Toes to the Edge

(I came across this article this morning that I wrote for the old Western Reserve Rowing Association web site. At this point, our local high-school teams are in dire need of coaches, so maybe this will help in some small way).

February 24, 2003

I left work today feeling a little sick and very tired. Grabbed a cup of venda-coffee on the way out to wake up as I drove out to the school. The coffee bore a most uncanny resemblance to river water.

The team has some ergs in a very small room at the school. The team was elsewhere strectching and warming up when I arrived. One of the coxswains brought me the list of athletes present – 17 rowers and 2 coxswains. Hmmm. We had the workout schedule written down through the ergatta the previous weekend, but nothing determined for today. Well, I’ve been meaning to have the team run stairs. It would be a good change as the sight of an erg makes them sick at this point in the season. Sharon, the other coach suggested erg/stair relay races. That would be hard to coordinate as the stairs are fairly far from the ergs. 6 ergs, 17 rowers, and 2 coxswains. That’s 6 groups of 3 if the coxswains row. So it boiled down to relay races on the ergs. Each rower would row 1000 meters and switch. Cycling through this 6 times would be a good hour and 15 minute workout. So we lined up the team in order of their 2K erg score and created 6 even teams of 3. That was after creating 3 teams of 6. (Rowing all these years has impaired my ability to count past 10.) The teams got started and the athletes rowed hard.

The races were amazingly even given the distance they were rowing. There was much yelling, power tens, and all kinds of encouragement resulting in rowers pulling hard, then falling off the ergs. The energy was amazing. All I could do was stand there and smile. The screaming continued until there was one person left rowing. The entire team gathered around this rower and egged her on, finally calling a power ten at the end. 18000 meters, an hour and 15 minutes later, and 19 tired rowers.

We talked to the team, explaining the purpose of the workout – how they are learning their capabilities, how they are a team when they support each other like they did, and how now that they were warmed up the real workout could begin. I left the parking lot feeling relaxed, energized, and quite happy. It beats happy hour any day.

Many organizations need coaches. Even coaching part time will be a big help. Just contact any of the delegates listed on http://www.clevelandrows.org

While we were unable to see the live webcast on this side of the pond, Tim Marcovy convinced a local pub ( O’Reilly’s in Cleveland Heights) to open early today so we could view the coverage on ESPN-U. About 25 local rowers showed up to watch ITV1′s live coverage. It seemed very appropriate that it was held at one of the few places in town that pours an imperial pint of Guinness correctly.

This was simply the best coverage of a rowing race I’ve ever seen. Each shell had a small camera on a stalk behind the coxswain. This camera could be rotated to view the other shell. The coxswains were miked as well. It also appeared that those running the video knew about rowing and what angles to show. I got the biggest kick from the stroke rate shown for each crew on the bottom of the screen throughout the race. I am just awe at the ability shown by these crews. They made rates of 35-40 look like a casual row. It was the first time watching a regatta that we were just stunned by the technical ability of the crews. The excellent race coverage brought this out and allowed one to see it, where as in the Olympic or Worlds races, the camera cuts away too quickly and is taken from such a distance that one doesn’t get a good view of the technique.

A video stream of the race coverage I’m writing about is at:
http://www.itvtheboatrace.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Video/0,,12539,00.html

It was also nice to see the wide spectrum of rowers in attendance today at our viewing of the Boat Race. The usual hard-core masters group was present, but the audience also included a large group of rowers that have recently come up to our competitive masters program from our summer rowing league. Some local scullers and members of the Case Western University Crew rounded out the audience. Marcovy is head coach of the latter, although I doubt attendance got them out of any ergometer work this morning.

Quote of the race – I’m not sure which commentator said it:

Bodies are asking ‘why’?
The mind has no answer
-but the spirit is willing.

After today, I’m ready to row NOW. Too bad there’s 5 inches of snow on the ground.

Voting is taking place now for the finalists in the Concept2 Video Contest. The contest started out slow, but the quality of videos has picked up over the last 3 weeks. The final videos are all pretty funny, but I thought ‘Erging, it’s the cool thing to do, ‘Row-Blots’, and ‘Concept2 Model D Montage’ were the best.

‘Tame the Erg’ gets an honorable mention too.

Take a break from that winter training and check out the videos.

Now that our local ergatta is over, I was able to work on and release a new Beta version of ErgMate.

The first official release will be soon. The program is stable and I am mostly tweaking it and the documentation.

Changes since the last release:
o tweaked power 10 timing – it now calls the stroke number just before the catch in a more reliable manner
o added power 10 / 20 clips that count down ( counting up was already present )
o added heart-rate monitor support
o added ability to select different voices for each status clip
o improved the quality of voice clips
o cleaned up MP3 tag display
o cross-fade works better when sampling clips
o added ability to change sound drivers

wxGlade has an option for ‘overwrite sources’ in the application dialog:

I normally have it off, but when doing some exploratory testing I enabled it. This morning I was working on my main application and regenerated the code. Guess what? Yes, it overwrote every gui class. Three things led to this:

1. I had assumed the overwrite setting was stored in the .wxg file (it is part of the configuration for a given application.)
2. My main wxsGlade window is sized so that option is not normally visible.
3. The value for ‘overwrite sources’ is actually a global configuration.

So BE CAREFUL with this option. Fortunately, a svn update brought the code back to where it was just a few minutes earlier minus a minor gui change.

I just noticed that my wxPython application looks different after creation of an exe with Py2Exe. The image on the left is the application running under the normal python interpreter. The one on the right is the same application after creation of an exe with Py2exe.

Notice:
1. The dark gray below the Music label instead of white.
2. The area around Music is inset in the exe version.
3. The splash handle separator is different, it looks more 3D in the Py2EXE version.

This is with wxPython 2.8.1.1.

I’d guess there is a simple solution, but I’m not finding it. Any ideas?

Edit:
Solution is at: http://wiki.wxpython.org/index.cgi/DistributingYourApplication

Just finished wrapping up the first Beta Version. A little more testing and a few additions to the help file this evening and ErgMate will go beta tomorrow morning. I am stoked. There is a preliminary screencast showing an overview of the application coming too.

Since the last update:
o simulated erg disconnects and closes when connecting to a real erg
o added reset that works with real erg and simulated erg
o updated MP3 tag reading to support ID3v2 tags
o names of state clips are now editable
o fixed README file viewing when setup runs
o cleaned up overall look and feel
o added help file and About box with credits and revision information
o created a screencast

A discussion over on the Business of Software about embedded firmware testers brought this software back to mind. I created this around 1998 to exercise the firmware (and hardware) of a steer-by-wire system for power boats I was working on. It was written using Tkinter for the GUI. It sent a simple command protocol over an RS-232 link to the system. It was amazing when I brought the system over from Windows NT to the Linux development box and did not have to change a line of code. Go Python!

The original page (which is long gone, thanks way-back machine) describing it said:

his is a screenshot of an application written in Python using the TK interpreter and the Python MegaWidgets Toolkit. It communicates with an embedded module via the RS-232 serial port. We use it to exercise new circuit boards and to debug hardware problems.

Most of the windows are generic, although they do have symbolic names for important microprocessor ports such as data I/O direction. One can also enter a numeric address to work with any memory location. The Motor Drive window presents high-level functionality specific to the product being tested.

I developed the application under Windows NT. The application ran with zero source-code changes when I later moved our development platform to Linux (the serial-port classes contained support for both Linux and NT).

Marcus McElhenney and Mary Whipple have started a podcast at Row Coach Media.

The podcast on handling and recovering from mistakes is a must hear for both coxswains and rowers.

The Daily Erg has an interview with Matt Roach of Oartec. The Oartec is a new rowing simulator coming out on the market. The elevator pitch is that it “… has been designed … as a training tool to help rowers improve and practice correct rowing technique.”

It is available in Australia, North American, UK, and European dealers are coming soon.

Good to see more ways for coaches to torture^H^H^H^H train rowers on the horizon.