Canberra, Australia via SCL - Daniel Boyle

[boyle]

Just had this one come up on my Facebook memories. Footbag outside Parliament House with Juho and Caroline. Another clip from Juho came up playing in the driveway of my old house. I was like, oh I was in pretty good form back then, only to realise the reason for the form was it was from a much better player than me.

Although in saying that, these days I can hit most of the tricks in the run he was doing.

We're getting well into the end territories for the Joulu. I still need to film a final day trick for the Link of the Day, but I was able to do everything else within one session. I set down my ideas the day before and then had my list as was able to go through that fairly methodically.

It's the school holidays now, that's very good news for me. We'll go down to Bega for Christmas and stay about a week, then we'll have some days in Sydney the following week and soon enough it will be time to go back to school once again. Looking forward to spending some time at the beach.

They've just announced that the Under 20 World Cup will be on in Chile in 2025. Might try and arrange things to be there at that time.

Looks like I'm due for a top post painting also. Here's "The Big Picture" by Tom Roberts.



It's from Day 1 of the Australian parliament, which was in Melbourne in those days.

[boyle]

Speaking of

Also from morning session this morning. I usually try to go to the gym really early on Tuesdays. I get up pretty much every day around 5:30, a lot of the time not so much by choice, but I try to make use of that. Did a few good tricks along the way.

[boyle]

Alright. Another Joulukalenteri in the bag. That's 3 in a row now and 4 in total. Hopefully someone else will do it this year.

We're into the new year. I haven't done any footbag today. I did a fair bit while we were down the coast. The first day we were there I got a huge graze on my leg at the skatepark.

I was having some decent sessions down there despite the leg. It was good to put a bit of time into kicking. Something I plan on doing this year is working on other kicking sports too (takraw, jianzi, freestyle football). I did do some jianzi today. That's pretty hard. My best was 25 kicks. I did a few tricks like ATW, butterfly kick and a few others.

Worlds will be in Montreal, there's also going to be a footbag event as part of Superball. Both of those sound kind of interesting but they're not really in the school holiday window. I'm not sure if overseas travel is going to be in the budget for this year, though the budget will increase thanks to a payrise, which is good.

I think I've had a decent year footbag wise. It was good having Khoa around for a while. I'd like to get back more involved with the freestyle football scene but I very rarely find out anything about events until after they have happened. That event in the gallery in Tasmania sounded really cool. Just to be playing at all when pretty much all of the other players in the country have packed up their shoes is a good achievement.

I don't know if I've hit too many new tricks but sometimes I had some pretty good runs with a bit higher density than previous years. Much of a muchness though. This year I'm going to turn 40 so it's good to still be going at this age.

Happy new year to all the people using Modified also. There's not so many but it's a nice thing to have.

[boyle]

There's been a bit of talk on the Facebook group about the badges.

This is an interesting one in various ways, because I went down the rabbit hole trying to find the original conversations and changes to Modified and footbag.org over the years haven't been great in keeping this information up to date.

The best information I found was actually from the Internet Archive

https://web.archive.org/web/20150503042 ... ag/badges/

I will try and get this back working again but I'm not sure it's within my capabilities.



Also, here's me doing a few of the badges some numerous years ago. 2015, around this time of year actually. I would have been ramping up for a big year with Worlds as a destination.

I've had a message or two asking if I will go to Worlds. I think it's fairly unlikely, although I would really like to go to some competition somewhere this year. The timing of Worlds is right in the middle of the school term which makes things difficult. If I was to go, it would probably be just going for a few days - probably not worth it for the thousands of dollars it would cost.

I started this post last night but didn't finish it off. Something I was thinking about with the badges, is that in the footbag world, we have a lot of people starting very interesting projects but then it kind of fades away and it's often not passed on for someone else to run with.

I haven't played that much to start the year. Bits and pieces here and there, but no real proper sessions. I usually go to the gym early on a Tuesday morning (Eg now). We've got my Grandma visiting and we had a birthday celebration for my wife yesterday so I will just take it easy, I might go later.

We just had a trip to Sydney over the weekend. We ended up visiting some friends and meeting up in a park I've kicked a few times with Dyalan. He wasn't available but we might get to kick together next month.

[Asmus]

I started this post last night but didn't finish it off. Something I was thinking about with the badges, is that in the footbag world, we have a lot of people starting very interesting projects but then it kind of fades away and it's often not passed on for someone else to run with.

Isn't this the world in general? This happens a lot at my job at least hehe.

The badges was definitely a cool idea.

I have some problems with posting on the forum in general. I get a 403 forbidden error a lot. Is it you who looks into this kinda stuff? Not sure why this post works, but I can't post in my own footblog for example.

[boyle]

I can take a look at that. Is it in your footblog (like this one, eg just making a post to the forum), or on the Wordpress based one? That may be a bit more complicated to sort out.

[Asmus]

This one. The forum is also running extremely slow.

[Tjuggles]

Hey Asmus,

What is slow; the loading of the site? Posting something? Both?

[Asmus]

Loading is slow. I am not allowed to post in my own footblog. I get an error:

403
Forbidden

Access to this resource on the server is denied!

[boyle]

Seems weird you can post in here but not in there, that seems quite strange.

[boyle]

I had probably my first session by the pool yesterday morning. There's a little bit more to go of school holidays so schedule has been kind of off.

It wasn't really a great session, but it was great to have a session. I also played in the backyard the day before so I've been at it a little bit.

There has been some kind of old school play get together in New Zealand in recent days. Scott Davidson and Tuan Vu and a few others went out, I think it was hosted by David Leberknight, they also went to Adrian Dick's house at some stage. I might be a bit young for the target market, but I have a feeling they're doing it as a yearly thing. I know Caroline was talking about going last year.

I didn't take any footage yesterday, I've got plenty of videos of me dropping the bag nearby the pool. I felt my tricks weren't quite going in the right zones.



I'm going to see The Butterfly Effect a few times in the coming month. They're doing a 20 year tour of their first album (which came out 21 years ago...). I'm looking forward to that. I will go to the shows in Sydney and Canberra and two in Melbourne. I hadn't realised but they are playing the same weekend as Taylor Swift in Melbourne. I was a bit worried as I hadn't organised many travel plans - I did have a flight down already but I've changed that for another time. I've ended up hiring a car and staying somewhere out in the burbs, it should work out a reasonable price, otherwise it was crazy prices for a 20 share dorm to stay right in the city. I stayed a while ago in a cheap place and they had a pancake machine in the morning as part of the breakfast which was fun, I think I'll try and stay there in a following visit to Melbourne.

I went on a little trip last week to Wollongong. Not too much footbag along the way.
https://www.instagram.com/p/C2BC8PvhQPm/

I did have a swim in this area above a waterfall, I'd like to visit that area again in the future.




It was quite refreshing.

I brought up the idea of going to Worlds to my principal and he seemed positive about it. Just have to make it make $ sense and also convince the family it is a good idea.

[boyle]

Came across an interesting thread on this very website - https://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=6535

"When we're 40". A few Australian players talking about what they're going to be up to when they are 40...might have to follow up on this.

Topical because I will be turning 40 this year. Ian and Jeremy both posted in that thread, they are the same age as me too but I don't think either has played in a long while.

I played yesterday in the backyard.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C2T9CQArY8z/

That jam in LA looked like a pretty good time.

Speaking of good times at footbag events, Worlds is looking a decent possibility for me. Just started looking into flights and they're not really very cheap, but it's a fair way to go. I might keep an eye on things for the coming months and try to get some good deal.

[boyle]

I didn't realise it had been so many months since my last post.

I've been playing a fair bit. I had pretty much committed to going to Worlds but now I'm thinking against it. The time cost is my main concern. It's a long way to fly to Montreal.

[Tjuggles]

I didn't realise it had been so many months since my last post.

Ha yeah I keep thinking that, and continue to not post... but funny that all it takes is someone to post something for me to actually get here and post something (even if it is a reply).

I've been playing a fair bit. I had pretty much committed to going to Worlds but now I'm thinking against it. The time cost is my main concern. It's a long way to fly to Montreal.

Oh? Have you bought tickets already? Was the time cost not something you factored in to the planning? I assumed its a good 25 hours or so from you to there eh?

I would love to go to worlds, but I'm still in family mode/get the home base settled phase of my family life and need to prioritize that first. Once things get settled on that front, and child gets a little bigger and more independent, it will be easier to travel.