14meters fencing blog

I just completed a new push from the test server onto the live one. Two major updates:

Referee Travel Map
I modified the referee locator tool to be something more visual and (hopefully, eventually) useful. Now, it will visually display average price data for a location. Here is how it works:

You load up the page. It detects the closest airport to your location and executes a search to find the cheapest Destination airports. These are the average round-trip ticket prices (measured by purchase date 2-4 weeks from flight date) to get from your airport to the marker on the map. I picked this as the default, because I feel its easier to grasp this way. Click on the Radio Button, changing it from “Origin” to “Destination”, it’ll show you the reverse — how much it costs round trip, on average, to get from the marker airport to your airport.

You can enter in almost anything (city name, airport code, etc) into the search box in order to obtain new results. It will automatically find the closest (and/or cheapest, if multiple airports are present) airport and use it. The price range slider will hide/show results based on the slider’s positioning. The Departure/Arrival dates are used to modify the dates for which the price data is obtained.

If there are questions, feel free to add a comment here or contact us via other means.

Fencing WebStream
It is what it seems to be. A big aggregator for news, blog posts, videos, photos, tweets, podcasts, etc.. Hopefully it would be a good way for someone to discover new fencing media. More content is being added daily.

So, the 2010 USFA Summer Nationals are coming up soon, and I decided that since 14meters is based out of Atlanta, I’d do a brief writeup that includes the types of things that I like to see when I’m looking to travel to another town for a few days of fencing.

Note: This page is going to be constantly changed and revised.

Atlanta Map

So, lets begin with an overview of the city. Below is a Google map of the place, with many things marked. If you click here, you’ll be able to see the full-sized map as well as the map key. The pins are color coordinated, so be sure to take a look at the full-sized map for more info. There are a lot of things not marked on the map, but I wanted to point out more interesting locations and Atlanta-specific things.


View 2010 Summer Nationals in a larger map

Hotel Information

As you can see on the map, some of the THS hotels are close to the venue, and some are not. Below is time sensitive information

Last Updated 19 April 2010

The THS website shows that all of the close-by hotels are booked through their blocks. There are less than 20 rooms left for the hotels that require driving/taxi.

A kayak.com search shows that the closest hotel is a Hilton Garden Inn, about $250/night and 0.2 miles from the venue. There are a few $135/night hotels in the 0.5 mile range from the venue, and a few more in the $90-125 range that are 0.5 to 1 mile from the venue. Availability and price will likely vary based on the day, so to determine things with more accuracy, it would be best to initiate your own search.

Again, its been a while since I’ve had time to specifically work on the 14m site itself.  But, I wanted to shoot out a quick update on what things are happening and what the plans are.

First, as some people probably know already, I’ve been spending some time trying to help the FOC push out an online referee exam and learning system.  I ceded priority to this project, as it actually has big, positive implications for changing the refereeing system and processes.

Next, I’ve decided to put the journal on the backburner for now. Its a good idea whose time will come, but the best functionality that I have planned for it won’t happen until askFred gets certain functionality implemented, and that is an unknown.  So until that ball gets rolling, I’m pausing production.

In its place, I’m going to begin working soon on a referee-based utility.  It seems to me that there are a lot of problems finding and arranging referees, and I’m looking to help solve them.  I’m looking to build something to help hook refs with tournament organizers.  This includes smart estimation of travel costs, from tanks of gas to analyzing flight data to help optimize costs when searching for good referees.

In addition, on the side, I’m going to look into developing an open source, modular scoring machine.  The intent is to start with the bare-bones scoring box.  Being open source, you’d be able to buy all the parts and download the software on your own to build something for cheaper if you’re tech savvy enough, but if you aren’t, the goal is to try and price it below $100 for retail.  Software would be updatable with a USB cable and a computer, and the intent would be to develop other modules that you can hook into the base box to upgrade into a better product.

Thoughts?  Input?

Although I’ve not posted any good updates to the site lately, I just wanted to make sure to let everyone know that progress is being made.  Journal is closer to done.  Test has been incrementally improved.  And there are other things in the works that are related, but that I haven’t yet specifically mentioned.  I’ve been putting most of my effort into these secret projects, so things just look slower than they really are.

I took some time and greatly improved the referee practice test.  There’s a lot more flexibility and options available, although random is still truly random.