Mainichi Interactive – Top News – Danger of Listening for Trains
There are important lessons in this story. Look both ways before listening for large, fast moving objects. Switch ears often.
Minor SoccerPhone Fix for Final-OT
The Crew-Revs match ended in overtime. In the past, the MLS website used “Final (OT)” or “Final (2OT)” to indicate overtime. The 2OT only appeared once that I can remember. Whether the game ends early due to a golden goal or if both overtime periods are played, the website usually says “Final (OT)”. For the… Read More »
Willem II vs. Málaga – Intertoto Cup match in Tilburg
Last week I was lucky enough to have a business trip take me to the Netherlands. While there I got to see Willem II play Málaga in an Intertoto Cup match. Málaga had won the first game at home 2-1. Unfortunately, Willem II lost their home leg 1-0, so Málaga moved on to face Villareal,… Read More »
MLS MagicNumbers
Today I rewrote a Python script I wrote last year for calculating playoff magic numbers for the MLS. It can now function as a CGI script and can generate a reasonably attractive table of magic numbers in an HTML document. You can check it out at https://www.wombatnation.com/magicnumbers/. The right side frame has an explanation of… Read More »
This weekend’s SoccerPhone fixes
In the scoring details on the MLS webpage, the time has always been given as just the minute of the goal, e.g, 34 for a goal in the 34th minute. The main exception is that goals in extra time are sometimes given a plus sign, e.g., 92+. In today’s game between Dallas and Colorado, Steve… Read More »
Fixed Caching of Results for SoccerPhone
Fixed the problem where the Python script wrote the cached results to one place, but the VXML code looked for it in another directory. I didn’t detect the problem earlier, because 1) I accidentally ftp’d a copy of results.xml to the VXML directory and 2) I didn’t do a good job of regression testing failure… Read More »
More MLSnet.com Scores.html Web Page Unpredictability
Whoever runs the MLS website is definitely keeping me on my toes. They made a couple new changes to the scores page that broke SoccerPhone again. First, they dropped the date information from each score. Admittedly, I probably should have had exception handling code for this scenario, but it just seems strange that they would… Read More »
Should a Webcaster Pay If No One is Listening
The recent ruling of the Librarian of Congress still contains the requirement that webcasters must pay performance royalties for each unique stream. Since it’s impossible for a webcaster to tell whether a real person is on the other end listening to the stream, the webcaster must pay the performance fee regardless for every stream, even… Read More »
SoccerPhone Finally, Really Updated
I ran out of time before last week’s vacation and never uploaded the new files for SoccerPhone. Consider it done. I even sort of tested it.
Yum, Yum, Chicken Nuggets
Ever wonder what part of the chicken (or cow) chicken nuggets come from? Makes me want to read Fast Food Nation.