spinner.org.nz

the bet

stick — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:07:38 +0000

I have accepted a wager from Peter that I will buy an iPad within 6 Months. The terms are if I buy one then he wins the bet. If I don’t buy one then I win the bet. If I get given one or win one then no one wins the bet.

The bet will finish at 14:49 on 21 January 2011. The iPad is released in New Zealand on 23 July 2010.

rotorua 2010

stick — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:52:03 +0000

Let me just start by saying that these are my thoughts/opinions and not those of my team.

First of all I’d like to say that I enjoyed myself. Rotorua is always a good tournament and it’s return this year was enabled by Brendan, Terry, Maria, Ants and the guys at Aces High Paintball offering to let Pete and his boys run the Queen’s Birthday tournament this year.

The facilities for the tournament were enjoyable. We stayed and played on the grounds of the All Seasons Motel and Camp Ground which meant that we didn’t have far to stumble from our rooms to the field. All teams had covered staging/pit areas and waiting to go on the field was covered as well. Works well with sun or rain. The compressor was covered too which was smart thinking.

I got up to Rotorua late on Friday night so didn’t see the field until early Saturday morning. From what I understand the initial field designs had some quite large open spaces in the middle. The idea being so that people didn’t hang about shooting lanes. From experience, this serves the opposite purpose. If you want people to not hang about and shoot lanes then put some big shit in the middle so you need to get out to the tapes for those kills. The field we played on the weekend ended up blocking the center lanes and most of the dorito side and promoted aggressive play which made for fast games. Great stuff. The only comments I have is we should’ve played with the X (although it is difficult to ref it), the tapes were a little close to the field and the deadbox should have some barrier so that those in there didn’t get shot up (again).

Reffing is always a point of contention. The winners always think the reffing is good and the losers always pick up on the poor calls. Reffing is a thankless job at the best of times. Personally I thought the reffing was good. Nice work from Pom (Ian), Skinny and Boog (I’ve named them because those are the only fellas that were reffing that I know; sorry to the rest). The games ran ahead of time thanks to a lack of bullshit on the field and the admin folks letting teams know that they were playing soon. I read someone suggesting that more time be allowed between games for people to collect pods. I didn’t really noice this being an issue. The refs were pretty on to it by grouping pods for easy collection. It’s your job to police your own pods so stop fucking around telling stories to the other guys in the deadbox about how you got shot and why it wasn’t your fault ;)

We had an OK prelims only dropping 1 game to Arachnids (who ultimately came 2nd) and a close game against Flash Point (well done on winning the tournament lads). So we finished 1st after the prelims and the next closest team was 200 points behind. We had trouble with the paint as did everyone else. Contrary to some beliefs, we were not partying on Saturday night (although that’s why you go to the Rotorua tourmanent). We were in bed relatively early, expecially compared to Friday night and were up at 6am on Sunday morning. It was a team decision to not play Sunday. Some people will understand why we didn’t play Sunday but all explainations will probably come across as elitist or arrogant.

Flash Point should have beaten us if they had kept their heads and communicated better. B2 should have stayed on the tape and Jono (from Contraband) should have run the highway. Worst case, I would have traded with Jono leaving B2 to hang the flag. I was in a bad position being in the snake and coming at me one at a time was silly :) This is not a dig at anyone. Flash Point played well the whole tournament and espcially considering some of the core guys weren’t there it was a solid performance.

Now, to my guys. How about more than 1 of us play some paintball less than 6 months before a national event. Also, let’s walk the field next time and have a reserve LOL.

super 7s round 2 – updated 24/5/2010

stick — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:37:25 +0000

Last weekend I played Round 2 of the Australian Super 7s series held at Action Paintball Games.

This year the format for Pro and Semi Pro has changed to a Race 2 scenario using modified Millennium Series rules.

We got 2nd in Pro. Well done to Hostile Intentions. A huge thanks to Logan for the coaching dorito side and Zed for the use of the gat. Much appreciated :)

Update 24/5/2010 – Derder Rob has started putting the vids up from Round #2.

Pro
1st – Hostile Intentions
2nd – Menasty NZ
3rd – Menace WA
4th – Sydney SWAT
5th – X-Fighters
6th – Blood Knuckles
7th – Explicit
8th – Raw

Semi-Pro
1st – Carnivores
2nd – NBK
3rd – SWAT Kidz
4th – The Business

Amateur
1st – Uprising A
2nd – Red Dragons
3rd – Uprising B
4th – Korrupt
5th – Sydney Spartans
6th – Vicious Circle
7th – ANV Nemesis
8th – Marksmen Recon
9th – Atomics

aces high race-2-3 – series 2 – round 3

stick — Tue, 11 May 2010 04:16:06 +0000

A couple of weekends ago we played Round 3 of the 2nd series that Aces High are running using the Race-2-3 format.

It was a very enjoyable day. The weather was perfect and all teams are playing to a consistently higher level. The scores don’t really reflect this but most points now are pretty close.

This was my second outing with Team Convicts and and my first time playing with Nick and Nate. We put on a good show :)

Round 3 Points:
Addicted – 6
Assassinz – 7
Convicts – 12
Happy Meal – 0
Slip Knot – 4

Series 2 Standings after Round 3:
Addicted – 26
Assassinz – 20 (previously played as Arachnids during Round 1)
Convicts – 31
Happy Meal – 8
Slip Knot – 14

retraction

stick — Tue, 04 May 2010 22:25:59 +0000

I’m going to retract all previous statements about the iPad and start fresh. After having a further play on one I can now see the usefulness of it. In landscape they are pretty easy to type on. Snappy and fast response. With the addition of Dropbox/mobileme, Pages and Numbers the iPad can replace at least 75% of what I do on my MacBook Pro. Well, maybe not 75% but still quite a lot.

The next step is for Vodafone and Telecom to come up with some plans that include appropriate voice/txt/data for households. I’m not talking about multiple plans on a single bill. I want multiple devices on the same plan/account/bill. So all minutes/txt/data is shared with the ability to add additional bundles of minutes/txt/data at a nominal fee. Wrap that up with a landline and broadband and you’ve got a pretty unbeatable package.

strange things are afoot at the circle k

stick — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:53:45 +0000

A buddy of mine owns a couple of paintball fields here in Wellington. Recently he’s had a couple of suspicious incidents occur. Have a read of the The Dominion Post article of one of them.

Police are seeking information from any witnesses, especially two teenage boys who spoke to people who are were calling emergency service.

Anyone with information is asked to call Detective Adrian Ross at Lower Hutt police station on 04 560 2600.

what i hate dislike about the iphone

stick — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 01:19:29 +0000

So I’ve had an iPhone for nearly two years now. I still have the 3G model. It didn’t seem reasonable to upgrade to the 3GS but I can see the speed bump would have been handy. Anyway, with the announcement of iPhone OS 4 and the up-coming announcement of the iPhone HD (or whatever they’re going to call it) I was thinking about what I dislike about the iPhone/iPhone OS.

Requires iTunes to sync stuff to phone
Alert notifications are poor (visual/sound)
Cannot use custom alert sounds
Cannot change alert sound for email/calendar
Cannot use device for storage like a USB drive (yes I know there are apps for this kind of thing but they have certain requirements)

This started out like a good idea, but that’s all I can come up with so far. iPhone OS 4 does not look like it’ll be addressing any of these.

Does anyone have anything to add?

Update: I like the way this guy thinks.

wptouch

stick — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 21:39:23 +0000

I have installed WPtouch on spinner.org.nz for ease of mobile browsing use. There’s an option to turn it off at the bottom of the page if you’d prefer.

Head on over with your iPhone, iPod touch, Google Android or Palm Pre and check it out.

winner winner chicken dinner

stick — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:33:00 +0000

I played the first National event of the year down in Christchurch over Easter weekend for SCK. We had Jono, Tom, Tower, Spike and myself.

There were only seven teams in attendance for one reason or another so we played a double round robin on Saturday with Semis and Finals on the Sunday. Both Semis and Finals were best of three affairs. After the Finals were done we had a bit of a free-for-all session where teams got a little taste of the Race2 format with sideline coaching.

We finished the prelims in first place and played Mugshot in the Semis. There was a bit of controversy in one of our games with Tower having an unexplained hit on him. It was in an unusual place and since no one was either shooting at him or could hit him (because I’d already eliminated anyone that could) in that location it was just plain weird. In the end, penalties were assessed and we still had that game. Finished the Semis 2-0.

The Finals were against Clown Monkeys who had a hard fought Semis against Flashpoint. We took the Finals 2-0 too. Good hard games.

Results:
1st SCK
2nd Clown Monkeys
3rd Flashpoint
4th Mugshot
5th TPC Blast
6th Vanguard
7th Contraband

Photos taken by Simo can be found here and more here.

springs 09 playing for resurrection – updated 27/7/2010

stick — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:55:06 +0000

I played the Springs ’09 tournament in October 2009 for Resurrection. A throw together team consisting of Gav, Mumby, Luke, Seth, Ants and myself. Some how we managed to win the event :)

Huge thanks to Carissa for the pit crew help and the video.

I still have to upload the rest of the semi-finals and finals.

Update 19/4/2010: Some more vids taken by 5toleninnz can be found here.

Update 27/7/2010: Last 3 videos uploaded.
Resurrection – Springs 09 – Video #11
Resurrection – Springs 09 – Video #12
Resurrection – Springs 09 – Video #13