hape42
Backgammon & Golf, with a side of iOS code.
Backgammon & Golf, with a side of iOS code.
I'm Peter Schneider — though my passport says Hans Peter. Hape comes from there.
The 42 is from Douglas Adams: in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a supercomputer spends seven and a half million years computing the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything — and concludes, with a straight face, that the answer is forty-two. Adams later admitted he picked the number at random because it sounded right. Geeks have been quoting it ever since. I mark my golf balls with a 42, so when one of them lands in the rough I know whose it is. Backgammon's doubling cube shows up in my logo for the same reason: it's a number that follows me around.
I studied computer science more than forty years ago, spent a few early years actually writing software, and then drifted into management for most of my working life. Four years ago I retired, picked up golf and backgammon properly — and rediscovered programming as a hobby. These days I mostly build iOS apps in Objective-C and Swift, mostly for myself, sometimes for friends, occasionally for the App Store. The projects I care most about are the ones at the intersection of the things I love: backgammon, golf, and writing clean code.
DailyGammon is a wonderful turn-based backgammon site that's been running since the late 90s. It has thousands of active players and a charm you don't find on slicker, newer platforms.
The catch: the official site is web-only, and using it on a phone is… let's say characterful. So I built an iOS client that scrapes the web pages and presents them in a native interface. About a thousand people use it on a regular basis.
The app is open source and I'd love help with it — especially from anyone who knows Objective-C and likes backgammon. Even bug reports and feature ideas are gold.
A native iOS training app for serious backgammon players. The focus is on practising the skills that actually make you better — starting with pip count and cluster counting, with more to come. Free, ad-free, and open source.
The app shows the GNU and XG position IDs below every board, with a one-tap copy button. Jump straight from any exercise into BGBlitz, XG or GNU for deeper analysis. Or import your own positions by ID and build personal training collections.
I'm looking for advisors on the backgammon side — experienced players who can help shape which positions and methods make it into the training modules. No commitments, just sharing knowledge.
I keep a running log of my backgammon match series: opponents, results, performance ratings (PR), match-by-match breakdowns. It's part personal record, part way to spot the kind of mistakes that keep showing up in my own play.
If you'd like to play, here's where I am:
When I'm not pushing checkers, I'm pushing a small white ball across grass. My home course is Golfanlage Hummelbachaue near Neuss — a flat parkland course that asks you to think more than to muscle. Water comes into play on a number of holes and the wind off the Lower Rhine has its opinions, so even a short par four can humble you nicely.
If you happen to find a ball in the rough with a 42 on it, let's trade — I'll give you one of the many balls other golfers have lost in the rough over the years.