Carol's Team Newsletter
April, 2005
Another very busy month in getting things set up. Sorry about the web site going
dark for a few weeks - we just had other things to tend to. Of course, if you're reading
this on the site, than you can see that we've done a redesign. Thanks to Kevin Robertson
for the new logo and site layout.
Carol
Because most of the current traffic on the web site comes from people wanting to
know about how Carol is doing, we've given her a separate item on the main menu.
Hopefully, this will make it easier for people to find that information.
It's been a big month for Carol. She had her 40th birthday, got a feeding
tube installed, and had her last day at work. Details on all these things can be found on
her page.
Sponsorship
We continue to receive both financial and moral support from Carol's friends and
admirers. We are also beginning to see some results from our outreach through the team,
although this is just getting started.
One big item is a joint venture with the St. Louis Orienteering Club (SLOC). Last year
most of the members of Carol's Team (who are also SLOC members) agreed to put on
the US Intercollegiate Orienteering Championships. This has become a joint effort with
SLOC supplying the organizational effort (sanctioning, insurance, permits, etc.) and
Carol's Team supplying the bulk of the technical work (mapping, course setting). Carol's
Team will get half the proceeds, which should amount to several thousand dollars. We'll
also get our website address on all the competition maps, which should help spread the
word.
Finally, we've struck a shoe deal. Thanks to
Montrail for supplying the team with trail
running shoes. We're particularly pleased because most of the team was already racing in
Montrails, so it's an endorsement we can really stand behind.
Development
We've purchased a development system for Carol's Song. If all goes well, we'll have a
proof of concept in the next couple months. At that point, we'll also want to get started
on the linguistic database. This presents a challenge to which some of Carol's theater
friends may be particularly well suited.
Originally, the plan was to tune the word distribution using standard distributions taken
from written usage. The drawback to this is that spoken language is different from
written. Thus, we're looking for large quantities of spoken language, AKA dialogue. If
anybody has a line on a large quantity of scripts (we're talking hundreds or even
thousands) in electronic form that we could do a word distribution on, please let us know.
Despite Carol's love for Gilbert and Sullivan, we'll have to pass on those in favor of
more contemporary work. Sitcoms may be our best source.
Racing
Eric and David teamed up again to win the
Kansas City 9-hour orienteering meet. In
April we'll get our first taste of national level competition for the year at both the Flying
Pig in Cincinnati and the Ozark Challenge in Arkansas.
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