Woodie Flowers Character/Word limit

[Foster]

Are you copying and pasting it into the box?

Dear FIRST, how else would I do it?

Why would my roboteers spend 10's of hours on a Woody Flowers submission honoring their mentor to then need to type it all into a box, not make a mistake inside of a 15 minute session?

Why would I spend many, many 10's of hours creating a Chairmans submission, reviewing it internally, sending it out for peer review to other robot teams / people, agonizing over letters and words to get all of our robotic goodness into 10,000 characters to then type it into a box with chances of errors?

Why wouldn't I cut and paste it. Why wouldn't I use the technology that is available everywhere else?

Did you really expect us to type it in?

[Cynette]

Originally Posted by Foster

Dear FIRST, how else would I do it? ...

Oooo Foster is GROUCHY!

The students tried typing some of the text directly in the box and once they hit the save button, the formatting was gone. So, FIRST's helpful hint does not work.

Any remaining submitters - get in there now! Do not put it off!

Our biggest challenge was actually getting into the system. It did not recognize 5 of the 6 students who tried, including the one who logged on last night to do the Chairman's essay submission. And lucky Student #6 was on the team leader's list as not complete - so we almost didn't ask her.

[AnibaS]

Are teams following the 600 word max?

We have two versions of the essay right now, one that exceeds the limit, and one that doesn't. Needless to say we would prefer to submit the longer one, but may end up playing it safely.

[ebarker]

I don't think the FIRST guidance works at all. You can copy/paste it in and it looks fine until you save it.

Then they tried typing text in and made it look good. After saving and viewing it then it went haywire again.

I think it just can't handle formatting.

[Cooley744]

Is it true that you have to create a FIRST account of some sort before you submit? I have my essay all written but I'm having trouble making an account. My verification link sent to me via email is broken! AHH! Help please?

[AnibaS]

Originally Posted by Cooley744

Is it true that you have to create a FIRST account of some sort before you submit? I have my essay all written but I'm having trouble making an account. My verification link sent to me via email is broken! AHH! Help please?

Your team captain has to assign you as a submitter. This should
help:
http://www.usfirst.org/uploadedFiles...structions.pdf

[Salmanz]

Cooley, i do not know about the activation link, but to be able to submit the essay your team leader has to select you as an award submitter.

[Cooley744]

Okay, thanks guys. This makes it pretty hard to submit your team leader for an award in secret haha. Now to figure out which mentor actually has the account and where they are...

[JVN]

Originally Posted by sandyewillson

Nine years ago, Flo and a Purdue University freshman
founded Westside Boiler Invasion (WBI) after observing the desperate need for the rejuvenation
of science and technology in education. With the respect Flo garnered after 24 years of teaching,
the community seized the opportunity. After relinquishing his positions as head wrestling and
assistant football coach, he was able to focus on the newly founded team. In addition to WBI, he
also helped found Purdue FIRST Programs, an organization that now supports three local teams.
Flo functions as the primary mentor for one FIRST Robotics Competition Team (FRC), one
FIRST Tech Competition (FTC) and three FIRST Lego League (FLL) teams. What's more? He
holds annual summer camps to further introduce robotics in the community where he uses FIRST
components to teach students design and engineering concepts. To this day, Flo continues to
expand FIRST, initiating five FRC teams and providing guidance as they develop.

Wow! A piece of a WFFA essay used as SPAM. I love it. I feel like we should leave this up for the pure hilarity of it!

-John

PS - Flo is the man, clearly.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by JVN

Wow! A piece of a WFFA essay used as SPAM. I love it. I feel like we should leave this up for the pure hilarity of it!

-John

PS - Flo is the man, clearly.

I've deleted the spam, but left your quote of it for the "pure hilarity".

[Amanda Morrison]

Originally Posted by Cynette

So, FIRST's helpful hint does not work.

And my helpful suggestion has failed. Sorry guys, I don't have a login of my own to test this beforehand.

In addition, I've now received multiple reports that FIRST's system is giving errors to teams about their essays being over the character limit, while Microsoft Word is providing numbers below the limit.

I guess my best report is to just get the reports submitted and roll with the punches for the time being.

[Chris Fultz]

There is always a difference in character count between word and a text file. Word does not count every letter and space and punctuation the same.

We found the best approach was to write in word, and then copy and past into a text editor file and then recheck everything. Then we cut and paste that file into the FIRST submission areas.

[Karthik]

Originally Posted by Amanda Morrison

And my helpful suggestion has failed. Sorry guys, I don't have a login of my own to test this beforehand.

In addition, I've now received multiple reports that FIRST's system is giving errors to teams about their essays being over the character limit, while Microsoft Word is providing numbers below the limit.

I guess my best report is to just get the reports submitted and roll with the punches for the time being.

This has been a problem with both the old and new award submission system. Most word processors count an "enter" as a single character, while most other non-Unix applications read an "enter" as two ASCII characters, "carriage return" (ASCII = 13) and "line feed" (ASCII = 10). Thus, every instance of you hitting enter in Word is creating an extra uncounted character for your submission.

Since the award site isn't displaying paragraph breaks as is, if you are that tight on character count I recommend that you get rid of all "enters".

[Cynette]

Originally Posted by Karthik

This has been a problem with both the old and new award submission system. Most word processors count an "enter" as a single character, while most other non-Unix applications read an "enter" as two ASCII characters, "carriage return" (ASCII = 13) and "line feed" (ASCII = 10). Thus, every instance of you hitting enter in Word is creating an extra uncounted character for your submission.

Since the award site isn't displaying paragraph breaks as is, if you are that tight on character count I recommend that you get rid of all "enters".

Well that explains why it took two taps of the backspace key to get rid of each paragraph return.

We always save a few characters for when we put the essay into the system. For the Chairman's essay, we started with 25 extras but ended up needing 40. I just wish that the entry section had a character counter so you could tell how close you are (or how many over). I thought it did last year, but we couldn't find it this year.

The WFA essay was under 600 words so the students had no problem with character count there.