Orienteering

I was born in 1988 in Brno. When I was one year old, I was actively taking part in the demonstrations of "Velvet Revolution" where I was waving the Czech flag from the buggy and shouting with inarticulate pronounce name of the following president. It was my first (and I hope also last) meeting with politics:-) Of course I don't remember that, so that is why it is written here (according to aim of these pages).

During my early years I found my interest in discovering how things works. So I was dismounting many electronic gadgets like calculators and radios to explore bases on which are these machines built. Sometimes I wasn't able to put it back together, so some problems with my parents were caused by this. In spite of this, I found my interest in electronics.

After that I tried to do some handcraft and art activities, but because of my hyperactivity it was impossible to keep me quiet. So my parents decided I should do some sport, but they were looking for some sport where also using a brain is required. Orienteering was a best fitting sport to their conception, so I started with it. Immediately, I found it very beautiful sport and I started to love it.

Because I have ever been very curious and active person, I decided to organize some local competition and I promised it, so there was no way back. I was fourteen years old that time. I decided also to make a new map for a competition, so I started to search how these special orienteering maps are made. This was my beginning of producing orienteering maps and these beginings were very hard for me. I had no computer to digitize drawings from the forest and I was thinking I am able to manage it during the public internet hours in school which were provided only one hour per day. When I draw only few lines in this hour, I realized that it is not possible to do it this way. Luckily, the coach of our club give me an old computer for free and I drawed this map on this slow 386 computer with 256MB hard disk. This map took me about 200 hours and was very very poor. Also my course setting was very poor - I set a sprint course where fastest time was 34 minutes and I planned it for 15 - 20 minutes. But because of my youthfulness I wasn't thrown out from the window and I survived ... :-)

Mapping

Since that time I improved my mapping skills very much and I started to make maps also for national competitions. Because of mapping I also improved very much my orienteering skills so I started to win some competitions sometimes ... Now I have visited several countries mainly in Europe and also out of European borders as an orienteering runner in Czech colors or also as an orienteering mapper.

That old computer I mentioned few lines above gave me also first experiences in programming. I had lots of orienteering maps and I wanted to have a system in them, so I realized I would make a software to organize these maps. So I started to search for some informations how are computer programs made and I finally learnt enough to make that wanted program in Pascal programming language. I also wanted to public some informations about orienteering competitions I was organizing, so I learnt how to make webpages too. There was a short way from basic HTML to more advanced JavaScript and PHP, from Pascal to DELPHI, C, C++, C# and suddenly I was somebody like a programmer. I started to make a custom software solutions and started to earn some money from it. When I was eighteen years old I established a small company called Adamna with my classmates, and I programmed the software for online results which has been used at World Orienteering Championships in 2007 and 2008.

Programming

Are you asking why I called my company Adamna? When I was very young, I built from lego-like bricks a small model of petrol station. The most famous petrol company in Czech was Benzina and there was a small step to change few letters to have a name of my own petrol station. I liked this name, so I was using it when I was playing for a business as a children game... And because I think I have a sense of humour, I have no doubt how to call my company which I established at eighteen, despite the fact it has nothing common with fuel ...

As I mentioned at the begining of this text, I found interest also in electronics. This interest was so strong that I decided I want to study at Faculty of Electronics already four years before I finished my grammar school by passing the maturita exam from mathematics and physics as elective subjects. This promise was realized and I finished my bachelor studies and master studies, both marked as passed with honour (red diploma). At the same university, I finished also PhD studies.

Personality submenu
Latest news

10.10.2023
Update of mapped maps. There is no time to update more :-(. You can check list of my orienteering maps.

12.8.2022
Next 14.1 km2 of new map was created by me and 7 colleagues in the France. You can check list of my orienteering maps.

10.5.2022
Mapped very interesting terrain in Slovakia, close to Banska Bystrica. It is a map for Slovakian Championships and it is combined of tricky vegetation, nice mining area and clear forest. You can check list of my orienteering maps

12.8.2021
Partially updated this page with new information. But lot of things remains obsolete, until I found more time to update it.

Contacts
Adam Chromý
Jundrov 570
637 00 Brno
Czech Republic

+420 776 627 692
chra@adamna.net