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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

I got a call today from a guy I know at a HUGE multinational corporation and they want me to write a bunch of code for them because they are stymied. I know exactly why they are having problems and I know how to get around it. I think that I will charge them my full hourly rate on this and they will be getting a great deal.

You can try to run Premiere in "XP Mode" - find the exe, right click it and select "Compatibility" tab. From there you can set XP SP3 compat mode. I have no idea what that mode means but it may help a bit. (This is in Win7, I'm assuming Vista has the same options?)

As for 64-bit, not sure if 32-bit-to-64 is a supported upgrade path, but there's an easy way to find out..

Btw, anyone know much about Six Sigma?

From what I gather it was developed to improve manufacturing processes via "controls" and measurement and all that.

What I really wonder though, is how applicable is it to software? Is there a "software version" of it, or does it apply universally?

Thoughts appreciated.

We're six sigma. Parent company manufactures stuff, so all subsidiaries are six sigma too. I haven't seen much in the way of actually helping to get software out the door, but it has helped us maintain CMMI level 5, which is required by our customers. There are parts of CMMI 5 that are really helpful with software, but there's a lot of overhead, and most of our tracking is through the ultimate crapfest of horrible software: Rational Rose.

Excuse me. I need to go puke now and cut off my fingers for typing that company's name.

Oh, and six sigma is also good at taking up office space and ensuring you know which people will not be affected by a RIF. :wtf:

Old Samsung DLP was dying - Ball Grid Array part on a board didn't have good solder flow and now some of the connections are broken and some are "iffy". All 480i source had a flickering "green plaid" overlay, but other sources could work most of the time. Every day or so it would require a hard reboot, though, and it would freeze randomly.

The plan was to get a new set and move this old one to Spawn1's bedroom so the boys could use it for gaming. Turns out that the only cables they had for their Wii and PS2 were composite video and hence 480i. They could get the component out cables, but some of their PS2 games didn't support 480p output. Then I had an inspiration! I had a broken DVD recorder where the drive mechanism was flaky. It has two composite inputs and component outputs so I was able to wire it up as a 480i to 480p de-interlacer.

I have to take a Microsoft Certification exam soon, 70-432, SQL Server 2008 Imp and Maint. Earlier this year I took a Cert in GP Dynamics and used Pass Guaranteed, but I heard it's not so good for the 70-432. Any chance someone here has taken this Test and has a recommendation on a practice test app?

RIF = "reduction in force"?

Thanks for the notes, more or less what I was thinking.

Today I'm diving in to a book called "Essential COM" - when I first learned programming I thought COM was the devil (maybe it still is), but it's still very much in use, to say the least. I know what GUIDs are, MTA/STA, and I've heard the term IUknown a lot, but beyond that it's all Greek to me. Hopefully not anymore..

yep

I didn't think Premier came in 32bit form...I could be wrong about that but I'm pretty sure you'll need to run 64bit to get Premier. (hey look at me I'm posting something useful in the geek thread!)

Is this is a reasonable place to ask a wireless router question?

My story, sad but true:
1) All was fine with wireless router in home.
2) All of a sudden, passkey is not working with any of the iPhones to connect. Keep getting message that passkey is incorrect.
3) I went into the settings of my wireless router, noted the passkey, and I am absolutely entering the passkey correctly!!

For some of the iPhones, I did upgrade the OS. (laptops continue to connect).

Is the best solution likely to just reset the wireless router and then create a new name for the router and a new passkey?
Anyone got any other advice for something to try?
I am not a networking maven, but, I can make my way around ok. I have a linksys wrt54gl (yeah, I guess I should have put dd-wrt on it or something like that, but, I have not, and now would not be the time for me to try that).

^^ are you sure the iPhones are still trying to connect to your router.

Thanks, yes!! I have to be missing something. But, this is crazy/annoying!!

Decided to do the reset, set it back up, and now, all is well. I don't get it, but, I have an effective solution. Still, I am curious as to what in the world happened. Oh well. Thanks agoodale; your reply prompted be to reset and proceed as I did. I'm a happy camper now.

One of my clients has the crontab for their VPS set to mail me all of the error logs. They have one job that tries to start Apache every 20 minutes in case it crashes, and I'm now receiving 72 messages a day telling me nothing other than httpd was already started. Server side rules for moving mail make me incredibly happy right now.

That seems... well, I won't say it. No if then? Lemme dredge up some stuff. ps -ef (?) | grep httpd. Hey I did it! The rest of it forget. Of course then you'd get all these mails saying that httpd is running. Or someone would ask you to make sure mail is working on that box because, you know, they're not getting a mail every 20 min.

One of the things that would help is if they relinquish some of that stuff, or at least have some kind of more thought out check.

The other is a mail filter. lol.

I'm sure you've seen this thing below. One of my very minor tasks was to restart httpd on a test box if it died. After a couple calls from a couple developers who swore the site wasn't working, another coworker sent me this. Their first one is the one I know - Sales Guy vs Web Dude. Absolutely classic, esp for those that deal with making sure the site is up. Back then it was on YouTube or something. Now you have to go to their site.

cdr