All about timing

Paul Smith has designed a timing software for the game of curling that is affordable and easy to learn.

CurlTime is an alternative to traditional specialized timing clocks that can be expensive and can take a while to figure out how to operate.

Smith, a Grade 7 science teacher from Lab. West, got word in October last year that the World Curling Federation will officially adopt his program and he is set to go to the 2010 Men's World Curling Championships in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy from April 3-11 for its official launch.

"What's attracting the World Curling Federation to using this is that they can get volunteers in the countries easily now to do the timing," said Smith. "They don't have to go through this enormous amount of training every time. So they have decided this year that this is going to become their official timing clock."

Program's infancy

Smith said always enjoyed watching curling and joined the Carol Curling Club in Labrador City after years of requests from club members Renee and Barry Edwards.

Eventually, somebody in the club approached the teacher with a background in computer science and asked him to take a look at a piece of software from Thunder Bay.

According to Smith, the program was almost like a stopwatch and he was asked if he could come up with something that could be displayed on the ice for the players to look at.

His program was adopted and used for the first time at the 2004 Newfoundland and Labrador Men's Northern Regional playoffs at the Carol Curling Club.

"I came up with something quick and dirty," said Smith. "Everybody liked the ease of use, so they encouraged me to develop it further, including all the necessary features."

There was a lot of trial and error, but he explained the best test was using the program in the real world, so problems were reported and he could fix them.

The program took off from there and was adopted as the official timing solution by the Newfoundland and Labrador Curling Association and at events like the 2007 Winter Deaflympics in Salt Lake City, the 2008 World Junior Curling Championships in Ostersund, Sweden, and 2009 World Women's Curling Championships in Korea.

How it works

One of the main features of the program, Smith demonstrated, is its ease of use.

He said the program prompts whoever is timing the game to enter team names, rock colour and country, which is a new feature he added for the World Men's Curling Championships, so the teams' flags could be displayed on the timing clock.

Then the timer can adjust options including length of the game, number of timeouts, time the teams will get for their pre-game warm-up, time the teams have between ends before game clocks are activated, and time teams have for their fifth end break.

The clocks, Smith noted, are started by clicking a button and when the other team takes possession of the ice the clocks can be switched by pressing the spacebar.

Whatever team has possession of the ice will have all their buttons activated while the other team's buttons will be grayed out to prevent clicking on the team's buttons that aren't shooting.

Some of the buttons available include start, hammer, switch, timeout, between ends, fifth end break, and adjust time, he noted.

An option is given to indicate which team has the hammer by clicking a button and a graphic of a hammer will appear in the appropriate score clock.

If a timeout is called a button can be pressed to display a one-minute countdown and the clock will wait for the timekeeper to activate it, allowing for the coaches to get to the ice surface, Smith explained. If the timeout button is clicked mistakenly, it can be added back to the team's available timeouts by selecting adjust time and clicking on the appropriate box.

This is another example of the programs' ease of use, Smith said, because with the old systems the timer would have to punch a number of keys to start and stop timing.

"It was clumsy. It was cumbersome. It wasn't very accurate because it would take them five seconds or so to punch in those key combinations," he explained. "If this occurred many times throughout the game, the game could actually go longer than 73 minutes."

The program also allows the timer to adjust the time as well as pause it at any point or to go into extra ends.

Another advantage, according to Smith, is the program can be connected to a plasma display as opposed to a hardware-based clock that has a fixed size and can be bulky to carry around.

It is also more flexible than hardware clocks, he adds. For example, he pointed out, the World Curling Federation is considering making a change to how games are timed by instigating Thinking Time where once a player makes a shot, clocks are turned off. Hardware clocks might have to be thrown out altogether because of the change, but Smith explained, it is a lot easier and less expensive for him to make the modification to his program.

Future aspirations

He said he is looking forward to his trip to Italy and watching some world-class curling in person.

However, he calls it a market expansion trip more than anything else. He will oversee the installation and the launch of his program at the games, but he is also scheduled to make presentations of the program to representatives of different countries.

At the championships he will also be testing some wireless connections, so his program can communicate with clocks down on ice level, and if it works, he has a feeling some countries might come on board.

Smith also has a prototype in the works that he's been trying to get funding for from the federal government. He would like to see one control panel on one end of the ice and one on the other, communicating wirelessly to a laptop.

"So when a rock comes to rest the skip can just turn around and with the end of their broom push a button and change the clock," said Smith.

However, he admits he hasn't pushed the idea because he knew rules were going to changed because of Thinking Time.

Nevertheless, Smith said he's glad there's a lot of excitement about the product.