Archive for May, 2019

May

25

The Meaning of the Koa-Plumeria Prizes

May 25th, 2019 | Category: General Interest

A few of you know that I sponsor the Koa-Plumeria prizes.  One is awarded to the best essay in an introductory English class while the other goes to the best work in CLU’s literary magazine Morning Glory.  English department faculty  judge the student works and make the selections.

This short article will explain the meaning of the name. I’m privileged to be able to offer these prizes, but I’m doing it for the students, not myself. I wanted the prize focus to be on the writing, not me, which is why I elected not to have them called the John Dillon Writing Awards or similar.

Since I grew up in Hawai’i, I tend to relate to items from my childhood, thus I chose to name the prizes with a flavor of my upbringing.

Koa is a hard wood, used for musical instruments and weapons, including edge weapons like war clubs.

Plumeria is a fragrant flowering tree whose beautiful petals exude a mildly irritating sap, such that you normally soak the flowers in cold water in the refrigerator overnight before threading them onto leis.

In summary, the idea of both prizes is to reward edgy works that employ musical language, and lovely, sweet writings that get under your skin.

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May

9

Some Rally Watch Settings

May 09th, 2019 | Category: Rally and Racing

I love my Rally Copilote watches and have been using them for years.

There are so many features, however, that I sometimes forget how to set some of them. It seems like the manual is written in one-point font, rendering it almost useless to my tired eyes, so I made this cheat sheet to help me remember the more esoteric settings.  The primary stuff (capturing and recalling stage times, setting time of day, and so on) is not recorded here.

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To my students: one of these days I’ll give you a project of modeling this watch with software.

Change time of day from AM/PM to 24 hour
Switch MODE to time of day
Hold SET until seconds start flashing
Press the LIGHT button

Set the countdown timer so that it starts at the next minute, or instant on, or other options
Switch MODE to Timer1
Press SPLIT/RESET
Press START/STOP until you get to the setting you want
Press SPLIT/RESET when done

Set the countdown timer to start counting down when a stage starts (e.g., FIA Start-to-Start timing)
Switch MODE to Timer1
Hold SET until seconds start flashing
Push SET repeatedly until you see Chrono Link, which you then set to On
Press SPLIT/RESET when done

Set the Chrono timer (not countdown) so that it starts at the next minute
Switch MODE to Chrono Time
Hold SET until the display starts blinking
Press START/STOP to change Next Minute to On
Press SET again
Press START/STOP to change Delay Start to Off
Press SPLIT/RESET when done

Set the Chrono timer (not countdown) so that it starts instantly, or after a specified delay
Switch MODE to Chrono Time
Hold SET until the display starts blinking
Press START/STOP to change Next Minute to Off
Press SET again
Press START/STOP to change Delay Start to On, then specify zero (for instant) or other delay time
Press SPLIT/RESET when done

Set the light so it comes on when any button is pressed (useful for night stages)
Hold the LIGHT button until you see the light bulb icon (top right) come on

Turn off the beeps or flashing lights
Enable the daily alarm feature, if not already enabled. (See below.)
Press and hold SET until the minutes flashes, then press SET again for hour, then again for ALARM SOUND.
Press START/STOP or MODE to change it to OFF
Press SET one more time and set the ALARM LIGHT to ON. (For my watches, at least one of the two must be on.)

Turn other features on or off
Hold the MODE button for several seconds until a feature name appears and starts flashing
Press START/STOP to toggle value between On and Off
Press the MODE button to select the next feature
Press SPLIT/RESET when done

 

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