Canberra, Australia via SCL - Daniel Boyle

[Tjuggles]

It will basically be building on from that, although from memory it was mainly about what to do when you are actually there on the school. Dan did a presentation at Worlds in 09, I think you were there too. But the idea is to make it a complete sort of guide from you even thinking about how can I do a demonstration, right through to doing the demo and then following up after doing the demonstration.

There are going to be some changes coming to the footbag.org site and my idea is to have it ready for then, and then readily available on there.

Sweet, looking forward to seeing how it goes.

People keep talking about changes to .org. Is this conversation happening on FB? I want to know more!

[boyle]

It's still fairly under wraps at the moment. Allan is the main man involved, he is the one to ask for specifics.

[boyle]

i played yesterday, it was a pretty good session with Dianne and Caroline. I did about half with the ball and the other half with the bag. I got a 10 contact combo with the ball, which was the first time I have done that. I also am starting to work on paradox whirl with the ball, which is hard, but coming close.

With the bag I had some nice long runs. "Know Your Enemy" by Rage Against The Machine came on and I was kicking along to that, this was the song I did a really terrible routine to at the Worlds in Oakland, with a lot of drops as well as some technical difficulties, but mainly a lot of drops. Anyway, I had a drop early on, but then I would have gone for over 2 minutes without dropping so I was pleased with that.

I can't remember if I did anything else of note. Oh yeah, I hit locomotion>motion and was trying to hit either phoenix into that combo or pdx blender as the next trick. Came close to both, but didn't get either.

Went and played soccer afterwards, it was a busy day of exercise as we went for a bushwalk beforehand for about 5km, then I rode to the kick, rode to the game and then I thought I would ride back but my keys had mysteriously disappeared. Oops. That was a bit of a debacle but we got that sorted eventually, with some bolt cutters and some assistance from Caroline.



This is a picture from our morning walk, with obligatory kangaroos in the background. There were quite a few of them hopping around on that walk yesterday. 25.5km on the bike yesterday, which I think should take me close to 100km for the week. I have just looked back on my week and I was actually at about 97km before even starting, so it's definitely put me over 100, which is a fair effort.

I have kept up this tracking of various things (food, drink, sleep, exercise, spending, reading) for the whole year and don't plan on stopping it, but I have found it quite a useful reflection tool.

Back to the soccer game, I was filling in for a friend and we had a 3-1 victory. I scored a goal, which used a couple of footbag skills, I juggled off the inside, off the outside and then BLAM into the goal past a bamboozled fellow. Those are the type of things I always try but they never come off, so it was a good feeling to get that going.

I also had a fairly heavy collision with someone in the match and had a fair bit of pain in my ankle, but it seems to be improving. I'm due to kick again tomorrow with Dianne and Caroline so hopefully it's feeling fine for that, I think I should be fine as long as I take it easy, I was able to run on it after doing it and have been walking around on it a bit today. I also had to run for the bus this morning, which was not the ideal start to the day.

[boyle]

As I mentioned, I have been working on my shred 30. This video from 0:28 is one I worked on the other day. I was going quite well on this one up until the end point, where I had a couple of repeated tricks and then two drops at the end.

This one scores 159.07, which is better than I've score in competition, but it's lower than I'm aiming for. Eventually I would like to get 200+ but for now I'm aiming to get to 180. I had another good one, which was probably slightly higher, but I went off the screen so I couldn't count the whole thing.

Total adds were 88, 26 contacts and 21 uniques.

The run was dimwalk>blur>dimwalk>blur>parkwalk>sidewalk>ripwalk>sidewalk>ripwalk>butterfly>butterfly>diving clipper>ducking clipper>diving clipper>ducking clipper>diving butterfly>ducking butterfly>diving butterfly>ducking osis>ducking osis (repeated)>butterfly (repeated)> then there were two drops, one right at the end of a rev swirl, and one trying to serve straight into a double down.

If I had just got 2 new unique tricks, that would up the score to 177.15, though there would probably be time for 4 tricks instead of dropping it. That's something to work on for next time.

Played yesterday with Caroline and Dianne. Caroline had a chainmail bag and I did a few things with that. Had a run of maybe 12 guiltless was my best with that thing. Pdx blender and scorpions tail were some individual trick highlights with the chainmail.

With a regular bag, had some reasonable runs, but kept get into a bit of rhythm before dropping it around 20 contacts. I did a few reasonable tricks, some I haven't done for a while. Reactor (atomic whirl), spinal tap (atomic ss torque), atomic ss blender were some of them.

Here's some music
Look for a much younger version of me in the crowd make an appearance at 3:21 in that Fear Factory video.

[C-Fan]

Nice work on Shred30. I recommend taking longer pauses in between attempts. If you do 8 contacts, then start over, you may have the energy to get through 20 contacts...but those 8 contacts from the previous turn will haunt you towards the end of the 30 seconds. I guess it depends on your stamina and health, but I know I can't do that.

Look for a much younger version of me in the crowd make an appearance at 3:21 in that Fear Factory video.

Haha! That made my day.

[boyle]

I've been looking at two ways of training for the Shred30 - trying to repeat it under fatigue, so doing a lot of repeats, as in competition there are plenty of stress factors like nerves etc.

The other part is breaking it down, trying to get a good score, taking a rest and then going on a little bit later back to it. Probably been doing too much of the high fatigue one lately, might cut things down and just try it a few times, but I have been very motivated to improve how I go about things.

Spring has come along here so there won't be too much complaining about the cold weather (hopefully). Today was excellent and I made some good use of that. Hopefully in the next few days I will have a video showing what I was up to, but it was a combination of a few different skateparks as well as a trip to the river. Went for a swim but the water was freezing. Considering that the mountains are not so far away from there, shouldn't have been too surprising.

Nice day anyway, I was feeling very motivated. Nearly finished the work shift so ready to go home and take it easy. Australia just won a World Cup qualifier (2-0 vs Iraq). I should be able to watch the Chile game tomorrow against Paraguay, I think the timing works quite well for that.

[boyle]

Did some more practice of shred 30 today. It's pouring with rain, with more of the same expected for tomorrow. At least I was able to play in the garage. The one I did the score for, I scored slightly higher than the previous one I mentioned (159.07), I think it was just over 161 this time, I haven't got it in front of me. Pretty similar, good for about 20 contacts without mistake, then a drop, then another and that throws things out the window.

I was also doing tiltless, nothing particularly high in numbers, but I was consistently getting 40+, I think the best one was 70 and I had a couple over 60 as well.

I rode to work in the rain, that was a bit of a debacle, I was so wet when I arrived. Think I will catch a taxi home. That fabulous Spring weather really hasn't lasted. Watched the Chile game this morning and they went very badly. Something to do on a rainy day. Had a bad headache most of the day, but that seems to have passed by.

[boyle]

Just a short session today. Hit a couple of 5>5 combos but I don't think any of them are really new. Flip phoenix>mobius was one. The ground was a bit slippery where I was playing but the rain has stopped now which is good news. Caroline has gone "up north" for a little while and Dianne can't play the next week or two so I will just keep training myself. Bit busy the next few days with uni stuff.

I am learning/relearning a bit of stuff in these uni courses. I am glad now as I have done pretty much all of the educational psychology/total bs style courses and the ones I have left are mainly just about the different subjects. So I am doing Art and Science and I am really crap at art so mainly the trick is to hide that and at least portray myself to have a primary school level of ability, fake it til you make it etc.

This time next year I should be starting out my teaching career so that should be quite interesting to see where things end up. See how I go on my final prac, if things go well I could even just get a start at that same school which could be really good. Don't want to make too many assumptions on that one.

[boyle]

I got some new shoes, and know they weren't of the Rod Laver variety. Some hiking shoes which my parents got for me for my birthday, which is later this week. I just wanted to give them a short test as today was the first time I had put them on. They don't seem to have much shape for footbag, there's no emphasised clipper space or anything, but I was still able to get 17 guiltless within about 3 tries. I also came close to spin ducking osis>pdx blender, I got both tricks by themselves and I got spinning osis>pdx blender.

So that was pretty successful. I had a short session at uni yesterday, it went quite well, I was getting some 30+ runs with a bunch of different 5s in midstring which I was pretty stoked on.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BJ6tVVdBRfa

Will be more stoked when uni is done for good, and not so long to go for that. It's not until about June next year, but this semester just has about 6 weeks left and I've already done my prac. Bit of just working, then we have the trip to Chile for about 6 weeks.

[AdAstra]

Happy almost birthday!

[boyle]

Getting there, still another day of work to get through before that. It has been quite a long day of work today. I normally take an hour of leave on Mondays and Tuesday, but this week I have worked the extra hours so I have that holiday remaining. Finish at 9pm at then back at 7 in the morning, however that will be followed by a small party and a weekend at the beach. All good news.

Played today in the lunch break, which was taken in the late afternoon. Did a shred 30 an have scored it. Just had one go at it towards the end of the session. 156.92 - I'm reasonably impressed with myself, I had a guess that my score would be around 150-160, though I have been using more or less the same formula for my shred 30. This one had too many drops, and would have been much better if I had've hit the phoenix as the last trick.

dimwalk>blur>dimwalk>DROP>parkwalk>sidewalk>ripwalk>sidewalk>butterfly>butterfly>diving clipper>ducking clipper>diving clipper>ducking clipper>diving butterfly>ducking butterfly>diving butterfly>ducking butterfly>ducking osis>butterfly>spinning butterfly>spinning osis>barfly>osis>drop>toe stall (and then a drop on the phoenix but by the time I dropped it that was after time, so I just counted the toe stall as a contact.)

Not so pleased with the drops, but only one repeat should be easy to fix up. Meanwhile on the session I hit a flip alpine blur, I definitely haven't done that in a long while, possibly never, but it felt really good, first try. Had some reasonable length runs as well. I have been trying to improve my consecutive double dex tricks. I have just been looking through the badges, I haven't tried a lot of them, there's a bunch I think I could do. I've been aiming for 6 consecutive double dexes, which won't really get me much, as silver is 7. I think my best so far is 5. I've just been looking at the rules for that badge, and I guess if I started on a clipper I would actually have a good chance at that one, I hadn't thought of that and didn't realise you could finish with a barfly.

That might be something to work on for the weekend.

[C-Fan]

dimwalk>blur>dimwalk>DROP>parkwalk>sidewalk>ripwalk>.

When I see this in your notation, I envision you picking the bag off the floor and mashing it back onto your toe directly. Cause if you drop, pick up the bag, then let the bag drop from your hand onto your toe for the parkwalk, that'd be scored as a drop, then a toe stall, then a parkwalk. Am I interpreting correctly?

I know that when I used to practice Shred30s I made it a habit to recover from drops by going into butterfly or osis, so I wouldn't get crushed by a zero add contact being followed by a 1 add contact, cause that destroys your ratio.

[boyle]

I placed it back on to my foot, which I don't believe counts as a contact - is that right? (as it's not a toe stall).

[boyle]

I am just back from the beach. Straight to work which is not the most ideal finish to a weekend, but I had an extra hour off so that gave us some more time to get back, so we were able to stop at a different beach up along the way.

I played a little bit down there at the beach, and hopefully I will have enough to put a little video together. I was hoping for good weather to film something cool for that compilation video, but I'm going to check the footage, I think I can get something better here in Canberra now the weather is coming good.

I will also have to check some videos I've done lately, I think I ticked off a few badges at bronze level. I think there's some I should be able to get to silver on and maybe I could try for some gold, I will look a bit more into that later this week.

[boyle]

A couple of weeks ago I had a great day out and said I was going to put out a video in "a couple of days". Well, I was actually impressed with myself to get things together in just 2 weeks. Anyhow, I have been saying all year that I would put together some skatepark stuff, and here it is, the first one, with the year getting closer to the end than the start.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ5Zx9pdDd8[/youtube]

That's something. Glad to get that done. I got a little bit of footage when we were down at the beach so I would like to find out if I've got enough for a video from that.

In more recent news, I've still been working on Shred 30. 179.82 is my best score so far, which is very close to my aim of 180. I think I should pass that soon enough and then I will increased the goal, probably to 200.

I would also like to improve my best fearless, I think my best is still 4. I came close to 5 a couple of times last week, but I think I could do better than that as well.

Nicolas was very active all night, he didn't sleep well, so I woke up with him at 5am. I have to go to work at 7 anyway, but I only finished at 11pm so I haven't had too much rest. Going to watch the Raiders tonight and have my fingers crossed for a victory. It's the finals now, so if they lose they are out.

[boyle]

I did some more Shred 30 practice today and was quite pleased with the results. All of the runs that I calculated were 170+. I got one that was over 190, which beats my target of 180, so now the new target is 200. I've just realised I counted one trick wrong, as in the plan it is blur, but I did a stepping legover instead. I just had the one drop, then two repeat contacts.

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

Haven't had so much time to play aside from that session today. Weather has not been so conducive to that. Working, uni, family, the usual stuff I haven't got too much to report. I really hope that I can go to Worlds next year, I think that is a good thing to aim for. I'm hoping if I keep doing practice on Shred 30, I should be able to do these kind of numbers (170 or so) every time.

[boyle]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi8GkOxmdB0[/youtube]

I put together a little bit of video from when we went down to the coast. I didn't have a huge amount to work with, but I was happy with some of the runs. I managed to put a couple of videos together this month. Neither are incredible cinematic experiences, but the good thing is that the footage was from within the same month.

I haven't really had too many proper sessions in the last couple of weeks. I played late one night for about 40 mins, was working on a bit of variety, I've been doing a planned shred 30 a lot lately, which has a very limited amount of variety in it.

I had a game of squash yesterday with my friend Jonathan, I won in a close encounter. I hadn't played in a while and it took me a while to find a good rhythm. By the last game I was feeling quite good and was getting some better shots in. We were going to do a long bushwalk but it was pouring rain, so it was good to have an indoor activity instead.

I have the next couple of weekends off work, which is really great, as most weekends I am working.

[boyle]

I am due for an update, I saw a few people have added some content lately. I kicked a little bit today, I was mainly bushwalking but I had in mind that I would like to film something scenic, so I went over to this Red Rocks Gorge Lookout and found what seemed to be a good place looking over a bit of a waterfall. There wasn't really anywhere to set the camera, but I was able to balance the Gopro on a post. You might not be surprised that when I went to look at the footage, it was bouncing around and totally useless. Nice place though. I also went up one of the few hills in Canberra that I haven't visited yet. I was telling my uncle last week that it's getting harder now that I have ticked off all the accessible ones, I have to go further out of town and do more serious walks.

In good footage news, more than a year ago I bought a viewfinder for the gopro and then sometime ago I left it somewhere and I didn't know where. I was visiting my parents on the weekend and I was looking for something and found the box for it. Jackpot! Very happy with that. I paid a bit of money for that and have got minimal use for it and it is something that will really improve the experience of using the thing.

On that same trip I took Nico down by myself, Francisca stayed back in Canberra. We just stayed one night, but it was quite a successful trip. No accidents for a start, he's getting along well in the toilet training. We went to the beach and also took him to the skatepark and he was riding his little bike around some of the ramps, having a lot of fun.

[boyle]

I haven't posted much lately. I haven't got in too many proper sessions, there was probably just one in the past week where it wasn't just snatching time in a lunch break or something like that.

I did this combo sometime along that way - legbeater>blur>plo rpt. Now obviously plo is a lot easier than atom smasher, but I feel that's a good building block for rubberman, which is something still on my yet to complete list. I haven't really worked on that for a while, but getting that combo was a little reminder that I should be able to do it with a little extra work on it.

Speaking of the to do list, there is this mountain, Mt Tennent, it's a little way out of town, but you can see it from most places in the city, I've been planning to go up there pretty much the whole year, but yesterday I finally committed to it and got up there. It's about a 4 hour walk so it was a good effort and I woke up really sore today. Like I mentioned in the last post, it's one of the less accessible hills around, but gives me some motivation to explore further out. The problem is that you need a bit of spare time or to wake up very early.

I can't even think of any other highlights I've done recently, I got a couple of runs that were about 40 contacts. I can definitely think of a general life low-light though. There was a major incident at work when I was on shift so we had lots of police around and one less guest staying the night...

In some more pleasant news I got a HD in one of my assignments for uni. The semester is practically over but I only got the first results today, so that was a mental boost to get a couple of good marks. Will ease the pressure a bit on the coming assignments. I would like to film something for the Joulu, not sure if I will get something in on time.

I am definitely glad I am not running it again this year though, it's quite a lot of work to get through. So good luck with this year's edition. I am also going to be away and not even at a computer for most of December, so I would not be an ideal candidate this year, we will be in Chile from the end of November until early January.

[boyle]

I played again today. I played in the garage because it looked like rain, but it didn't rain in the end so maybe I should have played outside after all. Did some shred 30 practice but I was still a bit sore from that bushwalk, so I wasn't going that well, maybe some around 150-160. Something to build on though. I was doing a lot of practice with different sets into osis. I don't really focus on a particular trick like that too often. pixie ss osis>dlo rpt was a fun little drill. I also did fairy ss pickup on both sides. My flip fairy is close to non existent so I was pleased with that.

I had a short kick on my dinner break as well, got a couple of 30 contact runs. Was hoping to get closer to 50 or above but I just didn't have the energy.

A band I really like are reforming (Life Love Regret) and playing a show in Newcastle, which is quite some way away. I am intrigued to go, I think it could be a lot of fun. Have to try and swap a shift at work first.