CR Bridge

Two videos describe the process of updating the bridge calendar

• Part 1 is general instruction on getting a Google account and on mechanics of updating the calendar.
• Part 2 is the specific example of updating the month of September for evening clubs.

Notes:

☠When you change one occurrence of a repeating series, you should NOT uncheck the “repeating” property before clicking SAVE.  If you do, you’ll mess up the series.😩

☠After you save a modified single occurrence from a series, that instance no longer has the “repeating” property, and it is safe to duplicate it.  You do NOT, however, want to duplicate a repeating event.

The video below shows the creation of a plain-text post, with the example of a monthly masterpoints report.  (note 1)

• A smaller-sized-file version is http://www.cedarrapidsbridge.com/content/uploads/posting_mps_50h.mp4 .
• A slightly-higher-quality version is http://www.cedarrapidsbridge.com/content/uploads/posting_mps.mp4 .

A second video, in two parts, shows the creation of a more complex post, titled “Two for One.”  Subjects addressed include the following:

• Creating, reviewing and editing a post.
• Creating a table
• Correcting a system issue with table formats
• Incorporating an image (note 4)
• Use of special symbols for suits

The video is in two parts totaling about 90 Mbytes.  They are about 5 minutes each.  A program called Flashback-Plus was used to record one video and  Microsoft’s free Moviemaker was used to split it in half.

• Part One
• Part Two (notes 2 and 3)

Notes:

(1) The masterpoints video states that “.txt” files open in Notepad; that actually could vary.  You can right-click to select the application you want to use.  To amplify the comment about “.dat” files, the meaning of such files is determined by the program using or producing the data.  This is qualitatively different from, for example, a “.jpg” file, which is always supposed to be a picture and generally follows certain public standards. Renaming the file (in the video) may have been a bit prissy, since Notepad will cheerfully open a “*.dat” file used to contain text.

(2) The Part Two video mentions alt key codes: You can google for “card suit symbols using alt key codes.”  One site is found here.   You have to use the numeric keyboard; the regular number keys won’t work.  You are supposed to have the keyboard NumLock set; some Windows applications won’t enforce that, but some do.  In WordPress, you may get some unexpected behaviors unless you set NumLock.  When you use alt key codes you press Alt, then press and release the number while holding down Alt; then release Alt.  The alt key codes for card suits are  3 for ♥, 4 for ♦,5 for ♣,6 for ♠.

(3) The Part Two video should have mentioned the full-screen option of the WordPress editor.  Hover over the button below the “Tools” menu , the fourth button from the right, to identirfy the full-screen toggle.

(4) A later post, “Managing Image Collections” provides additional detail about incorporating images.  That post mentions a new button, “clear-float,” that was added to the editor for use with images.  The clear-float button actually issues an html “break” instruction, which starts a new line.  In addition to its uses with positioning text after images, this button lets you start a new line without starting a new paragraph.  (By contrast, the “enter” keyboard key starts a new paragraph, which involves a line space.)

Here is a video about how to change announcements on the bridge website. It is about 10Mbytes.

http://www.cedarrapidsbridge.com/content/uploads/Editing_Announcements.mp4

Results:

For daily club results, software automatically computes the links to the latest postings on acbl.   The set of links looks something like this:

These links will automatically replace themselves without any intervention.   Some links may be shown that are not yet posted to acbl.  If a club session is not held, the link will appear anyway, but it just won’t work (you’ll get a 404 error.).

For hand records, only for evening clubs, the software will automatically compute links to the most recent postings.

These local hand records have to have the following precise naming format: YYDDMM.htm, as in “160713.htm,” or else “YYDDMM.pdf,” as in “161012.pdf.”    They have to be installed in the “hands” folder of cedarrapidsbridge via the “Hands Uploader.”  The names are case-sensitive, so use lower-case for “.htm” or for “.pdf.”  The link to the uploader is in the footer. This will open a form, in which you will

1)select the file to upload by clicking the “choose file” button
2)enter the necessary password
3)optionally select the “enable overwrite” button
4)click the “upload file” button

If the customer wants to see results older than four weeks, he can follow the “Current Month” link for the club and, at the acbl site, select the desired month and click “go.”  For older hand records, there is a link to the “hands” folder.  The files are displayed in order of date of play.  Clicking on a file name will open it in the browser.

The Wednesday night game normally uses the hands of the “Common Game.”   If, and only if, the results page doesn’t find the appropriate hand record for Wednesday night in the local archive, a link to the Common Game hand record is offered.  This would be sufficient, except that the Common Game hand records disappear after about two weeks, and we prefer to have a semi-permanent archive.  Therefore, every couple of weeks, we generally transfer a copy of the recent Common Game hand records to the local archive.