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Youth Soccer Referee Feedback

JD — Mon, 31 May 2010 16:27:08 +0000

This discussion has come up many times on online forums, such as at MLive.com. I didn’t want this point of view to scroll it’s way into the bit bucket, so I’m repeating it here.

As I think through this whole process of referees, coaches and parents – I know we all want the same thing – better referees.

I see mainly two paths that parents or coaches choose to take. The first path is marked by the lack of self-control, sportsmanship and self-discipline – complaining at every injustice (real or perceived). There is no need to talk to the referee after the game because you’ve been telling him all game long just how much you think he sucks.

The second path is pretty much the opposite of the first. You cheer the team on, you leave the calls to the referee, knowing that they’re almost sure to make a few mistakes. If there is an area in particular where the ref seems to be missing calls, after the game you take a coaching/teaching/managing approach and talk to the ref. “Thanks for your hard work. It seemed from our side like red was doing a lot of pushing that didn’t get called. How did it look to you?” I would suggest that at this point, you shut up. Your talking is done, except for a final “Thanks again.” It almost doesn’t matter how the referee responds. You’ve done your job – he’s thinking about it, and he’ll continue to think about it. It’s not the time to debate what he saw versus what you saw. Get him thinking about it, then leave it alone. (easy to say, hard to do.)

Path number 1 leads the young ref with 100 games of experience to finally quit. Next week, your new referee is one with 50 games of experience – and none of us got what we wanted – a better referee.

Path number 2 leads the young referee with 100 games of experience to think about the pushing and what he might have missed. During the next week, maybe he asks his assignor or a more experienced referee for ideas on how to deal with it. Nobody works just 1 game per week. There are usually many opportunities over a weekend/week to talk about game experiences with other referees. But whatever he does – he cares, he thinks about it, and he comes back next week with 105 games of experience – and gives every single one of us what we’re looking for – a better referee.

I think parents and coaches need to give some thought to what it is you want regarding referees and figure out if your actions are moving things in the direction you want them to go.

Variable Data Printing Automation

JD — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 00:52:34 +0000

For a good 6 months now, my LinkedIn status has been set to: working on a combination of PlanetPress Suite, Visual Basic, and awk to automate variable data digital print. I should throw some DOS batch files in there as well – they’re part of the process that’s making it work. I guess it’s time to update my status (I should probably do that more often, eh?).

All that personalized, data-driven, image swapping to produce a one to one mailer is great. What I’m really pleased with is not the fancy pieces that go out in tomorrow’s mail, but the fact that all the data work, postal processing and template merging that went into that fancy piece of mail got done by a couple of computers while I was sleeping. Well – ok. I wasn’t sleeping – I was at my desk working on other stuff.

For me – the keys to it have been 1) Can you define your output using a template and rules, and 2) can you get consistent input data? The rest of it has simply been an exercise in stringing pieces together – with a few logic puzzles thrown in to keep it interesting.

I realized we were done with the project when we ran 13 mailings consisting of over half a million pieces combined and the most time consuming part of the process was signing the postal paperwork and cutting the POs for the postage checks. In fact, that’s all I had to do.

We took in our customer’s raw data (structured, reliable input format though) imported it into our mailing software. CASS certified the addresses. NCOA processed the addresses. Produced PDFs of the postage statements and deposited them in a client-accessible ftp folder – files named to match customer input filenames. Produced data files in postal processing order for template merging and deposited them in another client-accessible ftp folder – matching names again. Printed qualification reports, tray tags and postage statements. Sent email notifications to customer service and our client that files were done processing, here’s the record count and here’s where to find the postage statements. For this particular client, they pick up the data and do some further work on it before we print, but the data could just have easily been template merged at that point and sent down to one of our digital presses. Hands off from raw data to files queued up on the RIP ready for printing.

PlanetPress has some excellent flexibility for designing templates, so I’m thinking the next weakness to address is reliable data input. Maybe the next step is making input buckets for various input formats (FullName in a field vs FirstName, LastName in separate fields). On the other hand, talking with an acquaintance who writes log analysis software – maybe the answer is tokens. Similar to describing your Apache log file format in httpd.conf. Give me a token string that describes your data, and I’ll know how to parse your data correctly. Hmmm – check back in a few months – I’ll keep you posted.

Hello world!

JD — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:53:10 +0000

Well… three years has just flown by, and I guess it’s time to update *again*.

I decided I’m due to move into the late ’90s and start doing something other than text-editor-hand-written html. In fact, as you can see, I’m making a full 15 year leap and going for a psuedo-cms/blogging system known as WordPress. I’ve used WordPress for a couple other sites I help with, and have been impressed enough with its flexibility and ease of use to go this far and replace my code with their code.

I would be out of place not to also mention the Atahualpa theme. They’ve done an amazing job of skinning WordPress and allowing a fine degree of control over many (most? all?) aspects of how the site looks to visitors. I’m still exploring.

As time allows, you’ll see some of that control exercised as the graphics change, the fonts move away from “Tahoma Big” – not sure what they’ll become, but they will change.

Also on the list is finding some genealogy software that can be used online – so various branches of our family can contribute what they know about our relatives. As always – it’s a work in progress.