CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150907
This week's tip is about CSBAstat "grids".
Most grids are retrieving data directly from the tables via SQL. Mind you, some other grids are being filled like one would do with a spreadsheet. Users cannot really tell the difference.
When you change the report filter criteria, the SQL changes and the new data is displayed.
If you click on the column header of most display grids, the entire grid is sorted by that column. If you click the header again, it is sorted in the opposite direction. And no, you cannot sort on more than 1 column at a time.
Some of the column headers are slightly cryptic. For example, what is a MHG on the batting display? Well, just sort on the column and the message bar at the bottom will interpret it for you.
You can change a column width. You can the row height. Not sure why you would do it: both are temporary until you leave the window and return later.
When you click on the PRINT button, a CSV file is created. The program is "reading" the grid, row by row and column by column. This can be a slow operation if there is piles of data in the grid. Fortunately, we rarely do
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150831
Every manager that gets to pick the POTM knows that he must adjust the filters on the reports to restrict the data to a range of dates.
There is another option in the filters to restrict the batting related reports to pinch hitting results.
Want to know how your team is doing in the PH department?
Want to see which team seem to conjure up a hit from their PH's?
Give the Options->Filter ... pinch hitter a try.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150824
And now for a boring tip.
There is a folder in CSBAstat's Google Drive called "CSBAstat Documentation" which contains ... you guessed it ... documentation.
C:\Users\YOURNAME\Google Drive\CSBAStat\CSBAstat Documentation
There are 3 important Word documents associated with the release you are running:
- Configuration Guide (the INI file)
- Installation Guide (installing it)
- User Guide (using it)
They are the cure for insomnia. But if you ever get a RTFM response from the Administrator, that's where you find the answer.
The various versions of the Rule Book, Record Book and Folklore are also stored in the folder.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150817
An "audit challenge" is the result of a comparison between two pieces of data entry. For example, your pitching entry strikeout count versus my batting entry strikeout count.
Each audit challenge has a "challenger" (the accuser) and a "challengee" (the accused). The software doesn't know who made the mistake when it detects that there is one. So it makes a guess.
Some audit challenge comparisons have a zero tolerance. They have to be exact. For example, the game date, game time, game score.
Some audit challenges have a non-zero tolerance built in which is externally controlled by the administrator. This means that the comparison has to be "close". For example, 7 pitching walks versus 5 batting walks would be okay; but 8 and 5 would result in a challenge.
Whether you are the challenger or the challengee, you can enter a comment that the other team will see when CSBAstat Exchange occurs. It acts like a 'chat session' conversation.
Have you noticed the long pause after you import a CSP file from the administrator? CSBAstat appears non-responsive following the Exit button click. Because the import has updated your local database, the software is recalculating your audit challenges for all of the games that you've entered YTD. This pause gets longer and longer as the season marches on. Too bad the software doesn't tell you this is occurring :-)
NOTE: A common batting entry "bug" will be fixed in the next release. This is when a run scores via a passed ball or balk or wild pitch (runner on 3rd) or a double play. We cannot give an RBI to the batter, so we grant him a virtual RBI ("V"). However CSBAstat expects the other team to have recorded an error - well, there isn't one. This results in an audit challenge that cannot be remedied.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150810
Some miscellaneous stuff this week. Maybe I'm running low on things to write about?
When performing data entry, did you know that you can type a "?" in any entry cell to get a list of your players
Can't remember these tips? You can click on any menu bar's Help->Tips to get information on using the window.
One pitcher recently gave up 28 hits to a merciless opponent. There is a field edit limiting entry to a maximum of 25 hits ... this is to prevent silly data entry mistakes. To get around the issue, the administrator can zap the database. Or you can learn to beg for mercy from such a Goliath.
Has any player suffered a long term injury on your team? You'll find that you cannot enter all of the injury days in a batting event cell - it's just not large enough. Just use multiple cells to account for the rehab. For example, say Josh Hamilton was injured for 22 games. Enter NYYYYYYY NYYYYYYY NYYYYYYYY over three cells.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150803
Here's a feature of the software that people don't realize exists. Oh, and it's been around since Release 3.
We all maintain paper-based records of our relief pitching usage. After all, we have to ensure that we don't push a reliever past his innings constraints. While your bookkeeping approach is sound, did you know it can be automated?
There is a pitching report that shows colorful mapping of your reliever usage over the season. It's called "Relief Usage and Availability". It shows a bunch of blue, black, red and yellow lines. (Aside: click the menu Options->Legend to have them explained). If you click the PRINT button, you will have a spreadsheet that should reflect your paper bookkeeping records for relief use.
Give it a click and see what you think.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150727
Data entry mistakes occur. That's life. Here's some tips on checking your work for completeness or accuracy.
1. Check the audit challenges if the opponent has entered his data. It might provide clues on some silly entry mistakes.
2. Double check the game date and time. The software is not clairvoyant.
3. Pitching HBYP and home runs surrendered are frequently forgotten; so too are fielding errors. It's worth doing a final check before you save
4. Do you manually sum the number of hits or strikeouts or whatever on your paper sheets? Check your totals against the software's total on the entry window.
5. Have you ever clicked on the button that looks like a green/blue tetris game? After you enter your batting data, take it for a drive. It tries as best it can to present an inning-by-inning "score card" facsimile of the game. Does it match your paper sheet? For example:
- Do the innings start/end with the correct player? Especially the final out of the game?
- Pick a random inning or two: are the player results right?
- Is the line score along the bottom match the box score on your paper sheet?
- etc
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150720
Further to last week's INI file tip, let's talk about backup and recovery of the CSBAstat database (which is an Microsoft Access (MDB) file, in case you wondered how out of date this application really is!).
BACKUP
You can instruct CSBAstat to perform a backup of your database every n weeks. Backup will occur at the termination of your CSBAstat session. If n=0, it will occur every time you use the software.
Your INI file is also backed up.
If you have an external storage device or you have cloud storage (eg OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox), consider changing your INI spec to backup there instead of your C: drive.
Another backup is the Administrator (me!). The central database contains all of your changes up to the most recent export.
Furthermore, if you store your database on an external device, as above, then it is already stored remotely. I believe the Vixens are doing this, albeit it doesn't help them in the standings.
RECOVERY
The backups are copies of your original database. You can copy them back from their backup location and rename them to match your INI spec.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150713
This week's tip is the INI (initialization) file.
Like most software, CSBAstat reads the INI file at start up. This TXT file needs to be in the same directory as the executable.
There are 4 things that it is providing:
1. Location (DIR) where the software can find files; for example, player photographs folder)
2. The name of a file (FIL); for example, the name of your database
3. How software functionality (FCT) is to behave; for example, how fast team photographs will cycle
4. The name of external software to display CSV print files; for example, Microsoft Excel
Specified directories and files must exist on your PC; CSBAstat will verify this at run time. NOTE: some folders are shared via our Google Drive approach; other folders will only be local to your PC.
The format of an INI spec is:
[XXX_xxxxxx]=________________
The full list of specs can be found in the "CSBAstat Configuration Guide 7.0" word document that can be found in the documentation folder in our Google Drive (C:\Users\YOURNAME\Google Drive\CSBAStat\CSBAstat Documentation).
Some INI spec examples:
[DIR_Export]=C:\Users\YOURNAME\Google Drive\CSBAStat\CSBAstat Exchange\Export
[FIL_Database]=Flaming Eagles.MDB
[FCT_BackupFrequencyWeeks]=52
General rules:
- CSBAstat will ensure that the value of a INI spec is valid
- if XXX and xxxxxx doesn't exactly resemble [XXX_xxxxxx]=, then it is ignored (see documentation for spelling)
- if you don't provide a spec or it fails the edits, then the default value will be used
- if there is more than one INI specification, CSBAstat will use the last one it finds
- order doesn't matter
- upper/lower case doesn't matter
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150706
This feature is rarely used but it could be useful to you.
This AAA+ software has the ability to register your favorite batting lineups so you don't have to enter the starting players each game.
Lineup Setup: Use the Batting Lineup window to CRUD your lineups. A visual positioning of the players helps you ensure that you have a player rated at each position. It uses the APBA primary position so there might be holes. And it takes a guess at the outfield alignment.
Some managers have a lineup for those occasions when they face a rightie versus a leftie starter. Some managers have more precision, such as a good or bad starter ("Right-hander under 11").
Some managers like to register partial lineups, where they delay the choice of a clean up hitter until game time. To do this, just leave the batting position empty.
Using it: On the Game Results window, you simply enter the batting lineup name prior to entering your detailed batting stats.
If you change the batting lineup name after entering those batting stats, it has no effect on the batting stats for that game. If you change a player after it prefills the lineup for a game, it has no effect on the future use of the lineup.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150622
This week's tip is about CSBAstat Exchange (aka import/export ... aka synchronization ... aka Steve's favorite nagging subject next to audit challenges).
Exporting
Every time that you export, you are sending a file to the Google Drive that contains all of the rows that you have updated/deleted/inserted and the Administrator has yet to acknowledge receipt of them.
If you don't ever import a file from the Administrator, you'll continue to export the same rows. The file will get larger with each export over time.
Importing
Eventually, you will import a file from the Administrator. Your rows (see above) will be coming back to you, but they'll be flagged to indicate that the Administrator has them. From then on, you won't ever export them again, unless you subsequently change/delete them.
When you import a CSP file, there is a lot of data coming to you ... not just your rows, but everybody's. The administrator can't be sure that everyone has imported these files, so you get the whole YTD data. This is what happens during import:
- each inbound row in the import file is compared to your local database
- if the inbound date-time-stamp (dts) is the same as your row's dts, then nothing happens - you are already up to date!
- if the inbound dts is greater than your row's dts, then your database is updated - you will now be up to date!
- if the inbound dts is less than your row's dts, then nothing happens (it is assumed that you made an update in parallel)
- when you delete a row in your database, you merely flag it as delete-able. During import, it gets physically deleted.
If there are multiple files to import, it is safest to import all of them.
If you get a message "you previously imported this file", then you do not have to import it a second time. But it won't hurt anything if you do.
What does CSP stand for? CSBAstat protocol
Bottom line: remember to import the latest CSP file to keep the CSBAstat Exchange cycling
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150615
When you are on the main CSBAstat window, an assortment of JPG photographs will be presented. When you leave the window, the latest photo freezes; upon returning to the main window, they continue cycling.
There is an INI parameter that controls the cycle time. It is called [FCT_TeamPhotoRefreshSeconds]=. When the integer value of the parameter is n, it will cycle every n seconds. When the value is 0, it won't cycle at all.
Sample: [FCT_TeamPhotoRefreshSeconds]=2 (every two seconds)
The photographs are stored on our G-drive in a separate folder for each team.
NOTE: Most of the time, you only see your team's JPGs. If you change the "active" team via the Personal Preferences window, or you click the "Other Team" button on the Game Results Summary window, you will start to see the JPGs for other teams.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150608
Remember the tip a few weeks ago about avoiding mouse navigation? Here's another tip for faster batting entry and pitching entry...
Once you finish entering data for a player, you'll want to quickly get to the entry for the next player.
There are two "magic" characters that you can enter into the next cell for the current player:
a "[" entered into a cell will cause the focus to jump to the player name field on the next row
a "]" entered into a cell will cause the focus to jump to the first entry field after the player name field on the next row
For example, consider batting entry:
...
French S X W [ (entering the [ character jumps the cursor to the Parsons cell)
Parsons K K K ] (entering the ] character jumps the cursor to the G cell on Sherwood's row)
Sherwood G X G
...
Likewise you know about the "I" (eye) character for batting entry? Entering an "i" will result in a row opening up for a player substitution.
It's a lot faster than tabbing or mousing.
(this tip applies to all CSBAstat releases since 2002)
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150525
The batting entry and pitching entry windows enforce edits to ensure integrity and completeness of your data. The good news is your data has integrity and completeness; the bad news is that you cannot save your data should you really really want to.
There is a menu option on both windows that allows you to override the certain edits.
When the override is activated, a red line appears under the particular data that will no longer be checked. And you can now save your data.
The override remains in force until you leave the window. When you return, the entry will once again enforce the edits; you'll have to override again ... or better yet, fix your friggin' data so that it is accurate.
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150518
CSBAstat entry windows prompt you to provide a player. This week's tip talks about nicknames.
CSBAstat will 'auto-fill' a name once you have entered enough characters to uniquely identify the player. For example, if you draft Jarrod Saltalamacchia and only have one player surname that starts with 'S', you only need one character to identify him. But if you have Jeff Samardziga on the team as well, you would need to enter SAL before it knew it is Jarrod.
Player nicknames is a way of identifying players with an alias. Auto-fill is looking for aliases as well as surnames. They're a great time saver.
Be careful when choosing nicknames. Continuing the example, above, giving Saltalamacchia a nickname of 'Salty Dog' would only make it worse. You'd have to enter SALTA or SALTY. It would be smarter to nickname him 'Dog', assuming D or DO is unique.
BONUS TIP: make a '.' or '_' the first character of a nickname so that it doesn't match a surname. But you'd have to remember that your nicknames start with your personal nickname prefix character.
How do you update the nickname? The 'Player Update' window is available from most windows that display grids with player stats.
REL8: Now every team has a player whose 'auto-fill' resolves right away: the cursor jumps to the next field but alas you are still typing characters of the dude's name. Growl. Those characters are going into the next field. Now you have to erase them. The next release will offer some relief. It will detect that this is happening and introduces a 'pause' so that the extra characters are queued up and discarded. The cursor will jump to the next field after the pause where CSBAstat is then waiting for its entry.
Play ball!
CSBAstat Tip Of The Week - 20150511
When entering batting or pitching data, you need to minimize the use of mouse clicks to navigate through the entry cells. Otherwise you are horribly inefficient.
Here's some tips:
- if you enter a trailing blank character in a cell (eg a W_ into a batting cell), the application will jump to the next logical cell. Don't use the mouse!
- if you have reached the end of data entry for a player and want to jump to the next player, then type a "[" character or a "]" character. The former jumps to the next player name's cell; the latter jumps to the first data field after the next player's name. Don't use the mouse!
- use the TAB key to jump. Don't use the mouse!
There is no getting around using the mouse to click on a command button like Save or Cancel.
