Blakesite

My personal web sandbox — a place for interactive projects, experiments, and things that are more fun when they can run directly in the browser.

Live site: blakesite.org

Projects

♟ Online Chess

A full online multiplayer chess implementation built around a serverless AWS backend.

Features include:

• Real-time multiplayer games
• Public game lobby and spectator mode
• User authentication
• Click or drag piece movement
• Move validation and complete game-end detection
• Move history with position navigation
• Draw offers, resignation, and rematches
• Persistent player ratings
• Automatic game expiration
• MCBAC ratings — Elo translated into the estimated Blood Alcohol Content Magnus Carlsen would need to play at that level

Built with React, chess.js, react-chessboard, AWS Amplify, AppSync, DynamoDB, GraphQL, and Cognito.

🔢 2048

A browser implementation of the classic 2048 puzzle game.

This was the first project added to Blakesite and primarily served as a way to build out and test the site's frontend project structure.

🪐 Two-Body Simulation

An interactive physics simulation of two massive bodies evolving under their mutual gravitational attraction.

A small experiment in browser-based simulation, animation, and numerical physics.

Tech Stack

• React 19
• Vite
• React Router
• AWS Amplify
• AWS AppSync / GraphQL
• Amazon DynamoDB
• Amazon Cognito
• PixiJS
• chess.js
• react-chessboard

Running Locally

Requires a recent version of Node.js.

git clone https://github.com/bsig1/blakesite.git
cd blakesite
npm install
npm run dev

Vite will start a local development server and print its address in the terminal.

Production Build

npm run build

To preview the production build locally:

npm run preview

Project Structure

blakesite/
├── amplify/              # AWS Amplify backend
├── public/
├── src/
│   ├── assets/
│   ├── components/       # Shared site components
│   ├── pages/            # Main site pages
│   └── projects/
│       ├── 2048/
│       ├── chess/
│       └── two_body/
├── package.json
└── vite.config.js

About

Blakesite is intentionally a sandbox rather than a single-purpose application. It gives me one place to build, deploy, and experiment with projects ranging from simple browser games to applications with authentication, persistent state, and real-time cloud backends.

More projects will be added as I find things worth building.