Fanzine

Keep a diary of what you're hitting, what's frustrating you, and your goals.
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Asmus
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Re: Folsom

Post by Asmus » 14 Sep 2016 00:01

Top post painting! Gonna give it a little twist and share an illustrator I am very excited about at the moment.

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http://sutueatsflies.com/
C-Fan wrote:Once we settled in at the hotel some, we recorded a pod, where I tried a couple new things format wise that I'm excited about.
Was one of them my suggestion?

I am quite envious of how much you get to play with different players and crews. Even more envious you got to play with who I think is the SMG.

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Re: Fanzine

Post by F[uns]tylin' Eclectic » 15 Sep 2016 07:49

Looking forward to finding out who the SMG is. I always like the mystery of an SMG. SMG's enhance a session, as MSG's enhance a food. Little bit of So no mole skin word jumble.

Loved the last link in the video. Blurry Whirl> Tomahawk> Pdx Whirling Swirl bs is pretty ridiculous. Nice work.
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Folsom Shred

Post by C-Fan » 26 Sep 2016 11:17

Asmus: loved the top post painting. That's such a neat idea with the interactive technology.

Polini: SMG jokes appreciated. For me, I can't see "SMG" and not read in my head "sub machine gun" since that's a common acronym in Team Fortress 2, a game I am still addicted to.

In good news, I'm finally back in Denver. I was back for about 30 hours in between week long trips, but that didn't feel like I was truly back. Overall I'd say the trips went pretty well. Workwise I got everything done I needed to, and then some. Socially, I got to see a bunch of friends. Footbagwise, I got in 3 shreds over the 2 trips...which is less than I hoped/expected, but not awful. It helps that I played OK at all 3 shreds, never losing my temper.

My second trip wrapped up a little early, so I changed my return flight to get home a day early. This cost me a session and hanging out with Penske, but I had to jump at the chance to get home early. It was at the tail end of pretty much 2 weeks away from home, and I missed Haley and my dog. There's a chance I may see Penske in CO in the next few weeks, so if that works out I'll definitely feel like it was the right call.

This past weekend was the deadline for people to submit to Jakub M's collaboration video. With my recent traveling, I was able to shoot and submit some clips of me, Derek L, and 2 of the Boise BAP players. I was pretty happy with my trick...I'll write about the experience of shooting it at greater length, once Jakub's video comes out. Speaking of videos that include footage I've submitted, this weekend Asmus released his Mindtricks video which included footage from my previous Boise trip. It felt really good to see the footage used, and edited so nicely.

In bad news, I'm way behind on the podcast, and am having ongoing technical issues. Long story short, being on the road for 2 weeks, followed by Haley being in NYC this week....not a recipe for getting episodes edited and launched. I'm also having some problems pulling the actual audio of the podcasts off my phone (files are too large to airdrop), but I think there may be a solution if I go through iTunes (which I can do on my work computer). Gotta experiment with that. But with Haley out this week, followed by her family visiting this coming weekend, don't hold your breath on the next episode coming out soon.

In better footbag content news, here is a video I edited from my California trip. The SMG is revealed, and there's some good stuff from all of us. There would have been more, but I dumped a bunch of clips due to bad framing (blame that on playing in new environments).

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Re: Fanzine

Post by C-Fan » 03 Oct 2016 12:18

Here's a quick footbag summary of the past 3 weeks.

1. Weeklong trip to Sacramento. Played footbag twice, did some podcast recording, did zero podcast editing since I was on the road.
2. Home for 30 hours. Edited footage from Sacto, edited 90% of Ep 5 of the podcast but couldn't finish, no footbag.
3. Weeklong trip to Boise. Played footbag once, did some pod recording, zero pod editing.
4. Home in Denver for a week, but Haley was in NYC so couldn't work on the pod. Released video from Sacto. Figured out how to offload large voice memos from my phone. No footbag.
5. Thursday night through Monday morning. Haley's family visted, so no footbag shred. I did carve out 3 hours for pod editing while everybody was asleep, and got episode 8 90% complete.

To sum up: I haven't played much footbag in the past month, and while I haven't released any pods I have done a lot of editing and some important troubleshooting, which hopefully means I can get the next couple episodes released on a more regular schedule. You may be wondering why I pushed hard on episode 5, then started work on episode 8 before finishing 5. Well, if I had gotten ep 5 complete and launched before my Boise trip, The Symposium would only have been a little bit late. But since I didn't get it out, I knew the next ep of the pod would be REALLY late, and I therefore wanted to release a longer, stronger episode. Ep 5 has some good content, but its by far my shortest recorded pod, and it has a lot of sound quality issues. So given the long gap after episode 4, I really wanted to come back with an hour long episode with good sound quality. Ep 8 has those qualities, plus some neat editing tricks I wanted to try, so I chose to work on that. Hopefully I can get that out this week.

In bad news, I received a setback with my paternity leave. Every year I'm allowed to carry over 30 days of vacation time, but anything over that I lose. This is called "use or lose" leave. The leave calendar actually resets around January 10. But the due date for my baby is January 19. I'm currently set to finish the leave year with about 37 days of leave, which means I'll have to burn a week of vacation before January 10, otherwise I lose it. Of course, starting January 19 I'll have a need for as much vacation time as possible for paternity leave, while before then I have no need for time off. I therefore requested they extend the leave calendar for me by a month, so I'd be able to use that extra week of leave towards paternity leave. I was denied. This is both crappy news for me as a parent, but potentially also crappy news for me as a footbagger. Why? There is a good chance I won't be able to attend Worlds because of this. Now, there's a chance I might not have been able to make Worlds even with the extra days, but this certainly doesn't help. Blergh.

No recent footbag shred=no recent footbag videos. Here's the last of my shred leftovers from my St. Louis trip:

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Re: Fanzine

Post by max » 04 Oct 2016 19:14

Sucks about the leave. If my experience is anything to go by though, you probably don't want to be taking too much leave as soon as the baby is born. It's great (to some extent) to spend 1 or 2 weeks with your newborn, but I found that past that I was adding only marginal value to the household by being there, not to mention that going back to work will fee a bit like a holiday! I've also found that having a small buffer of leave days once your child goes to day-care is invaluable as they will get sick frequently and need someone at home to look after them.

Anyway, your mileage may vary obviously and I know some fathers who were quite happy taking the 12-weeks paternity leave (some Australian companies offer this).

Anyway I hope you get it all sorted. If not, then lock in your 7 days and enjoy one last kids-free holiday with the wife :) .. I miss those types of holidays!
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Re: Fanzine

Post by boyle » 04 Oct 2016 22:09

There's also every chance that the baby will be around be Jan 10 (or plenty of chance it won't be around by the due date either).

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Re: Fanzine

Post by C-Fan » 05 Oct 2016 06:52

boyle wrote:There's also every chance that the baby will be around be Jan 10.
Right. The problem is I need to use the 7 extra leave days BYJan 10...so the baby would have to arrive by January 3rd for me to use those extra days as part of paternity leave. And maybe my plan should be to hold to sit on the leave until the last minute (Jan 3) in case the baby does come 2.5 weeks early. It's unlikely, but as you say it is possible.

Hopefully I can carve some time out next week to talk with HR and get a more firm plan in place.

On the footbag front, Ep 8 of the pod is still unfinished. I need Haley's help to put the finishing touches on it, but it's a rough week for her at work with events, so that's slowing us down. In better footbag news, I've been asked to participate in a project to help promote Worlds, which may motivate me to play more. The weather is turning cool already, so I should really push myself to play on weekends as much as I can.

Here's a 13 year old video of me doing a Sick3 demo at the very first Tokyo Shredder Gathering. Insane to think that was so long ago, but also awesome because that tournament has continued to happen annually ever since. In the middle of the video I apologize, since I only had planned out 3 combos, so I didn't know what to do. I ask for suggestions, and when Kim throws out: jani-ps egg-superfly, I ask..."any other requests?" :lol:

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Re: Fanzine

Post by bobgreen » 06 Oct 2016 20:41

Hey Ken!

That Folsum shred video was a fun watch; thanks for including a couple of clips of me in it.

Aside from the week that you may be forced to take prior to the baby's arrival, are you planning to take the rest of your leave in one solid block starting when Jr is born, or any consideration of taking more than one shorter blocks (if that is even allowed)? I'm sure it is different for everyone, but when Ruari was born we had an initial steady flow of helping hands from visiting family and friends that then tapered off pretty heavily after the first 3 or 4 weeks. Total bummer you might have to take a week before the baby is born but I think it is pretty awesome that you have a decent chunk of leave built up that you get to take advantage of, and I hope that things still work out for you to be able to make Portland a reality.

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Re: Fanzine

Post by bustinjustin » 10 Oct 2016 21:51

So many likes for that Folsom video. That 10 fearless at the end was nasty, 4 triple dexes no ps whirls.
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Re: Fanzine

Post by C-Fan » 11 Oct 2016 09:27

Thanks for the comments guys.
bobgreen wrote: Total bummer you might have to take a week before the baby is born but I think it is pretty awesome that you have a decent chunk of leave built up.
Good point. I am fortunate to have a job, to have enough leave to be in "use or lose," and to work for an employer that even has paternity leave. Gotta remind myself periodically to appreciate all the good things in my life, instead of complain about the minor stuff that could be better. Hopefully this week I get a more solid leave plan in place, so I have more certainty planning out the next year.


Justin- Thanks man! My unique fearless record is still 14, but I bet I could break that. I'm not feeling super motivated to dedicate entire sessions to it, but I might mess around with it a few times a session and see what happens. Something like phx-fog-dark-blw-blw-bed-pixie dod-tom-tom-blurrier-psw-psw-spin ducking osis-spanish fly-pdx torque-pdx blender feels doable, and that's 16.

I burned my first use-or-lose day on Friday, to give myself a 4 day weekend. Very happy with that decision...I feel mentally refreshed after taking off that amount of time. I got a lot of errands done, and I also got in a good amount of footbag. I played 3 out of 4 days, and on the day I didn't play Haley helped me complete Episode 8 of the pod:
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https://thesymposium.modified.in/podcas ... hane-cook/

As I explained in an earlier post, I released this episode out of order because I had fallen behind schedule, and I wanted my first episode back to be a strong one. Episode 5 is my shortest episode, and has some technical issues with sound quality, so I decided to release Ep 8 first since it was longer, had better sound quality, and included some unique features I had been itching to try out. The idea of having other footbaggers ask questions, in their own voice, was stolen from the NPR Politics podcast. It'd be cool to do more stuff like that in the future, but it also was a lot of work. Same goes for the sketch portraits of guests. I think its a neat idea, but it also took me a long time to draw. I do think it's cool though that this project has gotten me to do things I don't normally do, like compose songs and draw portraits.

My first shred of the weekend was on Friday. Derek has recently started a video thread for "mostly toes," which I thought was a neat idea. I feel like my toe game is decent, but there's definitely a difference between playing into and out of weak toe in the middle of a string using clippers, and doing multiple toe tricks in a row that use weak toe. I found this session to be a good mental and physical challenge, and one I definitely would like to revisit in the future. Here are the highlights:
When I posted it to Facebook, Derek wrote:
Derek wrote: Toes are bad for ya health, only do Clippers.
That made me laugh, but I thought it'd be a funny response to make my next session entirely clippers. The video from that session got a better response on Facebook than the toes video, which surprised me since I found the toe stuff a lot harder and more challenging. Definitely a lot harder to bail without using clipper. Who knows...maybe people liked having a real song on the video instead of the silly YT music I used for the toes video.

Denver is definitely easing into fall. The leaves are changing, and there's a crispness to the air. I'm going to make a point to play on weekends, since we're already at the stage where I don't have time to walk the dog and footbag after work, since the sun (and temperature) goes down so quickly. I'll be in Southern California next week, so maybe I can get in some weekday shreds then.

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Re: Fanzine

Post by boyle » 11 Oct 2016 18:22

how many unique toes tricks can you do in a row? I was pretty impressed with the toes video, some good stuff in there. I didn't know that you did the drawing of Kyle, I thought you might have outsourced that one. Looks good.

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Re: Fanzine

Post by C-Fan » 12 Oct 2016 07:15

boyle wrote:how many unique toes tricks can you do in a row?
I really don't know...which makes this a great challenge. I've done pixie everything, so the answer is at least 16. My DLOs and eggs are pretty good, as are my symp mirages and symp pixies. So assuming I put those all together plus a few atomics/rakes/ducking mirages...theoretically 25 would seem attainable? I have a feeling that would actually be harder than it sounds. I like Justin's goal of 20, so I'll shoot for that first, and then see how viable it is to go for more.
boyle wrote:I didn't know that you did the drawing of Kyle, I thought you might have outsourced that one.
I tried outsourcing guest portrait sketches, but my top artist choice declined me. Same thing happened with the intro/outro music for the pod. My selected musician couldn't get me a track, so I had to compose and record my own. I've definitely put a lot of myself into The Symposium and I'm proud of that. At the same time, I do sometimes wish the community would help support the podcast more. Even just feedback... the last episode literally took hours of work to put together and got 8 total likes and no comments on Facebook. Meanwhile, I can have a shred session, pull the footage off the camera, cut it up, slap a song on it, and get 5 times the feedback for something that took a fraction of the effort to make. Not the most motivating thing in the world.

In happier news, it was nice out after work yesterday. Haley surprised me by taking the dog on a walk, so I took advantage and got in a shred. My 4th shred in 5 days too. Went into this session mostly looking to work on longer strings, so I did some Shred30 practice as well as runs where I just focused on breathing more. I also wanted to try a new double dex drill which was surprisingly tricky for me. My last run of the day I hit a montage that felt particularly good, so I chose to end the session on that high note:

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Re: Fanzine

Post by bustinjustin » 13 Oct 2016 15:54

I scored the shred 30 from:

Even More St. Louis Shred at 212.76 (29 contacts, 28 uniques (1drop) 3 adds: 7, 4 adds: 18, 5 adds: 3, total adds: 108 x 1.97)

Montage and Shred30 at 222.61 (29 contacts, 28 uniques (1drop) 3 adds: 1, 4 adds: 25, 5 adds: 2, total adds: 113 x 1.97)

Nice job.
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Re: Fanzine

Post by boyle » 13 Oct 2016 22:00

222 would have been a silver medal at Worlds this year.

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Re: Fanzine

Post by C-Fan » 18 Oct 2016 11:55

Thanks for scoring the shreds Justin! I'll try and get a dropless one on tape and see how it scores.

I'm in Anaheim this week for work. It's my last trip before the baby comes...I'm definitely excited to bunker down at home for a while. I traveled a lot this year, and it definitely got harder to be away from home as Haley gets bigger and bigger.

The weather is pretty nice in Anaheim, so I'm going to try and play every day I'm out here. I thought I'd have all the evenings to myself since I dont know anybody here, but when I landed at the airport I saw an ad for UC Irvine, which is a university where my best friend from undergrad teaches. I had no idea it was located so nearby. So I'm going to get dinner with him on Thursday, but even that day I should be able to shred.

Hogan announced the Joulukalenteri. I'd like to contribute a video, but I'm not sure I have the time to do a solid edit. I hope I can.

Here's a video from my "clippers only" session I jokingly did after Derek told me to stop doing toes. Clippers only is like 50 times easier than toes only. I slapped a proper song on this vid, and I was happy with how the final version came out. The last trick in the vid was supposed to be vertigo. It was my only accidental toe bail of the session, which I thought was pretty funny.

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Vortex session

Post by C-Fan » 24 Oct 2016 10:31

Back in Denver, after a week in Anaheim. The Anaheim trip wasn't bad footbagwise. The first 3 days I got out of work early enough to play outside, while the last 2 days work ran a bit late and I wasn't able to play. I played the 3 days I could, and hit some decent stuff. It was a bit weird in that the sun was out (ideal for filming) for about 30 minutes, then it'd set but it'd still be warm enough to play for another hour or so. So from a playing perspective, I had three 90 minute sessions, but from a filming perspective I only had three 30 minute windows to film. And of course part of that time was spent on warmup, so not a lot of opportunity to get good stuff on tape. Still better than nothing, and still I managed some stuff I was happy with. I'll try and edit some video soon.

I got back from Anaheim Saturday night, which was crappy timing for a couple reasons. The obvious reason, is that I lost half my weekend to work travel, but at least I get compensated for that. The other reason this was bad timing, is that Penske and Red are visiting Colorado right now. They landed on Thursday I think, and set up a big shred with old school BAP like Irish, Rippin, and Sunil...for Saturday morning. I told them my schedule ahead of time, but I guess Saturday must have worked better for more people than Sunday. So I missed the Saturday session, and nobody played on Sunday. Crappy timing. It was beautiful out, so I got in a solo session. For some reason I was in the mood to hit a bunch of vortex stuff, so I spent the session mostly working on that. I also stole a couple combos from Hogan since they sounded stylish, and also did a bit of Shred30 work. Here are the highlights:
The last clip in there is my best Shred30 on video since I started practicing about a month ago. I calculated it at 234 points:

31 contacts
1 drop
30 uniques
4 three adds
23 four adds
3 five adds
119 total adds
Ratio: 3.8387

If I had hit the final paradox blender, I would have scored 248. If I would have handcaught the final osis instead of trying paradox blender, I would have scored 238. Goes to show how much drops hurt in a Shred30. 234 is decent, but I'd like to get a 250 on film. To do so I'd need to go dropless and turn some of the bails in my last 4 seconds into 4s and 5s. Definitely do-able. One thing I was happy about with this run, was that I started on butterfly instead of clipper. I know that sounds very minor, but the clock starts at the same time regardless of which I use, and that one tiny extra dex gives me around 6 extra points (6 pts if the rest of the run is dropless and unique) since it counts as a unique 3 (whereas starting with clipper counts as 0 adds and 0 uniques).

Only other footbag news, is that I decided to visit my folks in Tucson around Veteran's Day. Figure it'd be a good use of some of my use-or-lose days, so hopefully I'll get some shreds in while I'm there. I always like getting cactus backgrounds when I'm out there. I still love this vid Ivan did of me for last year's Joulukalenteri:

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Re: Fanzine

Post by boyle » 24 Oct 2016 12:14

It really is amazing the difference that a drop can make. What about turning that ducking clipper to a diving butterfly, don't think I saw one of them. You could also add in blender and torque instead of osis, that could work. Do you keep the same format for each run? Would be great if you could get 250 and you are not really too far off. Evan's score in Denmark was I think 256 and that was very impressive, though of course it's different in competition.

I also thought that for things like clipper and other below 3 add tricks, that you still got the points, but a non-unique contact.

Also, great work on the vortex stuff, that's a great trick. How many can you do in a row?

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Re: Fanzine

Post by F[uns]tylin' Eclectic » 25 Oct 2016 11:00

Really enjoyed the Vortex video.

Bummer the BAP circle played without you. I hate when sessions don't work out.

When you're in Tuscon, you should hit up Aaron Clevenger. He lives there now and is always looking for players to kick with.
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Re: Fanzine

Post by C-Fan » 27 Oct 2016 07:01

Telecommuted yesterday, which meant I could get to my shred spot early. It was perfect out, so I was thrilled to have a chance to play. After I released the vortex session video, I got a few compliments on the vortex-mantis link. When Nick Polini commented on it though, he mistakenly wrote "mantis-vortex." I confirmed with him that it was a typo, but once I read it, I couldn't unsee the combo in my head. Obviously it's a lot harder, but I really wanted it, so I set that as a goal for my session yesterday. As I was getting ready to head out I hopped on Facebook to see if anybody was on, and got a couple quantum drill challenges from Kyle Cook which I added to my list of goals for the session.

Once I got to my spot, I realized I was struggling for ideas beyond Nick and Kyle's items, so I pulled up Modified on my phone. The top post in Footblogs was in Justin's blog, and conveniently it was in list form. I decided to steal liberally from it, since it looked like a good balance between fundamentals I should drill (atom smashers, pdx drifters, barflies), and more fun fearless links.
Armed with Kyle, Nick, and Justin's challenges, I played for close to an hour and had a ton of fun. Here's what I managed: The first trick in the video is thin, but I kept it in there because I had never done that to hand catch, and then immediately hit a hard trick right afterwards. And that montage felt amazing.

The days are definitely getting shorter, so I'm trying to savor the chances I have to shred. When I walk the dog in the mornings, it's pitch dark out and I can see the stars. After work there's only a small window before its dark again. And in 3 months the baby will be here, and I will have even less time to shred. I need to savor each shred I get these days, and really make a point to have fun with it. Hopefully I can make each session approach this one in terms of balancing having fun, and pushing myself.

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Re: Fanzine

Post by boyle » 29 Oct 2016 03:07

Gotta get that mindbender, that would have been awesome to continue a couple of those runs.

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