I write about data, but at core this whole thing is really just about the dogs and the mushers and the trail. Here's video I recorded in the staging area as teams prepared to enter the start chute.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
The Yukon Quest start
I write about data, but at core this whole thing is really just about the dogs and the mushers and the trail. Here's video I recorded in the staging area as teams prepared to enter the start chute.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Blogs
I said that I'd get around to posting links to good Quest-related blogs, so tonight I took a look at what's in my RSS reader and just groaned. There's a *lot* out there. Most of it tends to be mushers keeping fans and sponsors up-to-date on how training is going, what day-to-day life is like, and so on. A lot of them are great, some are not, and I'm a little short on time. So, instead I'm going to provide a link to a new blog from KUAC reporter Emily Schwing. It's KUAC's Yukon Quest Coverage.
This one's a little different because it's by someone who's writing about the race and about the mushers, but not as a musher. She's a journalist and I think provides the best reporting and "color" coverage out there, and it's all original content. While the KUAC blog is new she covered the race last year at her own blog, "Current Resonance." With the race starting in 12 hours (ack!) this might be a great time to take a look at her posts from last year for a reminder of how things went. It might jigger your expectations for this year a little.
Basically, I think that if there's one blog to follow during the race (on top of the Quest website, the Trackleaders website, the Facebook Quest page, the mushers' Facebook pages ... ), this would definitely be the one.
This one's a little different because it's by someone who's writing about the race and about the mushers, but not as a musher. She's a journalist and I think provides the best reporting and "color" coverage out there, and it's all original content. While the KUAC blog is new she covered the race last year at her own blog, "Current Resonance." With the race starting in 12 hours (ack!) this might be a great time to take a look at her posts from last year for a reminder of how things went. It might jigger your expectations for this year a little.
Basically, I think that if there's one blog to follow during the race (on top of the Quest website, the Trackleaders website, the Facebook Quest page, the mushers' Facebook pages ... ), this would definitely be the one.
Testing 1, 2, 3
Fairbanks is definitely amped up for the Quest start. There seems to be more visibility, more fans, more everything this year than in the past. This morning on an oldies radio station they did a lead-in to I-don't-remember-what with "We've harnessed and ready to run our champion string of classic rock hits."
I just took a look at the Quest page at Trackleaders.com, where they had a scrolling window showing updates as they arrive:
Looks like there's been some testing going on and they're nearly ready to roll. I was hoping that Trackleaders would soup up the interface to the race flow plot so that we could select which teams to show, but even with the display limited to the frontrunners it's going to be an incredibly interesting source of information about what's happening on the trail.
One heads-up: I think that the "Native Chukchi)" in the musher listing on trackleaders.com is pretty clearly Michael Telpin.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Following the Quest
The Yukon Quest starts Saturday! The Quest has really led the way in making use of clever, inexpensive tracking services (Trackleaders) and leveraging social media.
I thought it might be worth a short post describing options for following the race online, so people can make sure that they're set up to take advantage of everything that's available.
The official website
First, the Yukon Quest website itself. Their race updates will be the authoritative sources on checkpoint arrival/departure times, accumulated rest, etc. The GPS trackers will also show times but they're being derived from tracking data and because there's some heuristics involved in determining when a team actually arrives (they have to be within <n> distance of the official checkpoint location, for example) don't be surprised if there are differences between that and the Quest website. Trust the Quest website for this one.
The Quest website also includes trail and route descriptions and a huge collection of other data. Poke around - you'll be amazed by what's there.
For German speakers, check out the German website, here.
Facebook
The Quest communicates directly with fans on Facebook. Fans also communicate with each other, but again, information from the Quest itself is authoritative and pretty much everything else should be taken with a grain of salt. The Quest has been excellent about posting photos and videos and providing links to interesting media and articles as the race is underway. It's probably the main hub for both information from the Quest organization and posts from enthusiastic fans during the race.
Personally, I've found that there's an awful lot of noise and misinformation from enthusiastic fans and while I appreciate the community and their enthusiasm for the race it tends to crowd out posts from the Quest organization itself and make it difficult to follow "official" news. Fortunately Facebook lets us control our own environment so that we can see what we want without stepping on anybody else's ability to post and participate. Options include blocking too-frequent posters as well as choosing to not show posts from anybody but the page owner (i.e. the Quest organization).
Trackleaders
I tend to prefer to go directly to the Trackleaders website rather than following it through the Quest website. Probably the primary reason is that if you use the race analysis tools (the race flow plot, the projections) you'll end up there anyway, but it's also the case that the map layers on the Trackleaders site include a topo map and the ones embedded on the race websites don't.
This year Trackleaders is also providing a link to a mobile website, and you might want to create a bookmark in your phone's web browser. To be honest I find the user interface kind of clunky but just having it available is a huge step forward and I absolutely love that they made this available. The URI is http://app.bluedot.mobi/. Definitely check it out.
Twitter
You have a few options here. The most obvious one is to subscribe to @theyukonquest, but they won't be the only ones tweeting about the race, so you can also search for the #yq2012 hashtag through your Twitter client or through Twitter's search interface. Because not everybody's fastidious about hashtag use I also have running searches on "yukon quest" (include the quote marks).
Blogs
Partipants' handlers and/or family members have turned into fierce bloggers and a fun source of information. I hope to post the listing from my RSS reader before the race starts but in the meantime you can search blogs by going to Google's blog search page and starting a search there.
News
Alaska and Yukon newspapers do a fantastic job of covering the races, and it's a good bet to check in with them at least once/day for both news and photos. The must-reads include
I thought it might be worth a short post describing options for following the race online, so people can make sure that they're set up to take advantage of everything that's available.
The official website
First, the Yukon Quest website itself. Their race updates will be the authoritative sources on checkpoint arrival/departure times, accumulated rest, etc. The GPS trackers will also show times but they're being derived from tracking data and because there's some heuristics involved in determining when a team actually arrives (they have to be within <n> distance of the official checkpoint location, for example) don't be surprised if there are differences between that and the Quest website. Trust the Quest website for this one.
The Quest website also includes trail and route descriptions and a huge collection of other data. Poke around - you'll be amazed by what's there.
For German speakers, check out the German website, here.
The Quest communicates directly with fans on Facebook. Fans also communicate with each other, but again, information from the Quest itself is authoritative and pretty much everything else should be taken with a grain of salt. The Quest has been excellent about posting photos and videos and providing links to interesting media and articles as the race is underway. It's probably the main hub for both information from the Quest organization and posts from enthusiastic fans during the race.
Personally, I've found that there's an awful lot of noise and misinformation from enthusiastic fans and while I appreciate the community and their enthusiasm for the race it tends to crowd out posts from the Quest organization itself and make it difficult to follow "official" news. Fortunately Facebook lets us control our own environment so that we can see what we want without stepping on anybody else's ability to post and participate. Options include blocking too-frequent posters as well as choosing to not show posts from anybody but the page owner (i.e. the Quest organization).
Trackleaders
I tend to prefer to go directly to the Trackleaders website rather than following it through the Quest website. Probably the primary reason is that if you use the race analysis tools (the race flow plot, the projections) you'll end up there anyway, but it's also the case that the map layers on the Trackleaders site include a topo map and the ones embedded on the race websites don't.
This year Trackleaders is also providing a link to a mobile website, and you might want to create a bookmark in your phone's web browser. To be honest I find the user interface kind of clunky but just having it available is a huge step forward and I absolutely love that they made this available. The URI is http://app.bluedot.mobi/. Definitely check it out.
You have a few options here. The most obvious one is to subscribe to @theyukonquest, but they won't be the only ones tweeting about the race, so you can also search for the #yq2012 hashtag through your Twitter client or through Twitter's search interface. Because not everybody's fastidious about hashtag use I also have running searches on "yukon quest" (include the quote marks).
Blogs
Partipants' handlers and/or family members have turned into fierce bloggers and a fun source of information. I hope to post the listing from my RSS reader before the race starts but in the meantime you can search blogs by going to Google's blog search page and starting a search there.
News
Alaska and Yukon newspapers do a fantastic job of covering the races, and it's a good bet to check in with them at least once/day for both news and photos. The must-reads include
- The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner
- The Anchorage Daily News
- The Alaska Dispatch
- The Whitehorse Star
- The Yukon News
And if you're a total Quest junkie, you can also do a newspaper search on Google, at http://news.google.com.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Alaska Map Resources
Nerds don't just like time and date formats, we also like Neal Stephenson novels, spicy food, and maps. By far the best-known and most widely-used online maps are Google maps and Bing maps, but by no means are they the only ones. In addition to free online topo services (for example, mytopo.com), we've got an excellent Alaska-specific online mapping service that not only includes road maps and topo maps, in a few areas it also has higher-resolution satellite imagery than you'll find on Google or Bing. It's the Alaska Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative and it's a cooperative project between the University of Alaska, the Division of Natural Resources, and other state agencies. I live in Two Rivers, AK and spend a lot of time in the Chena River State Recreation Area and the difference in quality is pretty remarkable. Here's what we get if we try to look at the confluence of the middle fork with the Chena with Google Maps:
Now, check out the same area from Alaska Mapped:
It varies by region but I have yet to come across an area in which Google has higher-resolution pictures but there are some where Alaska Mapped does, so the latter is always the first place I go when looking for satellite images of Alaska. Also, it's got a topo layer, so it's trivial to pop back and forth among satellite images, road maps, and topo maps. I'm not going to go into the various data services they provide because I think they'll tend to be less interesting to the casual user, but it's a fun site to explore and play around with if you like maps.
 |
| Middle fork of the Chena, Google maps |
Now, check out the same area from Alaska Mapped:
 |
| Middle fork of the Chena, Alaska Mapped |
It varies by region but I have yet to come across an area in which Google has higher-resolution pictures but there are some where Alaska Mapped does, so the latter is always the first place I go when looking for satellite images of Alaska. Also, it's got a topo layer, so it's trivial to pop back and forth among satellite images, road maps, and topo maps. I'm not going to go into the various data services they provide because I think they'll tend to be less interesting to the casual user, but it's a fun site to explore and play around with if you like maps.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Do Twinkies really not freeze at -60F?
We're interested in other things besides the trackers. For example, I've heard a few mushers say that Twinkies won't freeze at very low temperatures, even as low as -60F. That seemed implausible to me, so I set out to find out if it's true.
As it turns out, it's not.
As it turns out, it's not.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
What data would you like to see?
So far we've been pretty focused on the trackers, but they're not the only source of information about how a race is going. There are also tables maintained by the race committees, showing start times, checkpoint arrival and departure times, and so on. There's tremendous inconsistency from race to race about what data are shown, how they're presented, and so on. Because we use the data to answer questions, when thinking about what data to display we need to start by identifying what questions we're trying to get answered.
That one, I think, is pretty easy: "So how's everybody doing?" Knowing the answer to that involves information that's not readily available from the trackers, even when GPS trackers are being used. Arrival times at checkpoints is a given. We don't always get departure times and I would really like to see that, myself. I'd also like to see runtimes between checkpoints and how much mandatory rest time is "owed."
As for presentation, a tabular format is inevitable, both because it's easiest to maintain and easiest to read. But! This is the 21st century and it would be fantastic if RGOs provided tables that allowed us to click on any column to sort on it. So, if I wanted to see in what order everybody arrived at a checkpoint I could click on that column, or see an ordered list of runtimes I'd be able to click on that column. Maybe this weekend while I'm inside hiding from the seriously cold temperatures we're expecting I'll put together a Google Docs spreadsheet that shows what I'm thinking.
So, in summary, here are the columns I'd like to see:
That one, I think, is pretty easy: "So how's everybody doing?" Knowing the answer to that involves information that's not readily available from the trackers, even when GPS trackers are being used. Arrival times at checkpoints is a given. We don't always get departure times and I would really like to see that, myself. I'd also like to see runtimes between checkpoints and how much mandatory rest time is "owed."
As for presentation, a tabular format is inevitable, both because it's easiest to maintain and easiest to read. But! This is the 21st century and it would be fantastic if RGOs provided tables that allowed us to click on any column to sort on it. So, if I wanted to see in what order everybody arrived at a checkpoint I could click on that column, or see an ordered list of runtimes I'd be able to click on that column. Maybe this weekend while I'm inside hiding from the seriously cold temperatures we're expecting I'll put together a Google Docs spreadsheet that shows what I'm thinking.
So, in summary, here are the columns I'd like to see:
- start time
- checkpoint arrival time
- checkpoint departure time
- run time between checkpoints
- how much mandatory rest is owed
Too much data are too much data and I think much more than that would result in a table that's cluttered and hard to read.
That's a summary of what I'd like to see, but other people have different preferences. What data would help you understand what's going on during a race?
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