AtStumps

Well here we go again a new version for all of you to use. Most of the changes for this version are bug fixes. There is still a ton of additional items to add to the application but a fair number of them are not quite there yet. I have changed the way that AtStumps does its startup routines, so there will be a little delay in loading of AtStumps. I will be tweaking this and improving on this as I go, so please bare with me on this one. The biggest problem I face is that AtStumps is now a huge and complicated piece of software and as such every new item I add, slows down the loading. I will however work on this to try and improve the loading times, so what you see with this version is not the be all and end all of the loading issue. As per normal if you find any problems or have any issues please let me know.

V0.39
1) Fixed a problem where the country information was not updated to show net training on Saturdays
2) Fixed a problem in the settings form where the treeview was not being saved properly
3) Fixed a problem with importing a FC game that ended in a Tie.
4) Fixed a problem on some imports where Polish characters were causing problems.
5) Fixed a spelling error on the matches page.
6) Added in Top 10 innings list for batting and bowling.
7) Added a delete button to the select player list (for the wages page).
8) The training predictors now take a fielding and wicket net into account when calculating concentration and consistancy.
9) Added in Top 10 Appearances to records page.
10) Added in the training Overflow options. Now controlled by a setting in the settings form.
11) Added a setting to control where the applicaion loads on the screen.
12) Added BT20 Friendly as an import option for matches. All pages have been updated to include this match type.
13) Added marker for importing of matches to mark the game as played against bot. The relevant pages have not been updated for this yet.
14) Fixed a bug on the records page where the number wicket catches was not being counted correctly.
15) Fixed a bug where the importing of the Pavilion was no importing the BT20 League Data.
16) Fixed a bug where matches that occured on the start of the season date were not being included in the records, and player stats.

Version 0.39

Well this is a small update to let you all know that things are really moving forward. Version 0.39 is just around the corner and should be out the door soon. To let you know what is due I will include what I have already completed.

V0.39
1) Fixed a problem where the country information was not updated to show net training on Saturdays
2) Fixed a problem in the settings form where the treeview was not being saved properly
3) Fixed a problem with importing a FC game that ended in a Tie.
4) Fixed a problem on some imports where Polish characters were causing problems.
5) Fixed a spelling error on the matches page.
6) Added in Top 10 innings list for batting and bowling.
7) Added a delete button to the select player list.
8) The training predictors now take a fielding and wicket net into account when calculating concentration and consistancy.
9) Added in Top 10 Appearances to records page.
10) Added in the training Overflow options. Now controlled by a setting in the settings form.

I'm looking forward to this release, as it covers a fair number of things that have been bugging me in AtStumps. I also know this version is going to upset a fair number of people, as I have changed some of the way that AtStumps loads. What this means is that there is a lot more data loaded during the splash screen. There were a lot of ways of looking at doing the loading and I can down to 2 options. The first was to put as much of the loading in the splash screen, this would make AtStumps appear to load slower. The second was to do late loading. What this would mean would be to load only the main players page, then only load the other pages as and when you click on their tab. This would make AtStumps load faster, but would slow down the tab changing when you are in the application. Both methods have their pros and cons, and I decided to take the simpler of the 2 and do most of the loading in the splash screen. I just felt that the amount of data that I would have to change for option 2 would just not be worth the benefit at this moment in time.

What I really need to do is to try and build in a metrics library so that I can actually get a fell for how much of AtStumps people actually use. This would then allow me to make a better decision on the late loading. Basically if people are only using the main player page, and using the other tabs only 10% of the time, then the late loading would be of huge benefit to AtStumps. I guess I will just have to live with what I have at the moment.

Now some bad news, I have been trying to find a way to build in a "copy from x" for the other browsers out there, and the bad news is that the other browsers just don't support a nice neat automation interface to the browser. This means that I would have to do a large amount of development for very little gain. Yes I know that it would make importing of data a lot easier and simpler, but I just don't have the time to try and make it all work. I have already spent 2 days trying to understand and find decent documentation of FireFox and it really is just not there. It is a real shame as I would have hoped that being a OS app that there would be more there. Microsoft are just far too far ahead in terms of proper documentation and samples. It could just be that I was not looking in the right places, but after 2 days of walking through web sites and not finding what I was really looking for I have decided to shelve it for the time being. I have how ever decided to look at building in a browser to AtStumps, that will handle automatic importing of pages and data as you surf the Battrick site. I will expand on this in another post in the future.

Well this version is a quick fix to sort out the change related to training on battrick. The original code was set up to handle the training for Mondays, this has now been changed so that it will handle the training on Saturdays. I have included a couple of quick bug fixes to this version too, and will release another version with a lot more changes and bug fixes in the future.

V0.38
1) Fixed a spelling mistake on the records page.
2) Changed the start of week dates for the new Saturday training.
3) Fixed a long standing bug in the sorting of skills on the player list. The sorting now makes use of sub levels
   so a player that is competent + 1 training will be sorted higher than a competent with no training.
4) Fixed a bug on the copy to wages menu where it was not copying the sub levels of the player.

Version 0.38

Well I have been thinking long and hard about this post. I have needed to do an update so that you all have an idea of where I am and where I am going. I had two posts in mind when I was thinking about AtStumps. The first was that I was going to put aside AtStumps and stop all development on it for the foreseeable future. The second to tell you that I will still be working on AtStumps now and in the future.

Now before everyone runs off and gets all unhappy with me for even entertaining the idea of ending this. You need to understand where I am coming from. I have put a lot of hard work into AtStumps and feel a little exhausted. There is some additional problems that I have been having in my profession life that have compounded the issues that I now face with AtStumps. These problems how ever are not yours but mine. There are a lot of times where I just feel that I can not seem to get the application to where it needs to be. AtStumps seems to lack a really good feel, from my point of view. There are currently a mountain of things that I do not like about the way that I am doing things in AtStumps. The loading of the application is a serious pain of mine. I made some changes as a fair number of people were complaining that AtStumps was taking too long to load. The problem that I sit with now is that I had to bastardise AtStumps to make this happen. This has now left me in the situation where the house of cards is getting rather large and threatening to bring the whole thing down. Then there are some changes to the basic display on the main players tab, where you can't change the order of the columns or hide some of the columns. With every new release this omission pains me more and more. So now I sit at the cross roads of do I continue or do I give it all up and walk away. This is not an easy decision to make and it has caused me a great deal of pain. If I walk away from this, I will put a lot of you in a bad position, you have sat with me on this journey through all the bugs and the improvements to AtStumps. This has pained me as a fair number of you have put as much into AtStumps as I have.

After that whole doom and gloom you will be pleased to know that I will continue with the development of AtStumps. I have decided that too many of you actually rely on me to actually keep AtStumps up and running and as such it would be rather selfish of me to walk away. So I will continue my development of AtStumps. I will find the time to work on AtStumps even though I have another project which takes up a rather large portion of my free time. Now as I go through my list of bugs and ToDo items, I would greatly appreciate it if you all would let me know what additional features that you would like me to include for the next version. I will work through all that you put forward, as well as work through my lists. I will then give you all a list of what will be in the next version.

On a side note, I have not worked much on the documentation and I can only gather that this is a sore issue with AtStumps. I will also be looking at the documentation for AtStumps and will have something out for the next version of AtStumps. If you wish to help in this regard please do let me know.

Well here it is, version 0.37. It has taken some time, but the new records are there. If you do find any problems please let me know. I will not have Internet access for a while, but when it comes back up I will sort out any problems at that time.

V0.37
1) Fixed a bug in the wages page, where the prediction details were not being displayed properly. If the number of training
   weeks was greater than the number of weeks left in the season, the figures were updating the the end of season information.
2) Added in the records section.
3) Changed the filters for matches to be a dropdown panel. This brings the matches page inline with all the other pages.
4) Added a summary page to the matches page.
5) Fixed a bug in the match importer, where the team name for the toss was not being correctly matched to the correct team.
6) Changed the checkbox for "All Players" on the team player stats page, to include only players that have played a match for
   the team. This is the same on the records page.
7) Added a player information box at the bottom of the player selection form for the Wages Page.
8) Fixed a bug where the players experience was not being saved for players imported via the player import.

Version 0.37

Well first off sorry about yesterday, got a bit wrong footed there. I have built a new version that should now handle the new squad page without any problems (I hope). I had to rip out a bundle of things that were to be included in this version but which I had not finished. So I have only left in those things that were working at the time.

V0.36
1) Added a popup menu item "Copy to Wages" that will now copy the current selected players information to the wages page.
2) Added a check box to the Team Stats page that allows you to display stats on all players that have ever been part of
   your team.
3) Fixed a no longer functioning squad importer. This is due to changes to the base squad page on the site.

Version 0.36

On a side note, if you are having any problems or you think you have found a bug, please let me know, and if possible can you email me with as much information to the problem.

Well this morning I woke up thinking this week would be an improvement on the last 2 weeks where the world has slowly been falling down. I fired up my email too see a ton of incoming emails. My first thought was yay more spam, than ham. Then I noticed that these emails were not going to my spam box, but staying in my Inbox. I then thought, the spam catcher has injured himself again, and all those emails about helping me to become larger than life and cheap software, I would have to sort myself, oh the pain and agony. So I set about working my way through them only to discover that they were all about AtStumps. More thoughts can rushing through that I had finally made it, that these were all emails to tell me that I had just been voted the newest god on the block. Well after reading the first one it soon became obvious that this was not the case, and in fact AtStumps had decided that it no longer wished to play with the other kids on the block.

Well just to let you all know that there was a change, or possibly changes on the battrick site, and it has unfortunately broken the importer for the squad page. I am not sure how many of the other pages/importers are now broken. I do know that the squad page is completely out to lunch at this moment. From what I can gather from the emails, the nets page still seems to be functioning. I will have to go through all the others and see what other pages/importers are out to lunch.

Now for the bad news to all of this, as if the squad page going out to lunch was not bad enough, I am not sure how much time I can get to work on this. AtStumps was currently in a upside down state at the moment as I have unfortunately had to put it on the side a few weeks ago due to tons of other issues. I will have to work out where I left AS and how much time it will take to find out what the problem is, and then fix the problem. I can only say that I am sorry about this, and will try my hardest to put something together so that you all can continue to use the application. I will update more here as I work through things, so that I can try and keep you all in the loop.

This is a bug fix version, for the importing of players.

V0.35
1) Fixed a bug in the import Player, where it was causing the importer to crash when there was no bid information.
2) Fixed a bug in the import player, where the shirt number was being included as the players name.

Version 0.35