details.
Thanks, and good luck!
Today sees the launch of s1’s first five ‘local’ sites, serving individual communities in Scotland.
We hope to offer these sites to many more communities in future, but for now we’re focussing our attention on Bo’ness, Craigmillar, Culross, Galashiels and Millport.
We hope the sites will become a place for people to discuss issues important to them, to share their news, to upload their photos and video clips. The sites are based on an innovative new platform, designed and built by our in-house team, which allows all types of content, whether text, photos, video or graphical ‘noticeboard’ items to be moderated before publication. We’ll be extending the platform in future to bring new features, both planned and in response to user feedback.
I’ve been working on the concept since March, so it’s great to reach this point and be able to talk about what I’ve been working on all this time. Take a look, and let me know what you think of them.
Ok, so I’ve just bought a nice new Dell Quad Core machine. It’s fast, it looks good, and it’s dead quiet. Or at least it’s quiet until you ask it to do anything. (more…)
The company I work for, s1, has been nominated as one of the Best Ever Brands in Scotland, alongside Tennent’s, Irn Bru and Glenmorangie. It’s fairly exciting company to be in considering we have just 30 staff and have only been on the go for seven years.
The awards are on the 26th of October and, in the very unlikely event that we win, I’ll be sure to post up a pic of the award. Voting in some categories is open to the public, so please vote for us (on pages 3 and 7) if you have a couple of minutes to spare.
Read more on All Media Scotland: Newcomer Nominated Among Best Scottish Brands or on OnRec: Internet business s1 nominated as Scotland’s Best Ever Brand
I’m currently looking for an experienced CSS/HTML/JavasScript developer to join our team. Since skills are more important for this role than qualifications, I decided to turn the job ad into a skills test.
Applicants are invited to restyle the job ad on s1jobs.com using only a style sheet file — they have zero control over the HTML source or Javascript. Take a look at the live job ad here:
http://www.s1jobs.com/job/205382458.html … or see it with a different style sheet here.
If you think you have the relevant skills and want to have a go, please take up the challenge — simply view source on the live job ad for more details.
As I was coming out of the Clyde Tunnel last night I noticed a big house fire in the Linthouse / Govan area. I turned off the expressway and got these photos and video clips.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXuhM-5fmMw]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4-SYZREfM4]
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UQiFNUK7yM]
