For some time, my avatar on the bowling forums has been an animated GIF cycling through images of the balls in whatever is my arsenal at the time, from strongest ball to weakest ball. I recently updated the avatar to start with my Nano (now my strongest ball), but got the idea to show it on my blog, too, and, knowing there was a widget available on it, I added the image (on PhotoBucket) to the sidebar.

Note: For the individual images, I just used generic images of the balls that can be found in a Google image search, and used GIMPShop after resizing to create the animation. I could get fancy and fade the individual images into each other, but I’m not that skilled with GIMPShop.

With my addition of the National Bowling League Championships link to the sidebar in the “Tournaments” category, I noticed an oversight: The link to the Virtual Tournaments site was still in the “Bowling Sites” category. Wanting to keep the tournaments together, even the virtual ones, I re-categorized the Virtual Tournaments link to the “Tournaments” category.

Ray also showed me a flyer for the National Bowling League Championship after my lesson that someone had dropped off in his pro shop. Conceptually, this is a virtual tournament, but competition is for teams of five instead of individuals, all ending with a 96 team head-to-head roll-off with a potential $50K first prize based on 10K teams entering the NBLC. The flyer also said all competition takes place without leaving your home bowling center.

I’ve added the link to the sidebar (in the “Tournaments” category) for those who’d like more information.

I mentioned there was something interesting about the Inside Bowling site in a comment to a previous post, and that is that that site is actually also home to a webcast. The webcast is in its second season, and you can find both audio (right from the archive pages) and video (link to their UStream channel) for the archived shows (there’s a separate link for the live webcasts, though I don’t know when those run). They also have forums (though I think I’ll stick to the site I’m on, since I practically work for them now 😀 ) and a Java chat available (keep in mind this is the St. Louis-based site I mentioned earlier, so they may be locally-focused). I’m linking the site because of the big name guests on their webcast, and it can be found on the sidebar in the general “Bowling Sites” category.

Further digging from “The 11th Frame” turned up BowlSpot.com, which powers the blog. This site offers bowling stat tracking and possibly other interactivity (I’ll be registering tomorrow and post additional notes as a comment), and also powers, besides Jeff Richgels’ blog, Pete Weber’s website (those of you who watched this year’s US Open will certainly know who “He Is” 😀 ) and InsideBowling.com, a site devoted to bowling in the St. Louis area. The main site gets the link on the sidebar, in the general “Bowling Sites” category.

I had known that USBC Hall of Famer Jeff Richgels, who has my respect for doing well year after year at the USBC Open Championships (he is the captain of the defending Regular Team champion Turbo 2-N-1 Grips 1), writes a column for Madison.com (Wisconsin, where Richgels is from), but I didn’t know that he also had a blog site at 11thFrame.com until I saw a post of his linked in the USBC’s Twitter feed. Of course, the link is now up in the blogroll on the sidebar.

I was apparently looking at the wrong line in the upcoming schedule on the standings sheet. My team is bowling against “Bottoms Up!” tonight, and “The Mustangs” will be the opponent next week.

The redesigned Bowl.com went “live” today, and with it, a new RSS feed. It took some tweaking to the URL for the feed, but I have confirmed that the sidebar widget for the feed now actually displays the feed. The purpose for adding the feed in the first place was to keep my readers updated on USBC news, so I hope you’ll still find it useful. 😀

I was alerted to the International Art of Bowling site through Tim Merrath, who recently had a coaching session with them, via his “Gutter to Glory” blog. The coaches on this site are former Team USA member Diandra Asbaty (a Silver level coach), Ron Hoppe (one of the first certified Gold level coaches), and Jason Belmonte (also certified at the Silver level). An interesting feature of this site is “Skype-a-coach,” where you connect with one of them via the popular Skype VoIP application. They also maintain a blog, in which they pass along tips, answer reader questions, and write about their personal experiences. The link is now in the sidebar, under the “Coaching/Tips” category.

Note: Despite misconceptions because of his unique style, Belmo can coach a conventional one-handed bowler. 😀

I try to source my tournament news from outside of Westgate Lanes, particularly if it’s news away from New England, and I have done so in my post about the WTBA International Open, linking the tournament’s website on the name of the tournament in the body of the post. Full results will be available on the website.

Noticing that I still had room for posts to appear on the main page of the blog before the last widget in the sidebar (at the bottom of the page), I changed the maximum number of posts that appear on the main page (they will always be the most recent posts) to 20 (an increase of 5 from the default setting), which happens to be close to matching up with the last widget before I submitted this post. The change is aesthetic, nothing more. 😀

If my readers have noticed that there’s been nothing new in the USBC’s RSS feed in my sidebar since the World Women’s Championships in September, it’s because the USBC has developed a problem with the feed. I have alerted them to the problem, but these things may take time to be rectified. Please bear with me…I have little control over it.

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.