The Tenth Board

This has been a good week for finding personal bowling blogs: Last night, I found out that one of my virtual league bowlers, known to me as “kwik8,” has started a blog. He puts it up front that he is a member of the Seismic Bowling review staff, so many of his future posts will be about the new Seismic ball releases. To throw him a bone, I’ve added his blog to the blogroll in the sidebar.

I have been alerted via a recent NEBA result that I may have been in error on a bowler’s last name, with the bowler with a recent 300 game in the Tuesday Scratch Sportsmen league having the actual last name of Corneau (the R and N sort of blend together for Comeau on the LeagueSecretary.com standings sheet). The error has been corrected both in the initial post about the 300 game and in the mid-season round-up post.

I’d been seeking a way to do it, and had thought about using custom CSS (which would eventually cost extra), but saw that copyright information for this blog could be added via a text widget in the sidebar, so I’ve done so. Gotta protect myself.

Thanks to a new referrer that I spotted in my blog stats recently, I found three new (to me) personal bowling blogs, listed below:

• “Bowling in the Burgh,” done by a bowler in the Pittsburgh area.
• “Bowling Roller Coaster,” by a bowler in the Washington, DC area.
• “Joanie’s Bowling Blog,” by a female bowler in Colorado (there was no information on the specific area of the state).

The links to these blogs appear in the sidebar, in the “Blogroll” category. Welcome!

I had always seen “NAT 2008 results” listed on this blog’s dashboard as a search term leading to blog views of my post about the Northeast Amateur Tournament. Fearing that the post may have been a misleading result on the search term in question, I have finally taken the time to edit the post and the Permalink to it to specify that it’s about the Northeast Amateur Tournament by full name. I may still get hits on this post because of the mention of the search term, but at least the “thumbnail” of the search result may include the full name now.

Westgate Lanes had out a photocopy of an article in the current (Dec. 2011) Stars & Strikes magazine written by Dustin Markowitz of Motiv with his thoughts on how bowling can improve, and that prompted a search for the magazine’s site. The site has links to the current news articles and opinion pieces (including a column by Chuck Pezzano, the dean of bowling writers) in the menu, and also has a link to subscribe for hard copies. If you like your freebies on the Internet (and I know I do ), the site does have a PDF copy of the current issue in the “Archives” as well as PDF copies of back issues dating back to 2007. Needless to say, the link is now in the sidebar, in the “Bowling Sites” category.

Found this site on Facebook…Mark Baker is sometimes called “Coach For The Pros” because he works with many of the PBA’s stars, with his most successful student seeming to be Chris Barnes, who happens to be my favorite pro on tour. Barnes, in fact, wrote a testimonial for Baker’s website, which is now linked in the sidebar in the “Coaching/Tips” category. I don’t know if he’ll ever be in New England for a camp or clinic, but his schedule is on the website if you’re ever wondering (or are thinking about traveling to one of them as a sort of bowling vacation).

Being that they visit Westgate Lanes every few years for their national tournament, and wanting to support all kinds of bowlers, I found the site of the American Wheelchair Bowling Association back in June when they were at Westgate Lanes, but, at the time, it looked like it hadn’t been updated for some time; happily, it has (even noting Al Uttecht’s election to the USBC Hall of Fame), so I can now add the site to the sidebar (under the “Bowling Sites” category).

I’ve edited both the title and the URL of the post about Al Uttecht’s election to the USBC Hall of Fame to better note his status as a pioneer in his form of bowling.

BowlersDeals.com is a new (to me) online store offering all kinds of deals on everything bowling-related. I happened to learn about them because they’re the sponsor of the “All-In Challenge” that will kick off the third annual World Series of Bowling next weekend. The link to the site is now in the sidebar, in the “Other equipment sites” category (as I do with all of the online “pro shops”).

I became aware of a new ball company, Jet, on the forums, where a couple of members of the virtual league either had already become a staff member or were in the process of applying for staff. A quick Google search found their website, which has been added to the “Ball Sites” sidebar listing.

I know the pro shop can sell you a customized spare ball with your picture or other design on it, but didn’t know where the company that does it is online until the topic came up in my bowling chat and I did a search. The link to “On The Ball Bowling” is now in the sidebar under “Ball sites,” but keep in mind that they can do custom bowling pins and other bowling gifts, as well.

“Gutter To Glory” is a Roto Grip-sponsored blog written by Timmothy Merath, a web development/social media specialist for the company living in Milwaukee who is bowling in his first league this season (not counting those occasions in which he was a sub). I think his experiences as a neophyte league bowler should be interesting reading, and, as such, I have added the link to it to the blogroll.

I realized that, in the BowlSK sheet for my latest league night, when I changed balls (to my Hy-Road), I noted the change in the first frame with the ball, but not the second frame, so I had to go back to the sheet and reset the ball to the ball I was using in the frames that still had the ball I started with (my Reign of Fire). The sheet now gives a truer account of the night.

I was contacted today by the owner/administrator of the site, “All Ten Back,” who notified me both about his main site and his blog. Giving both a perusal, I noted that that blog had a nice collection of ball reaction video, mostly of Storm/Roto-Grip and Hammer balls. Where he does have other videos, I decided to add the blog to the blogroll rather than make it a site in the “Ball sites” listing. The addition of the blog is with the understanding that people can find the blogger’s main site through the blog.

I had meant to note it in previous posts, but the links to my winter league’s standings sheets on both LeagueSecretary.com and BowlerExpress.com are back up in the “Author’s links” sidebar listing with the start of the new season. More importantly was the real reason I waited on this post: I had created a new sheet on BowlingTracker.com for this year’s winter league, but it had problems showing the correct AVG+1 after Week 1 (it just repeated my Week 1 series score instead of that score plus 6 pins, as it should have been with my series evenly divisible by 3). I am now satisfied that the AVG+1 score (which I note in most of my league night recaps) is correct after Week 2, so the new sheet has been added to the links listing. I will probably take down the summer league links tomorrow, so if you want to view anything from that, you have one more chance.

I found “Steve’s Bowling Blog” by way of my friend(s) at “The Thumbhole Chronicles,” where they had the blog linked. This blog seems to have a daily video and quote, as well as the occasional opinion piece. I thought it would make a good addition to the blogroll, so the sidebar link has been added in that category. Welcome!

More “summer projects”…

First, for those of you whom I’m friends with on Facebook, I’ve connected this blog to Facebook so that, now, my posts also show on my Facebook wall and in my friends’ news feeds. I did this mostly to eliminate the need to post a separate note on Facebook about my league nights, but I may leave it connected full time for the time being.

Second, I visited the blog’s sharing options, and there’s now a Facebook Share button on posts. As I know some of you are also in the “Twitterverse” (I’m not; I’ve thought about it as an adjunct to the blog for posting about honor scores via text message as they happen, but I can’t be at every league, and I don’t know if I can have more than one cellphone number able to tweet to the account.), there’s a Tweet button on posts, as well.

Have fun with the new “features,” folks.