[obscurerichard]

I’d like to organize a weekly Freezing Saddles workshop, held in a public place. I’m neutral about whether we stick to one central meeting place or whether we rotate locations. I’d like to get people’s feedback on what would be convenient for them. I’m in South Arlington so the first 3 options are most convenient for me but I’m willing to travel to any of these if at least one person will commit to show up for the workshop. Please reply with the numbers of the locations you would be willing and able to attend.

I would probably have a mixture of weekend and early evening sessions. I’d also be happy to visit a nearby restaurant or watering hole with participants after we work on the technology issues.

1. Kogod Courtyard – Gallery Place, Washington DC
2. Arlington Central Library – Ballston, Arlington VA
3. Columbia Pike Library – Arlington Heights, Arlington VA
4. Beatley Central Library – Cameron Station, Alexandria VA
5. Herndon Library – Herndon, VA
6. Rockville Memorial Library – Montgomery County, Rockville, MD
7. Spauldings Branch Library – Prince Georges County, District Heights, MD

[obscurerichard]

@awitt 194506 wrote:

I’m interested in helping with the tech part of FS. I’m a web developer but I don’t know Python (I do ColdFusion/Oracle). I like the idea of a training meeting to get started. I wanted to help in the previous two years but was intimidated by facing the learning curve from a blind start. My ColdFusion career is coming to an end and I’m eager to learn some new skills.

Thanks @awitt! Your help would be most welcome. I’m going to announce a series of open workshop dates here soon.

[obscurerichard]

@jrenaut 194542 wrote:

I think it’s best we do not collect any personal information from anyone under 13 – Congress in their infinite misunderstanding of the internet passed some laws that really heavily restrict what you are and aren’t allowed to collect and by doing so have protected approximately zero children but made sites, even huge ones, just disable accounts for children (this is why so many websites make you click “I’m over 13”). Since I am aware of these laws but do not know how to follow them, unless someone else is an expert, I think it’s best we don’t pull data for kids. That was the point of the Pointless Kids – it was using the parent’s account and a made up name for the kid so we don’t get into this mess.

Please do not give a child under 13 years old their own Strava account – it would be a violation of their terms of services and it would put us in a bad position regarding liability. If a child is 13 or older they can sign up for their own Strava account and I think that they should be eligible to participate if so. That would be in the spirit of our all-ages community where we welcome riders young and old.

Last year we said that children under 15 could participate in the Pointless Kids related prizes by riding with an adult with a Strava account, and having the parents tag their ride with #withkidCodename and then the software will parse out the code names and track them. It’s also possible to track kid-related rides where you tow them in a trailer or ride tandem with them by using a #kidical tag in your Strava ride title. 15 or 16 seems like a pretty good cut-off for being counted in the #withkid cohort to me.

My very eager 12 year old turns 13 in mid-January, so I advised her that this year she would have to be part of the Pointless Kids competition but next year she would have the option of entering as a full-blown participant (assuming we allow it) as she will be 13 and eligible to sign up for her own Strava account.

[obscurerichard]

@secstate 194204 wrote:

I have the time. I’m trying to build the skills but am not sure if I have them yet — looking through the GitHub page, I can’t say I fully understand how all the pieces fit together. I volunteer, but only under the condition you think I’ll alleviate more headaches than I’ll cause.

I have taken some online courses and done basic work in Python/Flask, SQL, HTML/CSS, and even a little JavaScript. All of these (well, maybe not the JavaScript quite yet) have been useful in my PhD research and I’d like to take them further. Working on the tech side of BAFS seems like potentially a good way to do this as well as to give back to this great competition. I have your e-mail and will send you a note.

You are well positioned to be able to help, thank you!

[obscurerichard]

@jrenaut 194212 wrote:

Sorry, didn’t mean to dislike the post, can’t seem to undo it.

Anyway, there are basically two parts to the BAFS code – the part that does the synching with Strava and all of that, which hozn wrote and is totally incomprehensible but amazing, and the leaderboard screens, which anyone with basic Python/Flask/SQL/HTML skills should be able to create or update.

Javascript, aside from JQuery, is bad and should be avoided at all costs.

All of this to say you should be able to help out with a lot of the basics. Maybe you won’t be able to help out with weather data (I’ve been working in Python on and off for 10 years and I can’t figure that stuff out), but lots of the parts of the website that could use some help are much less complicated.

I disliked your post to retaliate, JUST BECAUSE I CAN. I don’t really dislike it of course.

I’m happy to have whatever help you can provide too @jreneaut. Your help last year was invaluable.

[obscurerichard]

@pingouin 194196 wrote:

I’ve been mainly a Java programmer over the last 25 years, but I had some experience with Python a long time ago; I’m starting to get up-to-speed on Python 3, for another project.

We’d welcome your contributions @pingouin!

It’s OK to be green on the language, the problems we have here are not super-hard to solve in any modern programming language, the challenges tend to be more in getting the solution just right, or in integrating with external APIs.

[obscurerichard]

@EasyRider 194062 wrote:

Apologies if this has been stated already, but “remove the point cap” refers to eliminating the limit on the number of “team points” an individual rider could contribute in a week, is that right? So all points under the proposed scoring system would count towards “team points”?

If so, I’m not opposed, and it would make things more interesting for high-mileage riders and “star players”. Under last year’s system, my motivation was to maximize my team points contribution. Along with the sleaze rides, it generally meant I rode 7 days a week instead of 5 and probably an extra 30-40 miles per week. I’d miss having the explicit target/cap for team points. On the other hand, if the new system made the leaderboard rankings was more dynamic, that would also motivate me to ride more than my usual commute.

All of which is to say I like where this is going, and thanks to the organizers.

You have this exactly right – the number of team points a rider can contribute per week will no longer be capped. The distinction between team points and individual points will disappear this year, since we have a compensating control – a progressive points boost for the first miles greater than 1 and less than 10 ridden in a day.

[obscurerichard]

@ChristoB50 193822 wrote:

I like the plan! I agree that the “front-loading” of higher points on the early miles should help motivate newbies or on-the-fence riders to get a few miles in each day at least. The “sleaze” single-mile ride, worth 20 points alone, would almost become a guaranteed must-do every day!
I don’t currently have Strava — are miles tabulated with decimal places? (So, would you round down, or up, for fractional miles?)

I ran my Feb 2019 rides through the new points calc… I had 18 riding days, each over 10 miles (so, old system points = 360 I think?)
Average ride was 22miles; month total was 402. New points system would value it all at 1,392 points I believe.

PS — is the “daily base points” of 10 useful in this points model? ie, if a 1 mile ride is the minimum ride to get ANY points for a day — and so everyone who rides in BAFS, rides at least 1 mile per ride day to get on the board — then everyone gets that same base 10 points (before tabulating their miles-points) and it seems essentially like an unnecessary constant in every rider’s score…?
{Edit; yeah, I guess it has a usefulness after thinking more on it – ie, for riders who managed to ride say, 100% of days, vs. riders who managed 50% of days…}

CORRECTION: I had written: Points in the system are integers only and mileage decimals are is truncated to the when calculating points. So a 2.0 mile ride, a 2.1 mile ride and a 2.95 mile ride count as a 2 mile ride for the purposes of calculating Freezing Saddles points. Instead, I should have written that points in the system are real numbers and fractional mile rides above the 1 mile threshold accrue points.

The rough consensus that is building both among the riders and organizers is to use the declining balance point scheme where you get 10 points for mile 1, 9 for 2, etc down to 1 point for mile 10+, keep the 10 point bonus to the 1st mile so that the 1st mile is worth 20 points, and remove the point cap.

ADDENDUM: This also means that there will be a step function for determining the points for each mile and any fractional miles will count at the lower point multiplier, so a 1.5 mile ride would count for (10+10 + 9 * 0.5 = 24.5) points.

[obscurerichard]

@Nadine 193818 wrote:

But is the graded points for the first 10 miles / day something Jon and Obscure Richard can do without too much trouble? If it’s just a simple program rewrite, I vote yes.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It is totally doable – and thank you for thinking of me & Jon!

[obscurerichard]

I’m really excited to see such good ideas being posted. As it will fall to jrenaut and me (and maybe hozn if we are lucky) to implement any rule changes, in the absence of additional volunteers we are going to have to choose carefully what we pick.

My personal bias is to encourage camaraderie over hardcore competition and avoid rules that will drive new riders away or be hard to understand or implement. Giving the people the choice of preferring a local team is appealing. I like the idea of having a much smaller team, raising or changing the point cap for team scoring, or just making the team score based on days ridden.

I really like that last idea, btw, because it would allow a dedicated team that just rides every day to crush a team composed of elite racers and retired people who can ride hundreds of miles in a week.

If we can easily model the effect of a rule change on competitiveness it will have a better chance of becoming official.

I’m going to encourage people to continue to suggest rule ideas in this thread. I’m going to capture all of them and put them into GitHub issues here:

https://github.com/freezingsaddles/freezing-web/issues

(You can see this without a GitHub account but you can’t add an issue or comment until you have a GitHub account)

Please feel free to add new ideas directly to https://github.com/freezingsaddles/freezing-web/issues but also please mention that you have done so here in this thread and post the URL to your issue so people can review it.

Then the team setting the rules and implementing for them will organize and prioritize these on cards in the Icebox column of this Kannan board (GitHub account & freezingsaddles team membership required to see this – PM me for access please):

https://github.com/orgs/freezingsaddles/projects/1

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[obscurerichard]

@bentbike33 189003 wrote:

The leaderboard is still adding rides this morning. I thought we were done yesterday.

It’s fixed now. I had put in the last day incorrectly and had to reset it back a day and delete the bogus rides.

[obscurerichard]

I’m in! I might bring my 2 pointless kids who have ridden with me so much this year…

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[obscurerichard]

@jrenaut 188652 wrote:

Updates – daughter had 2 root canals this morning. Apparently she was a model patient, the dentist wishes all the 8-year-olds he works on were like her. So far, so good.

I saw the ortho this morning. Unless there is something crazy in the MRI this weekend, likely to have surgery early next week. I’m encouraged by the recovery timeline – it’s faster than Dr Google lead me to believe. Assuming surgery next week, I should be able to walk with a boot the first week of April and walk normally around May 15. I don’t know if that means I can bike to Bike to Work Day, but I’m hopeful.

Oh man, I’m so sorry to hear this. Please rest up after and get better soon!

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[obscurerichard]

@Jim B 188572 wrote:

Chuck,

I have a couple new BAFS stat suggestions.

I have 7 sleaze ride days for BAFS 2019 but about half of them were sleaze rides to reach my maximum team points for the week (Sleazes to the Max).

Additionally, 2 of my 7 sleaze rides were a Double Sleaze to the Max: I finished the week with 2 consecutive sleaze ride days to reach my maximum team points for the week.

If the technology allows it my suggestion is to add “Sleazes to the Max” and “Double Sleazes to the Max” as columns to the Individual Sleaze Rides page.

Jim B

I’ve captured this suggestion as an issue: https://github.com/freezingsaddles/freezing-web/issues/117

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[obscurerichard]

@josh 184986 wrote:

I’ll try to get my act together and help out this year. I think I’ve gotten being stupid competitive in terms of raw miles out of my system. Will try and get the dev environment set up locally this week and take a peek at some of the “good first issues”.

I’m happy to help you get set up josh… pop into our Slack room and we can work it out.

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