Discussion: Model mystery

What does the pink overprint on the model map signify? It makes me think out of bounds, except that some of the controls are in there. Therefore it must mean something else(?).

What model map do you have, Mitch? Mine doesn't have any controls in the out of bounds section?

The one I downloaded from the meet website.
https://www.newenglandorienteering.org/2018trollcu...

What controls are you seeing in the pink area?

In the one I am looking at, there are none. My interpretation of the pink is "out-of-bounds" (likely it is impinging on the competition area).

2 and 6 are in the pink. 1 is right on the edge of it.

Mitch, I'd download another copy - looks fine in the browser.

Looks the same in my browser

Ok, looks different on my phone, using chrome!

If I open the map in Firefox it shows 2 and 6 in the pink and 1 on the edge. If I then actually download it as a .pdf, there is only a pink strip beyond 2 and beyond 6 and the controls are all unaffected.

With a few mins finally to look at the differences, it looks like the oob overprint was put in as a pair of rectangles and then portions of each were cut away to produce the final version. What I see in Firefox looks like the original rectangles without the cutouts.

Pink vertical lines, as usual, signify out of bounds – put there to ensure that no one wanders into the competition area. I haven't been able to recreate the problem Mitch was having, either in Safari or Firefox; but in any case, as Charlie says, it is a pdf file that should print the same for everyone.

The real mystery is that a new trail through the south side of the model area sprouted in the last couple of weeks!

"Should" is the operative word. After the event, this might be worth investigating, though it's not obvious to me which piece of software is to blame (but it kind of seems like Firefox). It works fine for me on my phone with Chrome, and if I download the PDF on my (Windows) laptop and open it with Microsoft Edge or Chrome, those also work. But viewing it with Firefox gives me this:

Might be specific to ff on windoze. And if you print straight from ff (what I did yesterday) you get that image on paper.

It could also be that PurplePen (if that's what Phil used) is somehow generating a PDF that's not exactly to spec, and most software compensates, but not Firefox. But that seems unlikely. I would talk to Peter Golde and see if he has any thoughts, though.

It looks to me like what Firefox is displaying is a bounding box for each of the OOB areas. No idea why it would do that, though.

Bigger mystery:
Who's bright idea was it to eliminate the club/school affiliations from the results posted by monitor?
What a pain in the butt that was for spectators and particularly those interested in how the various teams were doing at the JR Nats!!

Hi Gord. That was my bright idea.
When you want to host JNs, you can specify in the timing contract what you want displayed, and I will bill accordingly for the additional equipment required for that much screen space, and for the software development time to deal with the OUSA scoring rules.

Sorry. My wording was extremely gross. But I'd have suggested dropping the first names and add the club/ school abbreviations. After all, for the Juniors this is primarily a team competition.
But yes I hope that the Florida clubs can get together to host the Junior Nationals in the not-too-distant- future.
NEOC is doing a fantastic job this weekend and I understand they have graciously agreed to allow the JR NATS to be tacked on to the Troll Cup. In the near future I'd hope the Jr Nats are the event bid for and the public courses are the ones tacked on.

Totally agree with your last comment Gordon. That’s what we should aim for.

Were displaying open classes also outside the contract scope?

Just wondering...

The lower res screen was supposed to have the color coded classes on it. I ran out of time setting things up and didn't get it up in time. They will be displayed tomorrow.

Who thought of padding the clue sheets? I've never seen that before, but it is brilliant.

(Padding means to make into pads of paper with a flexible glue painted onto one edge of the stacked sheets. I've actually done it when I worked in the college printshop. It's surprisingly easy, if you have the right glue product.)

Were they padded as full sheets and then cut apart, or cut apart, padded, and then (possibly) trimmed?

I see various padding compounds on Amazon, and an article online mentions rubber cement as an option. I may try padding someday to contain the chaos of clue sheet piles. Any suggestions on which padding compound? (I've seen padded clue sheets in Europe I recall, but I don't remember which events. Definitely tidier, with fewer plastic bags, paper clips and loose clues escaping in the breeze. )

I saw it done at the Scottish 6 day and thought it was great. They were padded as 8.5in wide rows using padding compound from Amazon. Then cut to final width and length.

How do you cut cleanly through a thick pad of paper?

I like it when the descriptions are padded. A popular alternative, which seems just as user-friendly and perhaps slightly less work for the organizers, is to just nail the stacks of descriptions into a board. Then they are easily available in the callup line and also stay in place. Not sure I've seen it done in the US. It sure beats a bunch of rubber-banded stacks scattered around a table.

How do you cut cleanly through a thick pad of paper?

Using a tool called a paper shear. It's a fearsome piece of industrial equipment that nobody has at home, but places that do printing likely have one and it's a cinch for them to cut a stack of paper for you. I suspect that outfits like FedEx Office have ones that are less beastly than the ones I'm familiar with. Three inch stack of paper? No problem, cuts through like there's nothing there. Sometime when you see me, ask me to tell the story about how Pat Dunlavey and I figured out how to operate one without instruction and managed to not cut off any fingers.

Yikes, I don't think I could handle that story.

They do look like small guillotines.

I have one at home :) Mine is a bit smaller (18in wide, only 2.5in cut stack capacity), but I would really like to own a Challenge 305 if I had space for it.

I'm glad the padding worked out so well for everyone. Its not a lot of extra work, and a better experience for the racers, and easier for the organizers not to have to deal with as much loose paper, so I'll keep doing it for events I'm involved with.

Yikes, I don't think I could handle that story.

I said we didn't cut any off. Everything worked perfectly in the end, even though we were dealing with a piece of presumably dangerous equipment.

(You have a shear, Ed? I guess if anybody was going to have one, it would be you. Is it hydraulic, or what?)

We can do padding and have a guillotine cutter at the shop where I print Flying Pig maps. I'll have to consider that for the next Pig. And I'm sure we could do them here for any other club, although you can probably find a shop locally and save shipping.