JimmyPool (2001)
Programming
Weekly Picks Sheet Results Screen
JimmyStats1 Screen
JimmyStats2 Screen
Pool Results Screen
Community Chat Screen
Team Stats View
Pool Winning Screen
I wanted to learn server-side programming, so I decided to build an office football pool in Perl. Work began in 1998. I started out by breaking down the web application into separate tasks. By creating a catalog of issues to resolve, a roadmap to the finished product began to emerge.
Getting It Off the Ground
After finally getting a handle on syntax and dreaded "Internal Error 500" messages, the many pieces started to fit together. In September 2001, after 3 years of development & testing, it went live. With only a couple hiccups and rookie errors it ran smoothly and successfully the entire season.
Adding Features
Many features and enhancements have been added since that first year: it has moved from a flat-file database structure to MySQL, a "Trash Talking" discussion forum was built from scratch (complete with profanity filter), two unique statistics analysis apps have been created, a polling system was added, a comprehensive earnings/debits dashboard was assembled... and more!
Using the Data
As a by-product of building football pool software, I had a lot of game data sitting around. I already had a set of data analytics tools built in HTML. So in 2012 I thought I'd try my hand at making one of them into an iPhone app.
After some serious interface redesign, I was able to make my multi-parameter statistics engine "JimmyStats2" into a smartphone-sized experience. Here's how it worked:
The app was built with HTML/CSS/JS and packaged in Phonegap. I never submitted it to the App Store because I was never happy with how the hybrid solution worked on a mobile phone.
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