14meters fencing blog

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.

So, after taking a look at pageviews and traffic and such, by far, the most popular venture we’ve done here has been the one post about the fencing shoes (link). Go figure. Even moreso than the main application.

So, in the spirit of that, I’m throwing up a simple, hopefully useful, Fencing Shoes product blog (click here to visit).

The purpose is short and sweet - I’m going to try and throw up a post about every popular shoe used for fencing, what people think about them, and where to buy them. The mini-blog in the upper right-hand corner is for special deals. For example, Adidas occasionally has 20% off sales, Amazon does shoe sales, and the individual vendors all have special deals that they throw around. I’m going to try and keep on top of those things and post them in that section. I don’t anticipate any deals to overlap, but if you subscribe to the RSS feed of the blog, you’ll see everything, overlap or not.

Enjoy

http://wiki.14meters.com

Nothing in there just yet, but its open for use with the public.  I’ve yet to figure out exactly what it should be used for.  I’ve been contemplating things from documenting common Fencing questions to putting up a draft version of the rulebook with an effort to revamp the system.

Thoughts?