What Makes a Race?

There has been an explosion of nontraditional athletic events over the last few years.  Mud runs, zombie runs, color runs, sweater runs, gran fondos, festivals, etc..  As popular as they are I don’t think of many of these events as races (or competitions, if time isn’t a factor; see climbing comps).  My criteria are simple:

  • Is there a winner?
  • Are the results recorded somewhere?

If you can’t answer “yes” to both of these questions, you’re not in a race, and you probably aren’t listed here at NPA.  That being said, I won’t stop anyone from listing an event that doesn’t match these criteria, as long as it has an athletic component to it–and if your mud run or sweater run has results, that means someone cared enough about the sport to compile them.  Some of these races are even completely subjective experiences for each participant (see: zombie runs, collaborative mud run obstacles, etc.), but as long as everyone is happy with the schema, the results are real.

Notice how I don’t care about free events–if you have a free event with results, it’s a race.  If you don’t even have prizes for the winner, it’s still a race, and the prize is just bragging rights.  In this vein I’d argue that town-line sprints could be races…if you keep track of who won.  If you and your buddies meet up on Thursdays to run a trail loop and see who wins, you should call it a race (heck, I’ll even host your results).

Competition shouldn’t happen just because you want to make money, or create awareness for your group–although these are acceptable outcomes–it should be organic, because you like to compete, because your friends compete, because you want to create something bigger than yourself (or be subsumed by it).  Let the festivals of spirit (or colored powder) pass you by, and race for racing’s sake.

Image by Michael Hicks, used under a Creative Commons-Attribution license.

uMap is the best web-GIS alternative to Google Maps

Really.  You should try it.  http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/en

Pros:

  • Can split lines (Google Maps can’t).
  • Can move features to different layers (Google Maps can’t).
  • Can have advanced attributes, line styles.
  • Can see distances plotted with features.
  • Can turn layers on and off.
  • Can import data ()GPX, KML).
  • Can limit who can see and who can edit.
  • Uses OpenStreetMap, so if you know your GPS is right and the basemap is wrong, you can change the basemap.

Cons:

  • No satellite imagery basemap.
  • Can’t switch layer display order (but can duplicate layers, might be possible to change order that way).

I haven’t played with everything, but I’ve built a map for a race I’m directing and I’m sharing this with the participants.

Top Perks from “Outside Best Places to Work 2014”

This is a work in progress and will be updated.

Jobs in my particular discipline (i.e., not outdoor equipment manufacture or even outdoor-oriented) don’t generally come with the same kinds of perks that some of these companies have.  I’m curious why that is, and I wonder if, by incorporating some of these into my current office environment, my employer could attract more talent…

In no particular order, here are the workplace characters that I would enjoy and would work in my particular situation:

  1. Showers.  I’m a bicycle commuter, but heading out on a road ride from the office and being able to clean up afterward would make me a happy puppy.  Seen at: Strava, pretty much everyone else.
  2. Alternative transportation perks.  Credit for not clogging up the streets with more cars and the air with more pollution, in the form of time off or other currency.  Seen at: Mindbody, Patagonia, Deckers Brands.
  3. Gym on site.  I like being active, and what better way to keep employees healthy than to give them a place to work out?  Seen at: Sportif.
  4. Dogs at work.  I didn’t grow up with dogs, but now that I have one, it would be nice to bring him to work once in a while.  Seen at: Backbone Media, Ibex, Hydroflask, Smith Optics.
  5. Kids at work.  As in, onsite daycare for when you’re really busy and cool enough coworkers to be okay with kids running around when you aren’t.
  6. Flexible hours.  Modification: Unlimited personal time.  Seen at: Pretty much everyone on the list.  FullContact apparently gives you a vacation stipend of some sort.
  7. Social consciousness.  The belief that we should be helping people who aren’t normally within our sphere of influence.  Seen at: Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s.
  8. Environmental consciousness.  The belief that what we do should be good for the planet.  In the oil and gas sphere, this is a rough one to find, but I am confident that with extraction efficiency improvements to the n+1 degree, coupled with greater investment in alternative energy engineering solutions and conservation, we can do our part to improve the world.  It’s just so incremental sometimes. /soapbox.  Seen at: Patagonia, Namaste Solar.
  9. Indoor bicycle storage.  Security, convenience, and reduce wear-and-tear.
  10. Stock ownership, profit sharing, or co-op agreement.  Seen at: Deschutes Brewery, StoneAge.
  11. Informal office space.  Set things up the way you like, work from where you like, spread out, play games (do pullups), whatever.  Seen at: Hydroflask.
  12. Bar, or at least not a “dry” workplace.  I’m not advocating drunkenness on the job, but sometimes a drink at the end of the day can fuel interesting geological discussions.  Seen at: Omelet.
  13. Active employees.  Seen at : Infinite Energy (notable because this is a “traditional” company), a lot of others. 
  14. Snacks.  Who doesn’t like snacks, or fizzy drinks, or coffee?  Seen at: Pacific Market International.

Cumulative Charts in Drupal with Views and Charts

If you’re trying to use the Charts module to create cumulative graphs over time (in my case, race registrations).  No time now for a detailed post.

This guy had the answer: http://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/50066/how-to-add-up-rows-in-a-view

He cites this but I didn’t use it: https://www.drupal.org/node/1516348

This is the module you need, can only add field if you are User 1: https://www.drupal.org/project/views_php

My setup (I was pulling the order_id field and aggregating the results as a count):
drupal_cumulative.png
drupal_cumulative1.png

Output:
drupal_cumulative2.png

Who Would I Be?

I spent ten minutes staring at the ceiling this morning thinking about an idea I began considering last night.  If I weren’t as involved as I am in various long-term projects (project is a loose term, and doesn’t apply only to work), would I still be the same person?  Am I defined by the things I spend my time on and, if I decided to let some things go, would I be happy?  I’ve never been one to let my job/education/career define me, but in absence of that definition, what is there–I’ve been busy filling my time with other things.

In the end, this isn’t about my definition to myself and others, it’s about my own personality and drive–if we assume that I continue to fill time with long-term projects, why should I ditch the ones I enjoy (for the most part) now, only to slowly pick up others in the future?

#CoffeeEx

Join me as I intermittently document my attempts to make the best* cup of coffee ever.  Follow #CoffeeEx on Twitter and add your own recipe to the discussion.

I’m keeping track of only a few variables, but more could be added.  I am by no means a coffee snob, but I’m much more a scientist than a cook, hence the “trial and error” approach.

– Mass of beans
– Always ground
– Water temperature or heating time in electric kettle
– Agitation of coffee before press.

 

*Subjective and limited to the amount of time, money, and effort I’m willing to put into it.  No $1,000 burr grinders, no civet coffee.

Changing Author of Imported Nodes in Drupal

If you have imported a bunch of nodes from another source (perhaps using the Blogger Importer module) and the author has defaulted to Anonymous, you can set all the nodes to a specific author with a MySQL query.

UPDATE `node` SET uid = "1"

Use at your own risk.  Important: This will set all nodes to author uid 1.  If you have multiple uids you need to keep track of, you’ll have to filter them with a SELECT statement first.

Imported Posts

I have just imported my posts from the Grand Forks Streets blog to this one.  They have not been cleaned up, but the content is here and I will be shutting down the Blogspot version.  I no longer have time to devote to a specific streets-relaetd blog, but I plan to open a Twitter account to curate this type of content for the Grand Forks, ND area.

Imported posts are labeled as “Anonymous” but I will be changing that over time.  I wrote them all unless otherwise indicated in the post itself.