Discussion: Australian Long Champs RG

Route Gadget is now up.
http://www.bendigo-orienteers.com.au/gadget/cgi-bi...

If you're seeing a blank white map, scroll ---> thattaway.

ed: Whitespace is bad, mmk? :)

Or just hit the negative view button a few times

Any chance we could get the courses and names in some sort of useful order?

Not now. The options for amending RG event data don't include course order. The course setter used names like Course 1, Course 10 etc so I changed the order in the Condes file to course 01 etc. I changed them in the OEfile as well when building it. However, the result is the somewhat jumbled order in RG, and as I could see no logic behind it, I wasn't game to change the names in the OE file, having no idea what that might do to the database anyway. I'm more concerned about the large area of white. But late last night, after putting up 8 route gadget pages, and still feeling quite tired after the stress of the weekend, I called it quits.
You found the correct course anyway.

BTW, on course 1 it looks like the route choice for the long leg had a big impact on the final placings. I'm basing that assessment on the splitalyser at this stage, but it will be interesting to monitor it as more routes come in.
Splitalyser
http://www.bendigo-orienteers.com.au/gadget/cgi-bi...

thanks for that Neil. Shame the elites couldnt use GPS, bloody IOF

yeah, too right, that would have been a corker race for the gps

indeed lazydave.

neil i could be wrong but it don't look like the long leg had any impact (on the top 10 at least)... the only change was craig got ahead of long-distance muz, but muz edged ahead at the end again anyway.

the long leg had a big impact on my placing, i went right(straightish through the gullies) and i lost 3 mins to all the guys who went left, i ended up in 8th, 3 minutes down on 5th place, but it looks like i would have been closer to 7th rather than actually moving up any places

looks like frogga lost a few places on the long leg too, nick barrable overtook 4 or 5 guys on the long leg then lost it all on the last couple of short legs,
now ive overanalysed the crap out this, im off

ev, you and frogga lost time but not places!

true

I just eyballed the straight lines vs the dipping lines on that long leg. It was late and my brain was mush.

Still is probably.

pretty cool way to look at the race i reckon.

i've got an Ei karttaa! in the route gadget thingy.

Ei karttaa! is 'No Map'

Cant work that out, it's all there for me

Sometimes means your Java is out of date, or you're using something silly like a Mac. Java update here.

From my experience running WA's main RG, some people just can't run it. No explanation, no helpful error messages, it just says "NO".

yeah it says "No map" in english too, the translation wasn't the problem ;)

juffy, the machine here at work is running linux so that could be the problem, although i drew in my vic champs route on the same commo... i can see the routes, but no map!

Hmm...the map for the Aus champs is a GIF renamed as JPEG, whereas most of Bendigo's RG maps are actual JPEGs. It's possible Java on Linux just doesn't like GIFs...?

Shep - I get that sometimes for no reason - just reload a few times and eventually it works.

I can't believe anyone seriously considered anything but left to the road. Had to be faster ! Especially as (according to Sheps description) it was pretty rough terrain.

Craig had the fastest time by far and chose what looks like the best route to me. So far no routes up on RG have anyone going straight. Did anyone?

The fact that the route choice didn't affect the results merely reflects the spread of the times. - losing 30s -1min on a route choice doesn't matter much if the average gap between finishing times is 2min. In a race with more runners and a tightewr results list a "poor" route choice like that could lose you a lot of places.

Big Ev I don't see how you can describe your route as "straightish" - you ended up running almost as wide as you would have going left but had more climb and no road running.

yeah not sure why i decided (at the last second!) to go right... i wasn't super keen on the vague running towards the track and couldn't decide where to try and hit the track (and was scared i'd do something like simon where he went left but didn't really actually get to run on the track). going right i felt like i'd be more in control the whole way, but at that stage i didn't know about the bermuda triangle of green.

the bermuda triangle of green
where was that? And what happens in there? Did people come back with stories of aliens and rectal probes? Or just not come back at all?

i'll describe where it is when i get the RG thingo working... nothing as pleasant as rectal probes, but the aliens in there did warn me of the dangers of eating too much white rice.

I think he means close spaced eucalypt regrowth. Its one of the reasons we chose the map.

"No map" means there is no map file at all - or you have run out of memory :) You can try closing all browser and trying again and maybe reduce browser window size a bit.

You can simply allow java use more memory. You can do it by giving the magical "-Xmx256m" runtime parameter like this:
http://img251.imageshack.us/img251/763/javamem.jpg

If the problem with loading the map sometimes is Java memory allocation, it may be due to the size of the map image - the image on RG is 6552pixels × 5665pixels of which only approx 3400x3400 is actually map. This includes the southern part of the map that was not used by any course. If that is excluded the image size only needs to be about 3400 x 2400 pixels.

The large blank area on the left is why the window needs to be scrolled right to see the courses.

The compressed file size is only 1.4mb because 70% of the area is blank (white) but the full image area will still need to be handled when the image is processed.The smaller area used for courses is only 22% of the full image size.

robplow, yeah not sure why i described it as straightish and not even sure why i went right. i had noticed earlier in the course that the running along the bottom of the deep gullies was good (it was generally faster than the running through the rest of the terrain), i guess that was the genesis for my route choice. but hindsight is a beautiful thing and it was a pretty shit route choice

"No map" means there is no map file at all - or you have run out of memory :)

Jarkko - could I request some more specific error messages, please? There's a big difference between "I can't find the map file" and "I tried to load it and failed", and it makes debugging our users' problems pretty difficult. :/

yeah robplow, see on my route to 16, i came up the gully heading west toward the dirt road, and tried to hit the little driveway in to some lookout or something (which i still ran to), but came out a few hundred metres south right on the road bend! that's a good 45 degrees off. (i wonder if i'd have lost time to craig had i not **cked that up?). that area enclosed by the road, where i planned to run, and where i did run, is known as the bermuda triangle of green.

as something very similar happened to me in the relay the next day, i can only conclude anal probing aliens were involved in some way. i don't want to elaborate in regards to the other symptoms i'm experiencing.

NZ runs a different instance of RG and there are reports of periodic "Ei Kartta", including me. No apparent pattern of computer, OS or size of map. What's this magical "xxxx" runtime parameter? I've been gathering toads legs and newt's testicles to throw in the cauldron.

Open Java control panel (in windows click coffee cup at taskbar). There you can find the empty field for parameters. "-Xmx256m" alloews it to use 256 mbytes memory and it should do. I don't know what is default, maybe 64 or something.

I may change message from no map to something like "could not load map, map missing or out of memory". But there is not much I can do. I have suggested using no bigger than 2000 x 2000 pixel because of this restriction, but most seem to ignore it.

Ev： I wasn't trying to mock you for not choosing what looks to me (sitting with a cup of coffee and plenty of time) the best route. I'm guessing the reason you said "staightish" is that that is what you were thinking when you chose that route in the heaｔ of the moment. All I am saying is that when you do analyse your routes with the luxury of hindsight it is important to reevaluate your assumptions and to realise than actually it wasn' that much straighter.

Shep - yeah but you were running faster than Craig anyway so you would have been even faster than him running left. That bermuda trinangle don't look like much on the map. Eating too much white rice is not dangerous if you don' t mind the occasional anal probe.

I'll post my route when I've got a more time on the net than I do at the moment. I went to the road on 16 and thought it seemed a reasonably obvious route, but then I also thought the track out to the west on 14 was a good route, and the effect of the two route choices together is that I probably got back on 16 a minute of the two minutes I lost at 14...(I also lost time on the control on 14, but not that much).

robplow i'm still not convinced left was significantly faster - craig was running quick on that leg (and i wouldn't be surprised if he was going quicker than me at that stage), i think he was with robw for part of it. i prob lost 1 min in the bermuda triangle so i'm gonna say there aint much in it ;)

but if i was to run it again, i'd go left!

Robw was running quicker than me, he was about 100m ahead of me when he left the track but his route into the control was slower. If he had followed the same route as me he probably would have gone 17 low.

you just know I am right Shep.

there's a first time for everything i guess. i wonder if this is that time? ;)

if I was was wrong it would be first time - maybe next time.