Coach Thrasher
2- Collision with Dock
Ugh, the crunching sound of carbon fiber was heard today at Bair Island. I had just completed a 2000m piece with a group of two 1x, and a 2- about 500m off my stern. The group was obviously working hard, and gaining on me through the piece. After the finish everyone sat for about 30 seconds before taking it up again and the 2- immediately hit a dock. What a sad sound! Bow seat was pretty upset, but the real trouble started when the bow deck started to sink lower and lower in the water. The guys had to back it in to the Stanford dock, with the deck completely submerged. That's got to hurt.
Posted at 10:58AM May 31, 2006 by jason in Rowing | Comments[0]
Captcha
There's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today on CAPTCHAs. I just implemented a custom captcha for Tools for Teams account creation so this was particularly intersting. As I was putting my own implementation together the thought crossed my mind that a blind user wouldn't be able to use the captcha unless it was audio-driven. The WSJ states examples of bad captchas, ways around captchas, and frustrated users WRT captchas. I'd like to see a network/social based captcha system to validate users since it would be humans-validating-humans. Give me LinkedIn.com, crossed with Friendster, crossed with my ISP, crossed with my bank.
Posted at 10:51AM May 31, 2006 by jason in Software | Comments[0]
Muir Woods Hike
My sister Cath and her friend Christina just graduated from the University of Virginia and are escaping the oppressive heat back home by visiting CA for a week. We went up to Muir Woods to see the Redwoods and the amazing views. After completing the first half of the "1.5 hour" hike in about 25 minutes, we decided to take a much longer route nearly down to the ocean and back.
Posted at 02:55PM May 28, 2006 by jason in General | Comments[0]
SourceForge changed CVS for some projects
It appears that SourceForge.net has changed their CVS configuation without telling some people. The jipCam project is now accessable via the CVSROOT of:
anonymous@jipcam.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/jipcam
The old server name was just "cvs.sourceforge.net".
Posted at 02:35PM May 27, 2006 by jason in Software | Comments[0]
Finished XA-300 Installation
Finally, I'm done with the XA-300 install. I didn't have any space in my glove box, so I mounted it below the passenger seat. I get an unusual number of search hits from Google and MSN for the XA-300, so I figured I'd post some pics for people:
I mounted a piece of wood as a base, to the floorboard with drywall screws (it's painted black in the pics). They sit flush with the board, and the screwtips are covered with black RTV so they don't scratch anything. The XA-300 is mounted to this board with velcro, so I can move it around for whatever reason. The important thing is that it works, and there's no more fiddling with half-working FM transmitters.
The passenger seat has been re-installed to the mounts. You can't see the XA-300 unless you look under the seat. All of the wires are hidden. It was easy to remove the passenger seat... the hard part of this whole installation was routing the wires under the center console from the Sony head unit. I also installed a 400 watt 120 volt inverter for charging cox-boxes and laptops from the road. The inverter is screw-mounted to the wood base.
The car you see is my 1990 Toyota Celica All Trac Turbo. Only ~2500 were sold in the US from 90-93... so it's pretty rare. This makes screwing up the car a royal pain in the ass since parts aren't available for it. I had to be extra careful when taking apart the dashboard... but that's ok, I'm one of those people that cuts through the "warranty void if seal is broken" stickers.
Now I'm ready for the drive to the Championship regatta at Lake Natoma this weekend. Audiobooks and podcasts, here I come.
Posted at 04:02PM May 18, 2006 by jason in Hardware | Comments[6]
7-day Alarm Clock for Crew
Rowing at 4:45 in the morning has it's challenges. Having different wakeup times in different parts of the week usually means resetting the alarm every night. Reid Kleckner solved the problem with an alarm clock from ThinkGeek that allows for different alarm times for -each day-, so no resetting is required. Here's what he has to say:
http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/lights/788e/ . It's called the Neverlate. It has settings for each day of the week, and you adjust the time via a dial instead of with hour/minute buttons. This means when you go one past your target time you don't have to click it 59 times, you can just dial back 1. I think it'd be cooler if you could set it to do different stuff to wake you up, but it just has the standard radio + buzzer and volume control. Also before you go to bed you can hit snooze and it flashes the next scheduled alarm time and day.
Hope that helps with some of your sleep woes, Reid
Posted at 01:34PM May 16, 2006 by jason in Rowing | Comments[0]
Guest Coaching Adds Depth
Today we had Richard Edwards as a guest coach for the varsity men. Richard rowed at the elite level in England, and has coached several men's eights. I wanted to get a different perspective on the state of our current rowing, so Richard came to us as somewhat of a "finishing" coach to give us some excellent pointers and to add additional depth to our understanding of technique as we approach Championships.
He spoke of using hand speed to increase stroke rate and power, rather than push raw power with the legs. I think this was a really great point. It's not that the legs are less engaged, rather the focus moves to moving the hands (and oar) faster.
He also added an excellent relaxation drill: smiling! I thought this was cool because it's so simple. Smiling helps us to relax and gain confidence in the boat.
Richard discussed several other items as well, and the guys asked good follow up questions in discussion after practice. I really believe that having a different coach adds depth to a rower's "tools chest" of knowledge. Hopefully we can do it again sometime.
Posted at 09:01AM May 11, 2006 by jason in General | Comments[1]
Yoga Session Results
Meredith, Tito, Bryce, Teddy, Reid, Keith, Patrick, Edward, Colin, Alex, myself (we had 11 people total) were able to attend the session. Stretching was good! Breathing exercises on our back worked our abs, as well as breathing and leg rotations. We did a lot of "downward dog", which really worked the hamstrings. We used straps around the ball of our feed to pull the hamstrings out. We did the elephant, for our hip flexors. The warrior (1), warrior (2), and warrior (3) worked our inner thighs, back, hams, and the top of the calves.
I'm really not too swift with the names of poses, but we learned many new positions. Many of the positions were very similar to our regular stretches, but with nice variations for extra support.
Everyone seemed to enjoy it, and Catherine, the instructor, kept everyone engaged. I think it's worth doing again.
Posted at 06:07PM May 09, 2006 by jason in Rowing | Comments[2]
Tuesday Yoga Session
I've setup an optional Yoga session for the boy's team. My hope is that they are able to learn how to improve their flexibility and balance. Yoga came as a recommendation from some of the varsity parents and I think this will be a good learning experience for everyone. It also gives us some good variation as we ramp up our rowing intensity in preparation for championships.
The time and place are:
4pm Tuesday (today)
654 High Street
Palo Alto, California 94301
See here for directions in downtown Palo Alto: http://www.darshanayoga.com/location.html
This is an optional workout that is being run as a private lesson by Darshana Yoga. As such, there is a $15.00/each fee that is charged by the yoga studio. I think this is well worth the price for the experience that we expect to have.
Please don't forget to bring $15 (cash is best)!
I'll see you there,
Posted at 12:35PM May 09, 2006 by jason in Rowing | Comments[0]
Inside Man Soundtrack: Chaiyya Chaiyya
We just spent a lazy Saturday at the movies and saw "Inside Man", which was OK (3 of 5 stars?). However the opening/closing song was a really great Hindi tune called Chaiyya Chaiyya. After getting home I immediately searched iTunes, and the rest of the internet for this song. I could only find it available in an album: the Inside Man soundtrack, and an album of other songs by A. R. Rahman.
Now, the song is not worth $9.99 for a whole album of songs I'm not interested in. The publishers are only selling it as an album though: no single of this song is available. There are many other ways to get music than by purchasing the album though.... like I could borrow the album from a friend and make a copy. Or, I could just search the internet using different search-tools to get the song.
I only wanted to pay for the single song, Chaiyya Chaiyya. Since I'm not able to pay for the item that I want via the music-industry controlled sources, I'm forced to find alternative means of getting it. This whole situation reminds me of how I have no sympathy for the music industry's losses due to music sharing. It forces it's products on the public, limiting choice in the marketplace, and charging outrageous prices for it's offering. Music sharing lets people have the music they want! The music industry should get a clue and find a solution that allows this! At the end of the day, I was able to download the song for free from the Good Weather for Airstrikes blog. Which will likely remove the file soon...
The whole experience reminds me of working at Liquid Audio and trying to get people to pay $3.99 for a hit single that is then "locked" to the download computer. The music industry would have never let us charge the $0.99 that we recommended for their DRMed content in 2000. Yet today they are finally making bank with iTunes. Man are they slooooooow.
Posted at 10:03AM May 08, 2006 by jason in General | Comments[1]
Putty Knife Rowing Lights
Here are some pictures of the putty-knife lights that we made for our shells. I was painting my living room last year and noticed these 6 inch putty knives for spackling for sale at about $1.50 at Home Depot. We needed better boat lights. So, I bolted a bicycle light to the putty knife and stuck it in the number-clip. It worked great!
After the season was over, our rigger: Timothy Hodgson, went thinking about this design. He added the second bicycle light so we had fore-aft lighting. He choose bike lights that had side and forward facing LEDs. He had to trim the putty knife a little to allow the lights to bolt on without tilting upwards on the curved putty-knife. He also found a source for clear/white LED lights and made a stern version for the rear.
Since we only need "lights" on the boats, we're not worried about green/red colors for starboard/port. Raw visibility is more important. Generally we get at least 2000m of excellent visibility (measured by our race course). The visibility range is important because it lets other coaches know that we're coming, and since we try to be courteous with not waking each other, we can all plan ahead to not wake other crews.
The nice thing about using bicycle lights is that they are designed for a little water. They can get splashed and rained on without a problem - the rubber seals around the lenses keep water out. The bolting hardware is also fairly environment proof. It's not as good as stainless, or nylon (as the ARCNAV light uses), but it's good enough. They use two AA batteries for power, and last about 3 months without needing new batteries. They can be set to flash, or run steady (we like steady in the morning, less we get headaches!). When using these on a bow-loader 4+, the coxswains like to turn the stern-facing light off so they aren't blinded by its brightness.
The bow light has two bicycle lights with 5 red LEDs each. 2 LEDs on each light face sideways, and 3 LEDs face forwards.
Stern lights use white LEDs and a clear lens. They are REALLY bright, and not to be stared at. The lens provides 180 degrees of stern visibility. We glued standard number clips to the stern decks to hold the lights.
The total cost for these parts is about $15.00. The putty knife is $1.50, and each red bike light is ~$5.00, white lights are ~$12.00. A knife and drill are required to "hack" the putty knife for drilling the mounting hole for the bike-light hardware, and making a notch (as seen on the stern light) for the lights to sit flat on the putty blade. Batteries required: 2xAA. It takes about 5 minutes to assemble one of these with all of the parts handy.
Posted at 09:41AM May 04, 2006 by jason in Hardware | Comments[0]
ARCNAV Rowing Lights
I noticed one of Kent Mitchell RC's boats with an odd LED light last week. It was on when I arrived at our compound, and no one was around. They must have left it on after practice. Just now I happened across the website of the group that sells these things. They are called ARCNAV.
It's a pretty nice little led design. However, I still like my simple plastic putty-knife design with bicycle LEDs. There are 4-8 LEDs on each bike light, and two bike lights per device. While ARCNAV only has 2 LEDs... 2 just doesn't seem like enough for $75.00. I'll have a picture of our putty-knife design up soon (it's $15 total for the parts).
Posted at 05:18PM May 03, 2006 by jason in Rowing | Comments[0]
Regretting a Quit
I received an email today from a former athlete of mine. The person was a really great athlete, and a really great personality on the team. They were a team player in nearly all respects, respected by everyone, and the athlete was one of the fastest people in the boat. But the person ended up leaving the team for other pursuits, unrelated to sports. Now, in their email, they've come to terms with the decisions that have been made, and they're getting back on track in life. Unfortunately they realized the mistake too late to make a difference for their boat.
It sounds so dramatic! I'm heartbroken of the lost potential. It's especially painful to know that the person regrets their decision. There is no turning back the clock. What can be done?
This has to be one of those life lessons that must be learned from raw experience. I wish the best for anyone that comes out for rowing, gives it their all, and decides to do otherwise. I hope at least a small lesson can be taken away. In this case, I think it was a very big lesson. It hurts to know the difference.
This also reminds me of so many instances of people I've worked with that quit their job, or their "team" in the workplace here in Silicon Valley, to try something new, and then regretted it later. Without taking that risk, without trying something new, they would have never known the difference. So the big take away, the big lesson learned is: take the risks! But please learn not to repeat the mistakes.
Posted at 09:23PM May 01, 2006 by jason in General | Comments[0]