Canberra, Australia via SCL - Daniel Boyle

[boyle]

I made a new vlog.



That's number 22. I have a vague idea that I can make 50 in the year, which would include doing a one week challenge, though I'll leave that for later in the year. I was doing really well with having them up every week for quite a while (maybe the first 15 or so). Asmus mentioned something ages ago about consistency of content, which is so true, and which is so hard when you are following vlogs, because it's up to the individual and they are pretty much all over the shop - or you start following one you like and they never make anymore. Etc, etc, etc. That sort of thing is the same with all other social media too, but seems more pronounced with vlogs.

In footbag terms, this one has a few interesting things - only shred with jeans, though there's some good tricks in there. Also some more things like knee bumps, cloud kicks - I've been trying to bring more of that kind of stuff back into my game lately. Probably the best run of the video is just before the 4 minute mark.

It's coming up to the regular pay day tomorrow, which is great, as it always is. But this week or maybe next week will be very nice financially. Regular pay is all well and good, but then I am due to get my tax back sometime, I think that might not arrive until next week, but I believe on Friday I will get my first pay as a teacher, which is pretty awesome. Also in reality, it won't take long to accumulate more of a total income from the "teaching" column, up against the "writing" or "sports management" columns. Funnily enough "tourism", which I studied as a minor in that sports degree, is where about 99% of my income has come from over the past 10 or more years.

Also have to mention a little project I'm doing for work. A colleague and I are having a challenge to see who can first visit 30 free attractions in Canberra, which come from a list we have at the hostel. I believe this is created by the government tourism people, which is why there are spelling mistakes in the list...



So anyway, I have been taking this red dog around to a few of the places. Tomorrow I'm going to try and capture most of them. We have one week to get the 30, but some of the other days I don't have a lot of time to work with, so tomorrow is the key day. We are also planning to go to Sydney on Friday. So that will limit my opportunities over the weekend.

I am going to the game of Arsenal vs Western Sydney Wanderers on the weekend. I am a bit disappointed that Alexis Sanchez won't be coming out, but he was playing in the Confederations Cup last week in Russia, so he probably needs a holiday. Probably soon enough he won't play for Arsenal either. A good friend of mine is coming over from Western Australia, so looking forward to catching up. Probably if he wasn't coming over I wouldn't even bother to go to Sydney at all.

[boyle]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQCCG7Qkn8M&lc[/youtube]

For some reason somebody felt the need to put a comment on a very short video of mine from close to 10 years ago (maybe not that much, it's late 2009, so that's 7.5). Thinking about it, this would be around the time I was last playing in Quantums. Though I was still using them in 2010 at the Nationals, though I think by Worlds I had gone to Lavers by then. Some interesting comments on Facebook threads about Lavers and about using other shoes which I have some thoughts on but I haven't made any post as yet.

Played tonight for a short while. It was very cold out in the garage so I struggled to warm up. I had some runs over 20 contacts. Have been playing a bit, getting some videos as part of this challenge. Going to catch the train up to Sydney tomorrow. Looking forward to something hopefully a little warmer.

[boyle]

Had the weekend up in Sydney. I messaged Dyalan during the week and he was unfortunately out of action due to an injury sustained picking up his little bloke. Oh how I laughed, what an old man. The next day I did pretty much the exact same thing, although his was back related, mine was to the front. I was still able to kick though. I got what will hopefully be some cool videos with pleasant backgrounds. What was supposed to be a super cold weekend, was for a start, not -7 in the morning, and secondly beautiful and sunny.

I caught up with a good friend of mine, he had come over from Western Australia for the Arsenal matches. I went to the game against Western Sydney Wanderers. I just went along for the spectacle, not really a fan of either team, though I was disappointed old mate Alexis didn't come out for the tour. Which is probably the primary reason I bought my ticket about a year ago. It was cheap though, and entertaining, and I drank plenty of beers, which made it not so cheap.

It's currently 4am and I am at work. It's been quiet so far, but there's still a few more hours where something could go wrong.

This was the view out the window over the weekend.



This was my seat for the game. Since I bought it long before on presale I though it would be miles away up the back, but it was a pretty good view. Unfortunately all the goals happened at the other end. Big crowd though (83000), especially considering the game was a preseason friendly.

[Muffinman]

All these footbag vlogs make me want to try one, but I have nothing to talk about -____- 50 in a year would be rad! I imagine you'd learn a lot about your vlogging style by doing so many and so frequently

[boyle]

It's quite fun, I'm no expert video man, but I feel I'm improving at it as time goes on. I like to mix it up with footbag and other stuff that I'm doing in my life, rather than just footbag videos. Not sure if I will get to 50 in the year, I'm falling behind a bit in that target, but I may be able to get a few done in the next few weeks.

[boyle]

I played a little bit today. When I bought those new Quantums, I bought one that was already damaged, as they were quite cheap. Of course that didn't last too long, the heel is already unattached from the sole. We have a friend who is a cobbler. It could be worth asking him if he could do anything about that, though it may be beyond that as it is a manufacturing issue, which is one of the key reasons they had stopped doing the Quantums.

I played that little bit today, I was also kicking around with some other foot games, this rubber band ball from Nepal (Chungi) which I have mentioned before. I enjoy that because it plays in a very similar way to footbag. I was also playing with a shuttlecock thing from Vietnam. I obviously won't be required at the Worlds for that, I am not very good at keeping it in control.

I had a pretty wild night out the other night after going to the footy, where the Raiders lost, as has been their usual go this season. Think I might need to take it easy on the ales for quite some time. I had an old friend in town, we had a good day Friday, went to a bunch of skateparks. I got some footbag on video and a bit of skate stuff as well so hopefully this week I can pump out at least one new vlog, maybe even a couple. Let's see. I'd like to take things pretty easy, bit a bit too much craziness of late.

[boyle]

I had a pretty good session today, played for about an hour. A little disappointing that I won't be going to Worlds next week, but I'm not that fussed about it. I'm just getting to the point of being in an OK financial situation, and that would take me to a not so OK financial situation. Hopefully it can still work for next year, not sure where it will be.

I made a goal a few years back to make it to 5 Worlds by the time I'm 35. That's still possible if I go to next year and the year after. So hopefully I have a bit more money, which I'm tending to say possibly yes. Hopefully the comps are in nice places and hopefully other stars align for that to happen.

For this one I'd like to do some coverage of it on my Sport/Life site. Just a sort of daily update, collect posts from Facebook, Instagram whatever else and do what they do for other sports. We'll see how that goes.

I had another day of teaching yesterday. That was my first one this term and it went quite well. I did a short footbag demo at the end (only about 20 seconds, but I didn't drop at all and the kids loved it). I will be back at that school in a couple of weeks and might try and do a footbag lesson if I end up on the same class.



I made a new vlog. A good friend of mine came up to visit and we went and relived the old days at various skateparks. Probably for the best I didn't vlog the second day, which involved about a million beers...

Anyway back to today's session

- 63 contact guiltless runs
- 2 x 36 contact runs in a row
- (flip) ripped warrior>blurriest
- spinal tap (atomic ss torque)
- spinning ducking motion

I was just generally feeling pretty good and getting some consistent long runs, with quite a lot over 20. The big goal of the session was to get a 50+ run and I did that, so that was enough to bring the session to an end. I'd really like to get a 100+ and will try and work on that in the coming weeks.

[C-Fan]

Enjoyed the skating footage in the last vlog. Nice change of pace for sure. Good luck on the 100+ challenge. I've yet to do that myself...I always find I go too dense, and if I don't I feel like I'm sandbagging it and it gets boring. Let me know if you develop any tips to combat those issues!

[boyle]

Yes, I find both those things difficult. Because I think the only way you are going to have the stamina is to have some repeats of fairly easy tricks, but then you will get bored and try some harder tricks, and then probably drop it.

I have a couple of rules for myself when trying to get those higher numbers - I'm sure I have mentioned that before. One is that you can only do the same trick twice in a row (although I would consider all butterflies different for this rule (so you could do 2 x op, or 2 x ss, but you couldn't keep doing whichever one you were doing).

I just had a thought, and it's that every 10 or so tricks should include a certain trick that's out of the regular selection. I think it's a good achievement, even if you end up with a whole chunk of it being fairly easy tricks (eg bops, pixie set tricks, ducking/diving), it's still a big stamina thing.

Enjoyed making that video. As mentioned in the vlog, I just got a pair of skates fixed up so I'm hoping to get out and about more often.

[Muffinman]

Yeah, skate footage was nice, though wished you were pointing just slightly more upward for most of it -- pretty dizzying! My trick for longer contact runs is to throw in some drills and count the drills as single contacts rather than single tricks. Also, once I hit certain landmarks in the run I reset my counter to trick my mind. So once I hit, like, 50 or 60, I'll just start counting from 1 again. Or count each 10 or 20 contact chunk as a single trick -- then you just have to hit 10 of them!

[boyle]

I will keep that in mind for the skate footage. It's prettily lazily shot (just going around with my phone). Not bad tips on the resetting of the count. I haven't got to try your 20 x 20 idea - I might do that next session.

So Worlds is on, more or less. I'm starting to see a lot of footbag photos and people arriving in different places around North America before they are heading over to Portland. I saw an old colleague from work a few weeks ago, he said he was doing a trip from San Francisco up to Vancouver. I might have already mentioned that, but I was like, oh...I would have liked to be doing that at this time.

It's not to be though. I haven't been particularly disappointed about it, but that may change as my Facebook feed is flooded with people having good fun. I also didn't feel too jealous the last days because I was doing things like this.



Just went down to the beach for a couple of days with Nico. We had some good fun. He is getting better at riding his little bike so he can take that to the skateparks, which also means some more fun for me. I will try and make a vlog from that little adventure.

The one thing I am very disappointed about not being at Worlds for is these panels. That sounds like a great idea. Ages ago Matt Kemmer wrote to me and asked if I was going to Worlds. I said I wasn't sure, but it was already looking unlikely. Nothing came of that, then when he put up this information about the panels, he said he had wanted me to be on the promotion panel with Nick Polini and Taishi Ishida. That would have been great fun, and maybe could be of some benefit to other players. I have at least shared some thoughts on what they are going to talk about, so that is something, though it's not the same. Like I said in the Facebook post, I hope this idea carries through to future Worlds.

[boyle]

New vlog from the trip down the coast.



Bit of skate, some good quite long footbag strings and some very pleasant looking beaches. Also Nico riding on a bike.

So Erik has been talking about doing this 20 x 20 contact and thought, oh yeah that's a good idea. But my sessions attempting it have not yet been successful. Yesterday I was playing in the garage, it was wet and cold outside but I was struggling to get properly warmed up. Today I improved, as did the weather, but still only reached 15. Maybe next time. I got a couple of runs later in the piece which I went on with and got 30-40 kind of numbers, and there were plenty that were also just under 20, which are very frustrating.

It's a good challenge though, harder than I expected.

[boyle]

I had another day of teaching today. I have made it my aim to fit in some footbag with each new school that I go to. This school is the closest school to my house so it was good to go there and I am going back again tomorrow.

We were actually doing a hockey lesson but they were being a bit silly, arguing over pedantic rules, etc etc. So I got them to sit down and showed a few tricks, then everyone had a go. Some were able to do a reasonable amount of kicks, particularly for the first time.

I have seen bits and pieces from Worlds. It's a bit hard with the time difference to see things exactly when they are happening. Would have been nice to be there, maybe next year. If I can keep doing a bit more casual teaching, just stick with my regular salary and then get that top up every now and then, that could be a good system for the moment. I'm going back to that same school, same class tomorrow so I might do some kind of follow up.

[Tjuggles]

Here is my qualification routine that you were waiting for

[boyle]

Big finish as well, that's a great achievement!

[boyle]

I hope to go to Worlds next year. So I spent some time yesterday watching the promotions panel. Some thoughts.

- More people need to put themselves out there like Taishi. This is high risk which is why there's not so many people doing such a thing, but the benefits to the sport are great. It was only really mentioned at the end, but a big factor is money. Whether that is money to travel around, money to put on events, it needs to come from somewhere and you need to be professional to get that money. (Not necessarily making your living only from footbag, but that could be one income source).

- There was some talk about going to China. We should go to China. We should have a competition there. I think it would be fun. I have been thinking it would be quite fun to do some kind of Asian Cup style thing - have a few events over a couple of weekends where you accumulate points. Probably the best starting point would be in South East Asia because you've got quite a few spots that you can go to within a short time, it's quite cheap and it's central if people want to come in.

There are a couple of things I have been working on for a while but haven't made much progress on, and I want to combine that with a bit more educational things - I want to, by the end of the year, complete an online training course which is just basics of what you should do, with giving a presentation of footbag - and that would be an entry level "instructor", then following that it could go on where you are qualified to teach other teachers, etc etc. I think some sort of system like that could work quite well and give a bit more professionalism to that side of things. I also want to look at some different curriculum documents from different countries and set up some specific lesson plans that work to that, that can be presented directly to a class.

On routines, watching Pawel's on the stream, I though he did a blurry twirl in a key point of is routine, which I thought was pretty ballsy. Funnily enough, on looking back at the routine, no such thing ever happened, which is a huge part of why I thought he was the winner. Looking back, there's not so many really hard tricks in there, there are some, and it's consistent spinning, ducking and some butterflies, he's not dropping down so much to the easier tricks. On my first viewing I was thinking more like, that was hardcore, that was crazy, but watching again I'm not so blown away. I guess it's because he came onto the screen and I thought to myself, I don't even know who this guy is...

I went to a school today, I did a short amount of footbag. This is probably the worst class I have had. They were just really disrespectful, and I don't think it was just because I was a relief teacher, though that of course is part of it. I think they are just a group of very obnoxious young children. So I won't be in a hurry to go back to that school.

[Tjuggles]

I hope to go to Worlds next year. So I spent some time yesterday watching the promotions panel. Some thoughts.

- More people need to put themselves out there like Taishi. This is high risk which is why there's not so many people doing such a thing, but the benefits to the sport are great. It was only really mentioned at the end, but a big factor is money. Whether that is money to travel around, money to put on events, it needs to come from somewhere and you need to be professional to get that money. (Not necessarily making your living only from footbag, but that could be one income source).

I agree. But I think there are options that we could discuss, like that promotion team, for those who may not dedicate their entire career to footbag. For example, the IFPA could give money to the team to go promote, have a well-thought-out itinerary, and provide them with lots of merchandise that they would sell to make revenue. It could be like a two-week trip which seems like a great option. Surely the team could promote the sport and create revenue; Look at how much merchandise Bruce Li sold! If the team can go during a Chinlone/Takraw/similar sport tournament, the chances are higher that revenue would be earned and the sport would be promoted. I think there is a Chinlone tournament in Myanmar next year, for example, that I would be keen to go and compete, and also promote footbag!

- There was some talk about going to China. We should go to China. We should have a competition there. I think it would be fun. I have been thinking it would be quite fun to do some kind of Asian Cup style thing - have a few events over a couple of weekends where you accumulate points. Probably the best starting point would be in South East Asia because you've got quite a few spots that you can go to within a short time, it's quite cheap and it's central if people want to come in.

Yes. I mentioned Chinlone above!

There are a couple of things I have been working on for a while but haven't made much progress on, and I want to combine that with a bit more educational things - I want to, by the end of the year, complete an online training course which is just basics of what you should do, with giving a presentation of footbag - and that would be an entry level "instructor", then following that it could go on where you are qualified to teach other teachers, etc etc. I think some sort of system like that could work quite well and give a bit more professionalism to that side of things. I also want to look at some different curriculum documents from different countries and set up some specific lesson plans that work to that, that can be presented directly to a class.

I have an idea for an app that might help your idea. Maybe we can talk more once I get the engine coded.

On routines, watching Pawel's on the stream, I though he did a blurry twirl in a key point of is routine, which I thought was pretty ballsy. Funnily enough, on looking back at the routine, no such thing ever happened, which is a huge part of why I thought he was the winner. Looking back, there's not so many really hard tricks in there, there are some, and it's consistent spinning, ducking and some butterflies, he's not dropping down so much to the easier tricks. On my first viewing I was thinking more like, that was hardcore, that was crazy, but watching again I'm not so blown away. I guess it's because he came onto the screen and I thought to myself, I don't even know who this guy is...

I don't think the judges should score based on live performance only. Lots of things get missed and, like you said, you can incorrectly think someone hit something and score them for a trick they didn't even hit. It would be better if they scored maybe twice, once live and once watching the video later, then take the average of the two scores, or something like that.

About your teaching comment, I know the feeling. I have taught classes where no one was motivated and students were talking and doing their own thing. It sucks, but what a great feeling when the class is finished!

[boyle]

I will just answer the last comment first - it's especially good when the day ends and it's relief so you can just choose not to go back to that class again. I went to a different school today and it was such an easy day comparatively, so feeling good.

It's hard with routines because you want the scores to be announced reasonably soon afterwards, though I guess generally at Worlds there's Circle after. I know Justin Dale has mentioned they've been doing video review of the sick 1 and sick 3 and eliminating tricks that were not clean, which I think is good.

(I'm going backwards through the comments)

app idea sounds good. That would add an even better level of professionalism. I'll get some more content, you get some more engine and let's talk in a couple of months.

I love that idea of a team, but I don't think it's going to come from the IFPA. I'm not sure if it will work under the tax status, though I think it could. Whether the money could come through is the next question. I think the reality is it's more likely/faster to happen if somebody does it under their own steam, though then that risk goes to the individual, but it could pave the way for something. Of course it makes a lot of sense for a footbag company to take this upon themselves as their business is selling footbags. However I don't think any

Looks like the Asian Chinlone Championships happened earlier in the year (Feb), but the next edition will be in Myanmar. Sepak Takraw have a lot of tournaments, and are part of the South East Asian Games but that's on in a couple of weeks. Chinlone is also in it, it happens every two years. That sounds Interesting, something we could get involved in somehow. 2019 in Manila and 2021 in Hanoi.

I think I might work on building a calendar of events of things like that, could be a fun thing to maintain. That also sounds like something that I would be interested enough to keep up with, some of the little projects one can get started on and then lose focus and not be able to get back into it.

[boyle]

I should have started that project earlier because there was a Chinlone tournament here in Canberra 2 months ago, though they call it "caneball". I'm surprised I didn't see it on any news articles because I'm finding them now. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-11/c ... ps/8608208 - though from the looks it actually seems like a Takraw tournament.

[Muffinman]

Cool stuff.
Just randomly found a footbag app with demo videos of Tina in it in the App Store! Only in German, French, and Italian though