Canberra, Australia via SCL - Daniel Boyle

[boyle]

I haven't seen him in a long time. I don't think he really plays at all anymore. I haven't really contacted him directly, though I have posted a few things in the Australian footbag group, which I think he is in. Might try and get in touch next time I'm in Melbourne, though each time I've been there recently they've been super quick trips (1-2 days). Would be good to get him out for a kick.

I don't think I've seen him since we last had a nationals in Melbourne, which would be back in 2011. He had already not been playing much by that stage but was still too good for me. However, I guess if we look at 7 years of playing most days, vs probably not playing at all, well, he'd probably still win but I wouldn't be so sure.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpOk3E9lXbL

I hit this today. I'm not so sure if it's right, I think it's ok. The idea is spinning ducking spinning osis. I got diving spinning clipper on one side today, but if felt kind of awkward. Had diving spinning osis off the foot a bunch of times too. Had a few goes at pixie diving spinning but that was a bit too much for me. I think I could get that one though, not so often though.

I am enjoying this little surge in ideas for new tricks. The best part is I often think of something that over the years, I probably would have thought - I would never be able to do that, but I can go out and do it.

I've been thinking a lot that I'd like to go to Worlds next year. I think the next Worlds will be in Europe somewhere and I would really love to do another trip through Europe. I caught up with my cousin on the weekend in Sydney, he's now bought a farm in Norway, so it would be cool to see that. Quite a few of Nico's friends from preschool have actually moved overseas so maybe we could go and visit some of them around the way. Let's see about that.

Turns out this is a top post. Francisca studied in Stuttgart some years ago and would like to go and visit there.



This is from the Staatsgalerie website, I visited there when I was in Stuttgart for a day.

Giovanni Paolo Pannini
Roma Antica, um 1754/57

[Muffinman]

Hmm, I don't think the duck is there at all. I thought it was just double spinning osis until I saw your comments (so ignore what I said on Instagram...) Neat idea though. And pixie diving spinning sounds sweet! Would love to see some of that!

[boyle]

Looking at it now, it's way off, over to the side. I only really looked at it on the phone and I kind of lost sight of the bag when I was having a look at it. I was hoping for some tips, it's not something I've seen much off, though I imagine guys like Allan or someone like Dylan Fry could do this with ease. So now it's just a double spinning osis that's set way too high. Something to keep working on though. I didn't really feel I had it though (said as much in the comments).

I've made some progress on my little project I've been talking about in recent posts. The "encyclopedia". If I can get something like the equivalent of this site called Rugby League Project, well, that would be something. That site is amazing. You search for any player and it can tell you pretty much anything about them. For example, Mr D. Boyle from the Canberra Raiders - https://www.rugbyleagueproject.org/play ... mmary.html

Something I don't know too much about - you guys might be able to help me. I'm sure there are some, but they don't really have a "name" to them. What are some tricks that some of the top current-ish players have invented? Like Vasek, Jim, Nick Landes (I image some dragon based stuff maybe), Lon, Juho, Anssi blah blah blah. Maybe these guys have got so good at tricks that were already done, but I'm sure they've all got a few tricks where they were the first one to do it.

It would be pretty amazing to have some kind of full competition history (footbag.org only shows "official" competitions, and even then it probably doesn't have them all). There's a lot of comps that are not on footbag.org (especially jams and things), and even those that are don't always have results.

Anyway, I'm starting with player profiles and I think I will have them ready to go in the next few weeks for maybe like 20 or so, then I will slow drip feed them along with some scheduled posts, then maybe work on the "How to Play Footbag".

I'm giving away all the secrets here, but this is my plan (it's only about 5 people reading this anyway, so it's a little bonus for your reading and you can pull me up and say hey you said this was going to happen, but there's nothing there.) That's also a reasonably likely endpoint, but I don't think so at this stage.

So the different little projects I am thinking about are the following.

How to Play Footbag (basically a review of all different tutorial things online, then I'll see if there's anything I can do to fill the gaps)
How to Teach Footbag (My idea is to put some education theory into footbag related things. Reasonably basic stuff, but it's a lot of things you probably wouldn't think of. Also look at different lesson plans, etc, things that are already online)
Footbag Player Profile - As discussed. A little profile for footbag players, starting with the "Top" players.
Great Footbag Events - I might change the name, but the idea is a little profile of some of the famous ongoing events. Ones like Funtastiks, Todexon.
Classic Footbag Videos - This will not only be "released" videos - I found a good list of them a while back, though it's quite old (maybe 2004). A lot of those old VHS videos are now available online, but also look at different videos online. Maybe put in some collections where there's been a series - Mads Hole from a couple of different Worlds is an example at the top of mind.

I want to get it started and having a working process in order, then once that's going if other people want to help, I will let you know. Oh yeah, the other one is the footbag tricks. I've got a lot of work to do!

[Muffinman]

Stoked to see how this project comes together.
It would be smart to put it together in some kind of system that could later be integrated into a bigger site, or vice versa. I guess the discussion for that "new .org" kinda fizzled out immediately. Unless it picked up somewhere else without me?

[C-Fan]

What are some tricks that some of the top current-ish players have invented? Like Vasek, Jim, Nick Landes (I image some dragon based stuff maybe), Lon, Juho, Anssi blah blah blah. Maybe these guys have got so good at tricks that were already done, but I'm sure they've all got a few tricks where they were the first one to do it.

The problem/challenge here is that most of these players started late enough, that for them to have invented anything it'd have to be something super duper hard and therefore rare. While a super hard trick is cool, it's also not very common. Take triple swirl for example. Super cool trick invented by Vasek, but how often have you seen it? I can only remember seeing 3 instances of it on video. And certainly nobody does it regularly. So would the intent of this project be to show a super rare trick that was invented by a top player, but isn't used or seen very often? I'd think it'd be more interesting to get the backstory on tricks that are more commonly seen and used. Of course, that means 80% of them are Rippin/Peter/Kenny tricks.

Also here's a spinning ducking spin trick:


I know I've done some, but can't find any on my YT account easily. Maybe I'll try for some next session I film.

[C-Fan]

I'm giving away all the secrets here, but this is my plan

It was uncanny when a couple weeks ago you posted on Facebook about a very similar idea/project to one I had just floated by Kemmer/Morris. Since then, I keep thinking about the George Bernard Shaw quote:

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, each of us will have two ideas.

[boyle]

That was quite amazing, that coincidence of ideas. The idea of the tricks is for each "player profile" section, have a little bit about any tricks they have invented. The tricks section will be more along the lines of what you were saying in the post, though I guess it could continue to be expanded.

My idea is to do this project, if it works well and there's some new look to the footbag.org site, it can go there. Those are two quite big ifs though.

[boyle]

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpY8dHRFei5/
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpa2h-jlOn0

A couple of short videos from the last day or so. A few not attempts at some different tricks. One comment was that they liked my variety. That was actually a nice comment, I don't think my variety is that good, but it's something I've been working on of late. I have it in my mind that I'd like to hit some "big tricks" for my Joulu video. The idea of a beast is part of that mindset, though I haven't done one as yet, but I think there's quite a few that I could come close to.

I definitely won't be relying on that though. Hopefully I can get some cool tricks on video though and some nice backgrounds.

[janis]

I met up with Dan earlier this year, he hasn't been playing for quite a few years now. I play a bit these days but mostly for fitness rather than trying to push hard. I'd be keen to catch up sometime if you are in Melbourne. Coincidentally I'm also thinking that TATW might be doable soon too, it's been years since I hit that, the big change being that good physiotherapy has sorted out my knee issues. I think the biggest thing about it is that the control on the first dex is everything, it's really easy to lose control on that first dex which makes the trick require an extreme amount of speed. Essentially you want to not have too much of a rapid momentum shift with that first dex into the second one. It needs to be controlled enough to flow into the second dex without making the circle of dex too wide.

Regarding this encyclopedia idea, this is something I was working on a few years ago. I wrote some code to power a platform here: https://github.com/shuttle1987/footbag-db. I no longer host this site because it just didn't gain traction, it's all open sourced so feel free to rehost it if you want. You may also get some ideas out of it?

There's 3 aspects to how I'd go about it differently now:

1. I'd not invest so much time into a platform until I saw people actually putting some effort into using it. Plenty of people said they would but nobody actually did when the time came to use it. Because I was also doing this to learn a new technology it wasn't wasted time for me, but if that wasn't the case I would imagine that it would have felt like a massive waste of time.
2. A lot has change in regards to content management systems (CMS) in the last decade, a lot more existing tools can be reused/reworked for a project like this. I'd highly recommend using some sort of pre-existing CMS if you can and just customizing if needed.
3. I wouldn't manage my own deployment/infrastructure, I'd just pay a little extra to go with some sort of service like Amazon web services or maybe even a CMS as a service offering to power the data.This is because of two changes in circumstances; those services are much cheaper now and secondly as an older footbagger who runs an IT consulting business I just don't have the free time to spend on anything time-consuming like that. The time vs money tradeoff is definitely different to me now.

I think getting community engagement is the biggest factor in making this work. The technical side of it really isn't too difficult (at least relative to the other work I do) but the value of that community knowledge is not something that can be bought, the community really needs to be in on it.

There's a lot you can do with data like this, see https://sensecorp.com/the-data-science-pyramid/ for a good explanation of why this enables so much.

[boyle]

Are you back in Aus? I didn't know that, I was in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, but it was a very short trip. It probably won't be until next year, but I'd really like to spend some more time next time I go to Melbourne. I've been every year since coming back from Chile, but always just for a couple of days. It would be good to spend a week or so down there. My cousin lives on the Great Ocean Road, so it would be great (har har...) to spend some time with them too.

In reality with the encyclopedia idea, I want to do most of it myself. Obviously that's more work, but then I can just plug away at it. I have been trying to prepare some example content each time I am at work, so once I like how that comes out I might show a bit more. I will have a look at your work see if I can come up with any way to reuse it in my own.

Let me know if you're in Canberra or even Sydney, it would be great to catch up for a kick. Do you see any of the other Melbourne guys these days? I get Copey and Dyalan out for a kick a few times each year and see Ian from time to time but he doesn't kick anymore.

Glad to hear you are improved from the injuries, I remember that was giving you a lot of trouble. Glad to hear you are playing as well, that's exciting. There's a guy in Melbourne called Albert Hua from Vietnam - he's mainly into freestyle football but he's into footbag too. He's starting to do whirls, ripwalks etc. You should try to play with him some time.

[Ryan_Morris]

The idea of a beast is part of that mindset, though I haven't done one as yet, but I think there's quite a few that I could come close to.

Do it

[boyle]

I went out to the river today. The weather has been heating up a lot. I got a few footbag runs in.

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

I will probably use quite a few in my calendar video actually. I haven't looked at some much of the footage, but I had some good runs and some decent higher level individual tricks. I was playing with a new pair of shorts, but I'm not so happy with how they move, particularly for tricks like motion. You can only figure out so much from trying them on in a shop. I did quite a few tricks today though, so happy enough with that. A few I don't hit very often too.

The water temperature was just perfect today. I was expecting it to be a bit fresh still, but it was over 30 degrees outside, so splashing into the water was a good idea. I was really expecting a bit of a shock when going in the water, but it was just perfect. Might have to spend a bit more time doing that. Thursdays are particularly good as both kids are in daycare, so if I'm working the afternoon I get a bit of free time.

We may buy a house this weekend. We are going to the auction and have looked at the contract etc. We've been looking for a while but haven't put in any offers as yet. Hopefully this one is the one, then we don't have to do any more searching.

I saw a cool event coming up. It's in December. Asia-Pacific Freestyle Football Championships in Ho Chi Minh City. Unfortunately I don't think it will work out for me to go, but it would be super fun if I could make it. I think a couple of the guys from Melbourne are heading over. It would be fun to kick with Khoa again.

[boyle]

So that area nearby where I went yesterday has a big bushfire burning on it. It was very hot out there yesterday, but didn't really seem like anything like that coming. It's a bit further on from where I was, but threatening to come into the suburbs. It's exactly the same area where there were some terrible fires back in 2003, so people are quite concerned about it.

I mentioned I went in that "Latino Big One" contest. Not that I'm particularly Latino! However, I did come second, so that was pretty sweet. Pixie diving motion for the trick. Pretty happy with that result. It's quite good actually, because I believe I hit it one day when I was taking Jasmine out for a walk. She'd had enough of a snooze that I could have a short session at the tennis courts. Or it might have actually been a different day where I was there by myself, they all start to blend together.

I've been working a lot on inspinning. Not with a great deal of success. I have hit inspinning butterfly, inspinning osis, but I'm really struggling when it comes to inspin, then toe tricks. You see videos of Allan and he just does all that kind of stuff with ease, though I think he is the exception and it's just not particularly easy.

I'm making some slow progress on some of these ideas I've been mentioning. Just plugging away at some of the information for these player profile things. I haven't looked too much at the tricks, but that might be the next thing to start organising.

[Tjuggles]

I hope things calm down with that bush fire!

Inspinning is a fun concept, but I agree it is difficult!

I saw the Latino Big 1 vid, and was surprised you were in it. I think you got second place, yeah?

How are you structuring your player information?

[boyle]

Bushfire is looking to be much improved. It's still pretty intense I think but it's coming under control and hasn't come any closer to the suburbs, so that's very positive.

I was living in Chile for a few years so I am in touch with quite a few of the guys, especially in Colombia. They have a Whatsapp group but I can't stand those kind of groups that just keep popping things up on my phone - but they invited me to be in the competition, and I came second. (Funnily enough I also came second when I went to South American Champs in 2012).

Here's the video for those wondering what I am talking about.



That guy Sebastian Ceballos who won has improved so much since then. He's very into the circus and juggling stuff (Peter Irish style) and he's doing really well with that too. Impressive to see. Quite a few of those guys have made some big improvements recently. Interesting that he also did a pixie diving trick, I don't think it would be too common to have that as the main tricks in a Sick 1 comp (maybe stepping ducking stuff, ps whirl based tricks).

In terms of these player profiles, I've been using this Google Form to start filling in the information.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link

I've realised some of the fields I don't really have enough information for, so that might not come in when I'm going to do the actual posts.

Some time back I made another document giving a certain rating to placings in Worlds finals, particularly for Routines, and I've taken the order of that for who to start with in terms of the player profiles. That was only going back to about 2006 though (I think I did it in 2016, so it went back 10 years). I've updated it and gone back to 1999 now and it's made a big change in terms of the listings.

I actually found out an interesting fact in terms of numbers in the finals, which of course causes slight issues with my scoring system. In the very early 2000s, it was 10 people making it through to the finals. In 1999, there were 8 people in the final, then everyone in the next lot of 8 was =9th. In my scoring system, there are points for those who come in 9th place, which is usually 4 people in the most recent times, but those ones make a bit of a change there. It's not anything official, so it doesn't really matter. There's also the 2010 event where there were 9 people due to a tie. (Moreso because they wouldn't put out Vasek or Damian when Nick had clearly won the pool). So in that one each of the finalists got 1 extra point on their score. Which might not be fair, but oh well.

You can have a look at that doc here - https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing


Vasek is just so far ahead it's not even funny, though there have been some big movers with the addition of some of the older tournaments (Ryan Mulroney of course, Scott Davidson has jumped right up too).

The top 10 in this system is

Vasek (by almost double the next score)
Honza
Ryan Mulroney
Milan
Damian G
Scott Davidson
Evan
Jindra
Taishi
Patrik Cerny

If I keep going back, Peter Irish and Kenny will be rising up the rankings, I don't think either will catch Vasek though. Of course you can't compare the different eras, but it's just showing a running total, and rewards consistent strong performances. Vasek hasn't won recently, but he's still top on this table over the last 5 years.

Here's a little clip of me from today to round out this long and rambling post.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpsfJrjl9qn/

[Muffinman]

Nice. I felt that your pixie diving motion should've won, personally. I actually liked the alpine pixie paradon, but that last dex wasn't there, sadly.

I took a brief look at the player results spreadsheet and Eric Wulff should be with a "C", not a "K".
This is neat data though. Good job working on this! I look forward to the other stuff you've got going on!

Also, inspinning is haard! I find it way harder than double spinning. Helps a lot to set from an osis I find, though.

[C-Fan]

1. Congrats on the house purchase! Owning a house is a lot of work and a lot of headaches, but generally beats paying rent you'll never see again to people who aren't helping you build equity.
2. Congrats on 2nd place in the big latino contest. That's a cool 7 for sure.
3. I feel you on the difficulty of assembling consistent results for Worlds. I remember when they changed finals from 10 people to 8 people, and being frustrated that it suddenly made my goal of making Finals that much harder. In general though I think that was the right move, since it's almost impossible to ask judges to rank 10 players accurately. Even 8 is hard, but 10 is pretty much impossible. It also results in a better show for the audience.
4. Is there a way to see the back end of the google doc with the player profiles? I can help fill some out for you, but I don't want to replicate efforts or make things confusing by creating duplicate profiles.

[boyle]

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... sp=sf_link

This is the back end of the Google doc, you go to the answers form to bring up the answers. I've been working more or less on the order in that other spreadsheet, although the order changed a bit once I went back in time a bit further.

Good pickup on the Eric, that's actually one of the most recent additions. Easy mistake to make I guess, there's quite a lot of variety between Eric/k, though I think Eric is more common.

I don't know if I'll go back any further on the rankings. This is 20 years worth of Worlds, so you could say that's a "modern day" round, and you might actually limit that to say, 10 years. I put a column there just the other day to calculate the most recent 5 years. Also, I could only find the top 3 for 1998 and that's put me off. I will have to update the circle contest, I realised that I had given one to Honza that Milan had actually won.

Yeah, I think 8 is a good number for finals (depending on how many you have in the total pool). Some years if there's not even 16 in the comp, it's not so hard to make it to the 8, but it's best to have 8 if you're looking at comparing year on year.

I don't mind the results, although I had the same thought on the paradon. I don't think I could hit that trick that Sebastian did, though that's not how you judge those type of competitions, but if I get beaten with a trick I struggle with, it's not something I mind. The next one is going to be a Sick 3 so I'll have to hit something for that.

I've done a couple of inspinning tricks now, that's something I've been working on a lot. Getting dizzy! They are not consistent in any way though. I'll have to look at setting from osis, I hadn't really thought about that. Today I hit ingyro mirage. I've also been quite close to inspinning mirage as well. I also had it bounce of my foot a whole lot of times. It's hard to come from the spin and get in a good position to cushion the back, rather than just letting it bounce off.

And as Ken mentioned, we bought a house. Seems to be good value and a good price. I've been happy to rent in our current area because it's a very nice area and we can't afford to buy. We'll be moving a bit further out, but it's still reasonably central. I think we got quite a good price on it. It was the first time we got to the level of making an offer/going to auction and I'm super glad we don't have to go to any more inspections etc.

I was quite against buying a house but I have come around. Also, we didn't go to our highest level of what we could borrow, so potentially there will be some money available for a trip to wherever Worlds is going to be. I hope so.

[Muffinman]

Eric with a "C" is definitely the common spelling. Mine is the Scandinavian spelling, since I'm part Norwegian (named after Erik the Red!)

Owning a house sounds so nice!
Renting is actually the more cost-efficient option in Toronto, since owning even a semi-detached (half of a house, essentially) averages between 1-2 million... I heard from somewhere that we've actually overtaken New York in terms of cost of living, though I'm not sure how accurate that is. But it would be so amazing to have a basement to shred in year-round... Congrats!

[boyle]

No basement, but it does have a garage. We didn't actually get to look inside the garage, but it looks about the same size as the one we have now. It also has a long driveway which is reasonably flat so that should be good for playing, though maybe not in the depths of winter in the middle of the night. No basement as it's all single level, but that's ok.

One other thing is that it's a bit closer to where Copey lives so hopefully we can line up some kicks over summer. He has a pool too, so that's good after kicking. Haven't been to see him in a while.

The prices here aren't too bad - in Sydney they are pushing those kind of levels, though there's been a bit of a drop in that market. There have been a lot of headlines saying that the prices across Australia are going to drop, but that doesn't seem to be happening in Canberra at all.

So I had alpine food processor come of my foot three times today. https://www.instagram.com/p/Bp8EYLBF8Kd/ One even brushed my hand, but I wasn't ready for the hand catch. I have been playing basketball quite a bit lately. I am really bad at it, but I've been enjoying going to a park with a local hoop. Today on our walk I went to another park in the next suburb with higher hoops. So I missed even more shots!