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As you probably noticed FITA has decided to change some things in the financial structure of the TM world. Not all are happy but luckily most users see the point.
[b] Wages [/b]
The most critizied change was the wage change from seasonal to weekly updates. Let\'s just admit that it could have be...»
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... Sort of.
I get precisely a billion pm\'s pr day. So I\'m constantly reminded of the many shortcomings of our mail system. The top scorer on my annoyance-o-meter is the tedious task of finding previous correspondence with a user. So, as this is sort of heavy so-called \'query\' to our database...»
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It is with delight these days I\'m looking at growth and traffic number.
After we changed the creation procedure so new teams would not be created into the league system but be on hold until their first login we saw a very low number of new teams entering TM.
We used a lot of time on this and tu...»
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I think it\'s time to talk about the framework I\'m itching to implement.
http://trophymanager.com/pics/framework.png
It\'s slightly wider and the colors has changed a bit, this makes for better contrast and readability.
It\'s fully scalable (fig. 1 and 2).
It supports Arabic (please notice ...»
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TM is at the moment cruising as one of the most improving manager games on the web despite a low budget an minimal marketing efforts. We are really thankfull that so many users are refering friends, mentioning TM in forums and all other stuff that brings in around 500 new manager each day by word of...»
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A busy week it has been, but with great improvements on the commercial part. As most have read I managed to sort out the pending issue we had with our Poker Tour and the missing Hall Of Fame. Lucky Suite decided they did not want to take part in this great tournament anymore and I\'ve been unable to...»
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I have used a lot of time these last weeks on improving our payment options via phones. So far we have only had SMS payment and only for a small group of countries covering only 25% of TMs users. However we are now closing on a new deal securing us much better service in this area. I am just about t...»
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Our beloved users that when the extra mile and bought PRO Diamond has a gradient on their clubhouse-page. To ease their logo creation possess; I\'ve made a quick backdrop template for \'em.
http://trophymanager.com/pics/dia-logo-template.png...»
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Now that Easter is well done I think it is time for me to give a little update from my side of the desk.
Aa a user so nicely spotted a new team member have been employed here at the HQ. Janus Gringer (do not make fun of the name Anus Ginger is not fun ;o) - is our new sales manager. He will take ...»
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Short and sweet: A sparkling new official TM Desktop Wallpaper, ripe for the taking. Grab it here http://trophymanager.com/pics/tm-bg.png...»
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Ive started a thread in game development regarding match engine issues.
Basically I plan to divide all the nice feedback into 3 stages.
Easy implementable, somewhat hard, and extremely hard. Thus very good ideas might simply not be possible to dedicate resources to, or be too hard to do curren...»
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Time for yet another blog. Once again the focus is on the commercial side of the game for me. We have seen SMS payment introduced this week, and this has resulted in our PRO number growing dramatically. So far +100 new members by SMS. WE hope this development will continue and that users don\'t get ...»
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Hello Everybody.
This weeks maniac implementation will be a little less controversial than last weeks.
I plan to return the SMS payment option to Trophy Manager. Our provider offered us a more reasonable deal, and hopefully we can avoid all the technical problems we suffered from the last time...»
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Hi Everybody.
Heres a brief summary of the past two weeks.
1) Returned safe home from Skiing in Les Deux Alpes - very nice.
2) Made change clubname and donate pro, to generate a little extra income to Trophy Manager and to help managers wanting to change a silly clubname.
3) Been working...»
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Another season update under the belt, and a few resulting issues to think about.
First, it was by far the best one yet, setting several records. Here are the more important ones:
- \'Welcome to the season\' was posted at 19:43 tm time. And this could have been even better -- which it will be n...»
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The Super Bowl was simply awesome!
It took me all week to get over that game. I was lucky enough to watch it with some great food and drink on a 42\" plasma monstrosity!
Phew... I can\'t wait for next season - I\'m sure Chargers, Titans or Jaguars won\'t let me down.
Framework update.
The fram...»
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Ahh what i joy. A succesfull season update (only a few performance delays), a brand new odds game that looks very promising and very good PRO numbers. I couldn\'t be more delighted right now.
We just recently ultered the PRO pay site a bit whit some help from our users. The effect is already show...»
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I\'m now in 90% season update mode -- the remaining 10% is cup joy :)
(Boredom alert:) Currently, I\'m improving my script to check the transfer section of every single clubs finances. The aims are to make it faster and also enable it to run continuously during any given season, and hence, free ...»
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Will now that the rest of the HQ finally has stepped up in the blog department I must better try to keep up.
Sponsors
We will loose a few club sponsors this season. PartyPoker for once decided that they did not want to continue and sadly we couldn\'t really do anything about it. We will only int...»
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Ah yes - the day before the day.
I will be going to Les Deux Alpes friday for 8 days of skiing. Lots of snow and beer. Its gonna be grand.
I only hope I wont break anything the first couple of days. I expect to return home in bandages, so I will have a lot of time to spend in bed with my lapto...»
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Been working a bit on the upcoming enhancements to the transfer system. And here\'s a brief view of a few of the results (there\'s some odd details in the screen prints below -- that\'s from my \'local copy of TM\'):
Suppose I\'ve managed to locate an interesting player:
http://i13.tinypic.c...»
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Back to Blogging
It has been a long time since my last blog entry. A bright-headed blog reader would say about one entire season. That is not good enough at all and I\'d like to say I\'m sorry for not sharing my extensive knowledge as head of design here at TM for so long. Apologies are always a go...»
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No it is not another manager game, but instead a brand new odds game developed be Académica de Coimbra. It is very close to implementation phase, and I must say that I have been very impressed what Académica de Coimbra has come up with. The game consists of TM games from almost all top divisions, wh...»
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I\'m currently working on a new framework for our site.
The CSS is in bad shape and needs to be updated and be more flexible.
The new CSS will make the site a bit wider as well as change the green color a tad. Bad news for the logo creators, good news for the people who suffers from reading whit...»
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These days Thomas is working hard to on the brand new \"open transfer market\". It\'s looking really good. As a bonus thing we have a brand new PRO feature coming up as well. A great idea from the GD forum has made it to the implementation phase and we expect it to be ready around the same time as t...»
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Feeling a little mad about smaller division teams beating you in the cup? A lot of danish teams does. I was a little puzzled and read the thread in the danish forum closer. Here is the main concern:
25 Matches with at least a 2 division gap between the teams (ie 5-7), was investigated by the user...»
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What a week. Season update is a walk in the park compared to this. I think my \'tm/sleep hour ratio\' surpassed anything on record. However, on the positive side, i\'m confident we\'ve managed to upgrade general security substantially.
So, the heavy portfolio:
http://trophymanager.com/forum....»
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It\'s quite busy these days at the HQ at the fact that not many blogs are written is not a result of things going slow. Actually it is the opposite.
Here\'s a little insight in what\'s going on right now:
Armann is almost done with the new TI graph. It looks very cool in the traditional Armann s...»
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The last week much time has been used for our performance upgrade. We are glad that we finally had it done and that the effect is very good indeed. Soren told me that matches are now running 5 times as fast as with our previous servers. Awesome!
I have been using some of my own time recently to o...»
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It\'s freezing here, and it\'s only going to get worse, soon frozen rain will fall and chill me to the bone, dirty sleet will wet my socks and all under the supervision of looming hypothermia and countless of penicillin immune flus. I hate winter.
That is why our top menu now has a winter theme.
...»
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Damn\'! Haven\'t been able to connect with the blog recently -- must be some flaw with the internet.
The recent season update broke all records. This was extremely lucky as i was sick as a dog when running the process. Anyway, this very good result has lead to a host of new ideas on how to impr...»
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Once more it is time to give a little insight. The past weeks we have been working hard to improve the PRO area from our perpective to secure a healthy game. The first grand change we had to do was to remove some features for non-PRO like shirtsdesign and logo. Not very popular but it had to be done...»
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...Things that you can get for 8€:
1: One bottle of gourmet dark ale.
2: A Guinea pig.
3: 4 snickers bars.
4: Half a haircut.
5: A train ticket to Slagelse.
6: Starship Troopers on DVD.
Instead you COULD get:
1: Moonshine.
2: Pet rock.
3: 4 carrots.
4: Scissors and an mirror, need I...»
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Alas, Season Update
And so the season update is upon us once again. The previous updates have called for an entire weekend of slave labour as well as a 20-36h Monday. This time I feel confident that we won\'t have to go to such extreme lengths to complete the update and that ...»
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At last the MT Blogs is being integrated into the forum. There\'s still a few details to be added -- but, for me, blogging will be a lot more interesting with some feed back (i hope.)
Anyhoo, life is all about the season update. While we\'re definitely getting better at this, the task itself (th...»
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The last few weeks have, more or less, gone by with making an insane amount of banners. Daniel has been assigning them to me non-stop. Like a broken record he would recite sizes and whip me while telling me to 'go faster'. Almost.....»
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A Little Time Off
So I'm done vacating for the remainder of 2007 after having taken some time off these past three weeks. Me and Nielsen have now been running for almost two and a half years with no more than two weeks of consecutive free time, and I guess we both hit a wall by...»
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And this means for me that the stress factor to get all the new in-game club sponsors ready for kick off on Nov 12th is high. Since last blog I have closed deals with FHM and Bwin but only for Danish clubs though. I'm also in final discussions with two other companies to get started in season 9....»
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So far only PartyPoker is a "real" sponsor of the 18 you can choose from when you customize your club at the start of each season. In season 9 a lot more will be introduced. In mentioned previosly that bet188 and 888 will be introduced. On top of these two PartyPoker will probalby stay, and maybe ev...»
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(Still) Staying in Touch?
Last week's blog entry sparked some quality ideas in the dedicated forum thread. The subject was how th...»
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Two TM users at the UEFA Champions League Final and the UEFA cup final. This scenario will indeed come true in the Spring 2008 after we have closed a deal with Lucky Suite and KickoffPoker, giving all TM managers the chance to compete against each other in poker tournament during the coming months. The main tournament will be based on a freeroll, meaning it will be free of costs and no creditcard is needed to compete. We are thrilled as this competition has prices worth more than €10.000 and only Trophy Managers can compete in it. Watch out for more info in the upcoming weeks.
<...»
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Oh but I am so happy to see the TM forum in such good shape. It is a good feeling one gets when seeing the amount of sensible managers we have in there and the quality of some debates. And we do pay the forums a lot of attention even though our presence is not as strongly felt as it used to be - some might say that this is a natural consequence of the game growing from holding 2400 managers in the beta test and to the massive 100,000 managers playing TM today. We simply can't keep pace and have taken, as well as will continue to take, steps to ensure that the communication between the TM managers and HQ doesn't grind to a halt just because the game grows larger. This blog is dedicated by me to giving info/trying to start a little debate on how we can keep in touch - the managers and the HQ...»
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Last week I opened the discussion for the open transfermarket. So far I have been really greatfull of all the comments from you guys, and a lot of great input has been given to me, and it will be included in the final plan for the open tranfer market. I personally hope that we can implement it during the start of next season, but as obsticles almost always occurs lets say that mid season 9 is the expected date....»
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TM is entering a new era. We're still a young game with some minor bugs, balancing and tweaks to be done. But the time has come to conclude all the projects we've released during the past 1½ year of international TM. The facilities, the blogs, the forum and the Anti-Cheating-System to name but a few. Last Thursday we held a grand meeting (all five of us) planning the next half year's work and discussing the future of TM. The following weeks should see some of this planning released to allow all you managers out there to get up to speed on what's happening in the TM HQ....»
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So far my blogs have maybe not been the most interesting from a users point of view. Not much about game development and a lot about things not directly related to the game. But this week it's not the case. Here's why....»
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My current project is to get more companies into the game as club sponsors. So far a few more are ready for season 9. I have made a new system allowing each country to have different sponsors. This means that you can see some countries have sponsor which isn't available in your own country and vice versa. Also this makes the sponsors tending to be more local...»
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You'll be happy to know that tm is in very good shape indeed. This thursday we participated in the annual 'DHL Relay' (thought this was a worldwide thing - google's very disappointing, though.) In Denmark almost any 10+ employee organization participates in this. It's a massive event over 4 days where thousands and thousands of people challenge themselfs by forming teams running 5x5k (those of you not down with metrics yet, get serious!!). Although tm was without Armann - our only true soldier* - we managed to squeeze in a time of 1:54:12!! That's 25k in 1:54:12!!...»
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If you look you won't find a single blog entry from me for two weeks straight. I'm sorry for this - I do find our little blogging schedule (also...»
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I hate bugs -- and i know you do to. We have way to many of them, i know, but let me try and provide some perspective. First of all, let me assure you, we care deeply about this, but there are some external pressures causing us to not put all our efforts into this. Very simply put, we have no choice but to maintain a high pace of development, while trying to cope with the effects of all the releases...»
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We recently reconfigured our table-setup to be horseshoe-shaped. We surrounded ourselves with the plenty small cabinets on wheels we have and build us a fort...»
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During the week I have been in a meeting with a new advertising network. As a result new banner are apprearing on the site as of today. So far it though only Danish traffic who recieves the new banner, but in time the cooperation will be expanded if it works well. This means that the old AdPepper banners are kicked permanently....»
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This time we thought we had it wrapped. This time it wouldn't get us down. We'd managed to organize ourselves and put up a fight. Stand against the tide of time together reaping the fruits of our hard labor these past seasons...but no. We left the office at 4AM Tuesday morning bloos-spattered with a tired, matte eyes. The season update got us again the nasty bugger - tormenting our brains 'till the early morning. Laughing in our face as we tried to run a seemless promotion/relegation update. But I say to you: We'll get it next time. And this time there won't be any too-late bed times, there won't be any things which we haven't thoroughlt tested and the update will behave itself...»
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Sponsors
Once again a day late, but better late than never. I hope you are enjoying the first real in-game sponsor. It seems like a lot have chosen PartyPoker already and everyone seems to be happy with them being added to the game, which is great news. I hope to have more re...»
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It's season update time. And bloggin' isn't meaningful. Stats of more than 2,3 mio players will be considered and put into neat little boxes with ribbons. More than 1,6 mio matches will be carefully read and rewritten into a 'archiveable' format (Yes, we're fast readers/writers). At the same time, g...»
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It's moving day here at the office - so we've been clearing out our desks and gotten the pitchforks ready to clear out Sorens desk...»
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Today's blog is short but sweet.. First real sponsor is introduced in season 8. PartyPoker will be added as a club sponsor in the system up to the season update....»
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Being a fan can sometimes be tough. These days I am having serious problems concentrating on all the things I should be (season update etc) because my favourite footie-team irl is playing a pivotal Champions League qualifying match against S.L. Benfica. The chances of Copenhagen slipping through to the group stage is minimal in my oppinion. But they were just as minimal last season when we beat Ajax Amsterdam. So I guess there's still reason to hope... Last year the teams clashed in a 5th round group stage match at Estadio da Luz - and that didn't turn out pretty. But as sad as it was to see my team lose 1-3 then, as hopeful I am this time because the situation is completely different. Last time Copenhagen tried to play along and win the 3 points and go through to the playoff stages of the CL. This time they will take a more defensive approach - which is what they're good at. Chances are slim, but I think the final result after two matches will be quite close indeed. At least I hope so...»
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Finally I have access to my new apartment. I spend most of yesterday moving my stuff down from 7th floor and up to 4th floor.. It cannot be recommended!...»
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Before the match engines new tune is complete. A lot of bugs such as missing reducing of bans from international matches, assistant manager who picks too many foreigners, banned or even injured players. Weirdness with injurysubstitutions and bans and a few minor things will be fixed.
Among new th...»
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Another week of indecisive efforts by my players. I don't know what I'll do if I don't end up at least 2nd in my league after investing a hefty amount in wages over the course of the season. On the other hand I just noticed that my league has been hit by two bans by the GT team, leaving no. 1 and no. 4 out of the promotion race, so the odds of making it are in fact quite good. That being said, I have 5 players out for next game... InjuryHell.goAway(now)...»
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During this green (and unbelievably wet) winter, I've had tremendous pleasure from watching the most awesome Tour de France since the glorious days of Pantani.
...»
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The Livematch is all but done, and it will be added when the action texts as well as the translations are done...»
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Yup, you probably have noticed it. Our co-op with GB has started to give our users another option to pay for PRO. So far it seems like a success. I hope you enjoy this new feature, and remember if you don't want to use this service you should of course feel free to purchase PRO on a regular basis ;o)...»
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My team has had a horrible week. So sad. For the first time this season I've truly mismanaged it. Lost 1-0 to promotion rivals Mongolians while forgetting to throw my 129,000 ASI striker Aranauskas into the fray...as well as dictate a line-up at all. God Damn! And on top of that the weather in Denmark has been crap for the past week. Rain, rain and rain.....»
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I will be dedicating the next week to improving correcting the match engine. This work should hopefully remove most of the bugs for good. I wont add much new stuff, at least nothing that will require managers to change tactics.
I hope this will go well, as its quite impossible to test. Fingers cr...»
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As you probably have noticed we are starting to make an effort of increasing the games PRO rate. One of my mission has been to llok at the payment services. This has lead to that we will change payment provider to a topprofessional company within a month or two. This should make to payment option huge and a lot better. Daopay has still not given us any info we could need, and it is on hold right now. Maybe it will be skipped completely... Also because the new payment provider is the same Hattrick uses, and they have 30% "Pro's" using only this service - with a lot of these being people form fx South America. We hope for great effect when the change happens....»
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A little status on my doing at this point: Going over the Pro pages and updating the with all the new features added in the past 6 mths is a major thing which I am currently occupied with. We felt quite curious when users started reporting robot activity on the transfer market (it was of course the ...»
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It has been our main goal to keep TM the best free game around. We managed that, but question is wether we can keep the amount of features free as we currently are. One of the main things in keeping the game free is banners. Companies pays us to direct traffic to their site. Unfortunately the goodwi...»
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A day late on my blog... Not good when I just recently introduced fines for missing blogs....»
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We're introducing the new Live Match Viewer very soon - it will relay the accompanying action texts in an exciting manner that will really spice up any given match...»
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Just spent a week in West Zealand at my parents house. Absolutely splendid relaxation, and a welcome opportunity to indulge myself in music-making. I've attempted to record some of the sparse material I have created while working 25-8 on TM. It seems that the technical side of things has a buggy side to it, but I've been able to bag just about 8 tunes of raw cue track, and that is fine. I had to have loads of time for detoxing and lying around...»
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This season has seen the addition of a number of new anti cheating initiatives. The most important one has been the appointment of a group of new international...»
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The first week of our new banner-campaigns has shown indications of both good and bad signs. The revenue was quite good to start out with, and we were pretty sure this was the thing that would keep TM alive for sure. Sadly the revenue has dropped since and there's no clear indication of whether this will be enough to survive. I hope some adjustments soon will change this, and hopefully we can end up reaching the goal we set before starting it...»
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The Squad has been released and many valid criticisms has been voiced. We will refine the clicking on players on the datagrid as well as make it load faster. Bugs will also be sorted out asap...»
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Sad but true. As a necessity to overcome our deficit I have hooked up with huge international ad network, AdPepper. I have been undergoing a proces to find out how to implement their banners on our page to make the most profit with the lowest annoyment factor. A top banner simply is so much worth to us that we simply can't allow us not to have it, while we aren't making enough money from PRO sales. Therefore please accept the new ads, and remind yourself that without them TM would be in danger of not surviving. Also remeber to drop by our sponsors for a visit once in a while.
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God Damn Blog! Consistent blogging has proved my nemesis; truthfully I find it very hard to remember writing this little weekly text. Maybe due to too much work. Anyway Daniel has imposed a new strict blogging policy, making it costly to miss a blog or two: You have to buy beer for our weekly Friday beer-coasting/turbo-coding ritual. A whole case of 30 pcs for two missed blogs :O Arg. I better shape up...»
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Here at the TM HQ we play Foosball (Table Football) right before or after lunch - some times before AND after...»
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The highlight of the week was no doubt a succesfull meeting with a bookmaker about a upcoming partnership. It's looking very promising and hopefully we can already introduce the new TM betting community this season. The system is still in development, but when it will be fully operational, you can e...»
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So I've often been annoyed by the alleged randomness of the TM Match Engine (ME). Mostly because these allegations to a large extent has been built on weak syllogisms like: 1. I'm a bad mofo, and 2. I lost today => Obviously the ME is random...»
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God damn ¤/=&/()#! Forgot to blog :O What a bad example I am. Should be blogging a mere one day out of seven and I flunk it!...»
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Not much has happened this week. Most of my time has been devoted to establishing contact to different people. Luckily it has payed of. Monday I'm heading towards Stockholm to start a partnership with a bookmaker. The plan is to create a TM betting community where e.g. a TM pool system will be included....»
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Not much to report on this sunny Thursday - the front page is still undergoing reconstruction and will hopefully be done today...»
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Thats sadly the reality right now. But I'm getting closer to bringing some more income to the HQs soon. At the moment I'm awaiting response from a media bureau. Earlier this week we were rejected by a smaller company because they couldn't manage the task with their current capacity. Hopefully the new company are ready to take on the challenge....»
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Still havent learned this whole blogging thing yet. Never was the type who could write a diary - unlike others (cough WZA).
Well the past week I have spent a lot of time away from TM moving to Copenhagen (in an apartment with WZA and AC Packers). Apart from that I have been stressing a little bec...»
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Oh well, not much blogging stuff in my head this week. The season update and introduction of scouts and headhunting really drained me last week. Got a good night's sleep yesterday and now I am trying to get myself ready for separating scout and coach head hunting. The scripting seems rather daunting, but I hope that when I get on with it and pen down a complete work list it won't seem as daunting...»
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... gone. And it didn't go anyway near as smoothly as i had projected. Niklas and I worked from monday morning to tuesday morning and aged quite a few years in the process. Still, i guess, it was another step up the learning curve and I project it will be smoother next time :-)...»
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Season 7 will be as exciting as the previous ones, since we'll continue to improve and add functionality and content to the game...»
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I have during the last week been in talks with a betting company on a possible partnership. Hopefully this will end up with us introducing a new TM pool coupons function....»
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... is upon us. So while you're out drinking (responsibly!), Niklas and I will be sweating over the continuously growing effort of going through and evaluating our entire database of clubs, players, matches and whatnot...»
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I must admit that I haven't done much work on the game the last week. The reason to this is that I yesterday handed in my final thesis at Copenhagen Business School. Ohh what a delight!! Today I'm back again at full strenght here at the office, even though my hungover body is not thrilled.
...»
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I'm not in much of a blogging mood these days - guess that's also why I'm a day late with my blog entry. It must be the season update piling pressure on my shoulders. Nevertheless some improvements will come from this hardship...»
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The new version of the matchengine wont contain very much new stuff, but more a lot of fixes for bugs gathered the past 6 months. I will be spending my time on preparing it for the brand new live match viewing.
On a more personal note I've finally managed to get a decent apartment in Copenhagen -...»
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So finally, the translation of the front page news items can commence. I'm hoping this will improve our 'people-who-are-aware-of-front-page-news to people-who-are-not-aware-of-front-page-news' ratio.
...»
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Ohh what a pressure. It's tough to match the lenght of Niklas' novels. I'll keep it short and simple though.
...»
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New Line-up Selector
The new line-up selector is supposed to be ready soon. I've been co'oping with Armann for the past weeks, and all that's missing is a little language content and some start-up tips. The save and load functions, feel and formation overview of the new line-...»
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I plan to start the work on the next version of the match engine this week. After spending a few of the following days fixing the forum I will start with the rather huge list of improvements. Updating the match engine is always a pain. Its incredible hard to test as theres a billion different scenar...»
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And another season update is looming large. This will take up (nearly) all my time in the coming two weeks. Also, i'm working on a more secure transfer system that will launch primo next season, at the latest. This will not look awesome to you, but will hopefully free up a lot of time that i've spen...»
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This week I've been working closely with Soren on the functionality, look and layout of the new forum.
We've spend a lot of time making sure the forum will perform good as well as being easy to navigate.
...»
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So another week has passed. The last 7 days have shown some breakthroughs in partnership deals. Even though nothing has been agreed yet we have moved one step closer. I finally managed to get in contact with Carlsberg so now I'm awaiting their reaction. Hopefully they like TM as much as we do, but if not, I've made a long list with companies to go to....»
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Before the start of the season update frenzy I have decided to get those keen-eyed scouts into the game. This will most likely happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. The end of the season has a lot of exciting tasks in store for me: A new cup draw code, qualification matches for the 1st divisions and making room for next season's international cup winners and national cup winners in the international club cups...»
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While enjoying excellent literature and the Mallorcan sun, the less intellectually endowed part of the TM Team decided that Mondays should be my Blog day (cf. recent entry by Armando....»
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The new Squad is nearing release - I've used a few days to fix bugs and add a few features so much so, that it's currently only missing the translation system and then we can launch...»
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It's very clear that the growth of the game right now is looking tremendously. Now it's time to make benefit of this and convert the succes into some cool cash so we hopefully can get rid of our monthly deficit within 2007. It's not gonna be easy, but my tasks at the moment is to improve revenue streams from our banners, and hopefully at some point get a sponsor deal for our game with a large international company. The sposorship deal is great importance if we are to hope for break even this year, but not many companies are interested. At the moment I'm trying to get in contact with Hummel and Carlsberg, but so far not much has happened.
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This week has seen the introduction of a test version of the new user guide. At last I got something workable out there! :) Months of harsh battling with language versions, new text and documentation texts finally resulted in something everyone in the TM Community can use and enjoy - though the current state of the user guide is one of somewhat inaccesibility. I've just finished the first draft of a chucked-up user guide with lots of smaller paragraphs. Hopefully this will make more users check the user guide whenever a question rises...»
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Following week has been with sky high traffic. We have created almost 3300 new teams. Im always a little stressed when we suddenly experience a boost like this. Will the servers cope with the new high pressure? Will the matches be delayed? Fortunately we have had no such problems with the new higher...»
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18 fictional companies have been created and have been given (for the time being) to some 'special' clubs - besides the GT's (us) they have been handed out to translators, mods and general nice people...»
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After 9 days of work I'm starting to settle in here at the office. So far most of my time has been devoted to getting to know the system and the game....»
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A large survey landed on my desk last week, handed to me by Daniel. Even though it is concerned with a rather different kind of games than TM, its TM-related conclusions are interesting: 25% of the respondents complained that cheating was the biggest problem with their online game, and another resounding 24% that "whiners" and "immature idiots" were spoiling the fun. Interesting stuff that. We are already prioritizing the cheater effort with 1:1 man out of 4. What can be done about the whiner issue then? Well, mod'ing could be harsher, but I'm not sure how we'd do this. Let's draw on the experience of the community and our fine FTs to see if someone can come up with feasible suggestions. I for my own part will get rid of the "first post" part of the FITA license soon :...»
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My first task, was to improve the blogging. Gladly it was implemented today, so look forward to much more great new from us here at the HQ here in the blog area. My blog will be updated on wednesdays....»
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I have spent a lot of time the past weeks on designing a new forum for Trophy Manager. Our old forum is getting so ugly that I simply can't bear to use it. The new forum will make a lot of things easier. Its will be translated into all languages, it's much prettier, admins will get it easier and it ...»
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And so he's back with another blog entry :) The past week has been full of exciting experiences for me personally. I've just received the keys to my new flat (the contract I had on the last one expired :P) and here at TM we've introduced the new player development. When one disregards the few odd bugs and small correctional mistakes I think it has been a success. The flat? Well, it's absolutely lovely, very white and situated in one of Copenhagens most troubled neighbourhoods, but I love it anyway :) First time ever I've had a place to live which contained future perspective of acquiring another one through some waiting list system. This one does...»
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Online footie management games have long been far less rich in detail than the PC titles like FM, CM and FIFA Manager. The early-day pioneers at Hattrick never strived for excellence and until this day everyone has been copying the linear Hattrick way of developing players. But no more! We at the Trophy Manager HQ have gathered all good forces in the struggle for a new generation of footie sims on the web, and with the help of our superb community, we've taken the player generation of online management games a giant step forward. Trophy Manager players will, when the changes start to show in a season or two, have varied, well-sculpted profiles with individual specialties, key skills and some FP orientation. It is going to be good. Real good...»
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I just can't seem to keep stressless and well these days. So last week ended in another disease and a 7-day penicillin cure. God damn. I know some of you have been waiting for an answer as to when the new player generation will be implemented, and here it is: My illness may well cost another week of dev'ing :( We're 95% done, but the last 5% have to be done by Tuesday, and that may not be very realistic. Next Tuesday may be a good guess as to when the change is implemented...»
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At latest count, 484 transfers for a total of 17,714,409,208 in TM deafault currency, has been cancelled....»
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All the thoughts inside my head are pretty focused on generating new players with new training capabilities, helping with the implementation of the line-up selector and trying to write a user guide for the cheat-checking Game Teamsters all at once. A bit confusing when handled at once, but all important additions to the game in their own right...»
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The new Squad page is coming along nicely and will be released for testing very soon. With a full release in a week or two.
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I think the new transfer initiative is a success. So far the GTs (9 clubs at the moment) has stopped 171 dubious/stupid transfers from happening. I can only hope that a good percentage of the these teams (who has received PMs as a consequence) will find the righteous path. Those who don't will of co...»
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Latest initiative in the anti-cheating crusade is an enhanced transfer list that enables GTs to cancel a transfer before it goes through. Hopefully a lot of would-be cheaters will stop their efforts, and the rest will of course be handled in the traditional way....»
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You may (still) think we're waiting on this and that to get this effort going. That's only true to a degree; While we're still working on the system - and the guidelines that has to be a part of this - billions has been handed out in fines and many clubs banned. Within the past 30 days 244 clubs hav...»
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So the season update, despite what some may think, went fantastically well. To minimize site downtime we pushed a few of the very heavy updates a week or so. This exercise will (knock on wood) be a lot faster next time around, but there will still be a few days lag on player stats, for instance. Als...»
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Being open-minded and keeping a positive and continued ping-pong going with the TM community is a priority for us at the TM HQ. We stride and toil to listen, read and answer some of the posts which arrive every day suggesting new features or directions for the game. Some have said that TM is unique because the road to contact with the lead Devs is so short. We'd like to keep it that way, but we also sense that the growth of the game will eventually make this difficult. The stream of ideas is already growing, and it won't be too long before we'll have to struggle to keep up...»
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Nothing really takes my breath away any more like the sweeping vastness of a season update. Sitting 9 days in a row for 12 hours per day in front of an LCD screen trying to figure out which teams to relegate where is a tiresome job. The result, Trophy Manager, on the other hand, is by no means tiresome. :...»
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This week we've been sabotaged by the weather gods of Denmark who has unleashed a blizzard upon us. On top of that I went down with a nasty 'flu bug on Sunday and have only just recovered. So I won't try to sum up the work of the team this week, all I can say is that Soren has been making amazing progress with our new forum - it's going to be great! Armann has helped him quite a bit and is still struggling with the line-up selector as we speak. I have been writing a few odd bits and pieces for the new user guide, which is closer to complete than ever. I guess I am round 85% done...»
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Progress is really being made in the team these days. Thomas aka Internazionale is starting too see some light at the end of the tunnel fixing the...»
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Lately it seems apparent that Trophy Manager is a healthy child, as the game ascends towards adulthood. TM has followed Hattrick's rate of growth since November last year and the performance specks TM caught a month ago have finally responded to hard work and Penicillin. In short: Things look promising...»
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The performance of the webserver has been giving me gray hairs lately. The past year it has always been the database server where the bottlenecks appeared, but Ive started to get quite competent in handling that one - and just as it works nicely the webserver starts coughing. Luckily though the pro ...»
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After a successful new year celebration and a stressful Christmas I've almost finished exploring the possibilities of the new player stats format. A new unifying stats page, the l_stats.php, will be introduced somtime today, and it will provide insights such as divisional stats, cup stats and WC qualifying playerstats. Testing it sure has brought a few excellent players to my shortlist anyway ;...»
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Been working my behind off to make our anti cheat system ready for international users -- of course i developed the whole thing in danish :-) Next phase will be electing a few trusted users to start handing out some fines. I expect this great fun to happen during this week...
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We've long been looking to enhance TM with National Teams and international club tournaments. Season 5 could very well be the season we start these up in. Søren and myself are at this time testing systems and updates - though only part of them are finished. And hopefully the international aspects of...»
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Finally outta that cave! Yiiiiia! Pro is out and now we are all just hoping for a positive response. :) I personally think that the assistant manager adds a whole new dimension to the game. The breakdown he provides of chances and more is priceless. You can aggregate it from matchreports and grades yourself, but the truth and the whole truth is best laid in the hands of the assistant manager. The making of the assistant has inspired us to do some changes to the tactical section of the game, most likely from next season. The tactics could perhaps be assigned a slightly heavier weight and weighing of which kind of finishes are produced as it seems a bit too many of our shortpassing sequences ends up in header (!) chances...»
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So i spent the last week working mostly on a pro feature that i, as a tm manager, am really looking forward to: The "Transfer Agent". This will enable you to set a maximum bid on a given player on the transfer list, and the "agent" will automatically increment the current bid as long as possible...»
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We are nearing a new milestone for TM - the day on which the future plans will be laid. What should dev do? Which programmes need an overhaul? Obviously we have learned a bunch from the last few months of international gaming. The large number of sensible people joining the board has been a great help on this; getting straight what are the strengths and weaknesses of the TM game design. I won't go into any of the fruitless discussions here, rather I'd like to focus on some of the additions which are in the race to be included in the game in the near future. This text is about training and player generation...»
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My diet for the past week and the weeks to come is Pro - i feed on it, breed it and try to nurture the concept in every way ;-D Of course a lot of time is still spent doing bugs and support, but nevertheless Pro is really starting to shape up. The improved shortlist has been set up, a notebook has been programmed, the friendly tournaments are on their way and things are looking good on this front. The rest of the package will soon be "previewable" as soon as I get the Pro-preview page all done. Won't be long - I promise! :...»
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On this lovely Tuesday morning in Copenhagen I guess I'll just spend a few minutes blogging on TM. Just found out that you produce endorphine by smiling, which means that you can actually make yourself happier by forcing yourself to wear a smile! Crazy...»
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The third Pro feature has been finished inside the TM HQ: The Team Strength Bars. Check out the new summary feature, which will be available as part of the Pro package here (Click to see an enlarged screendump)...»
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Wow it feels good to get the new match engine going! The stats have really enhanced the insight offered to players about their teams' performance, and the extra features such as MoM awards and shot stats will be good when we get them fully implemented. The whole process hasn't been a complete success though, and here at the HQ we have decided to be more careful in the future and heighten the level of information offered along with the level of testing. We'll sit down and figure some procedures and some standarts in the near future...»
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We've come so far and now yet another season update is shaping up, sucking in out work hours like a vortex... It is always stressful doing the season update, and this time it will be the last time we will have to do manual "patching" updates like between season 2-3: Thomas is looking the entire update over and will make sure that things are working properly for the season 4-5 update. This time, between 3-4, we will be doing some testing to make sure we have a solid season update for future season breaks...»
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Ive been sitting implementing a new feature that will make the manager able to see how good a shot on target that a chance was.
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These weeks are perhaps some of the most busy we've ever endured in the TM HQ. Søren is modelling the new match engine (ME 2.0) which is nigh-on done and ready for test, Thomas is working his way through a long list of priority improvements, amongst them a revised season update, which will make all the history pages we've planned possible (at last!) and Armann is tweaking and tweening the new line-up/tactics selector flash element (it's gonna be good I can tell you!). I'm currently testing and expanding the new teamster application system as well as doing new highlight texts for the new ME 2.0. On September 16th all things should come together as the season update is launched, and on the 19th the new match engine can be experienced in a friendly match before the first league games are kicked off at 21:00 (CET) on the 20th....»
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At last, a few new languages is available -- been working on that the entire day. Thx to all the language teamsters for their superb effort :D...»
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While Im waiting for my egg rolls to get done (who made that name up btw?), I thought I would give a little update on the match engine work.
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Got the teamster application form right and almost through with the system in which they can be treated. Also the formations descriptions in the manual have now been translated. Both will be implemented soon....»
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Hello Everybody. Heres a little status on how work on the match engine are processing. I believe I have around 10 days of work left to finish it and hope it will be ready for the new season.
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Wush. Watched the CL group stage draw live together with Thomas yesterday. And had lasagne. We're both Copenhagen-fans, so we were pretty excited. Wonderful spirit you get from reaching CL for the first, but not last, time...»
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Reason for todays hangover: FC Copenhagen made it to the Champions League, by an amazing - and rather fortunate - 2-0 win at Amsterdam Arena.
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I've done most of the logos that I was talking about in my previous entry. I say 'most' because PRO is still missing...»
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I have just implemented a thing for all our future PRO-users while making the new match engine version. The concept is that we make some simplified aggregations of the different chains in the match lineup. That way you can get an impression of you and your opponents strengths and weaknesses. None pro users will be able to make the same calculations with just a calculator and a little more clicking around...»
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Been working on our Apache setup; configuration-, log files, what-not. This stuff is somewhat tricky since it's hard to test properly (good testing would imply having a test-server recieving lots of traffic which doesn't really make sense i guess.)
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