Blogosphere 2005

Everyone's blogging these days. Except when they're inactive.

The Big 6: me, Idris, Alex, Luke, Zaz, Atlanta guys. Luke's is purely personal, but he's often funny, in Luke's way, and he's a presence, so he's in. The others are of general interest, although Alex and I tend to write about our team a lot.

Others to look at: Tim Murray, Hartti Suomela, Jim Biancolo, Marshall Goff, George Cooke (who has made it into ultimatetalk! Attaboy, George.) . Tim has been writing about himself, but the others are trying to do something of more general interest.

I think we'd all agree that we'd like to get more comments, and that people shouldn't be afraid of hogging bandwidth or taking over someone else's blog. They are there to entertain and to provoke discussion, as long as it's not NUA/Z-Boys annoying blather.

Mine is the most read, although Alex would of course argue that it's not because of content but because of name. He also forgot to mention that more people link to me. I often find other blogs by checking out my Referrals on sitemeter.com and see a new one. Also I egosurf once in a while at technorati, but that doesn't seem too comprehensive for the little blogs.

Idris was the first of us to go online, and is often the most refreshingly honest because he's not playing this year and doesn't seem to care if he burns his bridges.

Alex is Jim lite. But please pay him a visit to get his hits up. He has had some interesting retrospectives on Worlds and Tuneup. I think it'd be a good idea to do some more retrospectives, maybe on other tournaments, or on matchups against particular opponents. It seems that most of our recent games against Sub-Zero have been one-pointers, so it'd be fun to look at the ones we won.

Luke is all over the place, talking about skiing or eating pancakes or losing his wallet in a dumpster ten years ago.

Zaz is putting out the best material now, but he'll slow down. I bet he wishes that some of this would have been put in the book, but you don't always think of everything the first time around. Definitely put this on your reading list if you want to improve your team.

Atlanta guys (actual title is "Coaching Techniques") talk about strategy and coaching, with some things like "Chain keeps losing in the finals" and interviews with World Games players.

We all comment on each other's site, too.

Tim Murray, most famous in ultimate for being the victim of my first Callahan, had an interesting inside look at Sub-Zero's very DoG-like victory at this year's Tuneup.

Hartti used to play with the Finnish national team before moving to the Bay Area for grad school 5-6 years ago. He is trying to come up with some improved high-tech stat-keeping and stat-analysis systems.

Jim Biancolo is a Masters player in New England. His blog is one about fitness, with some links and comments on modern research on fitness for "combat sports."

Marshall Goff mixes general commentary with commentary on me and an occasional photography post. Some of his pictures are in the book by Zaz and me (he said one of his friends asked, "Hey, how's your book doing?"). But he talks about Mixed, so.

George Cooke is a late entry. Look for some more insights into the inner backroom dealings of the UPA, since George is the National Mixed Director and was a chair of the World Games Selection Committee, plus he's a helluva nice guy.

PS. Track 4, Jim 3. Made it through this week's workout, running hard to the end despite too high of a heart rate and no one around to call me names for not finishing.

PPS. Started the new job, at the same place that my wife works. We talked about work over dinner tonight. If she starts golfing, we will have NO separation in our lives.