Foosball Score Tracker

Well, it's been awhile since I did any development on foos.zastica. I recently decided to try out the CakePHP framework, and instead of creating an entirely new application, I decided to convert an existing one that I had already created. I chose this app because it was pretty straight forward, and didn't have a lot of odd features.

About halfway through conversion, however, I learned that it wasn't as simple as I had thought. There are a lot of interesting database queries that need to be done to get the aggregate account and player data, and Cake isn't optimized to handle that. This left me doing a lot of direct queries on the database. Although I'm sure that part of that is my lack of CakePHP knowledge as well.

So, as of today, foos.zastica is now in v2.0. Most of the changes are backend type stuff, but there's a few front-end changes as well. I've widened the site, changed around some styles, and changed the player graph to use the flot jquery library. This allows IE users to see the graph. It used to be in SVG, but some users weren't able to see the graph so it had to go.

One of the bigger updates is the RSS syndication of updates. Whenever the site updates, you can get notified in your RSS reader. To subscribe, go to /posts/rss/

I've also got some more changes up my sleeve, but I'll wait on announcing those until I've got a better idea when they will be ready.

I've been working on some updates, and they'll be officially launched April 1. There's some major background changes, and a few front end tweaks. It's all very promising stuff, so make sure to check back and see what has changed.

I finished the first iteration of the ranking algorithm that this site uses. Rank is calculated based on how well you play in games and compared to how well you're expected to perform. The algorithm is subject to change at my whim, but it's as fair as I could make it. I'd prefer to use an ELO or TrueSkill type algorithm, but it would take a lot more to develop. Sometime soon, perhaps.

Made some minor updates tonight, including a bugfix and some CSS updates. Games are now sorted by the date they were entered. Coming up soon: an updated rank algorithm.

I'm announcing the launch of the Foosball League Score Tracker. It's super easy to use, just sign up, add your players, and begin to record games. Maybe if you're good enough, you can show up on the top players list. Easy as pie.