Geoffrey Taucer

Gold for Shawn! Huzzah! I'm dissappointed Horton didn't win gold on highbar, though; I thought he definitely had a better routine than Zou Kai. That was one seriously awesome routine. Still, silver is nothing to scoff at.

Zircon has dropped his claim on the map theme, so it's now open to anybody who wants it (and can put together a good WIP).

Sounds good. Count me in! EDIT: I work saturdays until 3:30, though, so I might have to come a bit late unless I can find somebody to cover for me. EDIT 2: One of my students is an OCR fan and will probably want to come.

Yeah, the american women really got fucked. Liukin and Kexin should share the gold (actually, Kexin shouldn't be allowed to compete, but that's a separate can of worms.) Getting back to the men, I gotta say I'm dissappointed that Dragulescu didn't medal in either floor or vault, considering he really is the best in the world at both.

Yes, definitely. But even better is the way it's gotten my students fired up; they've been working harder for the last week and a half than I've ever seen them work before. Looking at the math, her falls alone were not worth the difference in scores between the US and China; China still would have won Gold. However, that's assuming that there were no other deductions resulting from the mental shakeup from those falls. My opinion, had Sam Peszek and Chelsea Memmel not been injured AND had Alicia not fallen, the US would have won gold. But either of those things on their own would not have made a difference. I actually love the new scoring system (though this seems to put me in the minority among coaches). Under the old system, there was a cap on difficulty. In other words, once you reach a certain threshold under the old system, there is absolutely zero gain from pushing the boundaries and trying anything new or risky. The new system really encourages gymnasts to push the limits. That said, judging so far in beijing has been a joke. Alicia should have won bronze on vault. Shawn should have won gold on floor. Nothing quite so blatant yet (at least as far as I've seen) on the men's side, though I still think the US gymnasts are being under-scored (though admittedly, China has truly deserved all the medals they've won on the men's side; they're unbelievable) EDIT: It's definitely up there for me.

OH MY GOD. Did anybody else see Danny Rodrigues's Olympic rings routine? That was unreal.

HOLY SHIT! DID YOU FUCKING SEE DANNY RODRIGUES'S RINGS ROUTINE? There were THREE skills there that nobody else has ever done in the history of the sport. All three will likely be named after him. Absolutely unreal.

Going back and watching Cheng Fei's second vault again, Alicia really was robbed. Looking only at her two most obvious deductions and ignoring anything else, she should have lost FAR more than she did. The sloppy entry with two incomplete twists (incomplete roundoff onto the board and incomplete twist onto the table) and the fall on the landing should add up to AT LEAST a point and a half, without even looking at any of her other deductions. Those scores were a joke. I will say, however, that I was thrilled to see Chusovitna medal.

Poor Alicia. I just want to give her a hug. Well, perhaps a little more than a hug, but that's neither here nor there. The good news is that the deduction for a fall is being increased to a whole point in the new code of points, which takes effect after these olympics. EDIT: Izbasa should not have won floor. Too many obvious form breaks, and a comparatively easy routine. Shawn's routine was much nicer, as was Nastia's (aside from that double front. I have no idea why she even does that double front; she cowboys it and flexes her feet, and it looks so ugly compared with the rest of her routine)

Concurred. Changing the subject, Deferr's floor routine was sweet. He has without a doubt the prettiest double layout I've ever seen.

Definitely one of my favorites so far. The pudding line was great.

That sounds quite enjoyable. If I didn't have to work in 45 minutes, I'd go home and listen to groundbreaking remixes all nekkid n stuff right now.

Worry not, for epic it most certainly will be.

CursedByFire: I'll talk to bahamut and we'll decide whther we want you to do the album art sometime in the next few days. In the meantime, please don't post further ideas here -- send them to me and/or bahamut. We want the album art to be a surprise when the project comes out.

So I've started doing my planches on rings instead of p-bars or pommel horse; they're definitely harder, and I'm noticing huge improvements in the stability of my planches and malteses already. Haven't been doing crosses enough this week, so I did a bunch today, and I'll probably do a bunch more before I leave tonight.

NASTIA AND SHAWN!!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! lowercase

It's not dead; it was never alive to begin with. The project was an april fools joke that keeps getting bumped for some unknown reason.

That would be me and bahamut. We haven't settled on a title or anything yet. Do you have a portfolio we can take a look at?

Here's a cut version of the track "The Battle" from Gladiator: http://www.geoffreytaucer.com/randomstuff/Battle.mp3 Thoughts?

What was the difference in scores? (I didn't stay up to check the final results) Alicia's falls cost the team 1.6. If China won by more than that, they would have won anyway.

I've been slacking off way too much on flexibility. FOr awhile, my splits were getting close, but I'm losing them again. I'll have to work harder on that. My planches, malteses, and crosses continue to improve. My inverted cross is inconsistent, but not bad when I hit it.

GOOOO SASHAAAAAAAAAA ARTEMEV SAVES THE DAY! USA BRONZE! That was fucking intense.

I think it's completely fair for us to ask for proof of solid progress on the game before writing something for it.

Happy birthday! Collab?

Holy shit, did you see Artemev's pommel horse routine last night? That was beautiful. And Spring's high bar routine was insane.