Dear Tim,
The amount of times I’ve started a blog, and it eventually fizzles out means that I can see how this blog shall end – in a silence that is never revisited. As soon as the words stop flowing there’s no going back to it. But that’s okay, I’ve made my peace with such a thing, and it will never deter me from starting another. After all, there’s that miniscule light of hope that I can sign-off on a blog and say for sure that nothing more will appear, and hold that to be true.
So why start another? My girlfriend suggested that although she enjoys hearing about my latest project, the option to make such updates public might be beneficial to other amateur coders and programmers out in the www. I know I’ve been helped by a multitude of blogs and comment threads, and so graphing out my own way is giving back in its own self-centred way. But seriously, she’s right like always.
So what’s the new project I hear you ask? In a basic kind of way, it’s a simulation. In a more interesting description, it’s a social experiment. In a more convoluted manner, it’s a political simulator for a fictional country, formed around a website built in React on a MySQL DB backend. And so far it’s in pretty early development i.e. it’s definitely not ready for public consumption yet.
My mentality with projects is always to plough ahead right into the water and see how far I can swim. It can last a while or not long at all, which is why I have the scattered remains of dead blogs in my wake, along with countless other projects. But this one is one that keeps giving – a smorgasbord of creativity; graphics, coding, writing all working together in tandem. And something to keep me up at night with the questions and possibilities. This water is as big as an ocean and as long as I can keep my head above the surface, I’m certain to swim for miles.
Where am I at? That’s the real question, and what I need to set-up today because every update from this one will build from it. Like I say, we’ve got a MySQL database, filled with records of 24,000 fictional citizens of Kalmany, the grand old fake nation that I concocted as a bizzaro-twist on the named Germany. The Kalmans, as we shall call them, have various attributes as people including their age, their ethnicity, their gender, likes and dislikes, their profession, their religion, their zodiac sign, all to give them breadth and depth as fake people.
Then there’s the country’s constituencies; regions of citizens which elect a member of parliament to represent them in their parliament. Each filled with a variety of attributes and values to mimic the complexity of a constituency’s operations and its people’s livelihoods.
We’ve got a React frontend to represent all this data in a neat and tidy way. Something that allows for easy browsing around the constituencies, the parliament, the possible candidates up for election, the election results, all built around the imaginary Kalmany Electoral Commission – a mysterious entity responsible for the websites operations and the election integrity.
And then we have a myriad of python scripts to perform the processes that are needed to run the simulation – run the election, the parliamentary assembly, the implementation of what the assembly discuss and so on. They hook into MySQL, process data using whatever rules I write in the black box, and then update the results back in the database so the frontend can portray it in a pretty way.
It’s a lot! It’s a lot of moving parts and that’s the intention. Trying to predict the end results I want to be as impossible as the current political climate (actually strike that, politics can be incredibly predictable). The citizens will stands for election of their own accord, their peers will vote for the candidate they like best based off their policies and their own individual personality, and the successfully elected candidates will meet in an assembly to discuss their policies and try to pass them.
But what’s the purpose? How is this a ‘social experiment’? I’m glad you asked; eventually public participation will be encouraged. When I can link in an authentication system, anyone can register as a citizen of Kalmany, and then participate in the elections – vote on their constituency’s MP, or even fund a candidate’s campaign with their profession’s salary. And as the citizens become overrun with the public, the shift will move from the citizens managing their own country to being at the whim of the world.
Well that is if I reach more than 24,000 users. Hopefully not, as it will cost a crapload to run. Is their a monetary gain from this? No. Is there a psychological research gain? Hell no. Is it fun as an educational tool? Maybe. Is it fun for me? Hell yes. The project succeeds as long as it entertains me, and so far it does! But boy do I hit some annoying problems.
So that’ll be the bulk of my updates. As things develop, you’ll be sure to hear what is causing a road block in my development. And maybe a few screenshots and snippets. Because learning is about sharing, at least so I heard. Maybe not so much in academia.
Stay tuned – Kalmany is a country on the rise and its people may end up being more vocal in the future. Hope things are well with you – last I heard you stowed away on a freight ship on its way to Morocco. Just make sure you can get rid of those juggling balls; we both know what inside them.
Kind regards,
Stan
WoodenSocks 