And a little bonus top-post drawing - with a quiz!
This drawing is by Picasso. It is 10 × 7 1/2 in, it was done in 1954 and it is for sale.
How much do you think it will cost ya? You can see the answer here.
I think it is okay, to recognize players for competition results in HOF, if it is only the top tier of the top tier. So let's say.. 3+ singles routine world championships or something like that. /I only wrote this, so it was not completely obvious I did this post to do get top post painting.
I think you can see the total minutes uploaded on youtube. Not entirely sure, but I was having a look at the analytics yesterday and there is a lot of stuff about how many minutes have been watched. There must be something there about total minutes uploaded.
Asmus: I'd never heard of Franz Nölken, but I'm glad you introduced me. From the small sampling of his work I found, I like his style. Very nice work on the Top Post Painting.
Boyle: It's almost comical how un-savvy I am with tech. My wife does marketing and constantly laughs at how bad I am with social media, which is sad because I'm probably one of the most active footbaggers on social media (I blog regularly, I vlog, I podcast once in a blue moon, and I put out more YT video than anybody).
Speaking of media, the big news on my end is that my laptop finally died. It lasted me nearly 4 years, which is pretty good for a gaming laptop. They're notorious for overheating, which breaks down the guts of the machine over time. The good news is that I was able to backup all my files before it totally crapped out, so I still have original MP4s of every footbag video I edited over the past 4 years. The other good news is that my new laptop has already arrived and I've got it 90% set up. The SD card reader in the old laptop crapped out recently, so it's nice to have a reader that works again. The only drawback at the moment is that I don't have video editing software on the new laptop yet, so even if I do film it may take longer to get the footage out. I'm sure I can work out solutions in the short and long term though.
As I was backing up my edited videos from the old laptop, I also found folders with lots of raw footage of good players. Mostly the Boise crew. Some of the footage I had sent out to editors for use in other videos, but a lot of it was never used. Rather than delete it all, I spent the past couple nights furiously cutting through them to get minimalist cuts done. No editing, no music, and probably some of the footage was used somewhere else at some time. But hopefully enough of it was new to people that some people got enjoyment out of it. Here's one for now, which had a lot of strong Lon footage:
I haven't had much opportunity to play lately, but I've been thinking a lot about footbag. Combing through my old videos made me a bit nostalgic, and made me feel lucky to have so many footbag friends. There was also a post on Facebook recently about people who had to quit the sport due to injuries, and it made me feel thankful that I've largely been able to avoid injuries over the course of 20 years playing. I think that's just luck really. And then of course all the HOF discussion got me thinking about all the amazing experiences I've been priveleged to have over the years. If you went back to 1997 and told me I'd one day be able to hit both torque AND eclipse I bet I would have been thrilled with just that. So to have stuck around this long, met so many people, been lucky enough to win a couple tournaments and set some personal bests. Just really makes me feel unbelievably lucky.
Would be interesting to get some stats on the most active/most views/interactions. What Francisca does in her job works with a company that does something similar to this. I help her from time to time with different editing stuff and I have been asking her to run a web crawl for footbag to show me how the program works. I think she has to run it by her bosses, but it would be good to see how that turns out.
This is related and coulde be interesting for you two.
I just crunched some numbers on our FootbagDenmark youtube channel to share with the rest of the crew.
Here are the numbers:
395 videos on the channel (a bunch of them private)
Total of 77.507 views on videos and there have been viewed 111.658 minutes of video.
Most popular videos (Views in parenthesis)
Circle Contest Final - Variety Phase – (8.637)
Circle Contest Final - Density Phase – (4.648)
World Footbag Championships 2015 - Open Singles Routine Finals - Milan Benda (Czech) (7.334)
Jindra Smola - World Footbag Championships 2014 - Final - 1st place (1.920)
Vasek Klouda - Danish Footbag Open 2013 Trailer (1.230)
We got 668 likes and 10 dislikes. Our videos are in 167 playlists. And we have gotten 128 comments.
Found the old YouTube analytics page after a bit of searching. I was hoping it would list the total minutes I have uploaded, but instead it only shows total minutes people have viewed my videos. That data isn't even very good, as it only started being tracked in September of 2012. So while my account turns 10 years old next month, there's only view data for the last 5 years. On top of all that, what little data YT gives me is also skewed by a single video of mine that is a total outlier:
While I have 2,511 videos posted to YT, that single video accounts for 30% of my total tracked views. That's crazy.
The new laptop is working out nicely so far. I haven't played any footbag since getting it, so I haven't tested the SD card adapter or tried to edit anything on it yet. But I do feel a lot better knowing I've transferred all my old finished footbag videos onto it. The death of my previous laptop was also a nice excuse to push out some old footage I had laying around, and those videos got a nice reception from the community which makes me feel like it was time well spent.
I liked your double blender in the video with Evan, not sure if I've seen you do that one before.
Thanks Dan! I'm not very good at double blender (can only do one side, never linked to anything neat) but I've been doing them for about 10 years now. There's a crappy one at the 1 minute mark of this vid from 2006:
The big life news on my front is that Haley goes back to work next week, marking the end of her initial 10 weeks of maternity leave. I'm going to be home with the baby for 2 weeks, which is a bit intimidating but hopefully I get the hang of it. I'm not counting on having much free time, but if I do maybe I can work on The Symposium or some more old footage editing.
I was hoping to play this weekend, but now it sounds like we're getting half a foot of snow this weekend. Maybe I can get in a gym session?
Here's a random vid I put together from footage on my dying computer:
I think the key with that early baby time is that when you do get some free time, do something with it. Don't just sit around and say OH I AM SO TIRED, which you will be anyway, just have a shred or work on a video or something, even play a game, read a book, whatever. I find that really important (even when Nico is now 3, there are times when I'm just like, alright, this is my time, you take it easy).
That's the beauty of playing at a high level for a long time. Oh I haven't seen you do that pretty hard trick before - here's a video of me doing it more than 10 year ago...
I read this thing I also watch 95% of your videos. I just don't have much to say most of the time, but I do very much appreciate your time and efforts.
You're a dad?!? God help that poor child... Jk Congrats! That's so awesome! I admit I only skimmed through some of your more recent posts so I'm probably late to the congratulatory committee but dammit that's huge.
I look forward to hearing what type of shenanigans papa ken and his seed get into.
Btw been sorta getting into basketball (very casual) and was wondering are you team Harden or team Westbrook? (Or are you a Lakers fan? In which case my condolences)
Whoa! Rare Tank sighting in the blog! Very unexpected
For most of the season I had Harden over Westbrook for a few reasons:
The Rockets had a better record than the Thunder, and I'd say their supporting casts are about equally talented. Harden was averaging more assists but fewer rebounds...but he was getting his points a lot more efficiently. In their head-to-head match ups the Rockets won.
I think Westbrook has made it a closer argument lately, but I'd probably still give Harden the edge. Definitely a crazy race for MVP this year though. I feel like nobody is talking about Curry at all, despite the fact his team still has the best record in the NBA and he's the 2 time reigning MVP. But he's not even in the discussion. And while Harden and Westbrook are having historically good offensive seasons, Kawhi is having a historic two-way season for the #2 seed in the West. And again, nobody is even mentioning him as a candidate.
Weather this week promises to be good, so gonna try and play more often.
Focus of my sessions these days is my routine for Worlds. Like all routines, the first few sessions working on them are brutal. All the cues are slightly off, you don't remember what comes when, your stamina is never worse than right now, and the whole thing is just frustrating as hell. But hopefully there are already glimmers of potential, and then in a couple weeks you have a breakthrough where it starts to flow better. My routine this year is a lot more ambitious than past years, so I anticipate it will be more frustrating than normal. I'm hoping though that if I stick with it, it will pay off. With 4 months left, I am optimistic I have time to train. What is holding me back more than anything, is my lack of good equipment. The G-Units still feel like they're breaking in, and I literally have no bags that don't spit beads out. It's very frustrating. I ordered 2 more bags today, so hopefully I have better luck with the new bags, and that helps me get the routine in better shape.
I've been thinking about Worlds, and what events I'm going to compete in. For me, I care the most about routines. That's the only result I'm really gunning for. Ideally, it'd be nice to do Circle and Shred30 as well, but if the schedule looks like doing other events may hurt my chances in routines, I will likely just not do the other events. But that got me thinking about how the various events will be seeded, and how they will set up qualifications for them. In a nutshell, you need to balance fairness with time management. Say you have 35 competitors entering Shred30. If Finals of Shred30 is made up of 10 players, and you make everybody compete in both rounds, then you need to run AND count 45 Shred30s. That may not sound like a lot, but it is. And when you're done with it, what are the chances that Vasek/Evan/Penske/Landes are NOT in the top 10? Would it not make more sense to have some players get a bye to Finals? Or maybe Circles are a better example. Say you have 30 competitors in Circles, but only 4 make the Final. Do you run 10 circles of 3 players in the first day, then whittle it down to 4 circles of 4 players for the semis, of which top 1 advances? Wouldn't it be easier to give the 10 players with the highest seeds a bye to semis, and then you'd only need to do 5 circles of 4 on the first day, with the winner of each circle making it to semis to compete with the people who had byes? All the Freestyle events take place between Monday and Friday. If there aren't that many competitors in any event, then this may all be a moot point. But without an online pre-registration, you have to be prepared for a big turnout as well as a small turnout, which is daunting. Anyway, that's pretty much what I was alluding to in my latest vlog, here:
I think Shred 30, everyone has to do it. There's such a huge element of disaster (drops, non-uniques) that even the best players can really go badly. So I think everyone has to do it, someone has to take the task of scoring, if they've had some pre-training, that'll all be sweet (see other threads on this matter).
Even if those players are going to get a good score, I think they need to prove it. You can also see roughly which ones are going to be worth counting (say top 15) and count the other ones at a later date.
Circles I think byes are totally fine, and this has been done in some previous years. I think it is preferable to have 4 in the circle. You could either give all those people a bye, or even 6 get the bye, 6 pools of 4, then you have 12 (either 4 circles of 3, each winner proceeds, or 3 circles of 4, and the 3 winners go through, as well as the highest scoring second place). Which I think has some merit, as the second place in a hard pool might actually have played much better than the winner of a less challenging pool. That ones up for the organisers though, hopefully they get a nice number.
What are the thoughts on key contenders
You would imagine
Evan
Jim
Nick L
Ken
Lon
Vasek
Milan(?)
Jindra(?)
Taishi
Alex Trenner is the reigning champ, not sure if he'll go
Aleksi, he's won it before but I don't know if he's back to his full game after the injury
Brian Bear
Johnny Suderman maybe, not sure if he's really competing anymore
Nick Polini is going pretty crazy on the improvement, could jag a finals spot somewhere
I'm just reeling off a few names here, I'm sure I forgot plenty.
Great points Danny. I'd tend to agree with you that byes in the first round of Circle are fine, and maybe even in Routines, but for Shred30 all players should have to compete. The tricky thing to balance at a major tourney is fairness and time. You want the competition to be fair, but you also want to run it on time with as little bloat as possible. If having Evan, Vasek, Penske, and Landes compete in the first round of Circle means you have to do one extra Circle, that adds at least 45 minutes to the first day of events, and really doesn't change the composition of the semis of Circle anyway. For routines, I don't think the time savings are as pronounced but a similar argument could be made. As I mentioned in my original post, the real challenge with all this is that without pre-registration it's impossible to know if there are 15 competitors in Circle, or 60.
Here's a quick video from yesterday's shred. I tried out my new shred shorts (same as xmas, but black) and they worked great. I'm still struggling with all my bags leaking, and I also feel like my shoes still haven't really broken in. On the bag front I ordered 2 new bags from Ivan yesterday, and on the shoe front all I can do is keep playing and hope they get less stiff by Worlds.
On the routine front, I feel like I'm making slow progress. It's definitely frustrating, but at least I'm already working on it, and I feel comforted that I have as much time left to prepare as I do.
Both out of curiosity:
1. Where did you get your shoes from?
2. Also, how much tweaking to your routine song are you doing?
I know what you mean about the initial stages of routine planning. For me, I feel like even though certain links are in my head, my feet aren't my head and actually trying to hit sequences and not being able to can be frustrating.
1. My current pair of shoes are my last pair of G-Units. I have one other pair which are broken in and playable, but the instep on one is coming apart. So basically I have 1.5 pairs of usable G-Units. The pair which is broken in but falling apart (white) I got on eBay a couple years ago, and the current pair (green) were a Christmas gift in 2008(!). I'm not sure what I'll do once both pairs die, but maybe by then I'll be playing less often due to the baby. I certainly expect I will compete a lot less after this year's Worlds for the same reasons.
2. I'm not sure I understand your question? Are you asking about tweaks to my routine choreo, or tweaks to the routine song itself? In some past years I have asked people to make minor edits to songs so they would fit my routine better. I am not doing that this year. If you were asking about tweaks to the routine itself, I'd say that every session I have made significant changes. The way I look at it, a routine is 2 minutes max. If every session I make 1-2 important improvements, even if that's only 2 seconds of the routine that's still 1.7% of the total routine. Right now, I'm at the stage where I'm still just searching for cues that work, regardless of whether or not I have the stamina/consistency to hit them in the final version. The hope is that over the next 2 months I'll discover/create enough good cues, that I can then start to practice the final version for a full month before I have to do it at Worlds. Whether or not my schedule allows me to do this remains to be seen, but that's the plan at least.
On a related note, today I almost exclusively worked on my routine. I think it'll be better once my stamina improves, and once I get better footbags. Using 2 bags of different weights and sizes is definitely not ideal. But for right now, with 3.6 months until Worlds and with the routine choreo still taking shape, I felt good about my practice. This will likely be my hardest and most ambitious routine ever, but since there's also a good chance its my last routine at Worlds ever, I think that's appropriate.
Here's my 9th FootVlog:
In non-footbag news, yesterday I won my Fantasy NBA league by beating Tu Vu in the finals. It was a fun season. I feel I won probably 60% due to how I drafted on opening night, and 40% due to some well-timed strategic pickups from the waiver wired. I drafted KAT and Jokic well below their value for the season, and I picked up guys like Saric, Love, Middleton, and Lowry at key junctures too.
2008! Awesome. I just ordered some new lavers which should be here in a week or so. My current ones are more than done and since the soles (and insoles) are so worn down I think it's affecting my game.
Yup, I was asking about the song itself, but thanks for the routine-itself information as well. I am at the same stage, currently thinking about links and sequences that I can insert in different (appropriate) areas.
Happy birthday Ken! That was some interesting insight into your personal prep for a routine. You've done some great routines over the years, so I figure you've got the preparation part sorted out into some pretty categorised areas. Nice work winning the fantasy league. I am involved in a tipping competition for the rugby league, I've done fantasy before but never stay committed to it. The tipping I won last year, but started off very slow. By now I'm coming into a competitive area again so hopefully 6 months from now I will have some prize money to take from it.
Thanks Danny! The NBA Fantasy league was an interesting experience. The League was top-heavy with like 5 active owners, and then filled out with owners who were pretty uninvolved. That meant the waiver wire often had strong players available, and also that some weeks you knew you could win even if you had to carry an injured player on your roster. About halfway through the year the standings made it apparent which teams would be in the playoffs, and which would not. At that point I realized it would be pointless to make the playoffs and lose, so I changed my strategy to stockpile good players (even if they were injured at that point and could not play) so that once I made it to the playoffs, I'd have a stronger team. When the playoffs started, I had a 13-4 record. In the Finals, I faced Tu Vu who had a 17-0 record. But my strategy paid off, as I had picked up some very strong players in earlier weeks who were injured but were now healthy at this key part of the season. Tu finished the season at 17-1, but the single loss was to me for the championship.
My folks are in town for a couple weeks, which has been very helpful but also a little stressful (as extended time with family always is). On the footbag front though it's been great timing. The weather has been excellent, and with them around to watch the baby during naps I have been able to play a lot of footbag. While I'm still struggling a bit with stamina and my equipment, there's no doubt that playing more than once a week has helped me mentally and physically. The routine is taking rough form. It still needs a ton of work, but at least it's taking shape. I should be getting 2 new bags this week that should help me immensely, but even just from a planning perspective I'm getting to the point where I can envision how the routine will look in August. I'm trying to approach this routine as if it will be my last serious one ever. Like, I may compete in routines at future events just to participate, but my days of spending months working on choreo and practice are over. So I try and use that as motivation to really push myself and do a good one that people will remember. I also want to get one more dropless routine so I can "retire" from serious comp with 10 dropless routines under my belt. That's just a nice round number.
The list of strong players Danny laid out in a previous post is a good one. It did get me thinking though, that not all players are equally strong across events. The very best players are strong across all categories. I'm thinking players like Aleksi before he got injured, Vasek his whole career, Evan the past few years, etc. Then there are some who punch above their weight in certain events, like Taishi in Shred30, Dustin Rhodes in routines, or Pipenberg in Circle for example. I know there had been some talk a few years back about reviving the old concept of an "overall" champ, and I think this is related to it. Anyway, hopefully the people doing seeding take that into account when seeding routines and circle (obviously Shred30 seeding doesn't matter). The way the Worlds schedule is currently set, it looks like all freestyle events will be run between Monday and Friday. For routines, that means Tues, Wednesday and Friday are the 3 days. Monday the only event is Circle qualifiers, but if they don't do byes in the first round I may just scratch if I think it'll help me stay fresh for routine finals. We'll see.
Here's another video I slapped together of old backlog footage I found on my old laptop:
Congrats! That's so awesome! I admit I only skimmed through some of your more recent posts so I'm probably late to the congratulatory committee but dammit that's huge. 
The Rockets had a better record than the Thunder, and I'd say their supporting casts are about equally talented.