Christmas Savings for Ultimate Players

Don't think that I'm back in Ulti blogland, and thanks for all the emails to egg me on to get back into writing here.

This post is a quick Christmas gift for all Ultimate players, and the name of this game is "Bing" (though only for shopping). This morning I was running through my reading as usual and I hit this article about shopping online and getting cash back for purchases. If you're not familiar with "cash back", the basic premise is that you get a certain percentage of what you spend credited back to you. It's the same as a sale, but the middle man is giving you the cash back instead of the front man.

Anyway, I signed up to see how good the deals were on Bing's cash back. The good news for Ultimate players is that "Eastbay" offers 25% cash back. There's lots of other stores, but a nice deal on cleats is worth it.

Hope everyone is doing well, and I enjoyed watching the UPA run this year. I'll, likely, be at College finals this year if it's in Columbus, and I might come out of the woodwork for some coverage then.

Happy holidays
PJ

Hiatus continues

New job + new town = hiatus continued.

Approximate time for hiatus = unknown.

PJ

Irregular posting on my travels

While I move in and out of posting, don't forget to make your own Ultimate card over the coming months.If you're used to the Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri Cultimate posts, then things are going to be messed up for a little while. Basically:

• Move from London, U.K. to North America
• Two days in Toronto
  
• Week in my hometown
• Las Vegas for a conference
• Boston to Montreal on a bus
• Montreal for a day and then to Ottawa for a few days
• Ottawa to Toronto for a day
  
• Toronto to Ultimate camp for a week
• Up to Sudbury for a few days to visit my sister
• Back to Toronto for a weekend
  
• Toronto to Oxford, Ohio for 10+ years
  

Depending on connectivity and how I feel, expect sporadic posting.

PJ

Moday Economy Savers

As I come in to the lab and scan through my usual reading, there are two items of intereste to the Ultimate community. First, reported by ffindr, a GAIA closeout sale. Second, here's an article on how to make your own sports drinks.

PJ

WINNER Announced - CO's first competition

As I posted in early November that I was having a contest for logo design for either The Friars or the blog (The Cultimate Opinion). Well, I chose a concept design by Matrhew Peerce as the winner. I'll be working on making some jerseys with this design and shipping one to Matt for his efforts. You can see a version of the logo below:


I liked the look of it, and I think a stain glass entry also would have caught my eye. I plan on making black jerseys with the logo on the front and some writing and a number on the back.

Congratulations Matt.

Also, if anyone comes up with a logo for the blog that I like, then I'll also send a shirt your way.

PJ

More College News - MSSUI

If it wasn't for Match (sorry to hear about your grand father), I would know nothing about college Ultimate this year other than following the scores on the RRI, catching banter on RSD, and hearing progression from my alumni school.

In the U.K. this weekend marks the college regionals. Hopefully, I'll be heading to the tournament in an assistant role for Imperial College's team. It will be interesting to see the contrast between the North American and UK college teams. I'll discuss this next week.

Today I caught a passing thread on RSD about another website (MSSUI) that seems to be running articles on the college scene. From what I can tell, this site was started with some marketing at Trouble in Vegas. I couldn't find out what the name means or who's behind the publication, so any info would be interesting.

I read the article "Dealing with the Devil", and found it a good read. Sure it wasn't related to the college activity, but it was well written and an interesting take on vendors within Ultimate.

All I can say is I'm glad for the additional college coverage.

PJ

Eastbay savings and more...

People who run websites can get affiliate status by advertising for products on their website. For example, my blog has google adsense, which has generated $12.55 for my blogs lifetime (of course you only get paid if you hit an increment of $100). For other sites that have traffic and related advertising they can make a hefty second income stream.

So, why is this exciting for the Ultimate community? Well, my lab mate, Ian, and I once came up with a scheme whereby we would become affiliates to many different companies, and then allow people to sign up and buy things through those affiliate links. The catch is, we would share the profit between the buyer and ourselves passing on savings to you the buyer, and making profit for ourselves.

Well, it turns out that someone also had our idea, but they actually acted upon the it. Check out:

• Great Canadian Rebates

I haven't made an account yet, but some of the highlights for ultimate players are:

• 2.2% back for priceline airline bookings
• 1%-3% back on hotel bookings
• 3% back on Eastbay purchases
• These rebates can be combined with other coupons (and the site includes some of these too)
  

The other news is that both Canadians and U.S residents can sign up. Now if only VC, Gaia, or UltiVillage would run an affiliate program, then maybe my blog would support my Ultimate career. At least now, I'll get my cleats and books a little cheaper.

PJ

Latest RSS Blog Links and UCPC

I'm off to Boston this Friday to join in the activities at UCPC, and I've been working on my presentation as opposed to generating new Blog material. In return for the lack of new material, I'll do write ups for three of the talks that I can attend. I'm choosing between:

• Running Practices Your Team will Love and Hate-Tiina Booth
• Prepare to Play Your Best: Constructing a Competitive Routine-Kris Kelly
• Speed, Agility and Quickness on the Ultimate Field- Michael Baccarini
• Common Injuries: Treatment and Prevention for the Ultimate Athlete- June Srisethnil
• Preparing for Spirited Play- Miranda Roth
• Panel Discussion: Professional Behavior in the Sport of Ultimate (I'll be at this one)
  

So, if you want my perspective on a particular talk, just e-mail me, or maybe I'll make a poll tomorrow.

The other thing I wanted to pass on was the latest Ultimate RSS feeds in an OPML file (this file will only be available for a little while longer until I get a new website account). The OPML file can be fed into a feed reader like GReader (see my article on the topic).

If there are any Ultimate blogs out there that would like to be included in this list then just e-mail me. My minimum requirement is that these blogs talk about Ultimate related aspects at least 75% of the time and are reasonably active (no definition for reasonably).

PJ

Happy Holidays

Hey Folks,

Just wanted to say happy holidays. We're experiencing a nice white Christmas, and I hope everyone else is doing well.

Peter

Gone Fishing - Japan

Currently, I'm in Japan attending a conference. I'll be reporting on my trip instead of Ultimate posts here. I'll get back to Ultimate in a few weeks.

Pictured Above: Jeff Lindquist making a catch against a Van Buren Boy at UPA Championships'08.

PJ

Making your own Ultimate Talk and possibly saving time

I'm going to step out of the Ultimate sphere for a second and make a recommendation that may help some of you with respect to blogs and getting information.

The scenario is the following. You're taking a break at work and head to your favourite Ultimate blogs. Of course, you click The Cultimate Opinion, and blam, there's no updated article. You may repeat this process for any number of other blogs of the course of a day.

Figure 1: Here is a screen capture of Google Reader.

One option that might consider is the RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and using the many readers out there that will gather all the information to one single point telling you if there is new posts up. I, for example, use Google Reader as my RSS reader (screen shot in Figure 1).

Figure 2: The red square illustrates the RSS feed icon that you need to click to go the RSS feed URL.

Figure 3: An example of an RSS feed URL.

Every blog that I read regularly is added to Google Reader by grabbing the RSS URL (found on a blog in by clicking on the feed image - see Figure 2, and then copying the url - seen in Figure 3), and adding it to my reader (through Add Subscription). Now, similar to an e-mail reader, there will be listings of new articles and read articles.

You still might need to go to the web page for the blog once in a while to post comments, enter polls, and more, but just click the title on the RSS reader and you should be sent right to the blog.

Figure 4: Step 1 in importing your subscriptions in Google Reader is click "Manage Subscriptions".

Figure 5: Step 2 in importing your subscriptions in Google Reader is click "Import/Export".

Figure 6: Step 3 in importing your subscriptions in Google Reader is browse your computer and add the OPML file. Finally, upload the file.

One other useful thing in the RSS reader is importing a group of subscriptions at once. This is done using an OPML file. I've created an OPML file containing all the Ultimate blogs that I list in my blogroll. Just save this file to your computer and then execute the import as shown in Figures 1, 2, and 3 for Google Reader.

Now you have your own Ultimate Talk where you can add and delete streams that you want or don't want to see. You can even import a feed from rec.sport.disc if you really want to.

PJ

221st Post - One Year Anniversary

Hey Folks,

This is non-ultimate related, but I've made it. I've completed one year of blogging on the Cultimate Opinion.

Pictured Above: I'm relaxing at Cleveland No Surf (Photo by Marc Hodges).

I'd like to thank all the suggestions for posts, the photos people have let me use, the teams that I post about, and most importantly, the general Ultimate community who reads the Cultimate Opinion. I enjoy meeting people from all over the continent who come up and say they enjoy reading my blog.

Pictured Above: I'm in my Gender Blender look here with Thai Boxing shorts (underarmour) and a nice golfing hat (photo courtesy of Kevin Brown)

What's in store in the future? Well, I won't lie. My goal was to make it this far and then reevaluate if I would continue. So, I'm not sure. In the interim, I will continue to post, but I can't tell you for how long. I have 30 or 40 posts in draft form, so that will keep me going for a few months. I'm off to run Ultimate Camp up at Olympia a week from now, and I'll use that time to think about the blog.

Pictured Above: This is as Flowerbowl 07 finals. I still don't think I fouled Lugsden on the throw - maybe after (photo courtesy of Jamie Bishop)

Just some stats of interest with the blog:

• 75,852 page views
• Another 8400 rss feed views
• 13,406 unique visitors
• Top 3 visiting countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom
• Top 3 visiting states: California, Massachusetts, New York
• Top 10 visiting cities: Toronto, New York, Vancouver, Boston, Chicago, Ottawa, Seattle, Montreal, Portland, Pittsburgh (runners up: Minneapolis, Cambridge, and San Francisco)
• Revenue: $9.67 (not received since you have to get over $100)
• Average time on site 2:03 minutes
• 2,111 of you have visited more than 201 times...I've only wrote 220 posts?
• 3,594 of you have visited 51-100 times

Pictured Above: Inian Moorthy telling me what many of you probably think about the Cultimate Opinion (photo courtesy of Blue)

Peter

The Family Grows

So, the ultimate blogging family grew a bit more with the inclusion of Mortakai's Mumblings rule discussions. Personally, I think it is great to see another aspect of ultimate is discussed with some regularity.

I've heard all sorts of comments, both good and bad, about Ultimate blogs, probably, because I'm in the thick of things along with a few others. I can't see a disadvantage with an Ultimate blog or blogs in general. It's like having a source to a very specific topic you're interested in, and yet, if you're not interested in the topic you don't have to go. It's not like it got included in your local newspaper and you had to pass over the article even after carrying a significantly heavier newspaper due to the article.

Sure there are concerns with the accuracy of content. You're not reading a newspaper article that was heavily researched and all the facts were checked. The blog, for the most part, is an editorial. This blog, in particular, is to express opinions (both good and bad). And maybe the writing is poor (the author invents new, ways to use a comma), or the article's title was misleading and you wasted some time (I love making obscure titles). Still having a source on a topic you are interested in is great.

So, let's welcome, Mortakai, to the small Ultimate blogsphere. If things workout then we will have some interesting discussions on rules, and maybe even a searchable FAQ that can be used by the rest of us. I know that many ultimate BBS' have threads dedicated to rules, and RSD has had rule discussions in the past, but both these formats are unreasonable to search for specific details. A rule blog, or something similar, will hopefully fill that niche.

PJ

Blog Life

Hey Folks,

Picutred Above: Number 36, Norman Farb, gets off a flick for RoY at Canadian Nationals 2006.

Now that "The Cultimate Opinion" has been around for three months, I'd like to give some stats and reflections about who reads this blog, what is read, and some interesting stats.

The biggest success so far is the "The Cultimate Opinion" is listed at Ultimate Talk. Unfortunately, it's not part of the feed since I post too many articles and would overwhelm the feed. Still, just being listed means that the blog has become part of the Ultimate Blog community. Additionally, I've had many e-mails and personal comments about the blog.

The biggest influence the blog has had on Ultimate is the brick. I think I've convinced many people to rethink the brick and have heard anecdotal evidence about league and tournaments sticking with the 20 yards. Great!! Now we all need to learn how to pull.

The addition of Poll Thursday has been a great success for many of us. It's a fun little concept that gives us a chance to vote for teams we favour and ideas we like. I encourage readers to suggest polls as they want.

Also, adding pictures to the blog makes visiting the page much more enjoyable. Unfortunately, my photos are biased to my teams, but I would like to post a variety of Ultimate pictures from throughout the continent and world. The only way to do that is for some of our U.S. and world readers to send in some Ultimate photos.

Now to the statistics:

• This is the 50th article in the series.
• I have 40 draft posts with 21 of them completely written. At the current release rate that will last us until the first week of December.
• About 100 visits a day with Monday being the peak day (about 150 visits).
• 1119 regular readers (defined as have come to the Blog more than 15 times).
• 3500 different people (computers) have visited the blog once.
• Top three countries: 64% from Canada, 32% from U.S., and 0.5% from Australia.
• Visits from all continents (not including Antarctica).
• Top networks: 15% Rogers, 12% University of Toronto, and 6% Comcast.
• Top referrers: 33% google.groups, 20% tuc.org, and 15% direct links.
• Times: 223 of you stayed 1 to 2 minutes, 315 stay 3 to 10 minutes, 176 stay 10 to 20 minutes, and 27 of you spent more than 20 minutes on one visit.
• Browser: 43% Internet Explorer, 41% Firefox, and 10% Safari.
• Add revenue is at: $3.40. We could almost fund one century club badge.
• Add content is mainly disc related now instead of hockey and football drills.
  
• Main commentors are Tom, Warren, and Norm (all Toronto Boys).

Lots of interesting and fun things going on with The Cultimate Opinion. I'm still considering who to add on as contributors. The most important thing is I enjoy writing about Ultimate. I plan to shift into training aspects for the winter season as of the middle of November.

PJ

Belated Happy Blogday

Hey Folks,

I thought since I've been writing this blog for more than a month that I should give and get some feedback from any readers (if there are any). Actually, I know quiet a bit about who reads my blog, so I thought I'd share the demographics with you and give you my insights.

The main viewers are from Canada (75%) with the rest coming from the U.S. (24%). The remainder have been from the U.K., Sweden, Russia, and India. Within Canada, the majority of readers are from Ontario (59%), B.C. (12%), Nova Scotia (9% - probably because of people in Toronto at Nationals), and Quebec (9%). In Ontario the top viewers are: Toronto (57%) and Ottawa (9%). In each of the other top regions the top city for viewers are: Vancouver, B.C (67%), Halifax, Nova Scotia (80%), Montreal, Quebec (53%), and Calgary, Alberta (66%). In the U.S. the top three states are: Illinois (15%), Georgia (12%), and Massachusetts (11%).

Every day about 1/2 to 2/3 of you are returning visitors. 39 of you have visited the blog 9-14 times, 26 of you 15-25, and 4 of you 26-50. These are the people that keep me posting.

Finally, the majority of my referrals are from groups.google.com (35%) and the second biggest referrals come from tuc.org (25%). I've really only advertised on TUC with a BBS post, and a quick e-mail out to many of my Ultimate friends.

All this information is gathered from Google Analytics. I'm not marketing to you guys, and instead learning about blogging and web tracking. It is half the fun.

You may have noticed I have Ads on my webpage. These are there to see how well they track my content. If you've watched them like I have, they started out advertising mainly for Blogs. Recently, they've switched to all having the words "Disc" in them and "Ultimate". This is pretty good. Over 1561 page impressions, 5 people have clicked the ads for a total income of 0.97. I guess I'll have to keep my day job. Also, I've added referrals to Firefox and Picasa (I guess I support them).

Now that you know some of the statistics of my blog, let me tell you what I have plans for. I really like adding the photo to the blog. I'm considering getting a digital camera and going out to get some more photos. If you have any photos (ultimate related), then it would be nice for you to send them to me. I can't guarantee I'll post them, but if they're good, I can't see why not.

I have 12 articles already written covering a variety of topics, and I have about 8 ideas lined up to be written. At a release rate of 5 blogs a week that works out to a month of content. At a release rate of 3 that works out to about 2 months. Plus, during this time I'll be playing with Torontula, which will give me some more ideas. I've seen many Ultimate bloggers dry-up over the winter and start discussing there personal lives or just nothing. My plans are to switch over to workout and training thoughts.

Lastly, I've started to consider adding some other authors to the blog - a collective if you will.

Well, there's a quick review of "The Cultimate Opinion". I've read all the comments that come in, and I should probably reply to more of them. Feedback on what you think is interesting is always helpful, and feel free to e-mail me directly.

Pictured Above: A Stella lady in a game against Flo. I love the stance. This was taken at Canadian Nationals 2006 (from Corry Berghout).

PJ

Picture, Picture, on the Blog...

Hey Folks,

As great as it is reading about Ultimate, pictures are cool too. It would be nice to include ultimate pictures with every post, so send in your photos (include names, team, and tournament). Understand that I get to choose the caption.

Here Kirk Nylen deals with the challenging summer weather in Canada.

PJ

There's Got to be a Beginning

Well folks, this is where it all starts. I thought I'd add my contribution to the Ultimate world which I know and love.

First the details. I'm a Toronto Ultimate player. I've played TUC with various league teams, and I've toured since 2000 with a number of teams. Currently, I co-captain/play for BMF (co-ed), co-captain/play for Grand Trunk (open), and captain University of Toronto's Torontula (open). I've been to 90+ tournaments and hope to hit the century soon.

Second, what is this blog is about? Well, I hate to corner my topics, so in general this is an Ultimate blog. The focus, however, is in what I consider one of my strengths - coaching. Coaching, fortunately, includes a huge array of subjects, and in a relatively young sport like ultimate there is a huge element of philosophical coaching (the idea that there isn't a right answer). Also, coaching like playing is a learning process.

My goal is to publish something on a weekly basis; at the start I hope to post bi-weekly.

Finally, warnings. My writing skills are mediocre (hopefully I'll find a spell checker). My humour is spectacular. My wit is biting.

This should be fun...

PJ