When I saw this it made me start thinking of my list of the most impactful astronauts of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo eras. I made the mistake of Googling that very question and was a bit surprised of the lists that are out there that Lovell doesn't get much love. Shepherd, Glenn, and Armstrong top about every list unsurprisingly. Myself I was a bigger fan of the grinders of those eras like Lovell, Grissom, and Schirra. Lovell was a part of the "Next Nine" group which were a group of very impactful astronauts, Lovell was the last surviving member of that group. Godspeed Astronaut Lovell!
I am the official Iowa Hawkeye football fan of GPL!
I have been doing a bunch of backend updates in the last few days. The biggest would be on the stats side and player profiles.
Stats
In the past I have had to manually add stats for each player and let me tell you that was a gigantic pain in the a$$. So easy to make mistakes and I would never know if something was up to date. Seems like an assist is added or take away at a later date and noticing this among all of the updates was very difficult to catch.
So I am now pulling data from another site which is pulling their data from a stats bureau. So it is all automatic based on official stats and will automatically update when needed.
Going over to the Team Stats Page (UofM menu up top) you should see more up to date and accurate stats. Besides Skater and Goalie Stats, I have added a team stats tab. Still working on that, so we'll see if I can find a better way to get that info.
Stats will take about 5-15 seconds to load since it is going out to Google Sheets and pulling data.
Player Profiles
As part of the new stats, I am now able to pull in career stats for each player that will update automatically when the stats bureau updates their data. So I have added that to each player and cleaned up the interface on that page.
Looking at the attached image below, I have also added a dropdown menu in the upper right of each profile where you can switch between players easier. There is also a Name Pronunciation area so you can hear how each player pronounces their own name.
Check out Erik Påhlsson's pronunciation in his profile. It may surprise you on how he says his own name.
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@max27t It's an MP3 file, pretty universal. Works on a PC, Mac and iOS. I have no way to test on Android.
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Is the board loading weird for anyone else? It is sporadic, however...
I cleared cookies, browsing data, etc and it's still here and there where it partially loads or the formatting is off. It's *only* this site that is affected, also.
When you tell somebody somethin', it depends on what part of the United States you're standin' in... as to just how dumb you are.
The NFL thread has a quote earlier on that's missing the close and messing up the page load. Other than that, things are working fine for me.
NCAA Stats
Under the NCAA menu up top you will find a new page with NCAA stats data being pulled. It being national stats, the Skater list is over 1000 and will be slow to load. But you can search the national stats for individuals and whatnot, so it will be a decent place to go for national stats.
https://gopherpucklive.com/ncaa-stats/
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@jupiter Hmm, I get the error on Safari on MacOS, but the same address loads fine on Chrome. So he doesn't pronounce his name with the Swedish vowel å, but with the American vowel a
I have Chrome, and it's like Skal (with the whatever sign). It's not a long or short sound, it's somewhere in-between.
When you tell somebody somethin', it depends on what part of the United States you're standin' in... as to just how dumb you are.
I have Chrome, and it's like Skal (with the whatever sign). It's not a long or short sound, it's somewhere in-between.
Best way to describe å is that it’s between ā and ō, but honestly a bit closer to the ō. That is why skål is anglicized to skol. It isn’t perfect, but much closer than skal.
It's like a short "U" kinda/sorta in my head. Hammerheart Brewery described it perfectly one day, way back when, we were asking/talking about it
When you tell somebody somethin', it depends on what part of the United States you're standin' in... as to just how dumb you are.
@jupiter Hmm, I get the error on Safari on MacOS, but the same address loads fine on Chrome. So he doesn't pronounce his name with the Swedish vowel å, but with the American vowel a
I just tried on MacOS Safari and it worked just fine. Maybe clear your cache? I did just update all of the name audio files due to it not working on safari. So it may be a cache thing?
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I have Chrome, and it's like Skal (with the whatever sign). It's not a long or short sound, it's somewhere in-between.
Best way to describe å is that it’s between ā and ō, but honestly a bit closer to the ō. That is why skål is anglicized to skol. It isn’t perfect, but much closer than skal.
almost like umlauts then except with an “o” instead of an “e”?
(Mouth the vowel with the umlauts but say “e” is how it was explained to me once)
I have Chrome, and it's like Skal (with the whatever sign). It's not a long or short sound, it's somewhere in-between.
Best way to describe å is that it’s between ā and ō, but honestly a bit closer to the ō. That is why skål is anglicized to skol. It isn’t perfect, but much closer than skal.
almost like umlauts then except with an “o” instead of an “e”?
(Mouth the vowel with the umlauts but say “e” is how it was explained to me once)
It's so hard to describe in text. Skohl and skull are not correct. It's more more like skuhl. Kinda.
When you tell somebody somethin', it depends on what part of the United States you're standin' in... as to just how dumb you are.
You guys make my head hurt. Please stop.
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/skōl/
Think "skole" or "skoal"
All I got out of the name pronunciation was that the s’s sounded like z’s. The “a” sounded to me how most Americans would pronounce it like Paulson. 🤷♀️
Speaking of pronunciation, I was watching highlights of the OT BC game; Jim Rich kept saying Tanner “Lood-kee” and Pat pronounced it correctly per the audio clip in the bio. Don’t the announcers make sure to check that out so they pronounce names correctly? Usually the potentially challenging pronunciations are also phonetically spelled out on the lineup charts. I just found that particularly annoying.
NCAA Stats
Under the NCAA menu up top you will find a new page with NCAA stats data being pulled. It being national stats, the Skater list is over 1000 and will be slow to load. But you can search the national stats for individuals and whatnot, so it will be a decent place to go for national stats.
After moving to a new plugin, the stats for the NCAA and all over GPL is loading lightyears faster. I think the main skater stats from the NCAA was taking 30 seconds to load. Now it is around 5s. I was also able to automatically highlight Minnesota and Minnesota players in the various stats so that they pop out for users.
So I have updated all of the "tables" on GPL with the new plugin.
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After moving to a new plugin, the stats for the NCAA and all over GPL is loading lightyears faster. I think the main skater stats from the NCAA was taking 30 seconds to load. Now it is around 5s. I was also able to automatically highlight Minnesota and Minnesota players in the various stats so that they pop out for users.
“When your best friend is the son of God, you get tired of losing every argument.”
― Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal
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NEW content from Gopher Game Notes on the B1G Officials page. He is keeping track of the Gophers WLT record with the referees. Who calls the most penalties for and against MN? It's all there and will be updated each time he updates his data!
https://gopherpucklive.com/big-ten/officials/#stats
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Not sure how I feel about that being published although I suppose it could otherwise be easily found. I'd expect the HC of future opponents in games officiated by Bruggeman to be heavily in his ear before puck drop. I know I would.
I am not sure where you want this posted but the link on the portal to subscribe to the youtube channel is wrong. I am already subscribed but thought you'd want to fix it.
For those that want to subscribe go to the link below and subscribe.
https://youtube.com/c/GopherPuckLive?sub_confirmation=1
Hmmmm... The link got messed up when I saved it. Looks fixed now. Thanks for letting me know!
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I have added the NPI Rankings to GPL. You will find it under the NCAA menu up top. It will get updated after results are final, but with cache it could take 30m to update. Not sure on that. Direct link HERE.
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I have been doing a lot of tables updates across the board on GPL. Things like the NPI, NCAA Stats, Team Stats, Player Stats, Recruit Stats, Scoreboard, B1G Standings and other things have been updated. Some things that used to use hundreds of queries to get all that data has been reduced to a fraction of that on the Google Sheet side where all the data is gathered. The tables will also load a bit more reliably as well instead of returning "No Data". That was really annoying me, especially on the individual player profile pages with their career stats. We can thank the Google App Scripts for all this. (Nerd stuff)
Some of these updates have allowed me to get rid of the old CHN Scoreboard Widget (That widget had recently stopped working from CHN) and replace it with a simpler text based table with the game updates on the Scoreboard page. I was also able to add the Women's scores to the page as well. The NPI page and NCAA Stats page also include Women's data as well.
I will probably keep tweaking the Scoreboard page. We will see how it goes on Friday once the games are populated for the day.
So.... Added women's data and much higher efficiency and data reliability for GPL!
2026 is starting off well!
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I just updgraded the GPL server from php 8.2 to 8.4... This is backend software that runs the entire server. Everything looks okay, but let me know if you notice anything weird.
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Some of these updates have allowed me to get rid of the old CHN Scoreboard Widget (That widget had recently stopped working from CHN) and replace it with a simpler text based table with the game updates on the Scoreboard page. I was also able to add the Women's scores to the page as well.
The new scoreboard is coming together pretty well for both the men and women.
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Been working on the NCAA Stats Page as well.
You can now filter those stats based on Position, Year, Team, League for both MEN & WOMEN. BUT... This is not available on mobile. In fact, I have removed all but the basic columns on mobile since using any kind of table on mobile is problematic. Adding filters on mobile as well just adds a ton of stuff at the top of the table making it even more difficult to use. The filters are really for those on desktop/tablet that want to dig more in to the stats to see various results.
The Transfer Portal Page is updated as well for filtering, but again it will be hidden on mobile. (Once we actually have content)
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Update the Team Tab on the Main Season Stats Page.
It shows the following stats along with their NCAA Rank and what the #1 Ranked team's numbers are.
Power Play %, Penalty Kill % (OUCH!), Penalty Min Per Game (Good to be down the list on this one), Scoring Offense, Scoring Defense, Scoring Margin, Faceoff Win % (OUCH!), Total Blocks.
These stats are updated a few times a day, but obviously need to wait until the data is updated at the NCAA website.
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You can sort by that on the main ncaa stats page in the team stats tab
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Michigan Tech for $200, Alex.
(I actually don't know, but they had some BAD teams)
When you tell somebody somethin', it depends on what part of the United States you're standin' in... as to just how dumb you are.
The NCAA Stats Page was not really workable with all the TABS. It had two tabs at the top to select men or women, then 3 tabs below it to show the skater, goalie and team stats. This was very clunky. I also didn't want an accordion format either. What I really wanted was a dropdown menu that can be formatted in all kinds of ways on how it looks and works. The user can just select the content they wish to see from that dropdown menu.
Unfortunately... There is no "plugin" or "content block" on Wordpress that does anything like that without installing some big and bloated plugin that costs money. That is no good!
So... I had recently been using AI in a text editor to help create scripts to collect all of this data I want to have on GPL. Maybe it can create a plugin for Wordpress that will give the flexibility of tabs or an accordion but in a dropdown menu type of interface. Well, it sure as hell CAN create that kind of plugin! So last night I played around with it a bit and then tweaked it this morning on a test page. Worked so well that I decided to put it on a live page!
That live page I first rebuilt to get rid of "over tab use" is the NCAA Stats Page!
Works great! It loads the first bit of content and then you can use the dropdown to select other content you want to see. This will allow me to add some of those advanced NCAA stats in one place!
I am actually finding a real and helpful use of AI technology that is not realistic looking but fake video!
So stay tuned as I keep adding and tweaking more content on GPL!
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One possible change to think about could be reverse-sorting on Penalty Minutes per game. It's the one stat on the list that #63 is best and #1 is worst.
One possible change to think about could be reverse-sorting on Penalty Minutes per game. It's the one stat on the list that #63 is best and #1 is worst.
Let me see what I can do on that. The raw output is coming straight from the NCAA site and that is how they are reporting it. https://www.ncaa.com/stats/icehockey-men/d1/current/team/1249
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BTW... @steve-mn is referring to this stat on the MN Stats page where I am just comparing stats vs MN. I would like to display the entire NCAA list for all those individual team stats on the NCAA stats page.
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Ahh, that makes sense. If it's doable, great, if not, I think we'll survive.
Thanks as always for all the hard work.
Ahh, that makes sense. If it's doable, great, if not, I think we'll survive.
Thanks as always for all the hard work.
Done
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Looks good.
I have modernized the "Upcoming Games" block on GPL. The built in SportPress plugin that I used is very outdated and it's "Upcoming Games" widget was pathetic and looked very out of date. It was built as a "legacy widget" for Wordpress which is very old code. So I used AI Coding to create a new block to gather the game info from SportPress so I can format it the way I want it to look and use it as a block which is how Wordpress works these days. So on the portal page you will see the updated version of the "Next Games" block as well as on the Home Page. I actually left the old block up on the home page so I could grab this screenshot so you can compare the two.
Another change is that the current days game will stay on the upcoming games until midnight. I always hated how it would remove the game right at the game time. This will allow me to update the score and have it displayed once I enter the score. Which I have not done tonight yet since I have been working on this all night.
God I love AI coding! First the new NCAA Pick'em. Now the Upcoming Games. Next the BigTen Standings!
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I said the Standings Page (and widgets in certain places) was next for an update. As part of a custom plugin I am working on to give me more flexibility with pulling in data from Google Sheets where all of the live updates are happening to the data. I got the plugin to a point where I could start using some aspect of it.
It is much more modern now. I do not have to rely on a paid plugin that pulls in Google Sheet data and gives me much more flexibility in customizing how I want it to look and present. You can see the new version (top) and old version (btm) in the image to the left. (Click for a better view)
It looks much better than before AND it is much better than the manual standings updates I was doing with the built in Sportpress plugin app I still use. I was actually able to pull in Sportspress data with team links and logos automatically. Much cleaner looking and functionally way better for me.
The Schedule Page is also all new as well. The Sportpress version of this is very old and outdated in the way it looked. So I created a plugin to pull data from Sportpress and display it in a way that doesn't look like 2010.
I based the schedule plugin off of the upcoming games plugin so that they look very similar. This custom plugin allowed me to break up the games by month which makes it much easier to view the schedule as you are scrolling down.
This is what it looks like on desktop in the image on the left, but it will look similar on mobile. It is just more modern looking and less table and rows spreadsheet type of look.
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You may have also noticed a theme tweak as well. I updated the section headers on GPL as well just to freshen it up a bit. I will keep making updates all over since I seem to be a bit motivated lately? Or maybe I just want to fill my time a bit because the team has really been sucking.
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@jupiter , I just want to say thanks again for running this site. This website is really my only social media. I like being able to click on pretty much anything on the site and not having to really worry about what I will be reading.
Thanks!!!