Janis's blog - (un)retired from footbag

[boyle]

I'm really interested to see what you come up with. Some interesting lessons along the way for you. Are you working as a programmer now?

[Asmus]

Looking forward to see what you are making in your secret lab. Are you kicking?

[Cass]

[janis]

I'm really interested to see what you come up with. Some interesting lessons along the way for you. Are you working as a programmer now?

Yes, I work doing computer software/hardware design.

Essentially what I'm trying to do is make it much easier for people to find the relevant footbag info they need to help them with whatever moves they are trying to learn. I'm hesitant to release the site until things look a bit better in a design sense, however I will want to have a really small private testing release sometime really soon.

For the technically inclined, the source code powering this can be found over on the github page:
https://github.com/shuttle1987/footbag-db

I'm not kicking much lately, had a couple of bad foot issues including a broken toe. Hopefully that heals up soon, I'd like to kick more than I currently am.

[janis]

Been working on the formatting of the site a lot today. I'm really liking SCSS, it's making things a lot easier. If someone who has a lot of graphics design skill does end up joining the project (I'm hoping someone does!) I'm hoping that would make their life easier too.

Right now I'm just trying to get an initial proof of concept up and running. It's fairly spartan from a UI point of view by it is starting to show some promise. Sometime in the next few days I'll have to try to get in contact with people who are interested in having a look and giving feedback. Beta release of the site is still some time off though, need to make sure everything is in order before real content is added on a wide scale.

[janis]

Been frustratingly time poor lately. My toe has mostly recovered so I've felt like playing lately but I just haven't had much time. I got to what I consider an alpha version of the footbag website but haven't quite made the next step to a beta release. The main idea of the project is to have information as easily available as possible, which means that the big feature roadblock for a release is the lack of an editable wiki for the trick tips. I'm trying to integrate moinmoin wiki with the site so that every move can have editable tips but I haven't quite got it all working yet. There's a few other missing features/rough edges on the backend but the tips is the big thing that's preventing a release at the moment. Really it's only a few solid days worth of work but it's hard to find the time when you are in a life situation like mine.

As a start I want to get everything in this list: http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.php?t=2871 into the database. The one thing that needs some work is handling nicknames but that should just be a simple database table. The only possible complication is if there are tricks with multiple commonly used nicknames, if there's enough of these I'll have to do something similar to wikipedia where they redirect pages to a canonical page.

[janis]

If all goes well I plan to have a beta version of the footbag website live tonight. Of course things could go wrong but I'm somewhat optimistic. If anyone is interested in beta testing I'd be really appreciative, this wil help iron out bugs and make the experience for the users much better. Please do send me a PM if you are interested.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Any update? Looking forward to the beta version

[janis]

There were some issues with the hosting company I had to sort out last time I posted, then I ended up being extremelty time poor for a solid month. The site could be released now, but there's a few loose ends I would like to improve first before it goes fully public. I'm aiming to have a live beta of the site up in the next few days, I'll post in the projects forum here when it's ready. If anyone is interested in participating in the private alpha site please let me know, I would very much appreciate everyones feedback.

[janis]

I played some footbag for the first time this year today

[boyle]

Good stuff. Any Aus visits on the agenda?

[janis]

There's a good chance I'll be getting a job in Sydney in 6-9months time, so more than likely!

I might even get some footbag skills up if I get 2 summers in a row, having not had a winter shred spot here has resulted in a complete loss of momentum every year for the last few years.

[boyle]

good stuff! Always good to have more players here in Aus...the Canberra winter is just approaching. While it's nothing on the Canadian standard, it's never particularly pleasant...

[janis]

Played again today. My fitness completely sucks, no doubt being sick for 5 weeks didn't help.

Managed 216 toe delays first try which was nice. Hit gyro osis BS for the first time I think, this was certainly due to tips from a video that Nick made, lamenting the lack of work on my footbag site as sharing the advice around would no doubt help other people, but been working around 50-60hours a week for 6months now so finding the time very hard to get for that.

Definitely the small things in life bring happiness, stuff like still being able to hit barfly for example is a completely small thing but did make my day that much brighter.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Hit gyro osis BS for the first time I think, this was certainly due to tips from a video that Nick made

Are you referring to my Gyro/Zooming/Spinning tutorial?

If you are, that makes me so happy that it worked for you. I love when my tutorials help people Nice job on Gyro Osis bs.

[janis]

Last post was in May, I think I played a few more times after that post but got quite a bad foot injury shortly after that. Was super frustrating as I had started to make some progress on a comeback.

Had a lot of treatment on my foot lately and it's feeling a lot better, however I really don't know if I want to play again. Seems like my heart isn't really in it though after all these years of injuries. However even if I don't really kick much anymore I have a bit of unfinished business with the footbag world. I would like to see that footbag moves database and tutorial website completed sometime. Only problem with that is that I really don't think I can finish it on my own due to the lack of time I have.

I was kinda hoping some other people in the community would be interested in contributing to that project but I'm not sure I really got in contact with a big percentage of the community because of the decline of modified. Has all the discussion headed over to facebook or something? That or the community has shrunk a whole lot more than I realized... I notice that the projects page post got 0 replies which was a bit disheartening, did I not communicate what the project was about very well?

This said I know it's probably a stretch to find people in the community who are super into footbag and know how to code and have the free time to work on a project like this, but I was willing to mentor someone who showed interest in learning. Over the last year and a half I've been working 50-60 hour weeks as a software developer at a particularly interesting company. Managed to learn what I needed to learn to actually do the footbag database project but it's also put me in the annoying situation where I probably don't have the time to really mentor someone properly. If you are interested in both footbag and programming please don't hesitate to send me a PM, I'd love to talk to you, there's potentially a very good opportunity for getting some quality mentoring here. In any case I'll get back to that project when I get some more free time, the footbag community deserves a better way of ranking trick difficulty than ADD count and this project will offer just that (+more).

[janis]

So I'm currently in Toronto and I was thinking it would be cool to meet up with some footbaggers. Feet have been hurting though Somewhat disappointingly I don't know if anyone actually meets up for regular kicks these days and not being on Facebook I don't know how I'd find out. Say I wasn't a long time modified member who has been playing footbag for a long time, how would I find out what was happening with the footbag scene in a place like Toronto? Same thing goes for other cities, I really hope that people spend a bit of time thinking about this question if they are wanting to promote the sport.

[boyle]

I think Toronto has a pretty regular scene. Cass , Erik Chan and Adam Greenwood seem to play pretty regularly, Alex Venis too, if he's back from European travels.

[Cass]

The FAT Facebook page is where we plan sessions. They are not so consistent. I might have come out today with some advance notice but I'm not in the city.

There is a club listing on .org so I suppose that would be the alternate contact.

Sorry I missed you!

[janis]

Been a while since the last post. Been working fairly hard on the footbag resource website and it's now in a private beta. More info can be found over here: viewtopic.php?f=28&t=23879

Let me know if you are interested in participating in the beta, it's a good opportunity to get involved with a project that helps the sport.