The Chambers

I’ve added another interesting tweeter to my #goodpeople list. More info on this project can be found – @ckjchambers favourite tweeters

#10 #goodpeople @brettow who runs BNE digital shop Speedwell. Very knowledgeable about digital & team does great work https://twitter.com/#!/ckjchambers/goodpeople

Four ball aggregate competition today. Interesting competition style where two golfers play as a pair. At the completion of each hole both players take their handicap from their score and then add those scores together. Coxy and I scored a 149, which we think will be well off the mark.

Summary of the round:

Date played: 21st January
Score: 90 off the stick

Highlight: Par three scored on the fifth hole. My tee shot (9 iron) flew the green and landed on the tee block, some 15 metres behind the green. My lie was sloped severely and I needed to chip down an embankment. Given the difficulty of the shot I was happy to land on the green and have a 7 or 8 metre putt left. I sunk it. My scores on the par 3′s today = 4, 4, 3, 6.

Lowlight: The par three 8th, which I knocked my tee shot well left. Chipped through the green, duffed a chip back on and then three putted… #lesigh

Last week I undertook an AimPoint putting lesson. More info to post on that later. I was hoping my putting would improve and it certainly did. I only recorded one three putt (break in concentration) and recorded three one putts.

No 7′s on the round! Nine bogeys and three pars.

Round result 21st January

The scorecard can be found http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/20-8542412-8542446

Putting definitely improved a touch. I played the par three’s better than usual (except the 8th) and no blow out 7 or 8 scores on any single hole. Definite improvement, but had a couple of brain explosions.

My handicap pre-round was 22. Considering the round was inside my best 8 of the last 20, my handicap should drop lower. This round will knock a 95 out of the equation.

I’ve started up a list of my favourite tweeters, which I’ll add to frequently. You can find the list -> https://twitter.com/#!/ckjchambers/goodpeople

As at today I’ve only added 7 people. I certainly intend for it to be a far greater representation of all the good peeps I follow, but I am not intending on adding them all in one swoop. I’ve embedded onto this page http://www.ckjchambers.com/my-favourite-tweeters/ the list and their most recent tweets. The comments on that page include when I added each tweeter and why.

h/t to Mr Andy Elwood for the #goodpeople tag inspiration.

Whilst I am here, I’ll also add #8 to the list….

Rohit Bhargava – @rohitbhargava. Rohit’s twitter bio reads: “I write a blog about influential marketing. I work at Ogilvy. I have a personality. I wrote a book on why personality matters: readpni.com”

#goodpeople #8 @rohitbhargava posts regularly about online marketing & once sat on a TQ panel about “Best Job”. https://twitter.com/#!/ckjchambers/goodpeople

Public holiday Tuesday gives me the chance to sneak out for a hit in the comp at Pine Rivers. Tuesday is the vets comp day, but with it being a public holiday, the club has opened it up to any players. 7:30am shotgun start, single stableford competition. We drew a start from the par 3 14th hole.

Summary of the round:

Date played: 27th December
Score: 84 off the stick (my best ever score) which was 45 Stableford points
Highlight: A near chip in second shot from 40 metres out, which resulted in an easy putt for birdie on the 9th hole
Lowlight: A disastrous three putt 7 on the par 5 third hole after having a pretty easy par putt.

My putting score was 30 putts. Statistically an excellent result, but this was achieved with a chip in “no putt” par on the first and two lengthy single putts on holes 12 and 16. There was two shocking three putts on back to back holes (holes 3 and 4) and I slide a lot of putts past the hole or missed short putts I should have made. I felt this was the least satisfactory phase of my game yesterday.

Scoring wise, I managed a birdie (mentioned above as the highlight hole), six pars, seven bogeys and 4 doubles.

You can find my scorecard on golfshot -> http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/360-8309406-8309779

This was my lowest off the stick score. An 84, which could have been so much lower without a few dodgy putts. I dont know that I could have broke 80, but I would have gone close. The 45 stableford points was enough to register as second in the comp on the day.

My handicap dropped from 23.9 to 22.7. Means I am now playing off a 23 handicap. One more competition to play in 2011 and my handicap started the year at 28.1.

Last night Kylie and I headed to the Gold Coast for the Foo Fighters concert. The concert was at Metricon Stadium and it was a cracker. The concert really was outstanding, with a good variety of the Foo Fighters new music and some of the older stuff I was really looking forward too. You’d have to be very hard to satisfy if you didn’t like what was played last night.

Dave Grohl was quite the entertainer, full of energy and engaged with the audience throughout the show. Grohl told a story about being arrested for drunk driving on a scooter after a “Big Day Out” concert years ago. I also loved the way he and Taylor Hawkins mucked around and teased the crowd about the number of songs which they would play during the encore.

This video is from the concert, not shot by me, but is of one of the better songs from the concert. Generator.

The setlist for the Foo Fighters Gold COast 2011 show can be found – http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/foo-fighters/2011/metricon-stadium-gold-coast-australia-4bd1230a.html

I found a couple of articles reviewing the concert:

The review on the Gold Coast Bulletin. Another review can be found on the triple m website

When the Foo Fighters next come back, I’ll be sure to get tickets again.

I recently wrote up a review of a round of golf I played on the Hamilton Island GOlf Club and posted it to tripadvisor and also iseekgolf. This is that review:

I played this course in August 2011. Surely it must be one of the world’s most spectacular golf courses. You access the course by a 10 minute ferry ride from Hamilton Island and the club house sits atop a hill which gives great views out over the Whitsunday Passage.

There are some tricky holes made even tougher by a stiff breeze which waits to push your ball off the fairway and into the coarse rough just off the fairway. I paid several penalties for lost balls, when tee shots hit the fairway and then rolled off the fairway into the rough.

The most memorable holes are definitely on the back nine. The par 3 14th, with fierce winds and a long carry over native bushland is as tricky an iron shot as you’ll find. The 15th is a great par four which runs downhill & into a stiff breeze, you’ll be best hitting something which keeps low here. Another distraction, when I played this hole, was the pod of humpback whales passing through the passage. The par 4 18th, hitting down the hill & with views forever is a great closing hole.

I thoroughly enjoyed the course, though it was one of the more challenging I have played.

To see my scorecard for the round: http://golfshot.com/Rounds/Detail/218-6406508-6406739

One of the projects we’ve been working on lately at work is Roo Mail. The result is the video below, a tall tale about a North Queensland community which has trained Kangaroo’s to deliver their mail.

How amazing is this video from Disney which is about the revamp of the Star Tours ride at Disney Land. Featuring Darth Vader frustratingly waiting for the ride to re-open after refurbishment, this is a great bit of content from the Disney team which should gain interest from fans of the park and the Star Wars movies.

Star Tours: Darth Vader goes to Disneyland

This round review is a couple of weeks late in being posted. This was a mixed round, with five pars and a birdie being the good side of the round, the dark side of the round being the four bogeys and the eight double (or worse) bogeys. That’s a 56% rating on bogey’s or lower.

The main culprit of the dark side of the round being the four – FOUR – penalties in the round. Three of the four fell on the one hole, with three out of bounders off the tee on the 11th.

I was pretty happy with how I hit the new driver, with a driving accuracy of 42.9% on the day. This result is by far my best result off the tee with the new club.

Highlight hole is pretty easy to see on the card. The first hole. I smashed the driver off the tee, nearly through the fairway, which left me with a reasonably short chip (around 60 or 70 metres) onto the green. The chip ended up around four metres to the right of the pin and the putt went into the back of the hole! That’s how you play the first at Pine Rivers.

Lowlight hole is also pretty easy to see on the card. I still feel sick thinking about the play off the tee…. Driver, right and out of bounds… Tee it back up again. Driver, right and out of bounds. Switch to the hybrid, but same result, right and out of bounds. U G L Y.

Forthy-three stableford points, with three washes. I ended up getting a mention in the run down. All in all though, the result could have been a lot better though.

Howdy, welcome to round review number one.

This was round number one with the new Ping i15 Driver. I was not terribly accurate with it, hitting 3 of 10 fairways from the tee. However, it was a shot with this club that provided the highlight of the day.

Highlight of the day: A par 4 on the 13th hole. This hole regularly kicks my ass, I do not play it well. There’s a lengthy water carry and historically I play the hole by hitting hybrid, then a 9 iron on hopefully, but normally I miss the green and then have a chip on to a multi-tier green which is tricky to two putt. In other words, if I play it very well, I normally end up with a five, but chuck in a wayward chip / tee into the water and I reckon I would average around a 7 on the hole.

In this round though….. I hit driver from the tee to green side! This was a massive shot and one of the best I’ve ever played. The hole measures 308 metres, I’m not sure where the tee box was on the day, though I am sure it was forward. My shot ended up around 20 metres short of the green – hurray! After that tee shot, I was able to chip up nicely and just run the first putt past the right hand edge and sink the second putt for the par.

Low light of the round? Definitely the “Road Hole”, which is Pine Rivers fourth hole. I put my tee shot out of bounds and then ran my second tee shot into a difficult spot behind some trees, which I had to chip out of and from there it was an ugly road to an eight.

The round broke 100, with 99 shots. I had 3 penalties, had 32 putts (this is ok) & only had two pars…. hardly a great round.