Entries Tagged 'product warnings' ↓

Starts creepy. Gets worse.

Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.

Name this bad film.

Print Friendly

Someday we’ll have a website where for just a few dollars you can watch LIVE World Gymnastics Championships online. Won’t that be wonderful.

In the meantime, we have Universal Sports Gymnastics.

Here’s my experience today:

I don’t have the right version of Microsoft Silverlight. They don’t like my browser. They hate Apple too, I’m guessing.

In the end, something goes wrong.

The streaming service worked for many today. But when bloggers like Tsuk the Pain and Andrew Thornton can’t watch, that’s bad.

Print Friendly

I carefully refused to even mention the LIVE online video coverage of the World Gymnastics Championships provided by Universal for $14.99 or less.

When it works, it’s great. But too many paying customers have an experience like Full In Full Out.

Print Friendly

Our post on club cyber bullying policy resulted in some heated comments.

Some coaches were definitive:

coaches should not be facebook friends with their athletes

JO feels we need some “professional distance” between coach and athlete.

A few coaches felt they had enough mastery of the ever changing Facebook privacy settings to friend gymnasts, but only let kids see very limited information. (Not other peoples photos tagged with the coaches name, for example.)

Just Another Opinion took the gutsy stance that coaches can benefit from friending their gymnasts. It’s a new mode of communication we need embrace.

One coach in my region communicates with his team via Facebook. That’s where his athletes live. He uses Facebook very efficiently. Communication has never been better as his athletes “share” some of his posts with family and friends.

I’ve got mixed feelings, myself. On the one hand I’m savvy enough with the internet (I hope) to avoid major gaffs, yet every week I read about male coaches going to jail, often partly due to inappropriate text or Facebook messages sent to minors. It’s easy for an innocent joke to be misinterpreted.

So where are we in 2010?

My advice to coaches is that they set up a private social network for their club, coaches, kids and parents on a site like flipbook.

Anyone who chooses can opt in.

Some of the advantages of Facebook, with a much lower risk.

… This is assuming that flipbook truly has foolproof privacy, of course.

What do YOU think?

_____ UPDATE from Anne:

Gymnastike has this. It’s called groups: http://www.gymnastike.org/groups

Coaches can make a group for their club team, then invite members to join. You can easily send messages to members and/or fans, parents, etc. You can also: update a team calendar, upload and share team forms and documents, and upload and organize videos of your team…. and its free!

Heres an example -http://www.gymnastike.org/group/5263-Team-Gymnastike

Print Friendly

Word from Commonwealth Games in Delhi is that all is well.

Canadian coach Elizabeth Brubaker says “Things are awesome here!!”.

Despite the furor (“athlete housing not fit for humans”) in advance of the Games, so far as I can determine, only 1 gymnast dropped out of the meet voluntarily – Adam Cox of Scotland.

That’s him on the right, winning a Bronze medal on H Bar at the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. A National hero.

Why would Adam give up a couple of weeks before his 3rd Commonwealth Games?

… coach Tan Jia En was made redundant by Scottish Gymnastics last week from his post as national coach and Adam Cox, a gold medal hope in the high bar, announced he would not be heading to India in protest….

… (Adam) said, “I wasn’t prepared to go without him. Training had been going really well and there was a chance I was going to medal. To me it was out of the blue and I’m really upset not to be going. It had to be Tan, at this stage I would not feel safe going to the Games without him.”

The 23-year-old, who has trained with Tan for 13 years, added, “That is me officially retired now. It is a shame this is how I’m going to finish but I don’t really want anything else to do with the association.”…

Gymnast quits in protest as coach is axed

Herald Scotland:

… Anglo Scots Daniel Keating (a world and European medallist) and Daniel Purves, members of the Great Britain team at the world championships, which has caused them to be unavailable for Delhi, are reported to have said they have no interest in competing for Scotland in future, if Tan is out of the frame….

Scottish Gymnastics axe top coach on eve of Delhi Games

… could Scottish Gymnastics have bolloxed this any worse?

… Scottish Gymnastics chief executive Catriona O’Shea then asked him to continue as coach to the Delhi team, offering him £250 per day. …

Coach Tan declined the money. Devastated.

… The other male gymnast in the Scottish squad, Ryan McKee, will now head to the games with his club coach, Marius Gherman….

press release response from Scottish Gymnastics
(Sept. 22nd)

If you’ve an opinion, don’t leave a comment … Email info@scottishgymnastics.org, instead. Tell Catriona O’Shea what you think of the decision.

I did.

Print Friendly

MissEducated is looking to produce a Social Networking and Cyber Bullying policy for her club.

In particular, she’s looking for a disciplne procedure if a complaint of cyber bullying is received.

Aside from obvious guidelines, what should the relationship be between adults (e.g. club coaches) and gymnasts on social networking sites like Facebook?

The big question: Should coaches friend gymnasts on Facebook?

… If so, should coaches friend both child and parent, when possible?

When I took over a club as Head Coach 2yrs-ago, the very first thing I did was to line-up the girls … and give them a speech about Facebook. It is a real issue. I’m surprised there have not been more Facebook horror stories.

I’m not so much worried about death threats, as this:

Please leave a comment if you know of any set of club guidelines available.

related – Mashable – Harvard Study Finds Teens Online Lack Ethics

Print Friendly

There are at least 3 good choices today of blogging platforms, … in my opinion.

Gymnastics Coaching is a WordPress.org site, hacked once or twice each year I’ve had it on BlueHost. I love it … aside from the terrible security. My host blames me every time something goes wrong.

I’m tempted to move the site to new-on-the-block, Squarespace.

What’s the difference?

WordPress is cheaper. Squarespace more secure.

Price

Squarespace – Squarespace services include both web design tools and hosting. Basic packages start at $8/month. To host your site on your own domain, accounts start at $14/month. Coupon codes can save you around 10%. Squarespace provides an excellent value for their slightly higher monthly price tag.

WordPress – Free-ish – WordPress is completely 100% GPL open source however you still need to pay for hosting and domain name. The price ranges from ~$3/mo (GoDaddy) to $100/mo (Rackspace)

The article is referring to WordPress.org sites, not WordPress.com (free). … Confusing, I know.

Best would be if WordPress.com changed their name. (WordPress.com is the third good option: secure, but no ads allowed.)

Security

Squarespace – Being a completely hosted system means Squarespace is not prone to the same security holes as open source systems like WordPress and Drupal. I’ll never have to pay someone to cleanse my hacked blog because I bought my domain on GoDaddy. Daddy. My site is just plain safe.

WordPress – You need to maintain your own updates and be careful with plugins. Also – a good host helps. Remember in hosting – you get what you pay for. We prefer to host at Rackspace – but you can still have problems if you don’t keep your site updated to the latest version and security fixes. …

big picture web – Squarespace Vs. WordPress: Both Sides of the Story

My advice for a new blogger?

Go to WordPress.com … unless you want to host ads. … In that case, go to Squarespace.com.

Avoid the much advertised and promoted WordPress.org sites like mine. Hosts simply cannot keep up with the hackers.

Note: some are unhappy with Squarespace.

Leave a comment if you’ve any advice on this topic, especially for those considering starting their own blogs.

Print Friendly

Sho Nakamori had a ring grip break after only 2-days use.

He was lying on the ground after peeling off on a dismount before he discovered what had happened.

The manufacturer is Reisport, as good as any of the competitors, I’d say.

Over the years I’ve seen many Reisport grips break in only a matter of days, but never Ring grips. Horizontal Bar grips normally get stretched and break sooner.

Solution?

Dave Bucci in a comment on Full Twist said this:

NOT unheard of. Our friend, Mario West, had the exact same thing happen at the Winter Cup a year and a half ago — High Bar was his first event, and it happened during warmups. It didn’t injure him badly, but it affected the whole meet.

Since then, he’s been going to a gentleman in Gaithersburg, MD named “Tien” (not sure of the spelling), who handcrafts his grips. Apparently, the Japanese and Chinese national teams both buy from this craftsman as well, and Mario seems to have more confidence in his grips.

Leave a comment if you have any advice on where to get gymnastics grips more durable than Reisport.

Print Friendly

Define provenance …

… Can you do it?

I couldn’t.

provenance
noun
the place of origin or earliest known history of something

On the internet that means trying to “source” where a video, photo or idea started. At minimum, you should link to where you first saw it. Best practice is to link to the original and where you happened to see it first.

On this blog I’d say I’m about 90% successful in crediting a source. Not perfect. But not bad.

Tara Sickmeier of International Gymnast Hot Headlines is the worst gymnastics blogger I know. If she ever credits where she finds a story it’s only by accident of linking to the originator. If she sees something on Gymnastics Coaching, there’s never a (via Gymnastics Coaching) link on IG.

I’ve several times sent messages to Tara on her unethical blogging behaviour. But have yet to get a response.

Forward a link to this post if you know her personally.

(via Buzz Machine – New rule: Cover what you do best. Link to the rest)

Print Friendly

Girls Bars no longer break. Why can’t equipment companies invent a Ring that cannot be broken?

Inside Gymnastics has the sad details on exactly what went down after Illinois’ Tyler Williamson broke one of the rings during the Team Championships last night:

… “I’ve been doing NCAA meets for over 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Williams concluded. “Ultimately, I don’t want to take anything away from the winning team, yet I know we might have had a shot without that incident. Michigan was great two days in a row and maintained that momentum, even in the midst of all that. My hat is off to them for that.” …

Photo by Jessica Frankl

In the end, 6 gymnasts “peeled” off during the competition. All 6 were offered a chance to repeat their Rings routines, taking the new score (better or worse).

Tyler Williamson insisted on his redo. But it was MIDNIGHT before he got to start. Yeesh.

…
“That was one of the top 10 strangest things I’ve ever seen,” Olympic gold medalist Bart Conner, who was calling the meet for ESPN, told Inside. …

read Inside Gymnastics – ONE RING TO RULE THEM ALL

Despite the disaster, Michigan truly did have the magic. Congratulations to the NCAA Champions.

Print Friendly

I’m suspicious.

Magnesium carbonate is about as an inert substance as any.

Why add “five key essential oils and an additional natural drying agent“?

… Designed to inhibit bacteria, fungi and virus growth in the chalk and on weight lifting and gymnastics bars, PrimoChalk™ is the superior choice for health and safety conscious coaches and athletes. …

Click through if you want to check PrimoChalk™ for yourself.

And leave a comment if you’ve tried PrimoChalk™.

(via GymChat)

Print Friendly

I thought fast food outlets were tripping over themselves pretending to be “healthy”.

Otherwise Jamie Oliver will soon be featuring their worst products as bad examples. (I’m looking at you McNuggets.)

Yet the Colonel will soon sell you bacon and cheese sandwiched between two pieces of fried chicken. About 500 calories, 30g of fat and 1400mg of sodium … far fewer calories than I would have guessed, actually.

details on Hard Body

(via Consumerist)

Print Friendly

International Gymnast Magazine April 2010 edition has Canadian Kristina Vaculik on the cover.

Congrats to Kristina and her coach Elena Davydova. Getting on that cover is a minor kind of gymnastics immortality.

My first reaction is to be cheered that International Gymnast is covering international gymnasts.

Gymtruthteller posted quite a compelling conspiracy theory about that cover, however:

… has decided to further its own agenda by putting the winner of the Nadia Comaneci International Invitational on the cover instead of either winner of the of the Scam Cup.

Canada’s Kristina Vaculik won Nadia fluff competition. I have nothing against Kristina I was as mad as everyone else when Canada cheated her out of her Olympic experience in 2008 and I would have no problem if Kristina being on the cover at any other time but the bias going on at IG Magazine needs to be called out.

Do you ever wonder why certain gymnasts are loved at IG but others are not? Well it isn’t to hard to figure out you have to be connected to one of the owners.

The reason Nadia gets so much play at IG Magazine is because she is married to co-owner Bart Conner. The reason Dominique Moceanu was plastered on the cover more then any other gymnast in history is because Paul Ziert is her publicist. At least that is what he was listed as on usa-gymnastics.com a month or so ago. Ever wonder why Nastia has always been a saint? well Valeri Liukin has been best friends with the owners since he came to the United States. …

read on – Gymtruthteller – IG Magazine furthers own agenda AGAIN

I think that’s overstating it … a bit. (Though their offices are located at 3214 Bart Conner Dr., Norman, OK 73072. Some inbreeding is inevitable.)

One contradiction in the Gymtruthteller post: If Valeri Liukin is part of the conspiracy, why wouldn’t his gymnast Rebecca Bross be on the cover?

The more Publisher Paul Ziert stays away from his magazine, the better, it’s true. Let Editor Dwight Normile take the lead.

Still, overall, since Ziert acquired the original I.G., I’d say it’s improved. If you disagree, do not subscribe to the mag. Don’t visit their website. Simple.

Or … you can only follow the (free) website, boycotting the dead tree version. Amanda Turner posts some great web only stories.

… Kristina has verbally committed to Stanford University, by the way. A superb recruit. Perhaps she’s on the cover because she’s a charming gymnast, a reader favourite, and they happened to get a good photo of that release.

It’s possible …

Print Friendly