John Dillon – Senior Adjunct Professor

“Visualize victory!” As a rally car co-driver, I remind my driver with these words when we start a racing event.  Ours is the ultimate team motorsport: two of us in a fully-caged race car, one driving, the other (me) reading from a set of notes that describe each curve and hazard ahead.  We’re rocketing at over 100 MPH on dirt roads through forests or along the edges of cliffs, day or night, in mud, snow, fog, dust, or heat. I trust my driver to keep control of the car at maximum speed, and she or he trusts me to read the correct notes with enough time to react. In short, we literally trust each other with our lives. In every sense, our victories are shared, and not just between us, but with the crew who keep the car running, the officials who provide a safe, fair, and fun playing ground, and the spectators who cheer us on.

“Visualize victory!” applies to our students too.

Teaching or studying at Cal Lutheran is much the same way – but without the wild crashes that can happen when you make a mistake – with faculty and students teamed together, working towards a common victory.  Instead of a service crew, we enjoy the support of CLU’s amazing staff; instead of race officials, we have top-drawer administrators; and instead of spectators, we have our family and friends.

As a CLU graduate myself (I earned my degree later in life) I appreciate the value this university provides to its students and their families. It’s an honor to be part of this fine institution, and it’s a pleasure to work with my colleagues for the benefit of all. Indeed, it’s because of the quality of my professors during my graduate work here that inspired me to join the faculty, to be part of CLU’s educational team.

Every semester I explain to my students that it’s my job to help them succeed.  They have to work – and work hard, by many accounts – but my students know that if they’re willing to put in the effort, I’ll be there with them, shoulder to shoulder, helping them grasp the material and become proficient in the skills I’m teaching.

Sometimes budget constraints interrupt our successes. For lack of money, we have to park the car before reaching the final checkpoint of a rally. For want of funding, a national championship might be lost. Some powerful drivers and co-drivers have their hopes dashed when they lack the resources needed to help them cross the finish line. The same is true for some of our students who, fully capable, fully committed,  nonetheless struggle to complete their degree, or even fall short because of finances.

Most of the classes I teach are in the Professionals program. I enjoy teaching students who’ve faced the hardships that prevented them from getting a degree earlier – as I did – who have a solid foundation in life and a well-based and hard-earned appreciation of the importance of higher education. These are students who recognize the value of what CLU offers, even if (or because) they’re no longer in the 18 to 22 age bracket.  These students are sometimes forgotten in the money hunt, with few opportunities for financial aid. That’s why the Unstoppable Scholarship resonates with me, and I hope it will with you too.

A hard-fought victory, whether in education or motorsport, is a well-deserved reward for dedication and commitment. To watch my students “make the walk” – in cap and gown instead of helmet and fire suit – across the “finish line” is a joyful event, a celebration of their continued effort, and a recognition of their achievement for all to witness.

I look forward to many more years of teaching. More importantly, I look forward to witnessing the continued success of our students.

With your help, that august body of graduates will grow.

(Written for CLU Cares Day 2022)

No comments

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

.
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

No comments

As many of you know, I’m an active competitor in the sport of performance rally.

I recently returned from the 2018 edition of La Carrera Panamericana, a 3000 km race from Oaxaca, near the bottom of Mexico, to Durango, near the top. It was an amazing challenge and an equally amazing adventure, highly recommended to those who can afford the time and cost to compete.

My usual in-car video camera is a Sony AS-200, but for this race the team used a GoPro Hero 6 Black device. I’ll make some observations about that camera later, but the purpose of this note is to describe the filenames used by the camera as best I can deduce.

The main video files are in the MP4 format and have filenames beginning with “GH” followed by six digits. The first three digits provide grouping information, while the last three are sequential in nature. Since our camera was new, the last digits were quite low, from 070 to 207. The first three digits were generally 010, but with some caveats. For long recordings (approximately 4 GB in size), the camera would switch to a second (or third, or fourth) file. The last three digits remained the same, but the middle digit was incremented.

This is best illustrated by example.

File name

GH010128.MP4 was the first video file for the Mil Cumbres 
             stage but since it was a long stage
GH020128.MP4 was the continuation of the video.

This means that if you’re using third party video editing software, you would combine these two files, not the “obvious” next file which you would imagine to be GH010129.MP4.

Additionally, each video file has a .THM file and a .LRV file, the latter with a “GL” prefix instead of “GH.” I can’t be sure, but I believe the THM file is an encoded version of a CSS style sheet, while the LRV file contains encoded GPS information. (In contrast, Sony’s cameras use plain text formatting for these type of files.)

I tried using GoPro’s proprietary software GoPro Quik but it had a poor user interface and didn’t always recognize the files that I’d transferred to the computer from the memory card. Perhaps if I had the camera and connected it to my computer (instead of reading just the cards), it would have worked better, but I kind of doubt it. The bottom line is I switched to a package that, while still primitive compared to my old tools, was far more robust.

Now about those other observations regarding the camera itself.  It has a very compact form factor, making it easy to mount it in a variety of places. The picture quality is very good. (We were shooting in 1080 but 4K is available.) On the down side, battery life is poor, the user interface is difficult unless you can see the back of the camera (and it has a touch screen), it often inverted the images for no reason I could determine, and you can’t hook up a remote microphone without buying a special adapter for a non-standard connector. If you accidentally push the power button, the mode changes unless you hold it down for a while. The GPS components are a great idea, but the manual says you should mount the camera right-side-up for GPS to work best, something that’s not always possible.

In my opinion, the GoPro cameras are well suited for activities like skiing, cycling, and skateboarding. I’m less impressed with it in motorsports applications, though many of my colleagues swear by them instead of at them.

The bottom line is that if you understand the file naming convention, you can work with the output of these cameras more effectively, regardless of the editing software you use.

No comments