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| Beachy Head Half 2021 - the start is more of a climb than the entire Cambridge Half Marathon ! |
So only the ~380,000 images live on the day catalogued and distributed to the runners at the Cambridge half marathon last Sunday. The pic2go technology made the grade - we did have a very nice optical fibre cable internet courtesy of the University, and a *lot* of computing power (actually only three desktops, but well configured etc) in the back of our processing van. It looked a bit MI5 with loads of screens to be honest, but we had roughly 200,000 done through by 2pm and then wizzed back to the office to get the rest done ready for your evening gossip and chats about achievements.
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| Cambridge is very pretty - especially the Kings College and The Backs along the river. |
If you want to see the publicly shared galleries - then have a look here https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/ttpcambridgehalf - count the likes and comments and then wonder how you can get us involved at your next favourite race ! The pic2go gallery really does get the conversation going - what you achieved and what the race was like - it's a brilliant way to share the day.
So Here's our table of free download galleries - if it was a pic2go event you can always get your free pic2go personalised RunPage gallery by registering here:
| Date | Event | FREE DOWNLOAD and UPGRADE Gallery |
| Sun-03/10/2021 | Clarendon Marathon | http://sspimg.com/Clarendon-Marathon-2021-Gallery |
| Sun-03/10/2021 | Basingstoke Half | http://sspimg.com/Basingstoke-Half-2021-Gallery |
| Sun-10/10/2021 | aCR Islington 1 hour | http://sspimg.com/City-Run-1hr-2021-Gallery |
| Sat-16/10/2021 | Cambridge Town and Gown 10k | http://sspimg.com/Cambridge-Town-and-Gown-10k-2021-Gallery |
| Sun-17/10/2021 | Beachy Head Half | http://sspimg.com/Beachy-Head-Half-2021-Gallery |
| Sun-17/10/2021 | Cambridge Half Marathon | http://sspimg.com/Cambridge-Half-2021-Gallery |
| FUTURE EVENTS | ||
| Date | Event | FREE DOWNLOAD and UPGRADE Galleries to be |
| Sat-23/10/2021 | Beachy Head | http://sspimg.com/Beachy-Head-Marathon-2021-Gallery |
| Sun-24/10/2021 | Beachy Head 10k | http://sspimg.com/Beachy-Head-10k-2021-Gallery |
| Sun-24/10/2021 | Royal Borough of Kingston Half Marathon | For pre registration and after the race go here: https://pic2go.co.uk/register#kingston http://sspimg.com/RBK-Half-2021-Gallery |
Doesn't the computers do the cataloguing automatically ? Nopey Nope.
I came across this gem of a story last week - https://petapixel.com/2021/10/19/traffic-camera-mistakes-woman-for-car-issues-ticket-to-car-owner
and made me laugh because that's what you get with AI tagging - someone who looks a bit like you running slowly in a bus lane.
It's because I get told all the time that I *should* use AI and it's a lot faster than manual tagging and they quote me higher prices. But actually every time I look at an AI tagged gallery, along with the "selfie face recognition" capability that they have added to these - I just get error after error after error. My favourite test is to see how many race numbers I can surf before all the images are 100% correct for that runner. I usually start off with "1234" as a seed search, and then browse on sequential mistaken errors. You can get 10 to 20 runners surfing done before you find a race number with an entirely correct set of photo images. Quite apart from the fact if you do the selfie stuff you've probably put your personal face-data into some unknown database with goodness knows what privacy and GDPR permissions, which is probably cross-referenced to all your computer cookies and the websites google analytics. (I edited out a complete rant here about privacy, I'm sure you can ad-lib it yourselves as they sell your face-data and keyworded associated cookies).
Yeah - ok only a few out of lots are wrong you say, so what if AI is a bit wrong, it's mostly right ? well a) do you want to see other people, and what about those people seeing their photos which are tagged as you - how's that going to happen ? and do you want other people seeing you without you wanting them to randomly ? so it's a lose-lose and twice as bad as people think it is on the surface.
So that's one reason why we use the pic2go barcode system. We don't have to upload full resolution files to the cloud (wasting internet bandwidth and online storage), we don't have to turn on a zillion amazon servers to cope with the processing necessary (yes AI and face recognition is processing heavy and expensive), and if we can't see a pic2go barcode properly - it simply tells us to have a person look at it and make a decision, which we do, and we get it right, and if we can't we say "000" - so it's not confused with anyone else.
Yes it's fallible if the barcodes are not fully visible, or have pins in them (which obscures them), or they are rubbed off - but to be honest - that's the same problems as trying to read a race number. The numbers are usually a lot bigger and a little more tolerant to partial obscuring (you can read some digits with only a partial bit of the number showing), but then that's why we usually have two barcodes on a race number - so the one your hand isn't hiding can be seen, and also put next to the number so it's displayed nice and cleanly. And then we can always fall back to the race numbers - if you've not covered those up too...
Beachy Head Marathon - with free downloads
So if you're lucky enough to be out at Beachy Head Marathon this saturday - follow the usual standard guidelines - numbers on the front, don't fold them, don't cover them, and don't put pins through the barcodes, [and if you *MUST* put them on your shorts - put them *VERTICALLY* (ok so the number is sideways) with the barcodes *ON THE FRONT* up your thigh - facing forwards. This way the number can be seen from either side of the path.]
Don't put them horizontally and wrap them around your thigh - because only the first or last digits can be read from the side - but not all of it, and don't pin them on the side - again - because it can't be read from the other side ! Just down the front - easy ! and if you're in any doubt at all - tri-belts don't work for anyone except someone selling tri-belts. frankly I don't think I ever can read a number pinned to a tri-belt. You'd be better off using a bit of bamboo as a flag stick with the number on it.
Actually that FREE DOWNLOADS - LIVE ON THE DAY also applies to the RBK Half Marathon on sunday - which I'm again pleased to announce the full pic2go services with bespoke shareable personal galleries - fully customisable, and you can pre-register to get notifications as soon as photos of you are available during the race - so once you've got your breath back - you can share and tell people of your time and achievements ! You can also add your own selfies and medal shots to the mix if you want to and really make the memories your own.
Pre-registration is here https://pic2go.co.uk/register#kingston
Anyway I promised to keep this short - apologies for the lack of loads of images and witty captions - but I'm solid exhausted from last weekend and trying to build up myself for this long weekend coming...
Until next time - fingers crossed for the weather forecast this weekend and we can work out what's going on with our leaking roof,
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| So until next time when the dinosaurs once again rule the earth.. |
good luck if you're running too !
Anthony
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