Chris Curtis Web Site

The table is posted, based on the best 6 scores across the SOG season. I came 27th out of about 60 or so on the green list, though many people only ran in a few events. There is a new series starting soon – if I start the new series as I ended this one, I might well come higher.

I have finished a script that examines the media files in a directory on a web-server and displays a neat table with as much information about each file as possible, and a link to each one.

This means that you can place a number of media files (images, audio or video, plus things like flash movies) in a directory on a web server and point visitors to your “media.php” file, which will display what is there, showing “tag” contents and so on. This means you do not have to manually create an index of the material you are offering.

I like Stoughton (near Chichester in W Sussex). The woods seem a very long way from anywhere because you have to approach along a few miles of single track roads through tiny old hamlets that look like biscuit-tin illustrations. The complex shape of the downs, well cloaked in mixed woodland, creates cosy valleys with small fields where you often see large herds of deer. Today I came from Southampton instead of from home, so I saw new, equally beautiful areas.

This was the last event in this series of “SOGs” – Southdowns Orienteers’ Gallopen (or league) locals. Like everyone, I wanted to do well to get the most points possible – to try and hold my position in the league at least.

There was a steep climb to the first control and I encountered the first area of brashings – foresters’ waste in the form of branches (and even small trees) cut down and left lying. It had rained yesterday and overnight, so as well as the brashings catching your feet and bruising your shins, they were very slippery too. The ground was thin soil over chalk – even the mud was slick and slippery. Still, I was determined and found the first and second controls quickly. It helped that the forest was very open and the controls on platforms, so they were visible from some distance away. It was a matter of running in a straight line, down and often back up some steep slopes as fast as I could, which is not as fast as I hoped but I was really pleased with the first half of the course. According to winsplits, I was lying 10th overall at control 4 (almost half-way round), which is probably the best I have ever done. I was breathing hard but quite enjoying myself.

I made a bit of a hash of control 5 and went past it, mainly because I had not identified a good attack point. This dropped me to 20th, but I had managed to pull back a little by control 8 and was 17th. By this time, I was struggling with fitness (as usual) and simply could not keep up speed through the last control (9) and to the finish so ended up 22nd. I made a classic mistake for control 9 too, which did not help. I went down the bigger of two parallel paths (wrong!) and so was looking for my attack point on the right and never found it, of course. I was thinking really slowly (lack of oxygen?) and it took me ages to plan and execute a correction. The 450m to the finish were easy navigation, but my legs were lead. I did manage a tolerably convincing “jog-in” finish – thanks to the planner for the downhill to the finish!

There are things to be encouraged by – at 16 mins/km this was my fastest SOG. For parts of the course I was doing well – on one control I was sixth fastest and on several I was in the top ten. I worked hard and enjoyed it. Generally, the navigation was fine. On the other hand, two mistakes cost me lots of places and I could not sustain my good running for the distance. the fitness does seem to come very slowly – mainly because I have so little time to train. At this rate of improvement, I should win a SOG in 2012! I do feel, after my first complete series, that I am an orienteer – I know what to do and what I am doing wrong. I just need to work on my sport and get better at it.

My new glasses (from compasspoint – protective with magnifying insets) and my new Moscow 3 thumb compass (birthday presents) helped too. The compass was much better than my old one – very fast to settle and stable while I was running.

I recently acquired one of the new Creative Audigy 2 ZS Notebook PCMIA (small plug-in card) sound cards and I have been very pleased with it indeed. I love the silent background, the ease of use and the quality sound, right there in my laptop.

Tonight, I needed to test an Edirol UA-25 semi-pro USB-connected sound card for a project I am doing. This is significantly more expensive (about twice as much as the Creative Card) and has those “semi-pro” features – with a genuine metal box, lots of inputs and outputs and volume controls on the box itself. It has the major advantage for some users of midi-ports to connect to keyboards and sound modules, though it has no on-board synthesiser so without plugging it into a midi keyboard, you cannot play midi files and it only does stereo while the Audigy will do up to 7.1 to decode your DVDs and DVD audio and is THX approved.

I did some recording and listening on both cards. In terms of audio quality the Edirol had the edge. There was simply something more natural and effortless about the sound, with exquisite fine detail and balance. I could listen effortlessly all night. It reminded me of the professional gear I have used – totally silent backgrounds, deep, completely tuneful and controlled bass and subtle treble.

The Creative card, though, is close, especially if you change the speaker settings to match your system (I was using good Sennheiser headphones). The sound is just a little more closed-in, just a touch more veiled, and with some video cards can give the odd click unless you mute the line-in when you are not using it. Having said that, for the sheer convenience of a small card in my laptop, and for considerably less money, with a good soundfont synthesiser thrown in, I am happy to carry on living with the Audigy. It is a truly astonishing piece of kit – I can remember rooms full of professional analogue kit not sound anything like as good.

So if you need audio purity in stereo, excellent recordings including from professional mics, audiophile playback and do not mind carrying around a small metal box and lead with your laptop, the Edirol is what you need. For most laptop luggers, the creative wins on price, features and convenience. I am glad I will have access to both when I need it.

It took a while to dig through the wordpress wiki to find what I needed, but I have now completed a “proper” WordPress plug-in that will show “what’s on” for a shoutcast server of your choice. It works in my installation of WP 1.2.2 and might work in other installations or it might not. You can download it here (the zip includes a readme).

The plug-in has now been updated to work with WP 1.5 – see here for more details

To learn more about shoutcast go to www.shoutcast.com

Congratulations to the people involved in the new cms and forum-based web site for Southdowns Orienteers. Great work.

Use my link (on the right) or go straight to http://www.southdowns-orienteers.org.uk

I have now re-packaged the “What’s on” script to be a word-press plug-in. Installation is still a little complex, so I will do a little more work before releasing it, but nearly there.