I've just heard from Jodie (via a comment on the earlier post about the Byker v York A match) that unfortunately York B lost 5-9 in their match against Jesmond last night. Still, it sounds like it was a good game, and according York Uni Octopush Club's Facebook group they did much better down the pub afterwards!
Not wanting to gloat, but I suppose I should start off by saying that we (York A) won 10-4!
For those of you who don't know, the ONE (or Octopush North East) League has just started up, providing a league (and later in the year, a tournament) for Octopush/Underwater Hockey teams in the north east of England. At the moment, there are just 5 teams playing - Byker and Jesmond (both in Newcastle), Durham, York A and York B. (York had lots of players last year, so took the place of another Newcastle team who dropped out to field a second team.) The first league match was last night between Byker and York A, played at Byker. I must say, Byker have a great pool. It seems a little wider than York's (Bootham School), and I think it's only 20 metres long, but it has a movable bottom, so depth is constant, and was set at about 5 feet. Plus, the bottom is a hard plastic, and is nice and smooth, so the puck plays across it very consistently, unlike on tiled pools where the quality of the tile laying dramatically affects the ability to control and flick the puck.
The game was rather hard work, as we only had 6 players (ie no substitutes), but I think we managed to pace ourselves well, although the speed did slow down noticeable from the fist couple of goals. As a departure from the 2-2-2 formation we were playing last year in practice, Ali decided to try playing 3-3. Actually, this suites my style of play more – I tend to play at the back, but push forward quite a lot, either to support the attack, or to break out of defence. With only two defenders, this does leave a big hole at the back. Unfortunately what didn’t work too well was not communicating this, so there were odd times that, having pushed up from centre back, the guys playing left and right back didn’t know to drop in towards the centre more to fill the hole, and I think we lot one or two goals as a result – all my fault I’m afraid.
Aside from communication, the main other area we need to work on is supporting other players. From my position at the back, Ali seemed to spend a lot of time on the puck, but there wasn’t always the support there for him when he ran into trouble or out of breath (partly why I was pushing up further forward than I should have done). Support is not just about being in the right place, but also getting down on the bottom to be ready to receive a pass, or to take it off the opposition just after they won the puck off your team mate, or being ready to sprint into the open space that the player is about to put the puck into. Although I mention this in the context of the forwards, that’s simply because being at the back, I have the time and space to watch this. I’m sure it applies to the backs as well.
Despite the criticisms above, I think we played well, and there were definitely times when we gelled together as a team, as people start working out what other members of the team are doing, and being able to put the puck into space where you know someone is going to be. The last goal, for example, came from 2 simple passes – me to Ali to Lucy - taking the puck from half way into Byker’s goal. All my criticisms can be ironed out simply by playing together as a team more often, and taking the time to discuss what worked, what didn’t who should be where when etc.
One final thought is that playing 3-3 looses the midfield. The benefit is clearly better coverage across the width of the pool – a big help if everyone can’t put in long passes, and makes for a stronger defence. However, it means pushing forwards from defence is more difficult as you have don’t have that extra layer to push through the opposition. It also leaves you prone to having holes in defence if a defender pushes up with the puck, but looses it fairly quickly. So I’m now thinking there’s some kind of hybrid between 3-3 and 2-2-2, playing in some kind of arrow or diamond formation – eg with the either the central defender or the left and right backs playing more of a midfield role, and the 3 attackers mirroring the same v-shape (central attack plays ahead of the left and right wingers who become more of a forward-midfield position, or vice versa). Quite how any of this will pan out I don’t know, but hopefully we can practice it a bit in training session next Sunday.
Anyway, well done to York A, and good luck to York B who are playing Jesmond tonight!
For those of you who don't know, the ONE (or Octopush North East) League has just started up, providing a league (and later in the year, a tournament) for Octopush/Underwater Hockey teams in the north east of England. At the moment, there are just 5 teams playing - Byker and Jesmond (both in Newcastle), Durham, York A and York B. (York had lots of players last year, so took the place of another Newcastle team who dropped out to field a second team.) The first league match was last night between Byker and York A, played at Byker. I must say, Byker have a great pool. It seems a little wider than York's (Bootham School), and I think it's only 20 metres long, but it has a movable bottom, so depth is constant, and was set at about 5 feet. Plus, the bottom is a hard plastic, and is nice and smooth, so the puck plays across it very consistently, unlike on tiled pools where the quality of the tile laying dramatically affects the ability to control and flick the puck.
The game was rather hard work, as we only had 6 players (ie no substitutes), but I think we managed to pace ourselves well, although the speed did slow down noticeable from the fist couple of goals. As a departure from the 2-2-2 formation we were playing last year in practice, Ali decided to try playing 3-3. Actually, this suites my style of play more – I tend to play at the back, but push forward quite a lot, either to support the attack, or to break out of defence. With only two defenders, this does leave a big hole at the back. Unfortunately what didn’t work too well was not communicating this, so there were odd times that, having pushed up from centre back, the guys playing left and right back didn’t know to drop in towards the centre more to fill the hole, and I think we lot one or two goals as a result – all my fault I’m afraid.
Aside from communication, the main other area we need to work on is supporting other players. From my position at the back, Ali seemed to spend a lot of time on the puck, but there wasn’t always the support there for him when he ran into trouble or out of breath (partly why I was pushing up further forward than I should have done). Support is not just about being in the right place, but also getting down on the bottom to be ready to receive a pass, or to take it off the opposition just after they won the puck off your team mate, or being ready to sprint into the open space that the player is about to put the puck into. Although I mention this in the context of the forwards, that’s simply because being at the back, I have the time and space to watch this. I’m sure it applies to the backs as well.
Despite the criticisms above, I think we played well, and there were definitely times when we gelled together as a team, as people start working out what other members of the team are doing, and being able to put the puck into space where you know someone is going to be. The last goal, for example, came from 2 simple passes – me to Ali to Lucy - taking the puck from half way into Byker’s goal. All my criticisms can be ironed out simply by playing together as a team more often, and taking the time to discuss what worked, what didn’t who should be where when etc.
One final thought is that playing 3-3 looses the midfield. The benefit is clearly better coverage across the width of the pool – a big help if everyone can’t put in long passes, and makes for a stronger defence. However, it means pushing forwards from defence is more difficult as you have don’t have that extra layer to push through the opposition. It also leaves you prone to having holes in defence if a defender pushes up with the puck, but looses it fairly quickly. So I’m now thinking there’s some kind of hybrid between 3-3 and 2-2-2, playing in some kind of arrow or diamond formation – eg with the either the central defender or the left and right backs playing more of a midfield role, and the 3 attackers mirroring the same v-shape (central attack plays ahead of the left and right wingers who become more of a forward-midfield position, or vice versa). Quite how any of this will pan out I don’t know, but hopefully we can practice it a bit in training session next Sunday.
Anyway, well done to York A, and good luck to York B who are playing Jesmond tonight!
19/11: BarCamp Leeds {2007} Photos
I'm back from BarCamp Leeds, and I've even managed to get a few of the photos edited. There's a few left to go, but as people were uploading them at the event, I didn't want to leave it too long. I'm not sure I'm really happy with the photos - mostly they're too dark so exposure has been heavily boosted in post-processing, resulting in lots of noise. Lighting at the event was a challenge - trying to expose both the projected images/slides and the people is quite tricky - flash helps, but washes out the projections. Still, they may not be art, but I guess they're a record of the event.
I have to say, I came away with mixed feelings about the event. It wasn't really what I expected - which was lots of people talking about Web 2.0 and social media applications. Ie really geeky (meant in a nice way, of course). Given this isn't really my area (which is more networks, OSS and dull back-office stuff), I guess I was hoping to recieve a crash-course in what's going on a the front end. I turned out that the talks were much broader than that. Lee Strafford's talk on his history, inlcuding Force9/PlusNet, and his latest project The NetStart (aka Project Sahara) was interesting, as it covers similar timelines to my involvement in Freeserve, and there were one or two interactions between Freeserve and PlusNet. Tim Water's talk on OpenStreetMap was also interesting, and I note he used my photos from the Leeds Mapping Party (which are incidentally marked as copyright - the lawyers will be round shortly!).
Unfortunately I had to leave after the afternoon coffee break - too much time spent working away from home, so being away for half the weekend as well wasn't really on. I kind of wish I'd done the talk about DSL, ISPs and stuff, but at least now I'll be able to prepare it properly for next time. I keep getting ideas (which I must try to remember), but with only 20-30 minutes, it could be a struggle to get through everything.
Right, that's it for now. When I get the chance, I'll try and edit the rest of the photos and put them online. One last thing, a big thank you to Imran and the rest of the organisers for such a great event. Roll on BarCamp Leeds {2008}!
19/11: Technorati Tags and Nucleus
Technorati don't seem to cover Nucleus CMS much, so I've been struggling to understand why, having added the Technorati Tags plugin, none of the tags I input are showing up.
Much digging around, and tweaking of things in Nucleus, seems to lead me to believe that Technorati are parsing the Atom feed, not the RSS feed. And of course, the tags were listed as <category>tag</category> in the RSS feed, as per the instructions on the Technorati Tags page using <%TechnoratiTags(rss)%>, but I hadn't added them to the Atom feed.
Unfortunately, I've tweaked a few other things, partly in response to the help/faqs etc on Technorati (moving the tag placement around in the articles), so I'm not 100% sure which worked, given the lag between pinging them and things updating. Still, at least it works now - and fingers crossed I haven't broken something else in the process!
PS Just checked, and this post now shows up on a search for "Technorati" and "Nucleus" tags. All I need to do now, however, is work out how to get Technorati to parse the content properly, and show the text, not the HTML. Argh!!!
Much digging around, and tweaking of things in Nucleus, seems to lead me to believe that Technorati are parsing the Atom feed, not the RSS feed. And of course, the tags were listed as <category>tag</category> in the RSS feed, as per the instructions on the Technorati Tags page using <%TechnoratiTags(rss)%>, but I hadn't added them to the Atom feed.
Unfortunately, I've tweaked a few other things, partly in response to the help/faqs etc on Technorati (moving the tag placement around in the articles), so I'm not 100% sure which worked, given the lag between pinging them and things updating. Still, at least it works now - and fingers crossed I haven't broken something else in the process!
PS Just checked, and this post now shows up on a search for "Technorati" and "Nucleus" tags. All I need to do now, however, is work out how to get Technorati to parse the content properly, and show the text, not the HTML. Argh!!!
19/11: Test - Octopush
TEST POST!
Just got back from Octopush. Trying to fix brokem Technorati tags - don't know why, but the posts are being indexed, but the tags aren't.
Fingers crossed they are now...
Just got back from Octopush. Trying to fix brokem Technorati tags - don't know why, but the posts are being indexed, but the tags aren't.
Fingers crossed they are now...
15/11: Leeds Mapping Party Photos
There's a couple more photos in the set on Flickr, or in my own photo album, including Tim being interviewed by 2 Masters students from Trinity and All Saints College, and a nice shot of Tim, albeit with a video camera sticking out of his back.
12/11: Flyball - Hillam Hot Dogs
It's been a while since I posted any photos, in part because it's been a while since I've done much photography (or editing of the backlog). However, I did manage a bit of a session the other weekend, and went through the shots of the Flyball demonstration by the Hillam Hot Dogs Flyball team at the Cawood Craft Festival over the August bank holiday.
Trying to get a good position was a struggle - the whole arena was (quite sensible) fenced in with orange plastic fencing, and then there's lots of obstables blocking the shots, plus you don't want to distract the dogs. However, the biggest problem is that the dogs just move so fast! Most of the shots I got ended up as junk, but a few came out OK. Attempts at panning shots were mixed, probably because the dogs are moving up and down (over jumps) as well as along - panning is probably best left to motorsport shots! The best couple are in a Flickr set, and the rest are in an album on this site. Enjoy!
