Blockstack.tv

WCBU 2011, Hot and Streamy

2011-09-03T09:22:00.003+01:00

When we were asked to lead/be the media team for WCBU 2011 we were a little bit...'Us?!'. I'm pretty sure we've said this before but Tom and I have no formal media training or experience beyond this BlockStack TV thing we do. It's a hobby like stamp collecting or lighting your farts. Still, we agreed and since early 2011 have been engaged in largely skyped based meetings about how to do it, what we needed, who should be involved and as a result, generally set our sights fairly lofty.

Facebook pages, promotions, news articles, competitions, the daily podcast, live streamed games FROM THE BEACH and a team to get all this done. Easy!

Skip the end, we hope you enjoyed when we brought to you! We attempted, as best we could, to bring you live streamed games direct from two different locations separately merely by a few thousand metres of golden sand. Additionally we filmed edited and released our usual daily podcasts featuring lots of interviews, perspectives, controversy and game highlights! The podcasts went really well as usual. They can still be seen along with all of our previous podcasts via our website (www.blockstack.tv). The live streaming (our first ever attempt)...let's just say the hurdles were many.

The Hurdles
-----------
First we needed to get wired internet from the adjacent government buildings to the beach, and/or, get a strong enough wireless upload from the nearby GeTur sports facility that allowed us to stream the love, uninterrupted, and in something that resembled a resolution high enough that you wouldn't be expecting an ATARI logo on it. Let's not forget the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th hurdles. Hurdle #2: We needed a video camera with a good enough picture in a variety of light conditions that would stream the picture as it was filmed, via firewire, to a laptop. Hurdle #3: We needed a laptop that had enough balls under the hood and the software technology (and somebody who knew how to use it) to be able to connect to the internet and fire out the red hot streams of Ultimate pleasure. Hurdle #4: We needed a server that could keep up with the potentially millions of edge-of-their-seat live ultimate video consumers, anxiously waiting to watch every delicious moment of sandy caked frisbee porn from the comfort of the tiny hidden away corners of their offices/homes, hoping their bosses/co-workers/girlfriends/boyfriends don't catch them with their dirty pleasure. We know our audience. Hurdle #5: It was 35degC in the shade. Great for a beach holiday but a far stretch from an air conditioned server room. Tech + sand + pasty British flesh + heat ... you get the picture.

Bring it all together not forgetting the two idiots put in charge, and it's pretty much smooth sailing! We did hope that with so many things to go wrong it could only go right.

The Solution
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The Tech: We contacted Tushar from IamUltimate (www.iamultiamte.com). Tushar is a technowizard. The kind of wizard there may someday be a feature film about starring that guy who played Anakin Skywalker as Tushar, a flippant yet somewhat loveable anti-hero. Tushar himself will catch the film on a plane on his way to the next big thing. Tushar was the only sure thing we had. He has experience streaming (CUC2010), the technology background, the powerhouse laptop, the sexy assistant/fiance Rose and no patience for f*ck-ups.

The Camera: Once we realised, two weeks before the event started, that none of the people involved actually had a camera that met the requirements, this was solved by me (Steve G) doing some research via the the usual methods of hoping somebody had already solved this and posted it in ridiculous detail on the web. This didn't so much happen but enough information was found to narrow the search to a few affordable options. The ebay stalking begin and £800 later we were ready to film. £800 kindly provided by Lookfly (www.lookfly.com). Hooray for bail out sponsorship!

The Voice(s): Since 2008 when Tom and I accidentally fell ass-backward into the laps of Ultivillage during the filming of WUGC and did some impromptu commentary for their DVD, we've started to get a bit of a name for it. Tom in particular. I don't know how he can come up with 20 different ways of saying same thing over and over and keep it jazzed. He does it on the podcast as well. In fact we used to have some fun spotting the times I would say something and Tom would simply repeat my point using different words. A man truly made for live commentary. Of course one man + me isn't enough. I had games to play, we both had editing for our daily podcast and we had to eat and sleep. Help was required. The natural choice was Tony Leonardo. He's written two books on the subject of Ultimate, has done commentary in the past, knows a shit-ton about USA Ultimate and a respectable amount (for an American) about International Ultimate to fit right in. He was also already going to be there. He also recently bought a wearable GoPro camera that was potentially was a great addition to the show! We needed one more person and it had to be from a new perspective. In short, we needed a woman. What we got was a short woman. Liz Garfinkle, captain of the now Silver Medal winning USA Mixed Masters team was on hand and as keen to help us as Patrick Van der Valk is to get naked. Add in our journo BlockStack newbie Sean Colfer, random camera man acquisition during the event, Patrick Fourcampre-Maye from UAE, and lastly the passion powered, beer loving, Ultimate media go-getter Matt Kass and the team was complete!

How did it all go right?
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It didn't. That wasn't anything to do with the assembled team, all of which performed admirably and we would not hestitate to call upon each and every one of them again for such an undertaking. What happened, or didn't, was internet and sometimes light and power. Infrastructure basics for those looking to get into the live streaming of anything. Internet, light and power are important. Write that down. Our promised killer wired connection turned out to be a flakey shared uplink with half of the business end of Lignano Sabbiadoro (gotta love saying that name!). Who got that wrong? No idea. If we do find that guy who kept kicking the plug out again and again we're going to punch him in the jeans. Lack of essential services often meant that in spite of our killer camera, full staff, two commentators per game, heaps of techology ready to pump waves and waves of digital fris-bliss across the flood lit information super-highway straight into your face, we were too often spitting it through a candle lit, battery powered straw.

In retrospect we probably would have got a reliable source to check the internet in advance and verify the speed. Still, we did get lots of positive feedback from all over the world with regards to the games. The audio worked well, the video was at odd times quite good and the patience amongst the viewers was exceptional. We did still have the podcasts and we are uploading the recorded games to youtube.

Please do stayed tuned in to our streaming ventures in the future because, we have the technology and we have the team. If you've got the internet, if no one else can help, and if you can find us (facebook is good), maybe you can hire...BlockStack TV (and IamUltimate)!

Prague wrap up show - Now Live

2010-07-14T09:58:00.002+01:00

For those who’ve just returned to daily life after the excitement and
sunshine of WUCC2010 in Prague. We offer you a little light relief. If
you weren't there then don't miss out.

Finals from WUCC Prague is a massive celebration of ultimate, lovingly
wrapped in the witty banter of your hosts Tom Styles and Steve
Giguere. Coverage of all the semis plus commentary of the Finals. Chad
Larson Experience vs ONXY, Revolver vs Sockeye and the epic battle of
Fury vs UNO.

Interviews with the big players and plenty of tournament atmosphere
from the party and the stands on finals day. Prague + Finals +
Blockstack TV = 1hr 10mins of quality.

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank the sponsors of our show:-

Lookfly.com – Eco friendly and ethically sourced performance ultimate gear

and

Pulsin.com – Healthy, natural and nutritious snacks

We’d also like to thank Ultivillage.com for their help. Our commentary
of the finals will be on their DVD of the tournament and also
available through their website Ultivillage.com

Special mention must go to Chris “Aussie” White who worked hard all
week behind the camera, the shows would not have been possible without
him.

Music on our shows was kindly provided by the Star Wars themed
pop-punk group Order66, check them out at www.order66.co.uk The final montage was accompanied by a track by The Kyoto Connection Project

Subscribe in itunes, watch online, or visit “All our previous shows”
to view the shows in iPhone/Mobile browser friendly mp4 format.

Lastly we’d love to hear what you thought of our coverage. Positive or
negative our email address is show@blockstack.tv

Bumper WUCC wrap up episode

2010-07-09T19:35:00.002+01:00

Because of our commitments to Ultivillage and to the PARTY, we will be putting out one bumper episode covering all of Friday's and Saturday's WUCC 2010 Prague action. It should be a monster.

We hope that the wait will be worth it and that the anticipation won't seriously harm anyone.

Included in the episode will be coverage of all the Mixed, Women's and of course Open Semi finals along with the finals. Every interview, every perspective. Blockstack TV has it all.

Right now though there is a party and as you know there it ain't no party like a blockstack party.

Blockstack in Prague WUCC 2010

2010-07-05T11:27:00.001+01:00

The first episode of Blockstack TV from WUCC in Prague is now up and online.

The first episode features, interviews with Chevron, LLLeeds, BAF,
Fury, Lotus, Eastern Greys, Magon, Jonathan Potts. The opening
ceremony and the opening show game.

Plus pay attention to the title sequence as it took me (Tom) nearly 4
hours to create it and I'd like to think that someone had noticed.

Cheers from hot and sunny Prague.

Paganello Day 2

2010-04-03T21:00:00.000+01:00

Those of us who understand that Paganello is as much the parties as it is the play, were there last night when the winners of Paga Idol took to the stage for and extended set of tightly crafted versions of 60s and 70s hits to get the crowd into the mood for a boogie. Some of us were also lucky enough to catch the 2nd place finisher who opened the night with a loud Hendrix influenced series of head banging, face melting guitar rock!

After two nights and two days of Paga it's getting exciting. The Have made up for their shock loss yesterday to top their pool as planned by defeating Tequila Boom Boom today and ending the day with a Arena match point for point trade against Hot Beaches that nobody watching could have called until Hot Beaches managed to close the deal and leave the finals predictions for the Womens divisions completely up in the air.

The weekend saw it's largest spectator turnout in mid-afternoon as Inside Rakete turned a 2 point lead over tournament favourites UTI into a sudden death crowd pleaser with UTI needing the turn and score to deliver a defeat. One perfect huck to Justin Foord and what looked like the upset victory of the event was now another UTI Paganello sudden death win.

Willy & de Schellekes put in a very re-spectible performance and provided Los Tiger with an early wake up call punching through 8 points against the Americans, more than any competitor so far including Iznogood who topped their first round pool.
Huck 'n Sea came back from the tight loss to Iznogood brushing aside the Russian squad to chalk up their first win of the new pool structure. This was followed by a crushing defeat at the hands of upset kings CUSB La Fotta who are continuing to have a stellar Paganello XX.

Stinks have already shown that this may be their year by pressuring Scandal into their first defeat on the weekend in what looks to be the most difficult of the top open pools with Freespeed and Supermanschaft also competing for the top 8 in this group.

Some educated predictions can already be made in the Mixed and Junior divisions. The Swing Kings have not only won all of their matches in the Juniors division but have scored 70 points to only 15 against. That's 30 more goals than the nearest team in that Division. In the Mixed division the Horned Melons and CGNU have shown their comfort on sand in all conditions as the day ended with a chill sweeping through the Rimini, and the wind as always provided a levelling influence that truly separated the good the bad and the ugly today.

The day ended with an unfortunately almost deserted grandstand as SuperManschaft surprised everyone with a possessed performance against Stinks. The Swedes were kicking the sand, throwing hats and one even started digging in the sand like a dog in frustration as the ex-junior division squad scored two in succession to take the game to 6-6 and could only hang their heads in dismay as Manschaft turned and scored to take the lead 7-6. Stinks are the Paganello flavour of the experienced Skogs and are comfortable in pressure situations. Both teams traded the game out to 7-7 and then 8-8, each forcing turn-overs in spectacular fashion until, experience dominated over pure adrenaline and Stinks finished the day with a 9-8 sudden death win.

Tomorrow will bring the beginning of the quarter finals starting in the womens division at high noon across the 4 centre pitches. The finalists will be decided across the board only a few hours later with back to back semi finals in all divisions. We're hoping to see a Super Hot Pot vs Tequila Boom Boom final in the Arena to see if Hot Pot can withstand the enormous local support that Tequila will garner on the day.

Report by Steve Giguere - reproduced from "Roar of the Talking Fish"

Paganello Day 1

2010-04-02T21:00:00.000+01:00

1500+ athletes took to the beach this morning under sunny skies to churn up the sands and cast off the red wine induced haze from last night's incredible showing of flame, fun and fireworks that opened the festival of Ultimate.

It can often be said that there is a certain comfort that can be derived from predictability. Thursdays at Paganello have a tendency to progress in a very forseeable way and thus leave us begging for that dark horse team that has been underseeded for any number of reasons. If we look across the divisions in search of some of the more interesting results, the morning started off with JetSet sneaking out an unexpected victory over Cheek in the mixed division. We also saw the Slovakian/London contingent Golden Ants bring their A-game to the Clan to secure their position as a potential rising star.

The biggest news of the tournament in the minds and hearts of the Rimini locals was the tragic loss suffered by the highly seeded Cota Rica at the hands of neighbouring Italian squad CUSB La Fotta in probably the most heated battle that took place in the Arena pitch today. Perhaps they were missing some of the wisdom and patience from the older Cota mem-bers that are representing as Cota Gold at this years Paganello. Cota Rica will be a team to watch tomorrow as every game will now be critical to keep in contention for a place in the quarter finals and the guys from Bologna will be looking to continue their winning streak and potentially have a record performance.

Last years junior finalists Willy & de Shekelles are proving strength and maturity beyond their years today. In there first day at Paganello in the open division they have managed to sweep aside the oversized Dutch squad Cambo Cakes and only loose in a sudden death point to Stolichnaya. Friday will be an interesting day as they should provide surprising resistance to Los Tiger who (like UTI) strolled through all matches today visibly unhindered.

The womens division has without question provided the most interesting results for today. The pool of The Have, Copenhagen, Tequila Boom Boom and Hot Beaches has been turned completely upside down. The Have, lost in a surprisingly convincing way to Copenhagen in the early afternoon showcase match in the Arena while on the adjacent pitch 7 the lower seeded locals Tequila boom boom were busy making up for Cota Rica by shutting down Hot Beaches. Both of these underdogs later met each other for what should have been the battle for bottom. With the added new found intensity of two teams now playing for the top of the pool both clearly brought every-thing into this one. When sand settled it was Tequila Boom Boom, previously seeded 4th in the pool who have come out on top. What remains to be seen is whether The Have can recover and if Tequila have got enough in the tank to go all the way.

Report by Steve Giguere - reproduced from the "Roar of the Talking Fish"

xEUCF on Blockstack

2009-09-30T11:08:00.004+01:00

xEUCF was simply wonderful. Quote "The most civilised tournament ever seen in the UK". Sure the weather was a big part of that, back to back cloudless days tend to have a positive effect on the mood of a tournament. However, I'd argue that the logistics, volunteers, facilities, food, care and preparation that went into xEUCF had a bigger part to play.

The highlights were many, but the sight of the age old European rivals Clapham and Skogs squaring up in the fading sun and floodlights on Thursday evening, the sidelines thronged, the atmosphere electric, will remain a vivid memory.

Blockstack have produced two shows to cover the event, the first follows a single player, ex GB Junior Women's captain Anna Lisa Stone on her journey to the tournament. It was a departure from our conventional style of coverage for big tournaments, we're quite proud of the story we were able to tell, and we hope you enjoy it. Drop us a comment or email to let us know what you thought.

The first episode also has a few interviews and the two of us couching it up at one of the airport hotel bars, to bring you our take on the event.

The second episode is all action. Quarter finals, semi finals, and finals, interviews with all the teams involved, presentation footage, an interview with Si Hill, the tournament director, and some nutritional advice from our friends at Pulsin.

With both of us being so involved in the running of the actual tournament, and having such a large amount of editing to do we've slipped behind our usual prompt output schedule but we think it's worth it. ETA is PM Thursday 1st Oct.

Tom is now off on paternity leave for a while, but no doubt he'll return for more shows before too long. Here's hoping that starting a family goes as smoothly as the tournament did.

Episode 8 - EYUC and Copa Cabana

2009-09-18T22:50:00.001+01:00

It's been a long wet summer in the UK and myself and Steve have not
done as much Blockstack stuff as we have in previous years, but we are
finishing with a bang.

Our latest episode covers:-
- European Youth Ultimate Championships, Steve's report and the
trailer from the official DVD. (Which is awesome)
- Report and Interviews from Copa Cabana 2009 plus news about the
plans for the 2010 tournament.
- Fundrazr, a new way to organise your teams money and payments.
- Our plans for XEUCF
- All wrapped up with our witty banter on the new lux leather couch.

We'll be doing two episodes from the eXtended European Ultimate
Championship Finals in London. So watch out for those next week.

Cheers
Tom and Steve

CUC Nationals Stream!

2009-08-13T19:47:00.005+01:00

Our good friend Tushar over in Canada is perfecting some killer streaming technology and we're helping! Below we've embedded a player for his CUC live game camera! CUC is the Canadian Ultimate Championships. The finals are going to be broadcast this Sunday starting around 3 GMT (9am Central) as it's being held in Winnipeg Manitoba. The absolute middle of Canada.

Tune in...
(Tushar at iamultimate.com sends his apologies for the trouble with the feed it's a learning experience. Thanks to everyone for their patience)

Signing off from Paganello 2009

2009-04-16T09:59:00.003+01:00

Myself and Steve have been back in the UK for a couple of days. As is
customary with these things our final Paganello episode took quite a
lot of putting together. But it is live now and we both agree it's one
of the best episodes of blockstack.tv we've ever made.

If you have trouble explaining to your buddies at work why you look
tired, tanned, but ultimately content on the Wednesday after Easter,
sending them a link to blockstack.tv should make things much
easier.

As always we'd love to hear your feedback. show@blockstack.tv is the
email for all your comments.

There are a few people we need to say thank you to. Firstly our
partners in crime Linz Wilkinson and Tony Leonardo for their hard work
and support. The whole Paganello family, Jumpi, Bunny, Rambo, Rafa,
and the whole Rimini ultimate scene, for their support and assistance. To Mick
Mengucci, for the use of his music. myspace.com/misturpura To
all the players and teams who gave us interviews, and encouragement.

Blockstack.tv will be back in the summer.

So long until then.

Tom and Steve

Paganello 2009 Friday

2009-04-10T18:43:00.002+01:00

Officially, Jumpi apologizes for not having enough Vino Rosso on Thursday night, suggesting that the plebians under him failed to satisfy the thirsty crowds and will be executed.

For anyone who came to Paganello last year, today was an apology for the weather of the 2008 event. A tad foggy but generally we were all blessed with what could be arguably called perfect Ultimate weather.

The Open division went to plan unfortunately making a slow news day for us. The crowd were enthused and baying for an upset in the early Boracay vs Scandal clash. The match started off close to 5s before Scandal was able to pull away without difficulty. The Dragons did still provide a fulfilling dose of the dynamic style of play for the cheering crowd, complimented by Paga love child and Ulti-Author Tony Leonardo’s freakish height and facial fur. The Dragons first created interest with their unexpected finals appearance more than a year ago in Maceio Brazil. Seeded an almost intentionally humble 25th they will continue to be the official dark horse throughout the early stages of the tournament. Meanwhile, Jumpi is pregnant with a bambino Paga, again.

Also in the Arena fans got to see the French Friselis take an 11-9 over the Finns on Hattitwat until Hattitwat brought it to 11s, next point wins. After a Friselis turnover, Hatti had the disc to win but could not and Friselis escaped to win. Tomorrow they will move up to play Los Ox and UTI.

In the Women’s division, the favourites stayed on top, although fourth seeded The Have needed double game point to escape the Spanish-Japanese Nadeshiko. The Have are a phoenix from the ashes of a series of top British female Paganello champions including Bliss and Cake or Death. Top seed “That’s It” remained on top and even recruited a young bambina, 12 years old, from Bologna to play with them. However the girl decided to stay with the Bologna juniors team. Word from Fatima on “That’s It” is that their name comes from the comedian/musicians Flight of the Conchords’ song Business Time. The girls of Super Hot Pot would like to make it crystal clear that the word Pot is NOT short for Potato. Under no circumstances should anyone refer to them as this delicious food or shout from the sideline “Go Potatos!”.

One of the Tanias from the Ukrainian Dyki Krali normally plays for a team in Bagdad and regularly has practice during extreme dust storms that normally keep regular dwellers of Iraq sealed into their homes. We’re thinking she’ll be the one to watch if our sunny Paga weather takes a turn for the worst.

In Mixed, Czech’s Yellow Fever had the upset of the day over the Arrrrr pirates. Ireland’s 23rd seed Binge nearly pulled off a move to the upper pools by beating Ah Ou Puc, but point differential with them and Sugar Mix favored the Germans by a single point, and so Sugar Mix and Ah Ou Puc advanced and Ireland was relegated. Disc-O-Fever seeded bottom of their pool at an unassuming 28th seed managed to rock the boat upsetting Shocker and Morning Glory to finish one below regulars Huck Finn. Their green and yellow jump suits are apparently the source of their power. The 13th seeded Lamantino Tonante embraced the spirit of Paganello far earlier that most plummeting down to the 29th position.

Tech Noir fought hard by overcoming a three-goal deficit to tie Flugsaurier at game point before a patient Austrian team worked the disc in effectively for the win. Both teams now face the defending champions Huck Finn in the upper pool.

The Russian Shadows surprised eight-seeded Hardfisch with a 12-18 win. Their women’s team Sharks also played well.

Myself and Steve have been hard it since we arrived and will be uploading the fruits of work so far tomorrow morning. Steve wrote this article I'm just posting it.

Blockstack at Paganello 2009

2009-04-07T21:24:00.004+01:00

It's almost Easter and while many of you will be happily munching your way through your 4th chocolate egg, myself and Steve will be working to bring you all the best bits of the greatest show on sand. Paganello MMIX promises to be an event to remember. We'll be there every step of the way.

As you know Blockstack TV is the hottest ultimate internet TV show ever to rock your digital world. We make video podcasts about Ultimate.

This year Blockstack has a bigger crew, we've recruited the tallest camera girl we could find in the shape of the lovely Linz Wilkinson, and we're also going to be working with the legend that is Tony Leonardo. Tony is playing with the much fancied Boracay Dragons so we'll be sure to bring you the inside track on their progress through the tournament.

4 days of Ultimate, 4 nights of parties, and 4 podcasts to showcase all the action.

You can subscribe to Blockstack TV via iTunes, RSS or you can put our show player on your team's website. Visit our subscribe page for more information.

Lastly we really want to make sure we deliver what you want out of the show, if you have any ideas, requests or comments, please email show@blockstack.tv.

Clip Shows are Hard!

2009-02-02T14:22:00.004Z

Once again we've been delayed in getting a show out because of this blasted clip show we intended on releasing as our 1st anniversary show. Well in true BlockStack fashion we've managed to bite off more than we can chew (for now) as it seems doing a clip show is actually really really hard!

You wouldn't think it would be considering most sitcoms tend to slot in a clip show whenever it seems like they all want a week off or if there's a strike of some kind. It should be a doddle to knock one of these out right? Wrong. It's a day off for the actors of sitcoms (in this case Tom and myself) but it's a freakin nightmare for the editors and researchers of the clips (Tom and myself...((mostly me))) having to pour over more than 55 hours of footage (see previous blog post for stats) just to find all of the funny bits and of course the outtakes that never even made it to a show.

Let me add to the difficulty by admitting that I archived all of our footage to my big server computer which happens to live in my loft. Why is that a problem? It's a problem because my loft has no heating and if you hadn't noticed, it's cold outside. It is therefore very very cold inside my loft making working in there limiting if you value fingers and toes.

So the decision has been make to crank together more BlockStack episodes...Hooray!! but make them shorter and more bite sized...good!(?) and do the 1.5 year anniversary show in the summer when it's nice and warm and worth a nice lofty lounge editing session.

I promise it'll be 1.5 times funnier as well.

Post Vancouver

2008-10-01T13:27:00.001+01:00

Life after WUGC 2008

It's been more than a month since we've been back from Worlds and it's flown by just as quickly as the event itself. The memories are vivid highlights of the week.

* Ground breaking webcasting we did with Ultivillage
* Match Diesel smashing his fists on the walls of the commentator booth in frustration/excitement (and then not exactly admitting this on his blog)
* My being in a hot tub with two sexy but completely vacant women on my birthday while spraying
Allison and our expensive camera with cheap Champagne for 'effect' and somehow not getting sh*t for it.

There's too much more to mention.

The entire year leading up to WUGC2008 is a blur. Blockstack.tv started partly as an excuse to go to Vancouver and watch the worlds best players play the game we play. Who wouldn't want that? Tom and I talked about Lookflynews.com that Tom and I did for WUGC 2004 in Turku. Back then Tom went alone with a rather large group of volunteers including some now GB stars like Caesar, Brummie, Danny Hoyle and more. I stayed home and did editing :(. We thought we'd update the delivery method and reduce the man-power this time. Our purpose would be to create some video podcasts of our time there to give people a real feel for the event. I thought... 'I would enjoy that if I wasn't there.' Great! We had enough forethought this time to start early, actually learn how to do video editing, learn how to properly use a microphone and camera, and try to build up some viewers in advance so we weren't just there suddenly doing all this work recording and reporting and editing for 10 viewers a day. Tom and I found our areas of expertise, him mostly in front of the camera and myself mostly on editing and camera work. It all worked really well producing an Unplanned/Fantasy Football meets Waynes World style of show.

Fast-fowarding ahead to just over a week prior to WUGC, Tom and I were bricking it because we'd had no response from the WUGC staff in spite of contacting them well in advance. Tom had been turned down for the official announcers job (yes the guy, 2nd only to Tony Leonardo, who has done more event and Ultimate related commentary and public speaking than anyone in the world was looked off) and we thought this was going to end up being completely guerilla coverage with no support at all.
Enter Ultivillage. Patrick (Dick) Cloutier emails us and he's watched the commentary trailer kindly made for Tom by Si Williams and loved it. He doesn't know boo about me but wants us together to do commentary on the first ever webcast for the show-game between Canada and Great Britain!!! Whoah! We've got contacts, we've got free broadband, we've got VIP access and media passes. We're in.

What a week it was! I highly recommend going to an event like Worlds as a spectator. You've got the highest quality Ultimate being played non-stop to an extent that you can't possible watch all the games you want. Vancouver was beautiful and made me slightly homesick for the first time in years and the event itself was executed as smooth as you could hope for and more.

This may sound ridiculous or obvious but BlockStack has a tendency to make it all up as we go along. We thought for this though, we'd get some real planning in. Not to be. Once again we found ourselves pouring over the schedule each morning at the all you can eat buffet breakfast (sweet!) and planning the day which was loosely around key games. Unlike other events, at first we weren't allowed to film games because of the Ultivillage DVD deal. We were going to have to be more creative for sure. In spite of the additional pressure, most of the planning went to into the bin and we were filming primarily using distraction as our guide. If our attention was gathered by something then surely viewers would want to see this. Brilliant. Distractions plus big games = podcast: and we did this daily, spending most of our evenings at the computers editing hours of video into 30 minute shows while the ladies fetched food and drink. Credit to our ladies Alli and Catrin for putting up with all this.

So all is going well and suddenly Ultivillage come to us with a proposition. Do commentary on new daily webcasts from the show pitch and also for all 6 finals on Friday and Saturday. YEAH!!! Whoah hold on! How will we do the podcast if we're webcasting the whole time? With Difficulty. We brought in a few friends (Chris and June) to join the regular crew helping to film some stuff for us in the final days. Perfect! We did the commentary and it was a blast! Tom and I came up with new techniques for double teaming the play by play when you only get a semi-correct roster 5 minutes before. This largely consisted of one of us starting it off and forging on until we didn't know/remember a name and using a description and a switch of commentator. "HUGE SWING ACROSS THE BACK TO THE GIRL IN THE DISTINCTIVE YELLOW CAP... ...MELANIE HILL WHO MAKES A GREAT BID ON A DISC TROUBLED BY THE WIND"). It was great.

Sitting in the sun shine talking crap about your favourite sport with a good buddy, watching some great games, all the time receiving emails from around the world telling you what a great job you were doing. It's hard to imagine things working out better. We'll post some of our favourite emails in a future blog post. But rest assured if you did email us that we read every email that came in and almost all of them made us smile.

Unfortunately our finals episode did suffer in the end because of our own lack of attention to filming and especially our lack of editing time for it. Two days of finals footage and we had to check out of the compound the day after only giving about 6 hours editing time max. Not enough.

We're calling it a big fat success. I can't believe we haven't celebrated what we've accomplished yet. Two guys knowing nothing about modern video editing, camera work, how to podcast or even how to present a tv show ended up with VIP media passes at WUGC 2008, being
the faces and voices of the first EVER Ultimate webcasts with Ultivillage and released daily shows from the event with tight editing and interviews with all the top players in the World!

We're a little pleased with ourselves at the moment. This is the reason for what I said in the beginning. It's been a while since BlockStack has popped up and is enjoying a much needed break.

To put some perspective on the what we've accomplish and the price of it, here's some stats on the show so far
Total number of Shows: 8 in Vancouver, 2 in Copenhagen, 4 in Paganello, plus 6 on the sofa.
Hours of footage recorded: 55
Hours spent editing (appoximately): 160
Money spent on equipment: £2000 +- £100
Money spent on travel: £2,000+ each
Most watched show: WUGC 2008 - Monday Masterstroke (Ep 4) http://blip.tv/file/1146898
Total views (all shows): 38,000 and counting

We just need some time off to gather our thoughts, restock the holiday time and save some money and maybe take a nice bath. We'll be back.

Day 2 - Columbia is the new Japan

2008-08-04T06:51:00.002+01:00

We've made it through the first day of proper play and what a day it was. At a first glance, outside of the showcase matches, the schedule looked as if it was going to provide a series of expected results that would be far from news worthy. How wrong could that have been!

Columbia was the team to beat today. We personally witnessed the Columbian junior women's team defeat the USA junior women's team by a 3 point margin with full pitch rush celebrations for each and every point while simultaneously the Aussie junior girls took away the Canadian scalp. Those two victories left the junior girls division wide open.

In the open division we saw GB face off against the Columbian Open team and as tipped by Brian Gisel the tournament director for WUGC, they were more than a surprise package for the brits. In a controversial match filled with little disagreements the GB men offered a rocky start which the quick to go airbourne Columbians enjoyed. Great Britain tightened it up stretching the points difference at the tail end of the game to end it 11-7 in their favour. The left feeling a bit rattled, and more determined to return on Monday in force.

The New Zealand women's team seem to be taking advantage of what appears to be a mis-seeding (14th) by taking down everything in their path. They're going to continue to upset teams on their way to a potential quarter final.

Good news for us today was that Ultivillage seem keen to extend their webcast service by adding live webcasts each night from the Spirit Enclosure pitch showgames. That'll be a huge benefit to those at home and should be great fun for us as they want BlockStack back on the commentary. Spread the good word about that and register for UVTv asap at www.Ultivillage.com.

Don't get me wrong here, we did some many expected results from, Japan destroying the Netherlands to USA's Sockeye taking Finland to school.

All in all a great day. We found the beer garden, talked with loads of people for the podcast and even got permission to film ultimate for the show again. Ep3 should be great.

Day one round up

2008-08-03T05:19:00.005+01:00

What a great first day. Highlights include:-

Bangra lessons with 4000 people all doing the moves at the same time
20 Mexican waves
4 hour live web cast literally watched around the world
Philipino dancers
Parade of Athletes

Giving out an email address to the people watching the webcast wasn't something we had planned, it just seemed like a good idea. It turned out to be one of the best things about the opening day, for me personally.

Being able to get the instant feedback from people enjoying your work from Columbia, Dominican Republic, Malaysia, Netherlands, Great Britain, Australia, as well as right across Canada and the USA, was amazing. It really made the experience.

The opening game between GB and Canada was good fun to watch. I think GB surprised a few people. They certainly took points from Canada with some ease when things clicked.
Both teams made quite a few errors, GB just made a few more. Canada won 17-15.

Canadian handler Kira Frew and utility player Brandon Wong were the stand out players. GB had great performances from Mark Davin and Anna Wilkes, but there were no weak links. If GB eliminate the mistakes they can do amazing things.

Send us your comments if you saw the webcast.

Journey to Vancouver

2008-08-02T15:36:00.003+01:00

Travelling has become less enjoyable for me lately, not quite sure what it is but I think it's a combination of, tiredness, crampedness, dread at what I might have forgotten or might go wrong, and massive guilt about the amount of carbon I'm releasing.

I was tired, and I was terribly worried about the US immigration, but after a drive down to London, a Taxi to terminal 4, check in, a drink and some duty free shopping, we crossed the threshold to board our flight to Seattle and settled into NWA's comfy and well appointed seats. Each seat had it's own media player so you could pick from around 30 movies to watch at your leisure, pause and rewind too.

When NWA released "Straight out of Compton" I thought they could do no better. But since Ice Cube and the boys have started their airline they've gone from strength to strength.

The real fun started when we got to the US border. For those who haven't visited the USA in the last 5 years, they now use both fingerprints and a photo of your face to make sure they know who you are. When Cat (my wife) scanned her finger the computer raised it's eyebrow a little and went hummm. Soon we had a large red card stuffed into Cat's passport and were sent to go and sit in the naughty kids room with the other dodgy looking characters.

Security Officer Webb found the situation quite amusing which is a good job really or we might have just been turned around. The story goes like this. Last time we visited the USA was in August last year, we travelled with my Brother and his wife Clare. At the immigration desk Cat and Clare's finger prints and photo had been mixed up. So when we arrived at Tacoma International Cat scanned her finger, and a crack anti terror squad was put on high alert. It took a bit of explaining and a photo of Clare on my phone to convince Officer Webb that we weren't a threat to National security and it was in fact one of his Boston based colleagues that had ballsed up royally.

Our stay in Seattle was brief but very enjoyable. Our hosts Al and Xumin, are friends of Steve and Alli, and made us all feel very welcome. We had a trip to an American Dinner, and a drive around Redmond, home of Microsoft. I have a love hate relationship with Microsoft, but it was very cool to see the campus.

We entered a Top Gear style race from Seattle to Vancouver. Steve and Alli were catching one bus and we were on another. Both buses were timed to leave and arrive within 10 minutes of each other so we had a "loser buys the beer" bet which we lost by such a massive amount that Steve was already supping his third pint with a smug Jeremy Clarkson face on when we arrived.

Our Quick Shuttle to Vancouver was neither quick or capable of orbiting the earth, but give me chance to have a good chat with John Liddicoat from Australia open. Fascinating to hear his opinion on Aussie chances, Japanese threat, North American tactics etc.

UBC is a dream university Campus, watch the show for a guided tour. There is secure Wifi everywhere and kick ass net access in every room. A better venue for our needs is hard to imagine.

Last night we had more sushi than 4 people could eat, for $49 dollars. That's ridiculous. Awesome value.

Its a big day today, I'm so excited to see GB Mixed play Canada. We are also doing the commentary and interviews for the live webcast on Ultivillage. You need to register but that's free.

Tom

New Blockstack.tv Website live

2008-07-31T00:11:00.003+01:00

The new Blockstack.tv website is released on the world. Check it out and if you find anything wrong, put it in a comment and we'll fix it. We're hoping the new site will allow you to keep up with all things Blockstack.tv much more easily.

Myself and Steve have been working very hard in preparation for the trip to Canada. Steve has got some awesome gear for us to wear and I've been sweating over a hot laptop make the new site. We're a good team. We've also got some "things we prepared earlier" which we hope you enjoy on the shows. We've also got CanterburyNZ back to help us out with some more sponsorship.

We've got a great set up in Vancouver. We're going to be right in the middle of the action with a base in the athletes village. We're also going to be working really closely with the guys from Ultivillage so you'll get to see some of their awesome coverage on the show.

Here's hoping everything goes well out there.
Tom

PS. Myself and my wife will be travelling by car and camping around BC for the week after the tournament, if you have any advice or tips on things to see and do please leave a comment.

Blockstack in Vancouver

2008-07-21T12:32:00.011+01:00

Blockstack TV having been making plans to go to WUGC2008 in Vancouver for what seems like years now. To be honest the whole project has been building up to the World Championships this August. Both myself and Steve have been to a few big championships, they are always so exciting and this one looks like it's going to be one of the best ever.

We just hope we can bring you a flavour of what it's like to be out there

Our coverage will include:

Daily podcasts from the players village
Results from all the GB teams
Interviews with major players and teams throughout the tournament
Atmosphere from the players village
Myself and Steve inimitable style and sense of humour

Get a taste of what we are all about.

Anja Haman interview about GB Women trip to USA

2008-06-27T15:27:00.007+01:00

The other day I heard that GB Women, had beaten Canada women while in a recent tour of North America. I had to find out more.

The original idea was to record a phone call with Anja Haman (GB Women player and coach) and video me on the phone, then edit it down to a sensible size and include it in the next show.

As it turned out, we chatted for a bit too long and syncing it with the video would have been impossible. Plus the sound quality was very average.

However the content is interesting, you can listen to the interview on mp3.

You can find out more about Anja and the other GB women at www.gbwomensultimate.com. Check out those lovely photos.

Steve on the Couch

2008-06-22T14:28:00.002+01:00

Just for all the kids out there who may have watched Episode #5 and thought, those guys are absolutely smashed and are filming themselves rambling on about Ultimate, please drink responsibly.

We're not saying that alcohol is cool and that drinking lots of it prior to doing anything is a great idea. It just happens to be that it works rather well prior to filming a internet TV show or even filming the same episode of an internet TV show for the 3rd or 4th time.

Really though this show was such a pain in the butt, yet at the same time a complete party to make. I would have loved it if Take 1 had worked. As it was, the night pressed on and what is normally around 2 beers/glass of wine for a show became 4...then 6 and now as a result I get to see how silly I look/act when I'm drunk watching this episode completely sober. I'm my drunk self's sober friend, slightly embarrassed yet thoroughly entertained.

All that said the entire blockstack experience so far has been a riot! Paga was insane, Copenhagen was awesome and the regular couch shows are more fun that we had imagined it would be. Also much much more work. Thanks for watching and expect some pretty outrageous stuff in the future.

-Steve

Adventures in Podcasting

2008-06-05T19:18:00.000+01:00

Occasionally the rollercoaster ride that is Blockstack TV, takes a dip. The dip was the realisation that we had made another dud. The first recording of Episode 5 was so bad that even with 10 minutes chopped off the end it was still unwatchable. YAWN.

Problems included:

Too much self indulgent banality
Me and Steve fighting to have the last word (Steve usually winning)
No energy
We look bored
Even Clary wasn't very funny

Sometimes it may not seem like it but we do want to be professional in some ways, so we made the tough and time consuming decision to film it again.

That was last night at my house . Here's how it went.

Tom goes to post office to fetch new adapters to simplify mic cabling
Steve arrives with the rest of the crew
Test new mic adapters - thumbs up
Put camera on charge
Talk about loads of stuff, none of it related to show (iMac, growing tomatoes, blah blah blah)
Drink
New member of crew arrives
Have nice meal, more drink
Call Clary
Mic up and plan show (Do you think we should have done this earlier???)
10.45pm start recording show
11.20pm Battery goes flat
Check video to see where it got too, realise there was no sound all night!
Decide that we are going to do this thing if it kills us, more drink
Some crew goes home, rest of crew concede that staying over is unavoidable and get stuck into more drink
12.15am Start recording show take 3
Nail it
1.30am Play Star Wars Lego on XBOX 360
2.00am Go to bed

Of course for every dip in the rollercoaster there is a high point too. The episode is good, Clary is brilliant, we had great fun making it.

I'm editing this one so look out for it coming up very soon.

Also you can now subscribe to the show through iTunes.

Making of Episode 4

2008-04-10T22:21:00.007+01:00

The making of episode 4 has been a bit of an odd affair. Firstly it's important to note that it was filmed before Paganello, so there are a few mentions of Paga being in the future, obviously it is now in the past. We had to record an intro in a pub after practice to explain the problem, which Steve is going to strap on to the front of the show.

Episode 4 features our new agony Ultimate uncle, Clary. Clary is the oldest living Ultimate player, we manage to call him on the show and ask him about an incident from last years EUCF. Clary has to break off from his bathtime to speak to us, but it's well worth while. Got an Ultimate conundrum? Maybe Clary can help, what he lacks in tact he makes up for in wisdom. Send us an email with your problem and we'll put it to Clary next time we speak to him.

There's also a heap of exciting sofa based chat, photo news, some emails, and my photography section which I hope you find useful. If you have further questions about photography
then feel free to send them in, if we think that answering them in the show will be useful then we'll do just that.

One of the things we've learnt from Paganello is that simple is good. Our one mic, one camera solution didn't give is much scope for messing around with fancy camera angles, but it did mean we were fast. Easy to set up (approx 90 secs), and easy to move around (only one cable).
By contrast our home sofa set up involves two wireless mics, two receivers, a mic mixer, numerous cables and things that need to be plugged in and several batteries that can run out. It take us about 45 minutes to set up and we do a ten minute sound check before every episode, even then we have issues. As you can see from this episode where both my mic and Steve's mic take it in turns to go dead. We may well be trading down to a simple cheaper wired mic solution in the future, probably before Episode 5.

Blockstack at Paganello Review

2008-03-27T12:24:00.003Z

I've finished cleaning sand out of my bag. I've had some sleep. I've reflected on the amazing time we had. I've even watched the 4 days of coverage from the Rimini sands.

Both Steve and myself worked our socks off all week. We had less sleep than anyone. During the finals we commentated on all 4 games. We were still defrosting Steve's hands an hour after we left the beach and you may notice that some of the camera work is a little shaky due to shivering.

With everything considered I think we did a decent job of capturing the character and atmosphere of the event, but our opinion is not really that important. What is important is what you the viewers thought of it.

Get your commenting fingers ready and bust out your feedback.

What was your favourite bit?
Did any of it bore you?
What did you want to see more of?
Did you get a feel for the tournament?

If you could also include in your feedback whether you were at Paganello 2008 and where you are from it would really help us.

Paganello TV...4 days to go

2008-03-17T19:00:00.004Z

Friday will mark the release of Paga TV Episode 1, straight from the beaches of Rimini Italy!

With Paganello being probably the best beach tournament in the world, this is both an intimidating venture for us as it'll be the first time we'll be knocking out episodes with only hours of editing time, AND, we'll be very susceptible to adverse weather. I've checked weather.co.uk and found that it looks like rain almost every day. Not good.

All that said it'll still make for some good viewing. People don't want to see others lounging about on sun drenched beaches sending mocking text messages to those still home saying 'wish u wer here ha ha'. Viewers want to see adversity. I've been to a Paga with howling winds, 5-10 deg temperatures and while we bonded as a team, I don't recall being so cold while playing before or since. This time in addition to my own health, I've got a few thousand pounds of video and audio equipment to protect as well. Hmmm....

Right...so all that said we're going to get some great footage regardless of the conditions of the play, the players and the scene and at the very least it can't be anything but entertaining.

Episode #2 - The Making of

2008-02-13T12:18:00.003Z

Little do the viewers know but there are actually two complete versions of Episode #2. Both of them cover the same material. The first one we recorded on the Thursday before the release was meant to be 30 to 45 minutes long as we'd tried to learn from the massive over-run on Episode #1 and cut down our skeleton significantly.

Well...the bevy for the originally E2 was Capirinhas from Brazil! We chatting way too long about these, Tom went on and on about his snowboarding holiday and generally we just rambled about nonsense way too much. The reason being...our precious crew wasn't there for this one. It was a full DIY podcast for Tom and I and we screwed it all up.

To quote Tom after watching the editing version (already cut from 75 minutes to 50 minutes) " I just keep saying the same thing as you using different words! ".

Rather than release it we decided to bin it keeping only the advert for 'Ultimate BlockStack' we shot at the very end of that Thursday (lookout for more stuff like this in future episodes!). There was so many things wrong with it. Even the sound was crap again.

So...Sunday night we brought in the crew and trimmed down the schedule with actual times and hit it again. We also decided on filming photonews as a separate thing because of the laptop lag. That was a good idea. Having the crew to wave at us when we were faffing, going off topic or running out of time was so helpful. I think it really rocked. We switched drinks to a nice Banrock Station wine as well which we thought was a great environmental move until we filmed it and realised mid discussion it had a massive carbon footprint. Oops. Oh well. So we nailed a 30 min episode on the nose. Lets hope we can keep it up and speed up the editing as well!

BlockStack does GB Open

2008-01-25T23:31:00.001Z

GB D again
Originally uploaded by BlockStackSteve

I went down to the GB Open practice that took place at Loughborough University with the plan to film some practice stuff, maybe get a bit of action on film to, with some clever editing , give those who watch the clip a bit of a scare and also get some interviews with the players we can use as profiles on the show.

Well the first thing that went wrong was I got there later than I wanted and nobody was there! Thankfully there were tons of bags and discs all over the artificial turf pitch indicating I at least had the right pitch. Oh yeah they were practising on this high-tech artificial turf. Take a close look at any of the pics and tell me it doesn't look like grass. It was pretty sweet stuff. The give away was it was probably the only grass in England at the moment that wasn't flooded.

So, eventually they returned to the pitch after a bit of a team talk inside the nearby warmth of a meeting room. I then managed to get a few early interviews with a couple of the guys based on a bit of a script we'd written for them to answer.

The Script:
This was the plan...we'll right some questions on a piece of paper, they could read them all in advance, and then deliver the answers to the camera without pressure, cool and calm. Right? Not so much, however, some of the reactions I got were great, some were almost professional and others were near on autistic but nevertheless entertaining.

Afterwards I was excited and ready to film some action and was promptly told they were going to play offence vs defence and that I couldn't film it. : (. Bollocks. I can only imagine this was because they were aware of the vast appeal of BlockStack and simple knew that teams like Sockeye, Furious and Skogs would be glued to the broadcast looking for the Achilles heal of the GB team. Well because I know that all good players do watch the podcast on a regular basis this was a well founded precaution. So I didn't film. I did take a few good profile shots and out of about 250 crap pics I managed to scrape a few good ones as well. Thank goodness I brought my camera otherwise I'd have just be there getting very cold and wet. Afterwards I got a few good snaps and a couple more interviews, enough to make it worthwhile.

Personally it was superb because although I couldn't film the tactics of the open team I did get to watch and learn. So, look for the new book from BlockStack soon to hit good Ultimate shops near you 'How to Play Ultimate like Great Britain Open' and of course watch BlockStack Episode three for the GB Open featurette.

Episode 1: The Making of....

2008-01-11T11:28:00.001Z

titleimage
Originally uploaded by BlockStackSteve

Hosts: Steve Giguere and Tom Styles
Crew: Allison Baron and Cat Styles
Camera: JVC Everio MG505 3CCD Harddisk Video Camera.
Sound: Cheap wireless tie clip mics and a mixer.
Subjects: Photo News, Christmas gifts (The Powerball), Ultimatum, The Top 5 Ultimate Frisbee things of 2007 in the UK and the Great Barr Crawl Tournament.

Behind the Scenes:
We filmed this over the holidays. We had planned on filming it on New Years Eve and then ended up doing it just prior with the idea that we'd pretend it was New Years Eve but that didn't really work out. This was the first episode and we really wanted it to go off in a single take. That is the plan for most of the episodes so this isn't any clever editing and you can a real feel for the 'anything goes' aspect of it. The problem was our skeleton of a plan for it didn't take into account the ramblings that inevitably followed which made our plan of 30 to 45 mins extend into over an hour. Oops. As a result we release it in two parts.

We had all sorts of technical problems with the sound. First we had bought two wireless mics. We then found out the frequency of the wireless could not be adjusted so we could only use one at a time. We had an idea to get a two to one input jack and put both mics into one unit. Great right! Wrong. The mics had a special screw it connection so the whole time we're talking we're one wrong move from the whole sound contraption falling apart. That's mainly why we're trying not to move very suddenly the whole time.

The last issue really was the lighting. What you can't see is ever light in my house piled around us and aimed straight at the couch. The camera is placed just right so it seems to clip out all of them. The camera was actually the only thing that worked really well. I highly recommend it.

What else....the freakin dog kept trying to jump on us...the crew forgot to turn off their mobile phones so I had to filter out that...'dit...ditadit...ditadit....' sound thoughout the first half of the video. LOTS of white balance work and hiss and humm removal required on the sound but I think it turned out ok.

Oh one last issue was my mic was facing the wrong direction almost the whole time. You could hear me ok but not good enough.

Lessons learned: Sound is critical. We're getting another mic at a different frequency (this is getting expensive now) and we'll do more sound checks next time. Also...going on for over an hour combined with mulled wine = more rambling. We've got a better idea of how long things take now so we'll be doing shorted episodes more often.

We've got over 200 views on each part so far...hooray!
Steve

WCBU The final wrap-up

2007-12-22T20:09:00.001Z

Snorkling at the reef in Maceio
Originally uploaded by BlockStackSteve

Hello,

So on a personal note...we lost. The GB Masters fought hard to come back from 5-8 down to make it 9-8. We felt good for the win and inspired even more so by the women's team giving us a quality breast wave complete with Union Jack nipplies after each point. All that said, GB and the USA were very evenly matched and as the game swung back and forth, the timing favoured them as it ended in the cap with them taking it 11-9. Tragic in one sense but triumphant in another as we know we did very well against them and they were a great bunch of guys to lose to. USA did sympathise as they lost in the final in 2004 to Austria after a tough one. Perhaps that means it's ours in 2011.

The GB Women...what can I say about them. They were top class performers on pitch and off. I made a lot of new friends on this trip, many of which were on this team and I was extremely proud to be playing GB as they took took revenge for our loss by winning by 3 over the US team. Going into the final each team had a win against each other but I believe this time the better team won. GB had it all together and had the spirit going for them as well.

The medal award itself was really well done. I'll get a picture of it online in my flickr area in a moment. The women's gold version was a gold medal on a green string (very Brasil). Something cool enough that you could wear out and not just put on a trophy shelf.

I'm sorry that this entry took so long. To summarise quickly what happened that day,
1. lost the final to USA by 10:30.
2. Partied with the USA for a bit and then with the GB Mixed team cheering on the Women
3. Drank too much Cachaca from a can and memory loss begins here abouts...
4. Had to rush to Bus Station to get tickets back to Pipa that night because there was only 4 left. It's a miracle this happened at all but thanks goes to Anna Shipman for alerting me to the urgency of the situation.
5. Return to event with women winning gold and to watch the Aussies beat the fan favouriate Phillipines to take gold in the open division
6. More beer...swimming in the sea...a nap and almost missed my bus to Pipa. No internet in Pipa, sorry.

I did try to write an entry back at the hotel but you really should see it. Perhaps I should post it because it really is a pile of drunken jibberish.

Well done to all teams at WCBU and all players who stepped up to represent their country. There's part of me that want's WCBU to take on the same level as WUGC but at the same time, I hope that each countries top grass players still concentrate on there not so sandy area of expertise so that that Beach World Championship stays the big competitive chill-out party that it is.

Thanks Brasil and thanks to Patrick for another success.

Brazil Results

2007-12-17T09:29:00.000Z

Well it sounds like it's been an awesome tournament at the World Beach Ultimate Championships in Brazil. I've just got off the phone with Steve, who's chillaxing after a hard week in the soft Brazilian sand. Unfortunately he's in a place with no internet connection. So here's the results as far as we know them.

GB Women Gold - Yep that's right GOLD as in "always believe in your soul, you've got the power to ... etc.". They defeated the USA in the final. Come on ladies - Awesome work.

GB Masters Silver - as in Hi HO Lining. They lost in the cap to the USA, in a very hard fought game.

GB Open 4th - as in May the 4th be with you.

GB Mixed 7th - yep,

Scotland Mixed 11th

Ireland Mixed ??

Post any other information in the comments, also if you have an congratulations for the teams, then comment me up.

Today's Results

2007-12-15T21:34:00.000Z

It was a massive day for GB all around.

GB Women clinched an appearance in the final finishing at the top of their group and avoiding a 2-3 semi final late today. The semi was between the Aussies and USA. I didn't see much of it however I do know that the US team was too much for Aussies and will be facing GB Women tomorrow. They have already played twice with each taking a victory. As you can imagine it's early to bed tonight for the ladies.

GB Masters pulled some energy out of their arses to defeat Portugal today to put them 3rd in the group and subsequently defeat...I say defeat...whup is when I mean, the Canadian Masters 7-2 in the 2v3 semi final to put them into the Masters final tomorrow against USA in the second USA - GB final. The play in the Canada - GB semi was incredible. One point lasted 25 minutes with as many turnovers from each side and some massive play from both teams. I was on for that point. We all chalked up some killer D stats and showed that we had the legs to last and gave the US team watching a real scare. Last time when GB faced the US team it was a sudden death defeat for GB. It'll be different tomorrow (I hope).

GB Mixed have done very well at the event. Had they been able to gel and work on their consistency a bit more I think they could have contended quite a bit more. That said they finished today in 7th position in the Mixed division narrowly loosing a series of matches, each by only a few points. The position does not reflect the level of play from this team and respect must be given for their hard work. They were at a point only a few points away from the final in the game against Austria.

GB Open. This is a rather tragic tale. These guys have worked their asses off to be here and have shown by defeating the Aussies early in the tournament that they have got the balls and the heart to take it all the way. The tragic bit was loosing captain Dave Pichler today to illness leaving them without him for their semi rematch against the Australians and possibly contributing to their loss to them this time around. They played a hard fought match against the USA Open team but in the end the leaderless squad with stunning performances from Sicko and Caesar were still not enough. GB Open, 4th.

The Phillipines

2007-12-15T21:17:00.000Z

I first caught the Philippines playing against...I can't even remember who now. It was insane. Basically a bunch of hyper buff 5'5 average height guys and one girl (lets be clear about that because she's as part of the team as anyone) are storming through the top teams at this event! They play a fast paced, unhindered by conventional tactics style of play that is tearing the place apart and building a huge fan following at the same time. Their latest results being a win over the GB Open team who, while looking quite good, could not handle the speed of the Phillipines squad on turn-overs, and a win over the USA team in the semis putting them into what is sure to be a killer final against the Aussies tomorrow.

They seem to have a 'plinko' style of play, for those who have watched the A&B videos 127 times like I have that involve passing and running like a bullet into position.

I did think of stories I'd heard about the Buzz Bullets in Perth and they're unconventional style. Perhaps the far east have developed the game to a new level having reverse engineered the western tactics. Typical but consistent and effective here. Everyone is really excited to see more from them. I think it's a good time to mention that the GB Masters played them this morning and put up a 11-7 scoreline against them. Ok maybe they weren't pulling out all of the stops but it made us feel good.

The team made a request to mention their tournament next March. Look it up online and go, they'll be happy to help you with accommodations and flights as well.

GB Women POTD (Point of the Day)

2007-12-15T18:45:00.000Z

I thought in line with Felix and Ultivillage's COTD (clip of the day) I'd put together a point of the day for you. It's GB Women v USA Women. To give you an idea of the tight game and the effort required to score each point I've chosen one point I thought was exceptional to video blog. Enjoy.

Video Blog - The Disco Party

2007-12-14T10:56:00.000Z

After complaining a bit about the Hawaiian party we still put the effort into going to the Disco Party. This required a taxi to take us to a remote(ish) club only to find out the door man was charging R20$ to get in. This wasn't part of the plan so a small protest gathered outside and proved to be one of the highlights of the event as the players indulged into trying a bit of Capoeira (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capoeira) with the Brasil team and ended in a party that could not be stopped. I'm proud to have been part of the 8 strong GB team who represented there.

Corrected...yet again

2007-12-14T10:19:00.000Z

It seems there is a giant white board with results on it right next to the burger bar area attached to the arena pitch fence. It's just me who is a 'tad disappointing'. I'm recognising my mistakes and moving on.

Corrected...results are on BULA Blog

2007-12-14T10:18:00.000Z

I was correct last night and found that the scores are in fact on the bula blog (http://www.beachultimate.org/blog/) in details and the current state is coped below.

World Championships scores and standings

Schedule (.pdf) | Leave comments

Last modified:Friday, 14-Dec-2007 05:13:45 EST

**Mixed Divison**
	AT	BR	CA	CH	DE	ES	GB	IE	Pc	Sc	US	Pts
AT	X	13-4		8-9		6-12		8-5			1-13	4
BR	4-13	X	4-7	6-10		2-12		2-15				0
CA		7-4	X		6-16	6-10		2-9		7-8		2
CH	9-8	10-6		X			5-8	6-9			5-14	4
DE			16-6		X	9-6	13-2		12-4	16-3		10
ES	12-6	12-2	10-6		6-9	X	10-3					8
GB				8-5	2-13	3-10	X		14-6	15-9	3-13	6
IE	5-8	15-2	9-2	9-6				X	9-8		6-8	8
Pc					4-12		6-14	8-9	X	9-2	6-12	2
Sc			8-7		3-16		9-15		2-9	X	3-13	2
US	13-1			14-5			13-3	8-6	12-6	13-3	X	12

Pc = Peace Team. Sc = Scotland

**Open + Master Divison***
	AU	BR	Ci	GB	PH	US	BR	CA	GB	PT	US	Pts
AU	X		21-4	10-11		11-7	20-4		14-1		14-4	7
BR		X			8-18	8-9	7-4			14-4	6-8	2
Ci	4-21		X	3-15	5-8		10-11	7-12	7-10			0
GB	11-10		15-3	X			15-3	13-1	18-4	17-3		8
PH		18-8	8-5		X	10-8		13-4		15-9		8
US	7-11	9-8			8-10	X	11-4				11-6	4
BR	4-20	4-7	11-10	3-15		4-11	X				6-8	1
CA			12-7	1-13	4-13			X	10-7	8-5		5
GB	1-14		10-7	4-18				7-10	X		10-11	1
PT		4-14		3-17	9-15			5-8		X	7-13	0
US	4-14	8-6				6-11	8-6		11-10	13-7	X	7

*Top left is Open division. Bottom right is Master's division. A win within a division is 2 points. A win against other division is 1 point. After combined round-robin, play-off within divisions. Ci = Currier Island

**Womens Divison**
	AU	BR	Ci	GB	US	AU	BR	Ci	GB	US	Pts
AU	X	10-3	13-2	2-13	3-11	X	9-8				6
BR	3-10	X		3-14	0-15	8-9	X				0
Ci	2-13		X	0-18	3-13			X	1-13		0
GB	13-2	14-3	18-0	X	9-5			13-1	X		10
US	11-3	15-0	13-3	5-9	X					X	6

Ci = Currier Island

Posted by Patrick at December 1, 2007 10:46 PM
Comments (50) | Permalink

WCBU Day 2 Results

2007-12-13T21:15:00.000Z

GB Women

The boring news first. GB Women have stomped just about everyone. The real competition appears to still be coming from the USA and from the Aussies however having beat all of the competition thus far they are feeling rather confident. We'll see how confident tonight at the Disco party.

GB Open

The big news. The boys pulled off a massive victory against the Aussie open team ( that thrashed the Masters yesterday ) in a massive sudden death finish. Thrash from the Open team commented that it was all about massive D. The open were doing a good job however the D line really stepped up their game for this one and it paid off. Well done. They also clocked in some easy victories against the remaining Masters division teams, Brasil and Portugal. They are confident that the GB Masters will do a number on those teams as well. That said, they thought GB Masters would defeat USA and Canada. On to...

GB Masters

The Masters basically had a poor day. They lost a tough one to the USA team 11-10 in sudden death (or maybe it was 10-9). After some hard D and a some solid but missed layout D attempts the US team snuck the final point home. Great spirit has dominated the Masters division and although the loss was tough it was a great match. The game today against Canada showed the Masters feeling a bit weathered...literally. It was 35deg in the shade and sunny today. Perhaps a bit of over exposure or maybe even sweaty hands were part of the equation but Canada took over the game just past half to win 11-6 (or close to that). Jamie Rogers was the exception sending some clinical long discs to Wayne Davey. The rest of the team however put disc to sand, unforced too many times to hope for a victory. The encouraging end to take from this was that the GB Masters can play and will play much better. Brazil and Portugal are on the cards tomorrow. This is it if there is to be a chance for the final.

GB Mixed

Highs and lows are what the Mixed team are all about. They played magnificiently against the Swiss Mixed team today with an impressive 8-5 win from behind. Somebody comment on this if I've got that part really wrong. At times they look like a team destined for the final, and others, well my mother used to say if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
I watched their game against the German Mixed team who are tipped again for the final to repeat their Gold performance in 2004. This team is basically the team that played at EUC this summer. They performed well there and are showing here that they are World Class. A game to watch will be USA/Germany. (Photo: Gary Lloyd bids against a strong German Squad against a beautiful backdrop of Maceio).

Scotland

I missed out on them yesterday for which I apologise. I don't have any contacts on that team to keep me informed however I can say that they do look good at times. Yesterday their game against GB was hot! They lost it but it was a killer performance and left me impressed with the thought that they would end this event with a respectable placing.

Ireland

Same as above...they looked outstanding today playing against the USA mixed team. I don't know the result. I'll make some effort tomorrow to give some results on them.

The Tournament...

what I'm finding a tad disappointing is that it's difficult to get results. In Portugal there was a large white board out with daily results on it. Here there isn't any recognisable headquarters to so much as ask a question about the event. Scores are submitted to the scorekeepers who disappear somewhere and the blog or event website doesn't seem to have anything current on it.

Last night was the first party of the event and was a Hawaiian theme. That said, the bar staff could not keep up, the Hawaiian theme was simply a prearranged idea with little effort at the party itself to accent this choice so it was effectively a bunch of people dressed funny in a bar. Tonight is the 'Disco' party. I don't imagine it'll be more than a DJ playing disco music. Even so, I think I'll be pretty happy with that.

Opening Ceremony Video Blog

2007-12-12T22:28:00.000Z

A picture is worth a thousand words

WCBU Day 1 Results

2007-12-12T21:04:00.000Z

I'll update this post as more details come in however for now....

GB Juniors/Open
Won all games beating the US and Canadian Masters by quite a bit. They struggled against the GB Masters however but luck was on their side as the snuck out a cheeky victory only winning 16-4. The boys will start facing tougher opponents in USA, Australia and Canada later in the week.

GB Women
This is the big news! GB defeated USA Women, turning the tide from being initially down 4-5 to score 5 points consecutively to win 9-5. They also played the Currier Island Women and won it easily 18-0. The women's game on Currier Island is only just taking off with this being the first ever representation.

GB Mixed
Defeated the Peace Team featuring the lovely Alia and a slew of mega players as they found their feet as a team. I think the peace team will improve as the tournament progresses and will start upsetting some of the heavier teams in Mixed. Just as an aside, the Mixed division is the most popular here. As coming to Brazil was a considerable expense for most people, some countries put their money players into the Mixed first before considering other divisions. This has made mixed games very entertaining and competitive to watch and I'm sure play. Other games featuring the Mixed squad was a match against the near robotic USA Mixed team. I filmed some of this and in the end decided it was a giant lowlight reel. GB just packed up and went home for this game. I was disappointing to watch, know they had so much more to offer and likely disappointing to play for them as well. I think the US won 16-3 or so. Lastly the final game of the day was GB Mixed v Scotland Mixed. This was a cracker to watch. The first half was anybodies games with Scotland pulling out the bling and take it down against a tight GB D. The final score was 15-8 for GB Mixed however we saw the Scotland were a team to be reckoned with. Message from Anna Shipman on GB Mixed while I was filming 'Hi Mom'. Video highlight from this match will come in a later blog.

GB Masters
The Masters division is non-stop lesson in how to play ultimate. With supple throws, little movement and a sublime grasp of space, the Masters are the shizzle. Unfortunately the GB Masters played only open teams today and shizzle can only take you so far. The Masters lost to the Aussie open team 15-1. I've never experienced a team that laid out so prolifically and with such unexpected success. As Masters we didn't give them the credit up front they deserved and they spanked it into us. The next game was Currier Island open. In the past CI has brought some really quality to the pitch in both Spirit and Competitive play and this was no change from that. With no repeat players back they were lucky to form a team at all and suffered from only having what looked like 7-8 players. Respect to CI for a valiant effort but the masters cool (and numbers) prevailed chalking up win number 1 10-7.
Lastly the game of games. GB Masters vs GB Open. Women around the event were moistening up at the thought of this colossus of a match. It started with skill from both teams attracting a crowd however the Masters, while moving it seamlessly up pitch could not seem to hit the mark in the endzone. The babes of GB Open capitalized on this temporary lapse using pure speed and youthful exuberance to hit the deep players and create opportunities. In the end although the GB Open team scored more points than the Masters, the real winner was of course GB Masters losing with a respectable score of 4-16. Wayne Davey was to blame for the loss completely because he's not really a 'Dave' while the Open team boasted 4 Daves. We didn't stand a chance.

WCBU is go

2007-12-12T10:42:00.000Z

I'm a bit behind on the blog posts so I'll get some of the past few days published soon. In the meantime here's the scoop on the event which starts today in terms of play.

With a killer opening ceremony open (video to come tonight of that) complete, old friends reunited and the initial party enjoyed thoroughly it's time to play.

All of the GB teams have about 3 games today. I'll summarise those results as an addition to this post tonight. Masters have a hell day playing again Aussie Open, Currier Island (my old team), and GB Open. Yes that's right today GB will clash on the same. The Open team, know also as the Junior team with an average age of something like 20, will be matching fitness and gobbyness against the old wisdom and cool of the Masters. That is the game to watch today.

The Mixed have a tough one as well facing at least the US and the Canada Mixed teams. I believe they may also have the Scottish mixed to face as well. More details is available about the schedule and basic rules of play here http://www.beachultimate.org/blog/. Gotta run...Aussie's to beat.

The Pipa Experience

2007-12-10T07:24:00.000Z

P1000220
Originally uploaded by BlockStackSteve

After Natal some of us went on to a historic town called Olinda We didn't do that as we had more of a beach craving so we decided that Pipa was the answer as we'd heard such good things in Natal from the hotel people and from our lonely planet and rough guides to Brasil.

Skipping back to Olinda for a moment. If you do even go here, get money in advance as part of it's historicalness seems to include no bank machines. We received a text message from Wayne Davey to this effect and this also partly swayed out decision to hit the beaches of Pipa. I think I'd heard that some of the GB Mixed team hit Olinda as well when speaking with Anna Shipman. The odd person (Caesar) headed straight to Maceio on the overnight bus.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olinda).

We took 2 taxis for R120$ each from our Natal hotel straight to our new hotel in Pipa (www.rivasdream.com). Note the url. It was just that. A beautiful little dream land on what appears to be a rather nasty little road. If you're looking for it, turn left at the big pile of garbage as you leave the city centre.

So we were in Pipa! (http://www.pipa.com.br/conteudo/informativo/english/conheca.html) What to do? We dropped our bags in our rooms (R120$ for a three person room) and walked into town. We did a great interview with Dale you can see here as well. He summarised the experience thus far rather nicely.

We roamed about the shops, saw yet another creepy nativity scene being overlooked but what appears to be a nightmarish sailor with a possibly broken neck. We head down to the main beach which had about 10 feet of actual beachyness rammed with parasols. The food was great and the restaurants plentiful. What was immediately noticeable about Pipa was it's lack of tourists. With that was a lack of random people harassing your to buy more crap. Great success. After dinner the highlight of the afternoon was wading across the water with bags over head ( mr sensible me decided to just walk around on the boardwalk rather than risk dumping £1000+ worth of camera related treasure into the sea. Arrr.

You can see in the picture above where the destination was. A small outcropping of beach about the size of 6 ultimate frisbee beach pitches, had a bar and for some reason, nobody was on it. So we had a quick game of friz there, splashed about in the sea and enjoyed some Mojitos at the rustic bar there owned by a guy names Marcus. What's odd about this is, Natalie had read an article in the Guardian about a guy who was an IT consultant in Notting Hill who gave it all up, left everything behind and came to Brasil to open a bar. Living the dream you might say. Well here we were at his bar. I took some video of Marcus I've not had time to edit and unfortunately I did realise I did not get a photo. Arrrgh!

A Taste for Brasil

2007-12-10T02:41:00.000Z

A quick interview the surf/ultimate god Dale Madden out front of the Rivas hotel (www.rivasdream.com) in Pipa.

Day 2 - Surfing

2007-12-09T03:05:00.000Z

Surely if Keanu Reeves can learn to do this in a short montage, I can pick it up in a morning. I even had Surfing guru Dale Madden holding my hand through the process. Once at the beach, as I'd missed the initial hiring I had to wear a women's rash vest top which kept on riding up giving me a sort of a Daisy Duke unnecessarily exposed mid-region look while almost defeating the purpose of the top.

My first go had me catching a wave straight into the beach. I didn't stand up but just got a feel for it. I was ready. I was a natural. Check the video.

The Beach - Natal, Ponta Negra pt 2 - Shit for Sale

2007-12-08T11:14:00.001Z

sellersNatal
Originally uploaded by BlockStackSteve

I think it's pretty clear that you don't really need to pack anything at all before a beach holiday in Brazil. The beach of Ponta Negra in Natal to be specific as my knowledge of this extends only to this region thus far.

On the beach yesterday within an hour of securing our comfortable little oasis in the sand under a large parasol with a majestic view of the waves crashing onto the beach, the illusion of relaxation was harshly interrupted by a literal ebay of items for sale ranging from the practical to the bizarre.

Without fail, at a rate of about 1 every 2 to 5 minutes, our pasty white tourist skin attracted some form of seller trying to hock...
fruit, sunglasses, towels, beads, massage, hair braiding, surfboards, DVDs, big hats, small hats, coconuts , watches, Natal Tshirts, Brazil Tshirts, underwear, bikini tops, speedos, green coloured corn, beer mugs, flags, fine art, carpets, voodoo-like wooden sticks, booze (hurray!), bundles of sticks, grilled "meat", small clay dolls, squeezie toys, fine art, horses, woven swing chairs, AND my personal favourite, a 2 foot tall dark wood carving of a dolphin!

Where am I going to put it all?

The Beach - Natal, Ponta Negra pt 1

2007-12-07T21:59:00.001Z

Wayne Boogies
Originally uploaded by eurogig

Today the beach was the perfect answer to the stress of the pre-Brazil life. I spent a good part of the morning and afternoon just sitting in a chair under an umbrella in the Brazilian sun doing absolutely nothing and it was everything I thought it could be.

A few of the other hired some boogie boards and did a little body surfing with some success as the waves were at times a good 6+ feet high.

Day 1 - 06-12-07

2007-12-07T10:55:00.000Z

I'll put this in perspective right away. I'm updating this from a hammock on the balcony of my hotel room over looking the sea. Check photo from shiny new Lumix camera purchased at the Gatwick duty free shop.

Yesterday was generally painless. The flight was good considering it was a Thomson flight. It reminded me of the last Air Canada flight I took with the wee tiny screens, clearly well used seats and perky staff. I suppose considering that the staff could possible be getting a weeks holiday in brazil could explain the perkyness.

Our Thomson flight only flies on a Thursday. That means that either the staff are subjected to back to back 10 hours flights...or...they change staff and drop one for a week, load up last weeks and go home. I suppose the flight back with tell all by the magnitude of the tan lines on the returning flight crew.

Getting to the hotel was interesting as only two of the 10 or so people had booked the transport to the hotel (http://www.otempoeovento.com.br/ingles/index.htm). The driver who came for the people that booked phoned taxis for us. It was pretty good service considering the taxi was actually less (R34$) than the booked price of R35$.

We checked in, got our free welcome caprinha drink, and sat in the pool for a bit. After a few drinks we went 15 minutes down the beach and ate Mexican food which for me was jambalaya. I know this isn't Mexican but it was the only word in the bilingual menu I could understand. The menu was in two languages I don't know. I assume one was Portuguese and the other...Spanish? Suffice to say the food was excellent and the price even better. Restaurants beers are around 90p each. I haven't been to a market yet to see what they could possibly cost there.

I ended the night chatting to the Mixed team about stuff in general and the plans for the next few days. I think it's still up in the air for most people. We're all here for another day and a half at least and then the consensus seems to be to hit an area of Recife. Once that's agreed I'll detail the route.

Off to find food now to remove the mild hangover. We've got a plan to have a practice today around 4pm. Should be interesting.

Re: Email based posts...sweet.

2007-12-06T23:35:00.001Z

At the hotel O Tempe E O Vento now. The balconies have hammocks. Very nice. We just had a few drink by the pool and are going out for some vittles.

The flight was much better than expected. Although the entertainment was a bit forced with small screens servicing a large population, the films were mindless and entertaining with Transformers, Oceans 13 and Night at the Museum. Perfect brain fodder to get your mind into suspending disbelief mode.

Ok...little time as the cameras are charging and the team is waiting.

The Blog lives

2007-12-04T23:36:00.003Z

A new blog to be part of the blockstack.tv website once launched. Until then...it's a source of ultimate highs and lows.