# Live Results?



## IamWEB (May 4, 2009)

Who needs to be contacted in order to use the live results system?
How can they be contacted?
Is there any particular reasons why they haven't been used lately? It's like a wave of live results systems showed up around here, and then they started dissapearing (at least from thread titles). Is there a price for using it (w/o webcams)?


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## masterofthebass (May 4, 2009)

I've created it and tried to use it at competitions with internet, but not every organizer has wanted to use it. My system is still somewhat messy, and needs some hackery to work. It also requires MySQL in order to run. I'm pretty sure Rafal's system uses mysql as well, but with mine, you can still use the normal competition xls file to enter data. If you are really set on using it, I can give you the code, but it would probably take a bit of work to get it working, which I'm not really prone on doing.


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## miniGOINGS (May 4, 2009)

i can work with code if you want lol


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## masterofthebass (May 4, 2009)

the code is all written, it just takes some basic hackery to the xls sheet to work correctly. If you also have python installed on your computer, i have an autouploader that uploads results at a specific interval. I should probably port it to jython/java but I really don't have the time/want to do this.


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## Lucas Garron (May 4, 2009)

I know of the following main "live" results systems:
1) Rafal Studnicki's, used at Polish comps (and some others).
1a) My derivative. I used Rafal's code and customized it for SF09 and EPGY.
2) Uploading into the WCA database at the end of an event/day. Used at Worlds, and by Clement for Swiss Open, I think.
3) Dan Cohen's, which was written from scratch, and took the good features of my/Rafal's presentation.

Of these, I think mine was the fastest and most custom, as every single updated time was immediately updated online, too. However, turning the times into a spreadsheet could be much nicer.
I think Dan's system is the best, because it maintains the existing spreadsheet system, and can be kept in sync arbitrarily frequently.

If I ever get the time, I want to write a system essentially like Dan's, but as clean, usable, and portable as possible.


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## JBCM627 (May 4, 2009)

There's also the one I made for the Ohio Open (here), which I could give people the code for. Its literally just code I found that displays .xls files that I modified a bit, and wrote some extra code so you can see individual competitors results.

It is nice in that data is very easy to manage like Dan's, since it is all done on the spreadsheet (which the code just selectively displays fields from). It may not be the most 'efficient' code, but since there really isn't that much data in the spreadsheets, that really isn't an issue. One of the downsides is that it will display exactly what is on the spreadsheet, so it should be sorted, etc, before it is put online. Another plus is that all that has to be done to upload results is copying the file to wherever it is being read from. Only PHP required too, no mysql or anything.

I also need to touch up the CSS a bit for Chrome now, aparrantly...


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## hr.mohr (May 4, 2009)

I also did some minor changes in Rafal's system that we used for Danish Open 09. We didn't use the export to spreadsheet function so all times was entered in both in the live update and the WCA spreadsheet. (Thanks Trine!)


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## Ton (May 4, 2009)

hr.mohr said:


> I also did some minor changes in Rafal's system that we used for Danish Open 09. We didn't use the export to spreadsheet function so all times was entered in both in the live update and the WCA spreadsheet. (Thanks Trine!)



With your help I can look if we can set it up for Czech Open....


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## hr.mohr (May 7, 2009)

Ton said:


> hr.mohr said:
> 
> 
> > I also did some minor changes in Rafal's system that we used for Danish Open 09. We didn't use the export to spreadsheet function so all times was entered in both in the live update and the WCA spreadsheet. (Thanks Trine!)
> ...



No problem Ton. Just let me know when


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## brunson (May 7, 2009)

masterofthebass said:


> the code is all written, it just takes some basic hackery to the xls sheet to work correctly. If you also have python installed on your computer, i have an autouploader that uploads results at a specific interval. I should probably port it to jython/java but I really don't have the time/want to do this.


Python FTW!!!


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## JBCM627 (May 15, 2009)

Here's the script I wrote, for whoever is interested. It should be pretty portable, since all you need is a server with PHP (no mysql). It should also be very simple to get up and running, since it's just copy/paste the folder where you want it, and reference the spreadsheet. It should also be pretty easy to include in the theme of a site.

Feel free to edit it or comment. Script is here:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.zip
Demo is here:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/


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## Ton (May 15, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Here's the script I wrote, for whoever is interested. It should be pretty portable, since all you need is a server with PHP (no mysql). It should also be very simple to get up and running, since it's just copy/paste the folder where you want it, and reference the spreadsheet. It should also be pretty easy to include in the theme of a site.
> 
> Feel free to edit it or comment. Script is here:
> http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.zip
> ...



Looks simple, can you ZIP it again in a compatible format I can not unzip it with WInrar or with Windows


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## JBCM627 (May 15, 2009)

Ton said:


> Looks simple, can you ZIP it again in a compatible format I can not unzip it with WInrar or with Windows


Zipped it using winzip.
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.zip
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.rar


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## Ton (May 15, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > Looks simple, can you ZIP it again in a compatible format I can not unzip it with WInrar or with Windows
> ...



No, but I upgraded WINrar , so I have the files now Thanks!, I will test with it so I can used it in Czech and Indonesia


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## JBCM627 (May 15, 2009)

Ton said:


> No, but I upgraded WINrar , so I have the files now Thanks!, I will test with it so I can used it in Czech and Indonesia



I just touched up the css a bit, if you want to redownload.


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## Ton (May 15, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > No, but I upgraded WINrar , so I have the files now Thanks!, I will test with it so I can used it in Czech and Indonesia
> ...



Oke, 

Can you check why I do not see the event in a test sheet for Czech
http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Czech2009/results/


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## JBCM627 (May 15, 2009)

Ton said:


> Oke,
> 
> Can you check why I do not see the event in a test sheet for Czech
> http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Czech2009/results/
> ...



It looks like the excel reader doesn't follow references to other sheets in the book; so every cell that has a formula that references another sheet it considers blank. I'll look into this more over the weekend; what you have done with the workbook is very interesting.


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## Ton (May 15, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > Oke,
> ...


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## Ton (May 15, 2009)

I use the new short cuts for the name of the sheet 

e.g You have a 2x2 sheet , I have 222 , the same name used in the WCA registration page. might this be the problem? 


My results sheet has orginal much more in it, it was merged with the idea of Clement and Ron

So the sheets get the name directly of the registration sheet

My WCA sheet has the followings specs
-Results per event are automated filled in , when the event start you have to copy/ paste special the names as value to remove the formulas (else you can not sort)
-Make grouping list 
-print scoresheet per event + the group
-Print Certifactes with the name and result, for this you need just prepared certifacates without the name and result
-Print result of all events per competitor, when uses it takes at least 60 min for 100 competitors to print, so I can not use this most of the times


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## JBCM627 (May 15, 2009)

Ton said:


> I use the new short cuts for the name of the sheet
> 
> e.g You have a 2x2 sheet , I have 222 , the same name used in the WCA registration page. might this be the problem?
> 
> ...



Yeah, I've been looking at your spreadsheet for a little while now... it is very ingenious. I may try using some of what you have done for future spreadsheets of mine.

The problem with the script is actually in the excel reader code... its former maintainer never bothered to handle some of the data. Fortunately, about a month ago, it looks like a new maintainer took over, and has (as of last month) released new code fixing this bug.

I've updated my script to incorporate this new version, which should fix the problem you were having. Same links as before^^


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## Bryan (May 15, 2009)

I usually use Open Office to fill in the spreadsheet, and haven't had any issues. But Ton's seems to do enough advanced stuff that OpenOffice doesn't work.

Does anyone else use OpenOffice in their competitions?


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## Ton (May 15, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > I use the new short cuts for the name of the sheet
> ...



Oke try than the full excel sheet (I removed the date of birth)

http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Czech2009/CzechOpen2009results.xls


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## Ton (May 15, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > I use the new short cuts for the name of the sheet
> ...



Thanks looks promising!

Question: why are the names on two lines 
http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Czech2009/results/




Any why this is a very elegant/simple solution to post live results


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## JBCM627 (May 15, 2009)

Ton said:


> Thanks looks promising!
> 
> Question: why are the names on two lines
> http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Czech2009/results/
> ...



Thanks for testing  The script is more refined now, and should do a better job displaying info.

The names appeared on two lines because the spreadsheet had space reserved for data in many blank cells, and the script was outputting them as empty table cells, effectively shrinking the html table cell sizes. It shouldn't do this any more though.

It should also be more careful about displaying sheets... any sheets without data in the "A1" cell won't be displayed. The script also expects the first sheet to be the registration sheet so it has a list of competitors to look up data for. It looks like there was a small bug in the excelreader script, which is why the Sq1 and other sheets aren't being displayed... I've corrected for this now though, so they should show up. Another tweak is that it no longer relies on the sheets to specify what format the times are in, but grabs that information from the cells.

The changes have been uploaded again, so you can redownload if you like.


That was a huge workbook too, btw... I was only intending this script to be used for smaller amounts of data. Perhaps I'll add in something to let it cache processed data...


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## Ton (May 16, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > Thanks looks promising!
> ...



works great, take 1 to 2 min total to upload per event, 

http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Indonesian2009/Live%20results.html


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## tim (May 16, 2009)

Nice job, guys. I can't wait watching the live results .


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## JBCM627 (May 16, 2009)

Glad it works 

I'm working on making a web interface for it, so you can upload the .xls and change settings in a browser. I may have that done by the end of this weekend, but we'll see.


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## Ton (May 16, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > Thanks looks promising!
> ...




I found this visual basic macro to cleanup my sheet

Use 
Macro -> Visual Basic and make a module , you now have a nice cleanup macro "DeleteHiddenRows"

This is also use full after you delete line , your end page marker will still be there, afrer clear the cells , can can use the macro to reset the end page marker
btw use Ctrl Home and Ctrl End, to see where your page end is 


```
Sub DeleteHiddenRows()
Dim iRow As Long

With Application
.Calculation = xlCalculationManual
.EnableEvents = False
.ScreenUpdating = False

With ActiveSheet.UsedRange
For iRow = .Row + .Rows.Count - 1 To .Row Step -1
If Rows(iRow).Hidden Then Rows(iRow).Delete
Next iRow
End With

.Calculation = xlCalculationAutomatic
.EnableEvents = True
.ScreenUpdating = True
End With
End Sub
```


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## Ton (May 17, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Glad it works
> 
> I'm working on making a web interface for it, so you can upload the .xls and change settings in a browser. I may have that done by the end of this weekend, but we'll see.



Small question
http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Czech2009/results/competitors.php?p=Ton%20Dennenbroek

What must I do to correct the display per person, now the first round results appears twice
For me it is a great addition, compared post directly into the database, which needs more delicate handling


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## JBCM627 (May 17, 2009)

Ton said:


> Small question
> http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Czech2009/results/competitors.php?p=Ton%20Dennenbroek
> 
> What must I do to correct the display per person, now the first round results appears twice
> For me it is a great addition, compared post directly into the database, which needs more delicate handling



Huh, that is odd. It seems to be matching your name with the first blank cell at the bottom of your sheet containing a formula; I'll have to look into that more. For now, you can force it to only display your name once per spreadsheet... put a "break;" in on line 94, or near the end of the script right after the echo "</tr>";.


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## Ton (May 19, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Huh, that is odd. It seems to be matching your name with the first blank cell at the bottom of your sheet containing a formula; I'll have to look into that more. For now, you can force it to only display your name once per spreadsheet... put a "break;" in on line 94, or near the end of the script right after the echo "</tr>";.




Done

I added a time stamp (local time of competion) of the last time 
of the scores

http://www.speedcubing.com/events/Indonesian2009/Live%20results.html


I changed in live.inc.php


```
//	echo "<a name='results'></a><h5><u>".$data->val(1,1,$enum)." - Results</u></h5>";
To
echo "<a name='results'></a><h5><u>".$data->val(1,1,$enum)." - Results Last"," modified on: " . date("d-m-y H:i:s", filemtime($results_data['spreadsheet_filepath'])+7200+43200)," WIB (UTC+07)</u></h5>";
```


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## Ton (May 19, 2009)

Ton said:


> JBCM627 said:
> 
> 
> > Huh, that is odd. It seems to be matching your name with the first blank cell at the bottom of your sheet containing a formula; I'll have to look into that more. For now, you can force it to only display your name once per spreadsheet... put a "break;" in on line 94, or near the end of the script right after the echo "</tr>";.
> ...



The +7200 was need to correct the timezone of our server (speedcubing.com UTC -3)


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## Ton (May 19, 2009)

Ton said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > JBCM627 said:
> ...


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## JBCM627 (May 19, 2009)

Ton said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > I added a time stamp (local time of competion) of the last time
> ...


Very nice addition. I'll make that change to the version I have soon.


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## Dave Campbell (May 21, 2009)

It is a nice idea. What is the intent for availability? It seems a little silly for every organizer to have to download and install the script to use it on their own. Why not centralize it somewhere? I see it is on speedcubing.com, but i am assuming that is because Ton is involved. 

Is there any thought to making it a feature available to all organizers for his or her own competition on speedcubing.com/worldcubeassociation.org? You could have some sort of public upload with a validation key that must be entered so we can ensure there are no rogue files uploaded to corrupt the data (or, rather, minimize the likelihood). 

Keeping it public allows everyone to have access to the same version, any updates are immediately available to everyone. No need to propagate the changes. It also allows the users to find live results easier. No need to look for competition X's server. Just set up a simple index page that all can hit to see any live results available.

I can see bandwidth being a possible reason to not go this route. The biggest hit most likely being the constant upload of the file to the server and its processing. One could also argue disc space as an issue. But you could remove the data and just send the user to the official results page on the WCA site after the competition results have been finalized.

Finally, a curiosity question. If it takes 1-2 minutes to upload _per event_ how does the script handle the update? Is there downtime during those 1-2 minutes while it deletes old data and adds new data?


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## Ton (May 21, 2009)

The file is locked for about 20 seconds during the time of the upload, you can not get results , in stead you get this message



> Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 16 bytes) in /home/u6/speedcubing/html/events/Czech2009/results/include/reader.php on line 69



I guess we can change the error code is , please wait while file is refreshed


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## JBCM627 (May 21, 2009)

Dave Campbell said:


> It is a nice idea. What is the intent for availability? It seems a little silly for every organizer to have to download and install the script to use it on their own. Why not centralize it somewhere? I see it is on speedcubing.com, but i am assuming that is because Ton is involved.
> 
> Is there any thought to making it a feature available to all organizers for his or her own competition on speedcubing.com/worldcubeassociation.org? You could have some sort of public upload with a validation key that must be entered so we can ensure there are no rogue files uploaded to corrupt the data (or, rather, minimize the likelihood).
> 
> ...


Actually public uploading is something I have done already:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/admin.php

I've added in a bit to 'cache' the file, so when it is uploaded, it is broken apart into a few few easy-to-read files. This makes the down time significantly less, since it only locks the individual event files for a very short time. There is also a noticeable difference when displaying larger spreadsheets like Ton's... the cached results tax the server far less.

Right now the script doesn't really handle errors or do much validation, and can therefore be broken pretty easily.

Keeping it public does make sense, although it would limit customization. Perhaps someone wants to change the css or include some code that alters the display somehow... this wouldn't be possible if it were too centralized. I agree that bandwidth and memory usage are both issues to consider, though.


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## JBCM627 (Aug 2, 2009)

What better to do on a Saturday night than code. I could even cube, but no...

I've improved the live results script some more now since last posting in here. A few new things:
* grabs and displays styles from spreadsheet (well, for the most part...)
* included Ton's addition to display time of last update
* cleaner individual results display (Tim's suggestion)
* public upload / filesystem checks
* more organized/clean filesystem structure
* notices for events that are done/in progress/not begun
* should be a bit easier to customize
* added in some javascript to handle data
* touched up css some (just don't use IE < 6, although it still isn't bad even in that...)

I really debated adding in the httprequests, since now it won't work at all in some browsers, and providing links to specific results becomes harder - almost as bad as using frames .

Sample is here:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/
Downloads here:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/results.zip
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/results.7z

Things I'd still like to do/improve:
* Check for small errors in spreadsheets and alert the uploader so they can correct it - to make Bob and Ron's lives easier
* Store spreadsheet styles more efficiently
* cleaner/ better code in general
* sort results by specified column
* clean up css some more
* use hashes instead of query strings - better for those URLs. Then I'll be happy about using javascript.



Dave Campbell said:


> It is a nice idea. What is the intent for availability? It seems a little silly for every organizer to have to download and install the script to use it on their own. Why not centralize it somewhere?


I've been thinking about this, and have written the script to make handling more than one competition fairly straightforward. I'm not sure if this is a direction I want to head in though, since the WCA results system will amass all official results regardless of any other attempt at centralization - so why duplicate what has already been done? Also, if more people toy with the code, that will probably lead to better code and more features. With that being said, I wouldn't mind having something set up for people who don't want to mess with setting up a system on their own.


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## JBCM627 (Aug 2, 2009)

My first triple post. That hash thing wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. The last * on the to-do list can be crossed off then...

^^Source files for download should be updated.


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## Carson (Aug 2, 2009)

It looks a lot cleaner than it did the last time I saw it, and having the styles to carry over will be very nice. I am sure the list of completed/in progress events will clear up some confusion as well.

I especially look forward to being able to sort by column.

GREAT work Jim!!!


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## JBCM627 (Aug 29, 2009)

More improvements. Thanks to Lucas for his help in improving this.
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/

src:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.7z
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.zip

Big changes are:
* Themeing, interface improvements
* Support for multiple rounds of events
* Page for dedicated scoreboard results: http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/scoreboard.php
* A number of backend changes, many of which I forget now.


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## JBCM627 (Oct 25, 2009)

New release. I'm still expecting a few bugs to pop up. A centralized version of this will probably be available soon as well.

As in my previous post, demo here:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/
Download here:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.7z
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.zip

Big changes are:
* Full support for multiple competitions from the same codebase
* More scoreboard features (I initially tried implementing these for WC, but wasn't done in time)
* Scoreboard settings can be changed in the admin page, which will be pulled out quickly.
* Some more backend stuff


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## Ton (Oct 25, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> New release. I'm still expecting a few bugs to pop up. A centralized version of this will probably be available soon as well.
> 
> As in my previous post, demo here:
> http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/
> ...



I guess you still locked the file, I can not upload it


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## JBCM627 (Oct 25, 2009)

Ton said:


> I guess you still locked the file, I can not upload it


Sorry about that, they should be available now.


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## Ton (Oct 26, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > I guess you still locked the file, I can not upload it
> ...



I think I will try the new set for The Hague Open 2009...Thanks!


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## AvGalen (Oct 26, 2009)

Ton said:


> JBCM627 said:
> 
> 
> > Ton said:
> ...


When, when?????
It isn't listed in http://www.worldcubeassociation.org...egionId=Netherlands&years=only+2009&list=List

There is also a bug in the "current year" and "only 2009" feature of that WCA-page because I would expect them to be identical at this moment
http://www.worldcubeassociation.org...&regionId=Netherlands&years=current&list=List
http://www.worldcubeassociation.org...egionId=Netherlands&years=only+2009&list=List


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## Ton (Oct 26, 2009)

AvGalen said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > JBCM627 said:
> ...



I try to settle for 12 dec, as soon as I have confirmation of the venue I can ask the WCA to post the event....I try to get confirmation this week

Bugs you can report on the WCA site....


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## Tim Reynolds (Oct 26, 2009)

AvGalen said:


> There is also a bug in the "current year" and "only 2009" feature of that WCA-page because I would expect them to be identical at this moment
> http://www.worldcubeassociation.org...&regionId=Netherlands&years=current&list=List
> http://www.worldcubeassociation.org...egionId=Netherlands&years=only+2009&list=List



The way I understand "current" is that it's the list of recent and upcoming competitions. The current list appears to go back to July 26 -- three months ago. To me that makes sense--competitions that were 9 months ago aren't current anymore.


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## AvGalen (Oct 26, 2009)

Tim Reynolds said:


> AvGalen said:
> 
> 
> > There is also a bug in the "current year" and "only 2009" feature of that WCA-page because I would expect them to be identical at this moment
> ...


That would make sense except that dropdown has a "years" header. Also, the current WR could easily be several years old which means that current is very much context based

I wouldn't know how/where to file WCA-bugs so I hope this way works for now


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## Ton (Oct 26, 2009)

I just tested this tool box
I have one change request:
I would need a scoreboard to select specific event(s) to display

So I would need a display string like : 
1,2,5,6
Which will displays event 1 2 5 and 6


If you can implement this , it is fine for me to use it at the Dutch Nationals ...as first live test for us


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## JBCM627 (Oct 26, 2009)

Ton said:


> I just tested this tool box
> I have one change request:
> I would need a scoreboard to select specific event(s) to display
> 
> ...



This would be a good thing to add.

I may not be able to work on this until next weekend, but I will try to get it done by then... it shouldn't be too hard to add.


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## JBCM627 (Oct 26, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > I just tested this tool box
> ...



After thinking about it for a bit, I realized it wouldn't take that long to add. So this is done, and another bug was hackishly fixed as well.

Same links:
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results/admin.php
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.7z
http://koii.cubingusa.com/cm/results.zip


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## Ton (Oct 27, 2009)

JBCM627 said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > I just tested this tool box
> ...



I go to sleep and next weekend is already past....Thanks, this addition is most welcome. We will use the new set for the Dutch Nationals, scoreboard and live results

I think I do the scoreboard on a local php host , as I will have an UMTS connection which is suitable for upload only. And the scoreboard PC with beamer is on a laptop without internet -I can not change workgroup as this is my work PC which is secured, else I could internet via the other PC-

So my setup will be:

Two laptops in a local network,the main PC is also local PHP host for the second PC which is used as scoreboard with beamer-Such setup is not needed if there is (wireless) internet connections for both PC-

The main PC also uploads the file on the internet PHP server (speedcubing.com) for the live results.


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## hr.mohr (Oct 29, 2009)

I've also been working on a new system and we are going to use it for the first time this weekend for Fuglsangpark Open 2009.

http://live.speedcubing.dk/

It also works by parsing the wca spreadsheet but not by uploading the entire spreadsheet. You run a small program on the computer you are using to update the spreadsheet and when the spreadsheet are saved/changed then my program uploads results to a soap webservice.

I plan on releasing the source code under the GPL but I think I should write some build info first. It _will_ be released, just have patience 

I'm also planning on hosting results for competitions other than the ones speedcubing.dk are organising. There's some contact info in the FAQ section.


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## Ton (Oct 30, 2009)

hr.mohr said:


> I've also been working on a new system and we are going to use it for the first time this weekend for Fuglsangpark Open 2009.
> 
> http://live.speedcubing.dk/
> 
> ...



Can you already share the style.css that you use.....


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## hr.mohr (Oct 30, 2009)

Ton said:


> hr.mohr said:
> 
> 
> > I've also been working on a new system and we are going to use it for the first time this weekend for Fuglsangpark Open 2009.
> ...



Just grab it... from the WCA site. I have some credits in the FAQ section about this and and I wrote to Ron before going live with this.


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## Ton (Oct 30, 2009)

hr.mohr said:


> Ton said:
> 
> 
> > hr.mohr said:
> ...



I will , I assumed that you modified it a bit ....

I will grab them from the WCA site


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## hr.mohr (Oct 30, 2009)

http://live.speedcubing.dk/css/results.css

The entire block between 

/* wca css begin */

and

/* wca css end */

are all the wca css unchanged but combined into one file. And the rest are my custom settings.

I'll try to find some time next weekend to prepare the source release.

[edit]

We found a few minor bugs and logging turned out to be a bit too little. I think that I'll fix these bugs before I do the source release.


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## FatBoyXPC (Sep 29, 2011)

So I hate to revive an old thread like this, but it was after talking with Mike Hughey about some ideas, that this might be a better place.

I was reading the Future of Cubing Competitions thread, since I do not have access to post there, I PMed Mike and gave him some ideas. He said that given the way that topic had moved, and that the ideas were somewhat suited around Live Results anyway, this might be a more appropriate place. So here it goes (directly copied and pasted from my PM to Mike).

Since the trend seems to be that people would like for competitions to be more technological, I too fall into that trend, my idea(s) are centered rather heavily around that.

The cubing live results system (live.cubing.net) has always had me thinking about what more we could do with a solution like that. It finally hit me now that this could definitely be the thing to help make that kick off.

I think we should create a Competition Management System. I honestly think that if we are to use a CMS (I like how I stole that acronym ) that we should definitely keep it to non-country specific URL (ie: cubingusa.com would be ruled out), and should also honestly put it on WCA's domain. I like that live.cubing.net is the live results system, but the fact that right now US Cubers have 3 different domains to go to (not counting these forums) has always been one of those things that have just been on my mind (just how it would be more efficient).

Anyway, the idea is that this CMS would simply be given all of the data about a competition (date/time, delegate info, organizer info, etc), and we could only allow scrambles to be presented when events are to be done. We could build rules such as that once a scramble set has been generated, there are no more scrambles to be generated until a later round, etc. The scrambles would be automatically entered into the CMS and we could block access to change the scrambles.

Another thing we could do with this system is once the results are in, we could have them approved by the WCA board (or whatever the current approval process is for competitions), and instead of having to manually enter them into the WCA site (or whatever that process is), just do a direct insert from the CMS database to WCA's database.

Some ideas I have already shot to Jim for the current CubingUSA site (that would obviously be great ideas for said CMS) would be just better setup for the Events and Schedule page specifically. The organizer needs some HTML knowledge, or needs help getting this done. There is no reason why we can't just throw on a form of which events to include, then have the Schedule page pull the list of events and allow us select boxes with times in them. 

Another suggestion I had was to take the data entry away from the spreadsheet(s)/workbook and just do all of the data entry directly on the site. I later realized that this might not be as liked of an option due to the fact that arrow keys/enter/tab are just flat out more convenient for those who are rather efficient with spreadsheets.



This was rather long, and I'm sure the community here can come up with a list of a lot more features to be added to said CMS if it were to be a popular hit. I know I had more suggestions than this, however, this is already a bit lengthy


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## Meep (Sep 29, 2011)

fatboyxpc said:


> So I hate to revive an old thread like this, but it was after talking with Mike Hughey about some ideas, that this might be a better place.
> 
> *Stuff*
> 
> This was rather long, and I'm sure the community here can come up with a list of a lot more features to be added to said CMS if it were to be a popular hit. I know I had more suggestions than this, however, this is already a bit lengthy


 
The main thing with this is, not every venue has internet access (None of the competitions here have ever had access to it). It can be a solution to those that do, but it may not be worth the hassle.


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## Lucas Garron (Sep 30, 2011)

Rather than replying to individual parts: Thanks for caring. We are indeed headed that way, but there's only so much that we can manage in our spare time. It's mostly Jim working on live results and the competition manager at the moment.
It used to be that things were way less organized than this. (Until Bryan created cubingusa.com, competition website in the US were very messy. I'm tempted to start offering worldwide competition sites on a cubing.net subdomain, but there are some issues with that, mainly that I don't have time to do it properly.)

Two comments:
- Let's not overload "CMS" if this is not a CMS (although it might be).
- We should be careful about strong WCA involvement/integration. If something is codified by the WCA, it's hard to innovate in a different direction. Things can be made to work much better with the WCA, but I think there should be a clear separation between the worldwide organization and the competition organizers until we know exactly what to do about all these things.


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## JBCM627 (Sep 30, 2011)

fatboyxpc said:


> Some ideas I have already shot to Jim for the current CubingUSA site (that would obviously be great ideas for said CMS) would be just better setup for the Events and Schedule page specifically. The organizer needs some HTML knowledge, or needs help getting this done. There is no reason why we can't just throw on a form of which events to include, then have the Schedule page pull the list of events and allow us select boxes with times in them.


The Events/Schedule page suggestions I'd actually already worked on before you suggested that. The main problem with creating some sort of scheduling/event interface is making it flexible enough to be useful, and designed well enough enough to actually be worth using. So far I haven't been able to think of a way to implement this that would be better than just making a table/page in CKEditor, which CubingUSA uses (no HTML knowledge required). So I haven't worked on it since.



Lucas Garron said:


> It's mostly Jim working on live results and the competition manager at the moment.


Bryan is also working on a Droid competition manager - a really good project with even more potential than suggested here. I know other competition managers (JCRA, I have a semifunctional one, I've heard rumors of others...), but Bryan's is probably going to be the way to go once it is up and running. I'll hopefully be working with Bryan to try and integrate live results (which I'm completely re-doing in very limited spare time), and this new version will hopefully include some sort of API, more features, more stable, more options, etc. If you're interested in contributing, let me know. 

I also strongly agree with Lucas's second comment. Things tend to get really bottlenecked going through the WCA, and often just plain don't get done... I don't want this to stifle any innovation as Lucas said.


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## FatBoyXPC (Sep 30, 2011)

Well, you already have checkboxes for the event list of which events to show on the registration page. Is there any reason we can't use this? We could include a textbox next to it for Number of Rounds. As for the scheduling page, is there any reason we couldn't just have a select box with all the events, then a textbox for duration (the start time would automatically be the starting time for the competition). We could keep having select boxes appear (jquery) until the end time of the competition has been reached. We could also use jquery to automatically total the start time + duration to give the next start time. Another suggestion would be to have jquery remove the already selected events from the new select boxes.

Regarding the Droid Competition Manager, I think the best bet (agreeing with what you said would hopefully include) would be an API, then build all the interfaces around that. Build an API so that we could easily port the competition manager to the iphone as well, and then building the website with the API would be not too much different (I wouldn't think) than the smartphone apps. I'm actually working on a project with a friend of mine where he's building the actual application as an API, then he'll build the actual "website" part of it using the API, and the Droid/iPhone apps will be written in Titanium; that way he can just build those apps in javascript, port them appropriately, and since he's hitting the same API, the data manipulation will stay the same.

I suppose my young/inexperienced eyes hasn't quite seen what sort of bottlenecks could be caused from doing things through the WCA  One of my biggest points to making said Competition Manager is that we could do a bulk insert type of deal into the WCA database, then again, I'm not entirely sure of the current process. I'm just going off the (probably bad) assumption they are retyped from hand into the WCA databsae, instead of pulling from the competition workbook.


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## Bryan (Sep 30, 2011)

fatboyxpc said:


> Well, you already have checkboxes for the event list of which events to show on the registration page. Is there any reason we can't use this? We could include a textbox next to it for Number of Rounds. As for the scheduling page, is there any reason we couldn't just have a select box with all the events, then a textbox for duration (the start time would automatically be the starting time for the competition). We could keep having select boxes appear (jquery) until the end time of the competition has been reached. We could also use jquery to automatically total the start time + duration to give the next start time. Another suggestion would be to have jquery remove the already selected events from the new select boxes.



In theory that sounds good, but in reality, it doesn't work. You need time in the schedule for lunch. Sometimes events may overlap. Sometimes you have a break in the schedule. You may have two events in the schedule, and want to add a note. You end up building up a really complex GUI that allows someone who can't edit what is basically a Word-like equivalent that's going to give them all the flexibility they need.



fatboyxpc said:


> Regarding the Droid Competition Manager, I think the best bet (agreeing with what you said would hopefully include) would be an API, then build all the interfaces around that. Build an API so that we could easily port the competition manager to the iphone as well, and then building the website with the API would be not too much different (I wouldn't think) than the smartphone apps.



Yes, the API is going to be a bunch of JSON calls to CubingUSA/live results. If someone can write iOS applications, they could make the same thing. If someone wants to buy me a Mac and a iPod, I could also work on it.



fatboyxpc said:


> I suppose my young/inexperienced eyes hasn't quite seen what sort of bottlenecks could be caused from doing things through the WCA  One of my biggest points to making said Competition Manager is that we could do a bulk insert type of deal into the WCA database, then again, I'm not entirely sure of the current process. I'm just going off the (probably bad) assumption they are retyped from hand into the WCA databsae, instead of pulling from the competition workbook.


 
Shoving everything onto the WCA site just for the data insert is way off. Right now the WCA site pulls the data from the workbook. But there's no reason why it couldn't have a defined file format that live.cubing.net or anyone else couldn't export to.

Here's a list of features CubingUSA has that the WCA site doesn't:

1) You can edit your registration
2) Paypal integration and option to not display non-paid
3) Configuration options to ask if you need volunteers
4) Allow the user to choose between 4 themes and edit the content of the page through a browser

And if the cookie-cutter script doesn't work, for example if someone wants to allow people to register for 5x5 or Megaminx, but not both, either Jim or I can make a quick change to the registration script to handle that, since each site is it's own individual deployment. We wouldn't have that flexibility on the WCA site.


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## JBCM627 (Sep 30, 2011)

Bryan said:


> In theory that sounds good, but in reality, it doesn't work. You need time in the schedule for lunch. Sometimes events may overlap. Sometimes you have a break in the schedule. You may have two events in the schedule, and want to add a note. You end up building up a really complex GUI that allows someone who can't edit what is basically a Word-like equivalent that's going to give them all the flexibility they need.


Similar with the event listings... adding in disclaimers, special notes, formatting, etc., would be restricted by a GUI.



Bryan said:


> Here's a list of features CubingUSA has that the WCA site doesn't:
> 
> 1) You can edit your registration
> 2) Paypal integration and option to not display non-paid
> ...


5) Psych sheet
6) Competitor Map
7) Competitor/organizer contact forms
8) Live Results integration
9) Etc...


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