This was my 5th year at Adlard’s High Performance Training Camp. Another great event!
After the competition some of us headed out to the new lake cabin just purchased by Barbara Anne and Michael.
Here’s the view from the deck:
BEFORE the tree was chopped down
AFTER the tree was chopped down
Later we headed out to camp at a reservoir in Montana in celebration of the 4th of July.
more photos on flickr
I heard an audiocast interview with celebrity CEO Barry Diller.
He was being interviewed because his firm — IAC/InterActiveCorp — had been named America’s #1 Most Admired Company in the Internet Services and Retailing Industry by Fortune Magazine.
I’m supposed to be following what’s happening on the internet. And I’d never even heard of IAC.
Some of their websites are familiar:
* Bloglines.com
* Excite.com
* Ticketmaster.com
* Match.com
And, of course, their Ask.com search engine:
It’s “pretty“. But search results are TERRIBLE compared with Google. (Try it yourself on a search term you know well.)
So far as I can see, Google continues to draw away from the rest of the field when it comes to search. (Thought Microsoft has improved from worst-of-all to 3rd best.)
IAC is getting good press as Google’s up-and-coming rival.
Competition is good. Go IAC!
But Google is my most admired brand when it comes to search.
You will save a lot of time if you use Google to search over any other engine, especially Ask.
One of my favourite movies is the first Wayne’s World. Mike Myers and his nerdy pal Garth (Dana Carvey) are “teens who live at home and have their own low-rent cable-access TV show in Aurora, Illinios, in which they celebrate their favorite female movie stars and heavy-metal bands.”
This past week-end I lived Rick’s World.
One minute I was a volunteer Floor Manager at the Canadian Gymnastics Championships in Regina — the next, called up to the VIP mezzanine, suddenly moderating a live-to-tape 3hr broadcast of the Finals.
(Pretty boys like Bart Conner and myself are often asked to be TV sport commentators.)
I had a number of expert assistants in each of the gymnastics disciplines. Even Olympic Floor Champion Kyle Shewfelt stopped by for a chat.
What I like about cable TV is that it’s unscripted and irreverent. The more blatantly amateur and “real” the coverage, the more I appreciate it compared with professional Network TV.
Now that I am a celebrity of the Canadian gymnastics media elite, I’d like to thank the little people: athletes, coaches, judges and volunteers without whom there would be no local cable TV coverage.
Bad on those jealous few who complained I disappeared completely from the Floor after being called upstairs.
more random photos from Nationals 2007 – flickr
This was originally posted on my gymnastics blog.
There’s no doubt the most spectacular large gymnastics displays are in North Korea.
Canadian coach David Burgess visited years ago and became something of a foreign celebrity there. He was several times interviewed on Korean TV.
Dave brought back photos from the “Mass Games” from that trip and we were blown away by the scale of the shows.
Click PLAY or watch the clip on YouTube.
These spectacles are criticized as totalitarian government propaganda. But a British Film crew was allowed unrestricted access to film A State of Mind, a documentary following two North Korean child gymnasts and their families for over eight months leading up to the 2003 Pyongyang Mass Games.
The movie paints a much more sympathetic picture of one of the Axis of Evil nations.
Watch the movie trailer on YouTube.
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I’m off to Salt Lake City next week for the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships.
Unless the weather improves, I may NOT return!
I love WordPress, the software that runs this blog.
Just set up a new blog for a friend. Only US$15 / year including the domain name.
Sweet!
ANYONE can afford that for their own website.
One complaint. When I went to purchase the $15 domain name, the process was a nightmare.
This is the evil page:
Perhaps it works on a Windoze machine and IE, but it was near impossible for me to get the confusing process to work on a Mac using Safari, Opera and Firefox browsers.
I will complain to Matt, the front man for WordPress.
“We Are… Penn State.”
I never tired of hearing the official team chant hundreds of times en route to victory by the Men’s Team of the host school.
Cirque du Soleil sent me to charming State College in Amish central Pennsylvania to report on the state of Men’s Gymnastics in the USA. (Cirque hires many College gymnasts after they graduate.)
The competition was loud, proud, fantastic. Despite a steadily diminishing number of participating Universities, those that remain are strong.
My friend Sue Raffin competed for Penn State. I had heard many good things. With over 80,000 students it is one of the largest schools in the States.
Legend has it one of my favourite books — Catch-22 — was inspired when Joseph Heller taught here.
Penn State’s mascot is the Nittany Lion.
Though Penn State professors denounced Wikipedia for academic purposes, it’s a far more useful source of information than the official Penn State website.
On route home I stopped to help out at the huge (1500+ kids) gymnastics competition in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
It was an impressive show.
I only wish we had Canadian competitions anywhere near as fun.
They do know how to keep the volunteer workers going for 16hr days. Giant pizzas!
more information on the Great West Gym Fest
The following weekend at Altadore I helped with our competition of 300 kids. Good — but not nearly as Funtastic as in Idaho.
Happy Holidays !!
Trust you are getting a change, a rest, some exercise. (A gift or two that you actually wanted.)
Year end update.
More of the same for me. I continue to focus on as few things as possible: gymnastics, hiking, fitness, travel, the internet.
2006 started with a family reunion in Mazatlán, travels through that country to Belize and Guatemala.
I made four different trips through the States this year. Still a love / hate relationship with the USA.
My new part-time work as a talent scout for Cirque du Soleil has taught me a lot. In fact I founded a gymnastics blog with a focus on other acrobatics sports including diving, sport acrobatics, circus, martial arts, X sports and more. It’s amazing what gymnasts can do.
My hiking website is doing great, as well. Certainly the best resource on the internet for those looking for the “best hike”.
I’ve been avidly following the wild, lawless internet where millionaires are literally made (and crushed) overnight. The future will be amazing. I am very optimistic My ruminations on the web (and other nonsense) I post on this, my personal blog.
That’s it.
Gone to Saskatoon for a catch-up with old friends over New Years. Then off to Australia in early January for a series of gymnastics conferences. Finally, some hiking in Tasmania.
And I’m waiting on Cirque for 2007 assignments. That is my highest priority right now.
: )
I worked with Kelly Thompson (the little guy) for 10 years at the Taiso Gymnastics Club in Saskatoon. He was one of our Olympic judges in Athens 2004.
Kelly and family several years ago relocated to Nova Scotia where he and Angie work at SFX.
A highlight of 2006 was a trip to Hawaii. (Everyone I know is going to Hawaii except me.)
