Jim Matysek, web master nonpareil and extraordinaire, deserves nothing but appreciative gratitude for the past year of extraordinary Forum, Blog, and possibly Go the Distance web mastery!
Now, having thanked him for this, I propose we use this thread to jot down our various wishes for Christmas presents of the web servicey variety that we know Big Jim can provide!
Let me get the ball rolling with the present that is atop my masters swimming technology wish list:
Time charting/graphing capability!
I would love a place where all my USMS meet performances over the years are not only listed (thanks, by the way, for supplying this via the "My Meet results" link in the My USMS area), but a way of showing the results graphically by event.
Since I live in an area where most of the meets I swim in aren't USMS sanctioned or recognized, I would furthermore like to be able to manually enter meet results in this new Time Charting/Graphing Capability area so that I can get a better sense of my performance trajectories over each season and over the years.
I would futhermore like it if Santa Jim Matysek or one of his Christmas programming elves could add an age grading feature that would automatically crank out a ranking along these lines, too--and figure out some way to adjust for body suit vs. jammer swimming times so that it won't look like tons of guys suddenly got much slower and closer to death.
Chris Stevenson's age grader, which I think he's planning to recallibrate at some point, is a good example of something to incorporate into the Time charting/graphing capability (now with automatic age-grading feature)!
www.vaswim.org/.../rcalc.cgi
Okay, so that's what I want for Christmas, Santa Jim Matysek.
I want more, as well, much more, but I don't want to seem like one of those greedy children who ask for much and deserve little.
I now grant the floor to the next swimmer who wants to sit on your lap and ask for whatever it is he or she wants. I only hope, Santa Jim M., that you grant requests in the order that they were delivered to you.
If I had a wish, it would be to be able to have the age setting for the Event Rankings remain at my age group on my computer so that I don't have to change them every time I go in to see where Jim is in relation to me.
Jim, does that make sense?
+1 on making them sticky based on each user's last visit. If that's not possible, maybe set the default to one of our most populated age groups (hint: 50-54), rather than 18-25?
I just joined USMS in August so I might have missed a magical spreadsheet to graph times. I built one myself for my daughter that stinks. Do you have a link to this spreadsheet?
If it's an inside joke, please ignore my request.
Didn't someone already invent a spreadsheet for this? :afraid::bolt:
And another vote for more smilies :chug:
I just joined USMS in August so I might have missed a magical spreadsheet to graph times. I built one myself for my daughter that stinks. Do you have a link to this spreadsheet?
If it's an inside joke, please ignore my request.
It isn't an inside joke exactly, more of a yet-to-be-fulfilled request to Jim Matysek, the venerable web master nonpareil of this forum, to create something that we all can use.
I am pretty sure Jim and his merry conglomeration USMS elves are currently toiling day and night to make this spreadsheet happen by Christmas.
I, for one, have already told young Virginia, "Yes, Virginia, there is a Jim Matysek."
Speaking for wide-eyed naif's everywhere, I surely hope I haven't inadvertently lied to Virginia.
I just joined USMS in August so I might have missed a magical spreadsheet to graph times. I built one myself for my daughter that stinks. Do you have a link to this spreadsheet?
If it's an inside joke, please ignore my request.
I was just referring to the fact that excel has some great capabilities that even my lesser-techologically-able self can handle. Such as typing times into cells and then converting them into a graph over a period of months. I do a separate one for each event, but could probably get really "into" it and include splits and variances and compare pacing on different distances, but I'm not quite that inclined.....and then I might get stuck and need to ask my other half for help.
However if a nice USMS approved fancy spreadsheet tool came along I would certainly put it to use :D
Speaking of the FLOG, does anyone know if Nike is going to sponsor the GTD event again next year? The opportunity to earn a free swim suit was a major motivation for my goal to swim 500 miles this year (just 16 miles to go!). I really appreciate Nike's sponsorship! However, next year I'd like to see a prize added for the MAD (mile-a-day, 365 miles) milestone (and perhaps a quicker turn-around for the prizes- I'm still waiting on my water bottle).
Nike will continue to sponsor the GTD program for 2011. It is our hope that many other members, like yourself, will participate in the program and set one of the Nike prize milestones as their goal for the year. So please tell all of your friends about the FLOG and GTD!
The prize milestones will remain the same for 2011. However, some of the prizes could change for these milestones.
2010 was the first year that Nike and All American Swim Supply teamed up for the prizes and the fulfillment on the GTD program so there were a few logistical items that came up this year. Most of these items were worked out and the prizes in 2011 should come in a more timely manner.
If you have any other questions about the GTD program, you can email me kdeery@usms.org.
Best,
Kyle
Time charting/graphing capability!
I'd like something similar, but for the flogs. Back when we were using Mary Sweat's spreadsheet she had some really nice graphs available like the ability to track your mileage against past years, graphing yards or meters per hour, etc. I love that kind of thing.
