umd

I dunno, the UK sites have them for 100-200 pounds depending on finish and features.

wens

They're really cool looking. Good luck finding one.

Urthwhyte

This new forum skin is heinous, breaks the favicon, and makes the forum have horizontal scrollbars at anything less than 1280px wide. This is an example of how *not* to do a redesign

slynkie

i'm reading up on xslt to try and kludge together a race results page for my team's website that's easier to manage.

Urthwhyte

What's the input?

slynkie

an xml file that we'll have to manually update, at least initially. nothing special.

right now they just have a javascript+html table conglomeration that is...unbearable. but i have zero experience with this stuff. so i'm just writing up a simple xml schema with top level races, and child elements for all the details of the race, the fields, and our results within each field. i'm trying to figure out the right mixture of xml schema and transform so the html output isn't too ugly...so far it seems nested tables at least are inevitable.

Urthwhyte

I'm likely missing something, but if you're not parsing some preexisting source why go through all the hassle of writing a schema and dealing with the verboseness of XML (that you're going to have to write by hand, no less), and not just do it with a super basic database? SQLite would be more than adequate and you could probably throw together a simple {{ your.mvc_framework_of_choice **** application for the whole thing in an hour or two


Edit 1: I should add 90% of my work is as a web application developer, so if all you have is a hammer...
Edit 2: for some reason dual right curly braces get turned into ****.

slynkie

i'm not actually writing out a schema to verify against. just an ad hoc xml file for the data itself, then the xslt. i'd be happy to use a db or anything that would ease the pain of making updates, but i'm a bit restricted...I don't even have access to the host. i'd also like it to be simple conceptually, so anyone can mess with it (i don't fancy 'owning' our team site). so, client-side processing seems to work for this.

substructure

Never tried this before because I've always had my backup disks and what not.

Can you download a fresh copy of a Windows OS and install it if you know your product key on the currently installed system? Same version.
It's my mother's old laptop. It needs to be formatted but they don't have any copies of the OS, drivers, apps, or anything. All they use it for is online banking, and simple things like that.

mattm

Not sure if the same key can be used more than once, but assuming it can.. where can you download Windows from? (edit: unless you have an MSDN subscription) I would be careful about getting it from "sharing" sites, who knows what they attach to it.

mollusk

You can reinstall Windows OS's, but you might have to call and talk to a person and explain the situation. Do you have the original media?

carpediemracing 

Question that seems very appropriate here.

I want to update my finish line camera set up.

Currently:

Very nice camcorder with extremely high shutter speed > Tivo > TV

We use the TiVo to rewind, review, etc. We leave the camera on all the time since we can't tell easily if it's recording or not.

Problem is that I want to expand what we capture, and currently we are challenged to pick the top 20. I want to pick every finisher using the rider's race numbers.

How to do this?

A few things. We have an HD camera but it isn't clear enough. It must be the TiVo or our TV, I don't know, but we can't read the numbers well. 6 is an 8 is a 5 could be a 9 or a 3 or even a 0 with a wrinkle. We have power (2 generators, we could run a long cord from our home base building where we do registration), so we could use a spotlight to help amplify the numbers and their contrast. I have extra laptops so I could capture to hard drive (mac or windows). I need it to be operable by someone with very cold fingers in 20 degree weather, maybe a sheltered but rainy 33 degrees (TiVo works well enough).

I was even thinking of using a ContourHD but the problem is reviewing images quickly (like after a prime sprint, with another one coming up, or the finish when everyone is crowding around).

I'm looking for reliable, free (open source or free with OS stuff) software. I'll pay money if I have to but I'd rather not - the race isn't profitable right now and I am running out of my prior life/career money. I'm willing to buy a camcorder and misc supplies.

Thanks in advance
cdr

Enthalpic

No idea on cost but the FinishLynx system used around here works great.

kensuf

Them: Why are you reinstalling your operating system?

Me: Because Windows sucks and the registry gets corrupted on a regular basis, or it gets infected with malware requiring me to reformat/reinstall.

mattm

+1, it's great but I've heard also expensive.

carpediemracing 

When I saw the Tour used it... Looking for something free or close to it.

mattm

Was trying to write a batch file to read in an XML file (no prob), do a string replacement on it (no prob), then write it back out... when writing it back out (using echo %XML% > file.xml) I kept getting "< was unexpected at this time"... argh. Is there a way to escape output from echo?

Ended up using vbscript instead.

waterrockets 

You might look into an HD-recording SLR. Canons and Nikons can both be controlled from a PC. The advantage you get over HD camcorders is ability to choose lenses. You could use a depth of field calculator with your lens to determine if you have acceptable focus all the way across the road, then you'd know all the numbers would be ok.

The software and workflow is the question mark. I've thought about writing a slit-camera emulator that would process a video file into an image that looks like a slit camera finish photo. With 1080p HD, this would probably be a pretty solid solution, depending on how the compression artifacts ended up in the slices.

mattm

Out here there's a company that rents the camera out to races, you don't have to buy the actual thing. I'm sure it's still not cheap but maybe more affordable.

carpediemracing 

The going rate for a homemade set up (camcorder feeding into laptop) which can pick out all the numbers is $500 per race day. It's a huge expense for me.

Enthalpic

If you and other locals are renting at that rate buy the Finishlynx. The bronze version is $7500, which isn't that bad as far as business purchases go, and if you can rent it out a dozen times you're laughing. You could also sell your professional timing services to other events, cycling or otherwise.

Factor in all the time you save picking places and the sale of a few cool bike-throw photo finish pictures I think you can see how the system makes sense.

Hermes

I have a MacBook Pro running Snow Leopard and the disk is partitioned and Boot Camp installed. I run Training Peaks WKO 2.2 on Windows plus a couple of other Windows only programs. Quitting the Mac OS and launching Windos is a PITA. I purchased Parallels with the objective of being able to access WKO without rebooting.

So far, WKO will not work from the Virtual Machine. It wants to be reactivated and says the code is not valid. Training Peaks sent me a new registration code which did not solve the problem. I think a new registration and activation code is required.

Has anyone run WKO using Parallels software on a Mac?

Urthwhyte

You sure you're using the Boot Camp partition as your Parallels boot target?

Hermes

No I am not sure. My WKO software resides on the Boot Camp partition. When Parallels installed I followed the instructions which as I remember was menu driven without a choice to select the boot camp partition as the boot target. I assumed that Parallels used Boot Camp rather than create a parallel virtual machine consisting of storage and instruction.

jwible

So Adobe Premiere Elements doesn't seem to like Vista 32 at all. Every time I try to open the editor I get 100% of both cores in use and over 500meg of RAM allocated.

Now the question. My processor is listed as 64 bit ready. If I upgrade to Vista Premium can I got to 64 bit or am I locked in since the current OS is 32 bit? I don't really want to do reformat the drive, but I can if I need to in order to get a 64 bit OS running.