Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Happenings
I'll quickly breeze through some happenings.
We're counting up ballots for Prom 2008 royalty right now...every free minute at school is spent doing it, and they're not ScanTrons, either. We are going to have a run-off ballot, where the top eight or ten are put on a ScanTron to finalize the vote.
The Photography Club field trip is on Thursday, March 27th, to Michael Fatali's gallery up in Zion.
The State Jazz Band Festival is coming up on April 4th and 5th.
Prom is April 5th. I'm on the committee, so we have to plan it.
Website work is fun. I must say.
We're counting up ballots for Prom 2008 royalty right now...every free minute at school is spent doing it, and they're not ScanTrons, either. We are going to have a run-off ballot, where the top eight or ten are put on a ScanTron to finalize the vote.
The Photography Club field trip is on Thursday, March 27th, to Michael Fatali's gallery up in Zion.
The State Jazz Band Festival is coming up on April 4th and 5th.
Prom is April 5th. I'm on the committee, so we have to plan it.
Website work is fun. I must say.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Lanahans Round 2
Once again it becomes necessary to turn again to governmental politics for tomorrow.
James Ceaser/Andrew Busch - Red Over Blue
The elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004 brought with them a major increase in Republican leadership. There are four major policy dimensions: the economy, welfare issues (health, education, etc.), national security, and what has variously been called "social" or "moral" concerns. The red-blue divide leads to dichotomous thinking. The gender and race gaps in voting are closing, and more and more it is the issues that take the lead in polarization. The political realignment theory discuss before is attacked by David Mayhew. Ceaser and Busch take a less "dramatic" version of the realignment theory and apply it to the election of 2004. Conservatism has gained enormous ground. To me this means that our country has become like a prevelent female attitude (females, please take no offense from this) - trying to get to age 20 or so as fast as possible, then spending the rest of her life trying to remain that age. Same with conservatism and our country.
Earl Black/Merle Black - The Rise of Southern Republicans
This is mostly about the Solid Democratic South and its shift. The shift in the south toward Republicanism has "restored competition to America's presidential politics [and] revitalized congressional politics." There was a Great White Switch when Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The South has become a most important high stakes component of the national two-party war.
John White - The Values Divide
The twenty-first century is an intensely personal political realm. The value divide between liberals and conservatives over lifestyle issues has become a chasm. There is a huge difference between those who attend church and those who don't. Duh. According to White, values matter today more than ever, but politics can't cope.
Mark Monmonier - Bushmanders and Bullwinkles
Gerrymandering and remapping are discussed in this segment. And I'm tired...and I'm done with this segment. Sorry for the lame post, but I'm...really...tired.
James Ceaser/Andrew Busch - Red Over Blue
The elections of 2000, 2002, and 2004 brought with them a major increase in Republican leadership. There are four major policy dimensions: the economy, welfare issues (health, education, etc.), national security, and what has variously been called "social" or "moral" concerns. The red-blue divide leads to dichotomous thinking. The gender and race gaps in voting are closing, and more and more it is the issues that take the lead in polarization. The political realignment theory discuss before is attacked by David Mayhew. Ceaser and Busch take a less "dramatic" version of the realignment theory and apply it to the election of 2004. Conservatism has gained enormous ground. To me this means that our country has become like a prevelent female attitude (females, please take no offense from this) - trying to get to age 20 or so as fast as possible, then spending the rest of her life trying to remain that age. Same with conservatism and our country.
Earl Black/Merle Black - The Rise of Southern Republicans
This is mostly about the Solid Democratic South and its shift. The shift in the south toward Republicanism has "restored competition to America's presidential politics [and] revitalized congressional politics." There was a Great White Switch when Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The South has become a most important high stakes component of the national two-party war.
John White - The Values Divide
The twenty-first century is an intensely personal political realm. The value divide between liberals and conservatives over lifestyle issues has become a chasm. There is a huge difference between those who attend church and those who don't. Duh. According to White, values matter today more than ever, but politics can't cope.
Mark Monmonier - Bushmanders and Bullwinkles
Gerrymandering and remapping are discussed in this segment. And I'm tired...and I'm done with this segment. Sorry for the lame post, but I'm...really...tired.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Lanahan Readings...Again
Mr. McKeehan is really loading it on us now. We have to read eight excerpts from our Lanahan book, four sections out of our book, complete two+ online political ideology surveys, then write a three page paper on it...all by Wednesday. Today's Monday.
So here goes...I've already read a few excerpts and done the essay, so this will be relatively short.
V.O. Key - Public Opinion and American Democracy
Key attempts to explain the relation between people's opinions and the political leadership's opinions. In his opinion public opinion is useful as a parameter the ruling elite can maneuver in. This concept refers to what Key calls "Opinion Dikes." He says this because public opinion never exercises any initiative. It is more static. He finishes by saying the responsibility for indecision, decay, and disaster rests with the opinion-leader group because they influence public opinion, which in turn provides broad ideals of what is acceptable for governmental leaders to accomplish.
Lawrence Jacobs/Robert Shapiro - Politicians Don't Pander
The title says it all. The authors argue that politicians create a version of public opinion that coincides with their own objectives, and the media takes this view and makes it appear to the public that the politician's version of public opinion is in fact true public opinion. Gradually this effect shapes public opinion itself into what politicians want. The authors say that only the "heat of an imminent presidential election and the elevated attention that average voters devote to it motivate contemporary politicians to respond to public opinion and absorb the costs of compromising their policy goals." This seems to suggest that parties have different agendas and policy goals than do the people, which is a reasonable assumption. Politicians use to crafted words to simulate responsiveness. They create the appearance of responsiveness.
Walter Dean Burnham - Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics
Walter Dean Burnham talks about "critical realignments" and several key characteristics of this types of elections. First, they are associated with short and intense disruptions of traditional patterns of voting behavior. Second, the elections are characterized by abnormally high intensity, including the intensity of ideological polarizations. This intensity causes incumbent leadership to become more dogmatic, which in turn contributes to the intensity. Abnormally high voter turnout is also present. These realignments are like a train going slightly off course and then snapping back on to the rails with a bang. They occur with startling periodicity. These realignments are the result of the inability for parties to make gradual adjustments along vecotrs of emergent political demand.
That's all for tonight, folks.
So here goes...I've already read a few excerpts and done the essay, so this will be relatively short.
V.O. Key - Public Opinion and American Democracy
Key attempts to explain the relation between people's opinions and the political leadership's opinions. In his opinion public opinion is useful as a parameter the ruling elite can maneuver in. This concept refers to what Key calls "Opinion Dikes." He says this because public opinion never exercises any initiative. It is more static. He finishes by saying the responsibility for indecision, decay, and disaster rests with the opinion-leader group because they influence public opinion, which in turn provides broad ideals of what is acceptable for governmental leaders to accomplish.
Lawrence Jacobs/Robert Shapiro - Politicians Don't Pander
The title says it all. The authors argue that politicians create a version of public opinion that coincides with their own objectives, and the media takes this view and makes it appear to the public that the politician's version of public opinion is in fact true public opinion. Gradually this effect shapes public opinion itself into what politicians want. The authors say that only the "heat of an imminent presidential election and the elevated attention that average voters devote to it motivate contemporary politicians to respond to public opinion and absorb the costs of compromising their policy goals." This seems to suggest that parties have different agendas and policy goals than do the people, which is a reasonable assumption. Politicians use to crafted words to simulate responsiveness. They create the appearance of responsiveness.
Walter Dean Burnham - Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics
Walter Dean Burnham talks about "critical realignments" and several key characteristics of this types of elections. First, they are associated with short and intense disruptions of traditional patterns of voting behavior. Second, the elections are characterized by abnormally high intensity, including the intensity of ideological polarizations. This intensity causes incumbent leadership to become more dogmatic, which in turn contributes to the intensity. Abnormally high voter turnout is also present. These realignments are like a train going slightly off course and then snapping back on to the rails with a bang. They occur with startling periodicity. These realignments are the result of the inability for parties to make gradual adjustments along vecotrs of emergent political demand.
That's all for tonight, folks.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Backpacking
I love backpacking. There is something elemental about it, and it draws me in.
I love the simplicity of backpacking. A person lives off what he or she carries in a pack on his or her back. That's it.
I love the self-sufficiency style of backpacking and backpackers. Ben and I carved a fork out of a stick we found because we forgot ours. They worked like a charm. After we were done, we threw them into the fire. Simple.
Jess, Ben, and I are planning a backpacking trip to King's Peak, the highest peak in Utah during the summer, tentatively for the first week of August. We'll plan it for four days, plus driving. One day to hike in and set up base camp, two days to summit (in case one day is rainy and it is dangerous to summit), and then one day to leave. We are going to invite several people from school to do it. We thought about making an announcement in school, but then we open the door for some of the less-desirables to join. Much better to be hand picked and invited, so we know the reliability of the people we will be spending a week away from any civilization with. We can't have any girls, not because they wouldn't be able, but because there might be problems on a weeklong campout with girls and guys together. We'll have a meeting or two to educate people on the dangers of the Unitahs and just about backpacking in general. We'll have to have lists of food possibilities and packing lists. It will be fun, though, I hope.
I'm excited.
I love the simplicity of backpacking. A person lives off what he or she carries in a pack on his or her back. That's it.
I love the self-sufficiency style of backpacking and backpackers. Ben and I carved a fork out of a stick we found because we forgot ours. They worked like a charm. After we were done, we threw them into the fire. Simple.
Jess, Ben, and I are planning a backpacking trip to King's Peak, the highest peak in Utah during the summer, tentatively for the first week of August. We'll plan it for four days, plus driving. One day to hike in and set up base camp, two days to summit (in case one day is rainy and it is dangerous to summit), and then one day to leave. We are going to invite several people from school to do it. We thought about making an announcement in school, but then we open the door for some of the less-desirables to join. Much better to be hand picked and invited, so we know the reliability of the people we will be spending a week away from any civilization with. We can't have any girls, not because they wouldn't be able, but because there might be problems on a weeklong campout with girls and guys together. We'll have a meeting or two to educate people on the dangers of the Unitahs and just about backpacking in general. We'll have to have lists of food possibilities and packing lists. It will be fun, though, I hope.
I'm excited.
Pictures from the Camp
Here is all of us, taken Friday morning. You can see our cool fire-pit off right.
My backpack, not packed as it was during the hike.
Our campsite with the mountain in the background. My tent is the brownish one on the left. I am standing approximately in the fire pit we made.
Ben and Jess, packed and at the start of the trail.
Spring Break and All of It's Many Facets
So much to tell...
This week, the week of Spring Break, I have been very busy. I apologize to all of those who tried to talk to me or get a hold of me somehow (like the telephone or on chat or something), because I've just been gone from home most of the week. Here it goes.
Friday and Saturday have already been described - The track meet (see previous post). Sunday was Stake Conference, and it was a good one. I must also confess that I read the first Fablehaven book (Landon suggested it), and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Monday I was invited to go biking/rollerblading by Chantelle and a fairly large group of friends. We met at Whitney's house, then rollerblade-ed (everybody except me, that is, because I don't have any rollerblades) to Dairy Queen, got some lunch, then went back and tried out the Spendlove's tandem bicycle. I like it!
Also on Monday I had to plant two palm trees in our backyard while my family was gone to Abravenal Hall to hear Janessa play her violin in the Zion Youth Symphony Orchestra. The first one I planted by myself and the second one everybody helped with. After planting the second tree we drove to Toquerville to see who asked Chantelle to Prom, then ate an excellent dinner at the Gubler's house.
Tuesday was a day spent mostly reading. I was reading the second Fablehaven book. After I finished, I wanted to read the third one, but alas it was not to be. The third one is not out yet. In the evening I took my brothers and the Spendlove twins to my sister's concert for ZYSO (their farewell concert) at Pineview. A select group of ZYSOers headed to San Francisco, California that night, my sister included. She was very, very excited, and when she called to say hello on Wednesday, she remarked upon the magnificent view right outside of her window. She can see the bay and the bridge and a voodoo shop across the street.
Wednesday harbored a fun-filled day. My family (less Janessa and my dad, who is in Owotana, Michigan for a company training thing for the week) went an hiked Angel's Landing. We left our house at about 1:40 p.m., and by the time we picked up the boys from their sleepover in Toquerville and started up the trail it was 2:40 p.m. We got it done before dark, luckily. It was snowy and icey still up there (a little bit, at least), and it made the final part of the climb treacherous. I'm glad nobody was hurt. Afterwards we went into the restaurant that used to be the Bumbleberry...not for any of their food, but for the "famous" Bumbleberry pie. Unfortunately, the restuarant had been leased to new owners, and the new owners and their restaurant ("Wildcat Willies") had been open about a week and a half, with outrageous prices. So we left and went to a pizza/pasta place, which was very delicious. I'm glad we left Wildcat Willies. We came home and I had to pack until late at night for...
Thursday - our backpacking trip started. We left at 9:30 in the morning (that's a.m., for those of you excessively worried about political correctness, or excessively disinclined to 24-hour - sometimes called "military" - time). We (Jess, Ben, and I) drove in Ben's truck (rathered squished up, too) to the trailhead. Jess had a 35 pound pack, I had one just a little light, and Ben's was even lighter.
We started out by jumping a barbed-wire fence and then by crossing a stream. On the way back we saw that we needn't have jumped the fence; an opening was just 50 feet away. Crossing the stream became a regular occurance as we ventured further up the riverbed. We saw several likely campsites, but finally settled on a nice one about 4.2 miles up the river. We went a little further with no packs to find three pools that we thought were upriver a little bit, and find them we did. They were pretty cool.
Halfway up the trail Ben and I realized that we had forgotten silverware. I was very dissapointed in myself. It seemed like I had everything but silverware! I had extra clothes, and a pan or two that I never even used. I had three extra pairs of socks (in case we got wet crossing the stream, which we did - but I never used two of the pairs). I was prepared with soap and a pan scrubber and a collapsible water container and everything...but silverware. We had to improvise.
We set up camp at maybe 3:00 p.m., which allowed us a ton of time to do nothing. I carved a fork/spoon thing out of juniper wood. Juniper wood is not very good for whittling; It is so dry that every branch has a series of cracks running lenthwise through the wood, which is OK for making forks, but horrible at making spoons.
You can see my attempt here. It worked really well, though.
My food plan is laid out below:
Thursday:
Lunch coming in: Granola Bars, Nutri-grain bars, cheese cracker things (the ones with the little red stick), and a Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast bar.
Dinner: One package of Knorr Lipton Rice Sides (Chicken Broccoli flavor), one package of Garlic Instant Potatoes (We each had a different flavor of potatoes. I liked the garlic one - the others aren't so swell)
Various snacks of granola bars and nutrigrain bars, and even a piece of Ben's cow, George, who wasn't able to make it all the way up the trail without being salted and flavored nicely.
Friday:
Breakfast: Four packages of Instant Oatmeal in two batches. I had one batch a mixture of Blueberries and Cream and Peaches and Cream, and the other batch a mixture of two packages of Strawberries and Cream.
The rest of our snack food when we got to the car.
Friday is the day I got back from backpacking (that's today for me). We hiked a total of 9.19 miles. I put all of my stuff away and am now writing in this blog. My mother took my brothers and went to Bryce Canyon, which sounds like fun.
I will post more pictures in the next post from Picasa.
This week, the week of Spring Break, I have been very busy. I apologize to all of those who tried to talk to me or get a hold of me somehow (like the telephone or on chat or something), because I've just been gone from home most of the week. Here it goes.
Friday and Saturday have already been described - The track meet (see previous post). Sunday was Stake Conference, and it was a good one. I must also confess that I read the first Fablehaven book (Landon suggested it), and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Monday I was invited to go biking/rollerblading by Chantelle and a fairly large group of friends. We met at Whitney's house, then rollerblade-ed (everybody except me, that is, because I don't have any rollerblades) to Dairy Queen, got some lunch, then went back and tried out the Spendlove's tandem bicycle. I like it!
Also on Monday I had to plant two palm trees in our backyard while my family was gone to Abravenal Hall to hear Janessa play her violin in the Zion Youth Symphony Orchestra. The first one I planted by myself and the second one everybody helped with. After planting the second tree we drove to Toquerville to see who asked Chantelle to Prom, then ate an excellent dinner at the Gubler's house.
Tuesday was a day spent mostly reading. I was reading the second Fablehaven book. After I finished, I wanted to read the third one, but alas it was not to be. The third one is not out yet. In the evening I took my brothers and the Spendlove twins to my sister's concert for ZYSO (their farewell concert) at Pineview. A select group of ZYSOers headed to San Francisco, California that night, my sister included. She was very, very excited, and when she called to say hello on Wednesday, she remarked upon the magnificent view right outside of her window. She can see the bay and the bridge and a voodoo shop across the street.
Wednesday harbored a fun-filled day. My family (less Janessa and my dad, who is in Owotana, Michigan for a company training thing for the week) went an hiked Angel's Landing. We left our house at about 1:40 p.m., and by the time we picked up the boys from their sleepover in Toquerville and started up the trail it was 2:40 p.m. We got it done before dark, luckily. It was snowy and icey still up there (a little bit, at least), and it made the final part of the climb treacherous. I'm glad nobody was hurt. Afterwards we went into the restaurant that used to be the Bumbleberry...not for any of their food, but for the "famous" Bumbleberry pie. Unfortunately, the restuarant had been leased to new owners, and the new owners and their restaurant ("Wildcat Willies") had been open about a week and a half, with outrageous prices. So we left and went to a pizza/pasta place, which was very delicious. I'm glad we left Wildcat Willies. We came home and I had to pack until late at night for...
Thursday - our backpacking trip started. We left at 9:30 in the morning (that's a.m., for those of you excessively worried about political correctness, or excessively disinclined to 24-hour - sometimes called "military" - time). We (Jess, Ben, and I) drove in Ben's truck (rathered squished up, too) to the trailhead. Jess had a 35 pound pack, I had one just a little light, and Ben's was even lighter.
We started out by jumping a barbed-wire fence and then by crossing a stream. On the way back we saw that we needn't have jumped the fence; an opening was just 50 feet away. Crossing the stream became a regular occurance as we ventured further up the riverbed. We saw several likely campsites, but finally settled on a nice one about 4.2 miles up the river. We went a little further with no packs to find three pools that we thought were upriver a little bit, and find them we did. They were pretty cool.
Halfway up the trail Ben and I realized that we had forgotten silverware. I was very dissapointed in myself. It seemed like I had everything but silverware! I had extra clothes, and a pan or two that I never even used. I had three extra pairs of socks (in case we got wet crossing the stream, which we did - but I never used two of the pairs). I was prepared with soap and a pan scrubber and a collapsible water container and everything...but silverware. We had to improvise.
We set up camp at maybe 3:00 p.m., which allowed us a ton of time to do nothing. I carved a fork/spoon thing out of juniper wood. Juniper wood is not very good for whittling; It is so dry that every branch has a series of cracks running lenthwise through the wood, which is OK for making forks, but horrible at making spoons.
You can see my attempt here. It worked really well, though.My food plan is laid out below:
Thursday:
Lunch coming in: Granola Bars, Nutri-grain bars, cheese cracker things (the ones with the little red stick), and a Cinnamon Toast Crunch breakfast bar.
Dinner: One package of Knorr Lipton Rice Sides (Chicken Broccoli flavor), one package of Garlic Instant Potatoes (We each had a different flavor of potatoes. I liked the garlic one - the others aren't so swell)
Various snacks of granola bars and nutrigrain bars, and even a piece of Ben's cow, George, who wasn't able to make it all the way up the trail without being salted and flavored nicely.
Friday:
Breakfast: Four packages of Instant Oatmeal in two batches. I had one batch a mixture of Blueberries and Cream and Peaches and Cream, and the other batch a mixture of two packages of Strawberries and Cream.
The rest of our snack food when we got to the car.
Friday is the day I got back from backpacking (that's today for me). We hiked a total of 9.19 miles. I put all of my stuff away and am now writing in this blog. My mother took my brothers and went to Bryce Canyon, which sounds like fun.
I will post more pictures in the next post from Picasa.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Track Meet!
This last weekend, Richard, Monica, James, and I spent nearly 17 hours running a track meet here at the high school. Let me describe its setup.
The camera was a stardard miniDVD video camera hooked up to the pole that sits right over the starting line. It was plugged into a standard power source. The output of the camera (RCA) went through an adapter and was converted to a Coaxial signal, which plugged into a female Coax plug on the pole. The coaxial cable runs underground up to the press box. Once there, the signal was converted back to RCA using standard RadioShack converters, then it was plugged into the Pyro Bright Flash gun (more on what that does in a minute). The output of the Pyro Flash Gun (RCA) was plugged into a conversion box that converted it to a firewire signal. Finally, the cable connected to the laptop running FlashTiming on Windows Vista.
The Pyro Bright Flash gun is very simple. It watches for a flash of light (usually produced by the gun at the start of a track race). Once it sees a flash, it starts a timer and overlays the incoming image with the timer and sends it back out. Therefore, on the computer we see a constantly incrementing timer (if a race is in progress). On the computer we then can record the very end of the race when all of the runners cross. The video is stored in a capture folder on the laptop.
We have two more computers. The first computer is the video reviewing computer. It also has FlashTiming. The person points FlashTiming's video data setting to a mapped network drive. Richard did this part. He would watch the video, then type in the initial time and click the "calibrate" button, which associates the time with the video. He can then step through the video frame by frame 'till a runner crosses the line. He then very simply clicks on their name in a side bar. The names come from the final computer, which is running Hy-Tek's Meet Manager software. It exports the list of athletes to a shared folder, which is then mapped on the reviewing computer. The times from the reviewing computer can be imported with the click of a single button. The results are then collated and formatted and scored, and can be printed on the appropriate color of paper.
There are several benefits to this system. First, it is entirely modular. Each task is seperate and can be performed on any of the computers; this allows more than one computer to be reviewing video at once, etc. For example, on Friday night when we were backlogged by video I helped Richard review all of the video by doing it on the capturing computer, which we weren't using anymore because the races had all finished. Monica mostly ran the MeetManager computer.
All in all it is a very good system, and the three of us make a great team. Each does his or her job. We combined to produce the fastest track meet Southern Utah has ever seen (several people commented on the rapadicity of our meet). The events go girls then boys. Therefore, for example, the girls ran the 100M Hurdles finals (two heats of six). We had the results of the race reviewed and scored and outside before the boy's equivilent race was started! (the 110M Hurdles). It was like that throughout the race. Friday night we were done with the races at 7:30PM, which is probably a new record. We were computing results for another hour, but we usually don't even stop running a race until like 10:00PM! This new system works wonders.
Oh. Also, Coach Kidd-Thomas was running around to all of the field events with her laptop, typing in field events. After she was done, a simple export and import to the main MeetManager computer was all that was needed to finalize the event.
Cedar won the track meet with the most points, with Hurricane coming in at a very close second for the boys. Our Sprint Medley team (I think) got disqualified because of an early handoff, but they won the race. If it had counted, we would have won the meet for the boys. Karl (neighbor and close friend) received the male Athlete of the Meet award.
Initially we had some problems with the setup of the race because the laptop was logged into the District's domain server, while our track computers were not. Therefore, they didn't want to see each other on our small network. Eventually I had to change the IP address of the laptop in order to get them to talk to each other.
That track meet is pretty much what comprised my weekend this week.
The camera was a stardard miniDVD video camera hooked up to the pole that sits right over the starting line. It was plugged into a standard power source. The output of the camera (RCA) went through an adapter and was converted to a Coaxial signal, which plugged into a female Coax plug on the pole. The coaxial cable runs underground up to the press box. Once there, the signal was converted back to RCA using standard RadioShack converters, then it was plugged into the Pyro Bright Flash gun (more on what that does in a minute). The output of the Pyro Flash Gun (RCA) was plugged into a conversion box that converted it to a firewire signal. Finally, the cable connected to the laptop running FlashTiming on Windows Vista.
The Pyro Bright Flash gun is very simple. It watches for a flash of light (usually produced by the gun at the start of a track race). Once it sees a flash, it starts a timer and overlays the incoming image with the timer and sends it back out. Therefore, on the computer we see a constantly incrementing timer (if a race is in progress). On the computer we then can record the very end of the race when all of the runners cross. The video is stored in a capture folder on the laptop.
We have two more computers. The first computer is the video reviewing computer. It also has FlashTiming. The person points FlashTiming's video data setting to a mapped network drive. Richard did this part. He would watch the video, then type in the initial time and click the "calibrate" button, which associates the time with the video. He can then step through the video frame by frame 'till a runner crosses the line. He then very simply clicks on their name in a side bar. The names come from the final computer, which is running Hy-Tek's Meet Manager software. It exports the list of athletes to a shared folder, which is then mapped on the reviewing computer. The times from the reviewing computer can be imported with the click of a single button. The results are then collated and formatted and scored, and can be printed on the appropriate color of paper.
There are several benefits to this system. First, it is entirely modular. Each task is seperate and can be performed on any of the computers; this allows more than one computer to be reviewing video at once, etc. For example, on Friday night when we were backlogged by video I helped Richard review all of the video by doing it on the capturing computer, which we weren't using anymore because the races had all finished. Monica mostly ran the MeetManager computer.
All in all it is a very good system, and the three of us make a great team. Each does his or her job. We combined to produce the fastest track meet Southern Utah has ever seen (several people commented on the rapadicity of our meet). The events go girls then boys. Therefore, for example, the girls ran the 100M Hurdles finals (two heats of six). We had the results of the race reviewed and scored and outside before the boy's equivilent race was started! (the 110M Hurdles). It was like that throughout the race. Friday night we were done with the races at 7:30PM, which is probably a new record. We were computing results for another hour, but we usually don't even stop running a race until like 10:00PM! This new system works wonders.
Oh. Also, Coach Kidd-Thomas was running around to all of the field events with her laptop, typing in field events. After she was done, a simple export and import to the main MeetManager computer was all that was needed to finalize the event.
Cedar won the track meet with the most points, with Hurricane coming in at a very close second for the boys. Our Sprint Medley team (I think) got disqualified because of an early handoff, but they won the race. If it had counted, we would have won the meet for the boys. Karl (neighbor and close friend) received the male Athlete of the Meet award.
Initially we had some problems with the setup of the race because the laptop was logged into the District's domain server, while our track computers were not. Therefore, they didn't want to see each other on our small network. Eventually I had to change the IP address of the laptop in order to get them to talk to each other.
That track meet is pretty much what comprised my weekend this week.
Some more good links
The domain name says it all: Coding Horror
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001072.html
How to save money on startups:
http://www.calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17-really-good-tips/
Icons:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/06/35-really-incredible-free-icon-sets/
Wow. This is kind of funny:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/So-You-Hacked-Our-Site!.aspx
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001072.html
How to save money on startups:
http://www.calacanis.com/2008/03/07/how-to-save-money-running-a-startup-17-really-good-tips/
Icons:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/06/35-really-incredible-free-icon-sets/
Wow. This is kind of funny:
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/So-You-Hacked-Our-Site!.aspx
Monday, March 3, 2008
Preference
Preference was pretty awesomely cool. I'll relate events here.
First, the group. Tiffany Seegmiller and I, Josh MacDonald and Whitney Spendlove, and Stacia Pederson and Chance Steglich. (I bet I spelled somebody's name wrong...apparantly this blogger interface thinks so too)
The day dawned bright and early, and lucky for the three of us, we were already awake. Our respective dates had woken us suprisingly at 6:00 A.M., dragged us to Stacia's friend's house, and cooked us breakfast. We had eggs, pancakes (both regular and blueberry), bacon, apple juice, and hash browns. Yum!
The Guardian was next on our agenda, a movie which I found to be quite interesting and very good. It was about the elite of the coast guard.
So then we went home at about 11:00 A.M.
Later that night, we were individually picked up by a LIMOUSINE! A limo! It was awesome. We then drove IN THE LIMO to the Pasta Factory, then we were picked up and drove IN THE LIMO to the high school.
We proceeded to the picture line, then to the dance. The dance took maybe about a half an hour to pick up, and then we had a great time.
It was quite fun.
First, the group. Tiffany Seegmiller and I, Josh MacDonald and Whitney Spendlove, and Stacia Pederson and Chance Steglich. (I bet I spelled somebody's name wrong...apparantly this blogger interface thinks so too)
The day dawned bright and early, and lucky for the three of us, we were already awake. Our respective dates had woken us suprisingly at 6:00 A.M., dragged us to Stacia's friend's house, and cooked us breakfast. We had eggs, pancakes (both regular and blueberry), bacon, apple juice, and hash browns. Yum!
The Guardian was next on our agenda, a movie which I found to be quite interesting and very good. It was about the elite of the coast guard.
So then we went home at about 11:00 A.M.
Later that night, we were individually picked up by a LIMOUSINE! A limo! It was awesome. We then drove IN THE LIMO to the Pasta Factory, then we were picked up and drove IN THE LIMO to the high school.
We proceeded to the picture line, then to the dance. The dance took maybe about a half an hour to pick up, and then we had a great time.
It was quite fun.
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