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UPRR track crossing at Sixth St. and Lincoln St. FIXED! (HURRAY, HURRAY, HURRAY)
Fifth Ave. South of Thomas Rd FIXED! according to new AZ marking regulations.
Seventh St. just South of the Salt River FIXED! via Coalition of Arizona Bicyclists' Hazard Hotline and the City of Phoenix's Bicycle Coordinator!
Third Ave. just North of Buchanan St. FIXed! While the first fix left a depression that would erode again, a patch made in the fall of 2006 looks good.
South Seventh St. just North of Roeser Lane
For an interesting look at the first land surveys of the United States (the precursors of just about everything accomplished here), take a look at John N. Shankland's Principal Meridian Project. While you're there, check out a few photos I submitted to the Project on the Arizona and Southern California pages. More of my photos are in the "Arizona's PM" and "So Calif Principle Meridian" Albums at Yahoo Photos. #### Top.
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Top.DOE's Science Bowl competition operates with strict timing rules. Up to 25 Toss-up and Bonus question pairs may be presented to a pair of teams within each Round. A Round consists of an eight-minute Half-Round, a two-minute Break and another eight-minute Half-Round.
While a Half-Round is in progress, Toss-up questions are offered to both competing teams. Any competitor may "buzz-in", be recognized, and give an answer. The buzz-in may occur while the question is being read, but must occur within five seconds of the end of the reading of the question, and within the Half-Round time. If the answer given is wrong, the Toss-up is offered to the other team, again with the five-second limit and Half-Round time limit. If the buzz-in for a correct answer occurs within the Half-Round time, the answering team is given a Bonus question. No buzz-in applies to a Bonus question, but the answer must be given within twenty seconds of the end of the reading of the question. A warning is given when there are but five seconds left. The actual answering of the Toss-up question, its possible re-read to the other team, and the reading and answering of the Bonus may occur after the Half-Round time has expired. Students have been known to buzz-in when the Half-Round time is about to expire, even though the Toss-up question reading has just begun. With a one-in-four chance of guessing a multiple-choice question, it's worth it to a cometitive team!
When the first Half-Round is completed, a two-minute break begins. At the end of the two minutes, the second Half-Round commences. Should an issue arise during a Half-Round, an official may request the clock be paused, and, optionally, adjusted to compensate for the interruption, then resumed or restarted.
This clock has features to fulfill the above requirements. Since the Half-Rounds and the Toss-up or Bonus timings are independent and overlap, this clock has two faces that are controlled independently. The clock faces are controled by display pushbuttons. When the pushbutons are yellow, they are active. When disabled, they are ghosted. There is a start Half-Round button that starts the Round clock. Another button starts the Break clock with ten minutes to go, with a 30-second end-of-break audio warning and a color change when the second half begins. This allows a smooth and automatic beginning of the second Half-Round. A Pause/Resume button allows the Half-Round to be interrupted, including an optional adjustment of the seconds-left value (enter key must be pressed after the desired value is typed).
Additional buttons are for starting and clearing the other (Toss-up/Bonus) clock. This second clock is used as either the Toss-up clock (blue) or as the Bonus clock (white, 5 and 20 seconds, respectively). The Toss-up may be restarted anytime in the case that the first team's answer is incorrect and the Toss-up is offered to the other team. Finally, the Bonus clock changes to orange when but five seconds remain. Currently, audio is being added to alert users of these specific situations.
This program was written as a Java I course project (at Phoenix College) by Gene Holmerud, Electronic Engineer (Ret), US-DOE -- WAPA, PE (Electrical), CCNA, BS (Physics). Audio portions were cloned from Dr. Iain Robin's 1998 Tone-Generator example. Experience with Keith Lesch's Science Clock program during an actual Arizona Science Bowl competition was the first inspiration to write this program. Climbing the learning curve of Object Oriented Prgramming was the other driver. This program is released under rules of GNU Pubic License and offers no guarantees of function, nor suitability to a given application. Sun's Java Runtime Environment version 1.5 or later is required to be installed on the local machine. A standards complient Browser, such as FireFox or Netscape is also required. #### Top.