living on delta

I am going to post a few articles on golfing. I decided I am at a point in my architecture carer where I need to start building social networking skills. Golfing will give more ‘out of the office’ opportunities with the executives I work with.

So, I have been playing awhile now and need to really step up the game to a level where I can play without being obsessed with the ball striking or embarrassing shots so I can start these outings.

My first step is to re-think how I putt. Some faults I have are indecision over the ball. After I line up the putt I tend to see the alignment marks on the ball I just set up and second guess them. This leads to some loss of control of the putter head, inconsistent distance control, etc. when I was watching the pros in the Players Championship this weekend, I noticed they miss a lot of putts but leave themselves inches from the hole. I tend to leave myself within a few feet but if don’t over think I can drop the ball inches away too.

I decided to alter my pre-putt routine to focus less on alignment and more on sensing distance. If you can get a basic read on the line, it should be easy to put the ball inches from the hole. Focusing on the hole from more than 6 feet away kills the confidence and confidence is pretty universally accepted as the most critical influence in good putting.

The new routine:

1. While walking upto the ball, look for the obvious break and grain direction.
2. Stand a few feet behind the ball to see the line and pick an inflection point to aim.
3. If the putt is over 6 feet, walk the line to the hole and check the read from behind the hole to verify the selected inflection point.
4. Address the ball and look at the hole for 5 seconds to verify the distance feel.
5. Now trace the line back to the ball.
6. Glance at the aim point and pull the trigger.

This routine should take only about 1-2 minutes. On the subsequent short putt, the routine is just steps 4-6.

The next big step, of course, is to start chipping and pitching to within 3 feet of the pin, so those lag putts are less frequent. Between the improved lag putting and the better chipping/pitching I can expect to take a large number of strokes off the game and get more up and downs.

My new practice routine would be to once or twice a wek spend 29 minutes at the practice green. I have heard its better to practice more frequently for short periods than to try and do occasional long sessions.

I will simple throw 20 balls around the green and practice all the way up and down so I chip and putt to the hole from different places around the green. I expect to see a decrease in the length of the putts I need to make and drop from 50 strokes in practice to no just under 40 since I expect to hole some of the chips. This will reduce my score by 10 strokes in real games.

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To use Mylyn in Eclipse with Google issue tracker, go to help and install new software.  Enter the update site http://knittig.de/googlecode-mylyn-connector/update/ and install the connector.

Now choose in Mylyn to create a new task and your Google repository option will be there. Put in your project URL and Google credentials. Now when you add a task, it will offer the Google issue tracker as a repository.

The connector home page is here: http://code.google.com/p/googlecode-mylyn-connector/

UPDATE:

After messing around with this enough I realized the connector is not working.  First the login validation passed and when I tried to submit I got authorization errors.  I checked an had a typo in my credentials, yet the validation had told me the connection was working.  After I fixed the credentials, I got a new error “Submit Failed: system error retrieving feed” and so I have just figured out that I only see this when I have an empty description. Adding anything to the description makes the issue go away

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To use Subversion in eclipse to access the Google project hosting, there are few steps sporadically documented on the web.  Here is what I did in a nutshell:

1. Install SubClipse by selecting Help…Eclipse Marketplace.  Search on Subclipse and hit the install button.  After a bit you will have Subclipse ready to go.
2. Go to https://code.google.com/hosting and you will find your project hosting password.  You’ll access your code using your Google account, but the password is generated and not the same as your normal Google account password.
3. Open the Package Explorer and right click for a context menu. Select New … Other.  In the next dialog called “Select a Wizard” expand the SVN folder and select “Checkout Projects from SVN”.  Choose “Create a new repository location” and provide your Google SVN which is your project name and .googlecode.com/svn such as htttps://pmenuplanner.googlecode.com/svn.  Note that you will use HTTPS else with just HTTP your going get read only access.
4. Ok, select a folder such as Trunk and in the next dialog choose “Check out as a project configured using the New Project Wizard”.  Select Finish and SVN will open the normal new project dialogue where you can select a project type i.e. java
5. Once you complete the normal new project dialogues, SVN will create your project with a indication its under source control.  It probably created some starter folders and classes.
6. Now you can commit the new files as a test of the solution.  Right click on the new project root and select Team … Commit.  SVN will now check in and commit all the files that were created by the new project wizard.
7. From here your project is under source control.  If you create new files they will not automatically go under source control and will have an indication or the icon to let you know.  Right mouse click and select Team .. Add to version Control and the icon will change to show you its changed and not committed.
8. Next time you select Team .. Commit, you changes will be uploaded to Google’s SVN repository.

Have a nice day !

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