Javascripting and spelling

Well this week I've been busy working on websites.

The first is the local CAMRA branch website (for those of you who can't spell, that's Campaign for Real Ale, not anything to do with photography). I've been having a lot of fun creating a map which shows all the pubs in the branch. Google provide a lot of libraries to help with this, but it does mean creating rather a lot of javascript. Then of course, two hundred odd pubs looks rather cluttered so I turned to the MarkerClusterer library to help. This is absolutely fantastic, and magically clusters all the pubs nicely. However, it did rather annoyingly draw the cluster markers under the branch outline. A little hacking later and the clusters are now above the map. I've even added the local breweries too.

The second website I've been working on is for my daughter. The original idea came from the fact that her school appears to believe that they've taught 'times tables'; and certainly Louisa can count her way slowly through any times table given enough time and fingers. What she can't do is answer a multiplication question without resorting to her fingers, so to help her we figure she needs to keep practising.

Naturally, she enjoys playing games on the computer (check out the millions on the BBC website) so this is an easy way to help her practice.
This thought was still developing when we went to a school meeting where they told us the plans for the year. Apart from general homework, they're also giving the children spellings to learn each week. Obviously another opportunity for an online game.

For me, this feels slightly surreal, as some of the earliest games my mother wrote on our BBC computer, were a spelling game and a tables game to help my sister practice!

Still, I've put something together and it's met with an enthusiastic response so far. So lets see if it helps her to learn to spell 'germination'.

Yes, that really is one of her spelling words this week!