Toes to the Edge

This Year’s Hammer Ergatta information was just announced:

It will be at the John Carroll University Recplex on Sunday, February 22.

This indoor regatta benefits a local collegiate rowing club, so if you are in the Cleveland area, come on out, have a little fun, and help out a rowing club.

Contact Chris Maeder for more information.

I found the old Erg-Piece Calculator I wrote back when I maintained the WRRA website. Since it’s been lost on that site, I thought it would be nice post it here.

Just fill in two of the three fields and hit tab or enter. The calculator will fill in the third field, then it’s up to you.

Just a quick update. The first release is feature-complete. At this point I am just waiting on the voice vendor to complete an evaluation of the demonstration/trail mode. ErgMate will ship with a high quality voice that is a marked improvement over MS-Mary, Mike, or Sam.

While I’ve not posted any updates in some time (that’s what having a baby will do to you), I have been busy incorporating feedback from the early beta testing. The biggest new feature is a wizard that allows one to create new sequences by simply answering a few questions. You also can now row to music from your iTunes collection in addition to files on disk.

It’s coming! Beta testing revealed that new users can use a hand getting started. There’s going to be a wizard to help new users create sequences.

I was going to post a screen shot of the flow, but that’ not very exciting, so instead here’s a screenshot of the latest version. The icons to the left of each clip indicate the type of trigger that causes that particular clip to play. Rulers represent distance, while the clocks represent time. For example, the first power 10 is triggered based on some time from the end of the row. The chain indicates a simple trigger that plays the clip immediately after the clip before it finishes.

This guy is doing the Concept 2 “row as far as you can” challenge this month, even though officially it is a team challenge this time. He wanted the time spent to have a bit more meaning, so he’s doing it to raise awareness of breast cancer.

His plan is to erg 2000 miles ( > 3 million meters ) in January.

“…12 days + 4.5 hours finished, and I’m now past my previous month best, set this past fall. 1,101,336 and 34.2% finished.”

http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=305324608&blogID=341877773

That is hard-core.

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

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

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.