But what if they've run out of okra?
Food is something that comes up a lot at forts, even at a mini-fort with only four of us. We decided to build a little app to help with shopping for particular recipes. How many kilos of carrots do you need across the various recipes you're cooking next week? And what if they've run out of a key ingredient for one of them?
Nosebag allows you to build up a list of recipes you're cooking, and keeps track of which ingredients you've already got (or have in your shopping basket). If you change you mind about the recipes, it'll adjust the quantities you need overall, while doing something vaguely sensible about recipes that insist on mixing different units (such as when one recipe calls for two carrots, and another calls for 250g).
We first built the recipe modelling and searching as a pure Node app, then built a React app on top of that. The idea is that you'd log into Dropbox and the app would sync your shopping list, and your recipe book, from there. (Half of the Dropbox backend has been written, but it isn't wired into Nosebag itself. Consequently you have to run your own version of the app somewhere, and it can't sync your shopping list between devices.)
One of the joys of /dev/fort is finding out how the venue has been kitted out. Properties often have books, maps, and pictures of the local area, prompting us to investigate local history. Some of them have beautifully-chosen colour schemes, such as the kitchen at Knockbrex Castle, which inspired the colour palette Hannah Donovan used for her designs. Some provide inspiration in other ways. One of them had a bugle. Silverton Park Stables is all about the horses. From pictures on the walls to books on the shelves, there wasn't really anywhere you could look that didn't have something to do with horses. There was even a full-sized model horse in the undercroft, which for some reason was wearing a gas mask.
Trained in Yorkshire, and racing exclusively in the North of England, Doctor Syntax won at least thirty-six races in ten seasons from 1814 to 1823.
One of the horses depicted was Doctor Syntax, and we'd decided he had to be involved before we even knew what we were building. So the file format we developed for recipes is called Dr. Syntax. (Known as Syntax, MD in the United States.)