Submitted by drew on

Traffic Question 13:

The John Deere Express / Milan Beltway exchange. Which of these is the better road layout and design?

IDOT's Answer:

It is easily apparent that the top diagram is much simpler. Let’s remove some of the distracting parts of the diagram to illustrate this.

Moline/Milan have no stops. Moline/Rock Island and Milan/Rock Island both have opportunities to stop and enjoy the scenery.

Let’s build a ROAD! Quack, quack. (You may be familiar with Word World’s “Let’s build a word.”)

Conventional Answer

Are you nuts? Who wants to sit at extra stop lights and stop signs, and make extra turns and merges? The only way the top diagram makes sense is if Milan is trying to get people to come to Milan (by mistake).

The lower diagram has zero stop signs, zero stop lights for any direction. No bizarre pathing, except perhaps a minor loop for Milan to Rock Island.

Additional Information:

Apparently, the main reasons for a new connection was 1) need for expansion and 2) Blackhawk State Park is a historical area with embankments that prevent widening of the existing road. IDOT still have the report available (directory,  first section of report. road plan for future development).

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Timer

The timer can count up from a time in the past or count down towards a time in the future.

The timer's appearance and the format of the time (and text) is very configurable. You can hide it's border, it's background, set the color and glow effects.

Sound Recorder

This is a simple recorder that records directly to an MP3 file. Recording can be paused and resumed.

The recording window has a compact mode and can be set to stay on top of other windows, so it can be out of the way, yet still visible.

When done recording, you can playback the recording or upload the file to an FTP site.

Download

RocketDock with multiple bars\docks

Submitted by drew on

It seems there is plenty of interest about how to make RocketDock work with two or more docks or bars. Most answers say to use additional docking programs--one for each dock you want. Or use a commercial program that offers multiple docks. I think RocketDock is excellent except I want more than one. I finally figured out how to do it!

Let's first point out that RD is licensed under the Creative Commons license and it explicitly says "You are free... to Remix--to adapt the work." And also to redistribute.