Thursday, May 31, 2007

To Do List

Here's the List
- Final preparation for Underworld (check courts, check regos, draft draw, find a whiteboard and clock, get rest of the prizes)
- Work out why yahoogroups isn't sending my final Underworld reminder after 36 hours
- Recruit for the Red Peppers Winter YUFL title bid
- Keep getting to Tuesday training
- Ensure Tony Ross is bringing an esky of joy for Rawhide tonight
- Get my Halibut party themes to the organising committee (currently, I like "Huge" as a party theme)
- Get my last issue of Australian Ultimate newsletter finished and out
- Find a new Australian Ultimate newsletter editor
- AFDA Board teleconference this Sunday night
- put the AFDA Annual Report together
- finish v2 of the 2008 Calendar paper
- draft AFDA Board Comms plan for the upcoming Board F2F
- Keep blogging

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Seven Things to Do After Halibut

Good news everybody!

The Brisbane Ultimate Blog is now your completely unofficial Halibut Blog (or Hali-blog), because I said so.

So lets get things around the wrong way to start of with.

Seven things for you to do after Halibut 2007:

1. Sleep.

2. Go cold turkey for a few days. Nothing heightens the memory-solidifying-process of a Halibut like going without disc/exercise/alcohol/Dusty/Peta/whatever you over-subscribed to.

3. Try to explain what you did all weekend to your slightly confused co-workers.

4. Write about Halibut. Its genuinely fascinating to me to read how the tournament was different for different people, so put it into email, blogs, message boards and the like.

5. Unpack all your stuff. If something's gone missing, email the TD. Do your laundry before it gets really festy.

6. Get back to work, you Ulti-bum.

7. Make your booking for Halibut 2008.

Sunday, May 27, 2007

There are two fella's grabbing out there, but only one's playing Ultimate

Well, not quite, but I wanted to play off the famous Bill Woodfull quote.

Check out this photo under discussion at rsd.



I guess its a way to request that someone respect your vertical space?

I'm sure you'll forgive a diversion from Brisbane Ultimate.

From http://www.eastultimate.org/Photos/2007/May07/7-States2/pages/070520121815.jpg.htm

Friday, May 25, 2007

On a More Sombre Note

News filtered through at BPL last night, and Mat Ryan was kind enough to post to the e-lists today.

Dear Queensland Ultimate Players,

Many
of you would be aware that Matt Boevink was involved in a serious car accident hile travelling in Egypt 2 weeks ago. Matt suffered damage to his T9 and T12 vertibrae and was evacuated to Frankfurt for surgery. Matt's girlfriend Christina was tragically killed in the accident.

Matt has had 2 rounds of surgery to correct the damage to his vertebrae, performed by specialists in Frankfurt. The surgery was very successful and Matt is expected to return home within a month. Thankfully Matt's family is with him in Germany to support him during this difficult time.

If any of Matt's friends want to send him any messages of support, please send them to me and I will forward them on.

On behalf of the Queensland and Australian Ultimate community, for whom Matt has worked tirelessly and selflessly, I offer our sincerest condolences to Christina's family and friends, and our best wishes to Matt for a speedy recovery.

Regards,
Mat Ryan.

I think we can only echo this. I understand the AFDA Board is also arranging flowers.

I'm sure Matt B knows our thoughts are with him and his grief, and we hope his recovery is swift.

Thursday, May 24, 2007

What's with the Photos?


Thanks for the comment, drynose (?). If you want to see the Shawn picture, check out the archives down the left there, or click on the loldisc label to see just the pictures.
The pictures are of course, fodder for the lazy blogger, but inspired by the lolcats over at i can has cheezburger (just google it).
So here's one from the Mukluk party.

Wednesday, May 23, 2007

You Can Always Learn Something New

So last night I went along to Men's Training at Toowong (which is running Tuesday nights for the next several weeks).

I went because Ms N. was going to Women's at the same time and place and I wanted a run around after a busy day at work. But I guess most importantly for me was the realisation that despite being 'old', there's still a heap of improvement I can get into my game and that an improved me will make a big difference the teams I play with.

And I can report that I really enjoyed it and got a lot of out it. There was some comedy value for the other 9 guys from discovering that I've never thrown a push-pass - but I started to learn how to throw one. I'm not terribly fit thanks to current workloads, but the exercise involved was about right - I went home tired but not wrecked. And it was good to be with people that I don't normally play with - Andres, Jangles, Liam, Chris, Mica and so forth.

A real find for me was having Pottsy lead the session and Buzz and others offering suggestions. I've never really played much with Pottsy, and I started to realise that the pointers you get from people during games are usually pretty limited. I think Dusty mentioned to me recently how when playing Mixed Nats last year with Pottsy in Crikey he got a lot of value over JP's ability to coach people, and I saw it last night. Where other leader-types explain and run drills or plays, Jonathan seems to be able to always offer an extra explanation of how an individual can do their bit of the drill, and to do that bit better.

Anyway, enough praise. But I'll be back next week.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Lucky 14

I'm now including the picture source information in the pictures.
14th post this month - not quite daily, but reasonably close?
Only two comments though - lift your game people (or maybe I need to advertise more) *insert smiley*

Monday, May 21, 2007

Spirit Scores - Winners, Losers and Everyone Else

There's been a bit of discussion over at http://groups.google.ca/group/aus.sport.frisbee/topics?lnk=rgh&hl=en about the 'spirit guide' that was given to everyone at Nationals.

The idea of the guide was to give people, if not an objective base, a common basis for giving spirit scores. The view goes that, as we don't play everyone at a tournament, we can't rely on our own subjective standard, so we need something that's reasonably common to ease out the vagarities (for example, of a team in one pool giving spirit scores in the 8-10/10 range, while a team in another pool gives scores in the 4-6/10 range).

Using a spirit guide is a good idea, but I hope people don't forget you don't really need it at smaller events where each team plays against a majority of other teams - I reckon for those events the old 'give the first team you play against 7, and then rate every other game against that' approach works best (particularly if you have a range of players in your team - you all have the same first game to rank against).

The discussion back at aus.ultimate was prompted by the release of the overall spirit scores for Nationals.

Its pleasing on the one hand that this causes some angst. Spirit scores remain a useful tool for reminding people that their spirit is on display, and for most of us it can always be improved upon (at least in terms of the teams we play with).

But on the other hand, I tend to think that the overall rankings only really tell you about the top few teams (who had to have kept everyone happy) and the bottom few teams (who, if the distance between them and the top teams is large, had to have made at least a few opponents unhappy.

Everything in between doesn't say much in my mind - spiritwise I don't think the difference between 4th and 12th is much (compared to on-field placings).

Friday, May 18, 2007

BPL Winter 2007 Kicks Off

Well, the Thursday Night / Men's / A-Grade League (aka Brisbane Premier League) kicked off last night . . . and I for one was pretty impressed.

Looking around the fields, there were *five* *full* teams. Many new faces. Many many players were there around 7pm (games start at 7.30). People were waving their $50 around, desperately trying to find someone to pay fees too. The team that came down to train actually seemed to train the whole time. There was even an esky of beer ready to go for after the game.

Maybe its the excitement of a new season, getting everyone keen. But certainly kudos has to be laid at the feet of those people who got together a month or so ago and planned out the re-energising of BPL. Good work guys - your fruit is there.

Thursday, May 17, 2007

Halibut 2007 Is On

Shawn and Peta have announced the immanent arrival of Halibut 2007.

Good stuff kids, say I.

Here's the details:
What: Halibut '07 - One of the Best Mixed Tourneys inthe Country!
When: Sat 28th & Sun 29th July, 2007
Where: Brisbane
Who: Mixed teams from around Australia
Format: 3/4 mixed
How much: approx $65 pp
What you get for your money: Lunches and BBQ, AwesomePlayer Pack, Legendary Party, Beautiful Queensland Weather, Women and Men.

REGISTER NOW at http://www.afda.com/rego/showcompetition.php?competitionid=312 so you don't miss out.


Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Saturday, May 12, 2007

Happy Juiz 4 Evrywun

click on picture for larger view
just learning of course
photo pinched from Roger
Ph

Thursday, May 10, 2007

The Dodgy Future of Australian Ultimate

Did you know the "Victorian" (note the inverted commas) "Juniors" (ditto) team had a website?

Check out http://www.headsofstateultimate.com/profiles.htm, particularly for a few familiar Queenslander not-Junior faces.

Friday, May 04, 2007

Bugger Blog

Did you know the Buggers have a Blog?

Click on http://moretonbaybuggers.blogspot.com/ to enjoy the wisdom of the Invisible Pogo Stick, and others.

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Fail

Photo taken from Roger's fab pics from Nationals 2007 - check out http://digitalarts.mindsocket.com.au/gallery2/v/events/nationals2007/ and spend a few $.
Enjoy