Welcome

I first picked up a golf club when I was around nine years old. Lack of patience and perseverance meant I quickly put it back down again. The cycle repeated for a few years before finally giving up until I was in my late twenties, early thirties. Being that bit more mature, sometimes at least, I began trying to monitor and quantify my progress.

I looked at various on line services and several PC applications, I finally "discovered" and chose GolfScoreMaster. This fantastic software makes it very easy to record scorecards, and although capable of much more, allowed me to monitor my progress.

Being somewhat competitive I wanted to share the information with my friends in the vein hope of scaring them into submission. Although GolfScoreMaster is capable of exporting data in XML format, looking at raw XML did not provide an acceptable user experience.

Curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to see what could be achieved. I decided to display the original export data using an XML style sheet. FusionCharts are used to display the data where possible, for as we are often told "a picture is worth a thousand words". Judge my coding, not necessarily golfing, achievements for yourself here.

Some of the data has lead me to venture into the world of statistics. It would be fair to say that I very much disliked statistics at college; I preferred algebra and studied Pure Maths and Mechanics rather than the "easier" Pure Maths and Statistics. Although time has moved on, I still dislike statistics, albeit for a different reason. No matter what spin I put on the data, my ability is continually classifiable as "could do better". The charts on some of the tabs, such as Analysis and Handicaps, toggle between several different statistical representations by selecting the Change Chart button.

As a little reminder that it is only a game, I have enlisted the help of Robin Williams and the guys from Life in the Trap to provide an alternative view point on the game of golf. The irony is that it is all true.... at times anyway!? If you are feeling bad about the game the chances are this will bring a smile to your face.

The only required change to the XML data exported by GolfScoreMaster is the addition of the style sheet definition as shown below. Of course this step can be done automagically by the web server, as indeed it is on this site.

The XML style sheet and the required widgets are available as a download package here. Just unzip and drop your modified XML data file into the base directory and point your browser at the XML file.

Last updated: 27 April 2013
Last updated: 17 October 2011
Last updated: 20 March 2011

To brighten up my Windows XP desktop, back in mid 2008, I wrote an AutoIt script to download and update the Active Desktop with cartoon strips. The removal of Active Desktop in subsequent editions of Windows forced me to create the wallpaper on the fly, but this was a relatively trivial change. The following cartoon strips are currently supported:

• Alex
• Calvin & Hobbes
• Dilbert
• Garfield
• Matt

The binaries, including source code, are available as download packages below:

• Comic Strip Downloader - Windows x86 | Windows x64

The software does not need to be installed, just unzip and run the executable in the bin directory. The executable, when run for the first time, will create the default config.ini and getComic.bat files, along with the raw directory. Running this default batch file will download today's Calvin & Hobbes, Dilbert and Garfield comic strips into the data directory. Note the download may fail when a comic is being downloaded from a server in a different time zone; schedule the download carefully. The downloaded images are used to update the desktop images.

getComic.exe [Refresh|Clear]
    Refresh - Refreshes the desktop.
    Clear - Removes all comics from the wallpaper.

getComic.exe [Calvin|Dilbert|Garfield|Alex|Matt] TARGET_PATH
    Downloads the specified comic to the TARGET_PATH directory specified.

getComic.exe  Run BATCHFILE_PATH
    Runs a batch file specified without showing a DOS window, useful for running a daily scheduled task.

The software is configurable via the command line, as above, and the config.ini file, which is commented and should be fairly self explanatory. The deprecated Active Desktop mode is only available on Windows XP and requires manual configuration of the operating system. The active desktop needs to be enabled and the comics need initial manual placement on the desktop; more details in the config.ini file. The recommended Wallpaper mode involves no manual setup steps. Wallpaper is created on the fly using the successfully downloaded images. The desktop background colour is used as the background colour of the photomontage. Strip placement is controlled by coordinates specified in the config.ini file.

Last updated: 14 March 2011