gymn Digest Wed, 12 Jan 94 Volume 2 : Issue 57

Today's Topics:
body suits
college meet schedules
ftp testers wanted
Gymnastics archive sites
Gymnastics on TV
Mens Gymn meets in SF Bay Area et al...
shops
The Gymn Guide

This is a digest of the gymn@athena.mit.edu mailing list.

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Date: Mon, 10 Jan 1994 20:41:28 -0600 (CST)
From: <***@owlnet.rice.edu>
Subject: body suits

Hey, did you guys see the body suit that _IG_ had in their January
issue, in the Rhythmic Worlds coverage? For those who don't get _IG_,
they reported that the women were now allowed to wear ankle-length
body suits, basically to make the competition open to those athletes
from cultures which require that women keep their skin covered.

The girl they had pictured had an all white suit on (it was a
Ukrainian, actually-- I guess she just likes the body suit better than
a leo). I thought it looked really cool, myself. I hope that the
women's artistic committee makes a similar decision-- these body suits
look more "athletic" in my opinion than leos, and they're probably
more comfortable too. Seems like you could come up with some really
creative designs too (getting kinda bored at seeing the same leotard
designs all over the place...).

Rachele

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Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 19:01:04 -0600 (CST)
From: <***@owlnet.rice.edu>
Subject: college meet schedules

Today I sent off letters requesting meet schedules from about 50
colleges. I expect to start receiving them in a week. I will post a
msg to Gymn listing the teams I have meet schedules for.

If you get meet schedules, please send them to me (rachele@rice.edu).
I will include the schools in the list of available schedules. Please
don't send schedules to Gymn as that could possibly result in a lot of
"here's the so-and-so" schedule messages, and we don't want to flood
people's mailboxes. =)

If you'd like to report on a team throughout the college season for
Gymn, please contact me about credentialing.

Rachele

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Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 19:10:03 -0600 (CST)
From: <***@owlnet.rice.edu>
Subject: ftp testers wanted

Hey Gymn,

Our ftp site is really beginning to shape up now. A lot of thanks go
to our group of about 6 or 7 Gymn members who offered to test the site
for me... they helped to work out a lot of kinks.

Since we have a lot of new members, I just thought I'd announce again
that if you want to help test out the ftp site, please let me know.
What it basically means is that whenever I update it (add lots of
files or reorganize what's there, so forth), I send out a notice to
the ftp testers listing some of the changes and asking for feedback.

Rachele

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Date: Tue, 11 Jan 1994 08:07:18 -0400 (EDT)
From: ***@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu
Subject: Gymnastics archive sites

I'm finishing up an assignment about internetting today (1/11)
for a computer class and I was wondering if anyone had good info on
any good archive sites for gymnastics. I already have the
ftp.cac.psu.edu and the f.ms.uky.edu sites listed, but if y'all have
any others, that would be very wonderful. Please e-mail me directly
at sct3226@ocvaxa.cc.oberlin.edu so as to not disturb the group too
much. Thank you very much!
Cara

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Date: Wed, 12 Jan 94 14:40:27 EST
From: ***@eos.ncsu.edu
Subject: Gymnastics on TV

In this week's issue of TV Guide (the one with David Caruso on the
cover), there is a little blurb about World Cup Gymnastics on 29 Jan. I
believe it's going to be on ABC's Wide World of Sports. It's on the
sports commentary page--not the weekly sports listing page.

--Brent

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Date: Tue, 11 Jan 94 14:31:16 PST
From: <***@us.oracle.com>
Subject: Mens Gymn meets in SF Bay Area et al...

This morning I decided to be REAL late to work...

Mary Lou Retton-Whatsisname was great on the talk show "Vicki" (Vicki
Lawrence) I loved it when she spotted Vicki to a head stand.
Everything was cool til Mary-Lou says "OK, Ill let you stand on your
own now". Vicki went over (WHUMP !) It was great. Now as
spectacular as my wipeouts, but it was a nice wipeout. Mary-Lou had
this "What have I done?" look on her face.

I stopped by Calif Sports Centre to see if they have posted the mens
college schedule yet. They only had schedules for 2 mens colleges
posted. One was from some wimpy team called "Army" from someplace
called West Point.

They also had Stanford posted. I was P***** OFF ! Stanford mens team
had meets both last Friday & last Saturday nights. I missed them
BOTH! (ARRGHGHGH!)

Rumour hazzit that somone from this list is supposed to be posting meet
calendars to the list. (drumming fingernails on the table)

Stanford guys will be at it again on the 22 & 23 of Jan.

Another &^%$#@! meet im gonna miss because I will be out teaching winter
survival course.

Ill get Feb data asap for Stanford, Berkeley & San Jose State.

Back to Mary-Lou, I saw her on "Runaway With the Rich & Famous" a few
weeks ago, while channel surfing on the tube. They got some TERRIBLE
pictures of her around the pool at some hotel. She shouldda sued !
It is a scream watching 4'9" Mary-Lou walk hand in hand with her 6'3"
hubby. Kinda humourous.

Sat night I caught the Ice Skating competition. They kept shooting up
to the private box where Nancy Kerrigan & her coach were watching.
Again, UNCOMPLIMENTARY camera shoots ! I swear they were trying to
make her look even more forelorn & miserable than she was..... It was
embarassing when I realized that I am credentialed press and those
cretins with ABC are kina colleagues ! (ACK ! THPBLLT !)

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Date: Wed, 12 Jan 94 10:50:13 MET
From: ***@frec.bull.fr
Subject: shops

Hi all,

This is a message from my friend. He will be flying to California
L.A soon and will try to bring some good stuffs back to France.

I'm interested in having a list of all shops where I can find
special sportwears and outwears (made of good material like GoreTex,
Polartec, etc...) in Los Angeles Anaheim area. Somebody out there can
give me this?

Thanks in advance.
--
Regards.
Minh.

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Date: Mon, 10 Jan 1994 00:52:27 -0600 (CST)
From: <***@owlnet.rice.edu>
Subject: The Gymn Guide

Hey Gymn,

We've been revamping our welcome letter to include answers to the
questions about Gymn that seem to repeat themselves. The result is a
document which, through great inspiration and creativity, has been
named "The Gymn Guide". This should be useful to everyone on Gymn,
however, not just new members, so I have decided to post this to the
entire group. Any feedback is appreciated.

Rachele

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to Gymn, an electronic discussion forum for gymnastics. New
subscriptions to the mailing list take approximately 24 hours to
process. In the meantime, you can look over the attached Guide, which
should tell you everything you need or want to know about Gymn; please
keep it handy (we suggest printing it out). If you think anything is
missing, please let us know!

The email addresses for all contacts mentioned
in the Guide are listed at the end.

Thanks for joining Gymn!

###################################################################
# #
# ________ G y m n ________ \ | ___ #
# o __o |o |o (o #
# An electronic forum !__ \! ! ! \. #
# for gymnastics. ====== ====== ====== ====== ====== #
# #
###################################################################

The Gymn Guide

last revised: 10 Jan 1994

___Table of Contents___

1. What is Gymn? How does it work?
2. Subscribing to Gymn
3. Netiquette on Gymn
4. Who is that person? Getting to know your fellow posters...
5. Current gymnastics news
5.1: From other sources
5.2: From our members
6. Trivia contests
7. What's available (via ftp, gopher, or email)
7.1: Addresses
7.2: Calendar
7.3: Back issues of digests, trivia sets
7.4: "The Gymn Reporter" (TGR)
7.5: Info on other publications
7.6: FAQ
7.7: History files
8. GIFs anyone?
9. An address book
10. Referring friends to Gymn

Headings may be searched for with the pattern "-- n. " and subheads
may be searched for with "n.m:"

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

-- 1. What is Gymn? How does it work?

Gymn is a friendly forum for the discussion of all aspects of the
sport of gymnastics. People of all levels of knowledge and interest
are most welcome on Gymn. Novices are especially welcome, as
increasing the number of people interested in gymnastics is always
good for the sport. On that note, we'd like to emphasize that no
question will be considered "dumb" so feel free to bring up anything
that has been puzzling you here. Please don't hesitate to ask
questions if some of our more technical members get too carried away
in terminology. If you want to get a taste of the "flavor" of Gymn,
back issues of the digest are available (see 7.3).

Gymn was founded by Robyn Kozierok and Rachele Harless. The 1992
Olympic Games inspired so much interest on the net in gymnastics that
they decided to start a mailing list. Gymn has since evolved into an
organized forum with various services for its members. In a
reorganization effort in mid-1993, George Atkins joined the Gymn Admin
and many responsibilities were passed out to various Gymn volunteers
(all very appreciated!). If you're interested in volunteering to
helping out on the forum, send a note to Rachele.

All communication takes place via electronic mail on the Internet.
Sending a message to the alias (gymn@mit.edu) results in that message
being immediately distributed to the regular members of Gymn. Messages
are then archived into a digest, which is distributed to those
remaining members who subscribe by digest, and stored on our ftp site.
Traffic is typically 3-4 msgs/day, but has been as high as 20 and as
low as 0.

When replying to post, make sure that your reply is addressed to the
Gymn alias and not just the author of the post to which you are
replying, unless that is your intent. Also, please note that
individual addresses on Gymn are sometimes temporarily unavailable,
resulting in bounced msgs in your mailbox when you post. Just ignore
and delete these msgs unless a specific address persists in bouncing
beyond 4-5 days; in that case, forward the entire message to Robyn.

IMPORTANT: REMEMBER THAT GYMN IS A PUBLIC FORUM. All msgs are
eventually archived and are accessible via gopher or anonymous ftp.
Gymn members should be aware that their posts to the forum can be read
by anyone with Internet access.

-- 2. Subscribing to Gymn

All administrative requests (subscribe/unsubscribe/switch formats)
should be sent to Robyn at ***@mit.edu. Note: If there is more
than one Gymn member at your email address, please send Rachele a
brief msg listing the members' names.

Subscription is available in two formats: standard or digest.
Generally, the standard format has an advantage in terms of more "real
time" conversation, but the digest format is advantageous to those
wanting less traffic in their mailbox.

Some of us have friends without net access that would like to
subscribe to Gymn. Feel free to print out the digests for these
people. Also, Gymn has just started publishing "The Gymn Reporter", a
newsletter for those without net access that is composed of some of
the higher-content msgs posted to Gymn (ie our competition stories and
interviews). This is currently a complimentary newsletter, published
on an infrequent basis. Subscription to "TGR" is by email or by snail
mail; contact Rachele to subscribe.

Also, please note that by posting to the forum, it is assumed that you
will give Gymn permission to edit and publish your post, with proper
credit, in "TGR". However, you will definitely be contacted before a
message of yours goes into "TGR", to confirm this permission.

-- 3. Netiquette on Gymn

We're often asked by new members "What is appropriate for posting?" We
suggest that you either retrieve old digests (see 7.3) or sit back for
a week and just observe the traffic.

We have a simple set of posting guidelines designed to keep the forum
efficient and user-friendly. Please note, we do *NOT* want members to
be inhibited by these guidelines: One of Gymn's assets is the
diversity of opinions that are available. We merely ask that Gymn
members please keep these rules in mind when posting:

-> If your mail is really directed to just one or two individuals,
please use private email instead of posting to the alias.

-> If your mail includes previous postings, please label the
inclusion with the original author. Always sign your posts. However,
excessively long signatures should be avoided.

-> Catch up with a thread before adding to the discussion. Someone may
have made the same observation you have. Mail sometimes comes out of
order, so just do the best you can.

-> Make sure you have something to add to the discussion. Look at
the subject line: if your post doesn't really add to the discussion of
this topic, then either don't post or start a new topic. If you
include a previous posting and only add "Yeah, that was funny!", your
post is probably not essential. Also, please do not digress from the
discussion of gymnastics, which is, after all, the purpose of Gymn.

-> In order to keep the forum friendly, we ask that all members
remember be respectful of others' points of view. It is, of course,
all right to disagree with a person's opinion, but attacking them for
holding it will be considered inappropriate in this forum. Similarly,
we hope to be able to keep the "signal-to-noise" ratio high, so PLEASE
AVOID ALL MANNER OF "FLAMING". This includes statements that could be
considered libelous in nature. Please remember that in computer-
mediated communication, clues such as facial expression, body language
and tone of voice are missing, making it easy to misunderstand
intentions and jokes.

-> *DO NOT* post copyrighted articles on Gymn. This includes retyping
something you saw in the newspaper, forwarding articles from a
newswire, etc. You may, however, quote small parts of the article and
post a short summary of the story to Gymn (with proper reference)
according to the "fair use" clause of copyright law.

-- 4. Who is that person? Getting to know your fellow posters...

In order for us to get to know one another, it would be helpful if you
could send a brief self-introduction to Gymn (less than 50 lines).
This should include things such as your name, age, where you live,
what you do, and of course, your connection to gymnastics (any
personal gymnastics experience, or how you got interested; how long
you've been following gymnastics and how closely, etc.) and particular
areas of interest within it (men, women, international, collegiate,
etc.). Of course all items are optional, as is the request to write an
introduction; feel free to add anything else you'd like to.

If you want to find out more about the other people on Gymn, or check
out some other intros before you send in yours, you can request our
file of compiled introductions (anilrao@cs.usc.edu). Once you've
posted your intro to Gymn, it will be inserted into this file. Please
remember that Gymn is a public forum (see 2). Any information that you
post in your intro will become part of the next Gymn digest and stored
on the ftp site. While Gymn members haven't had any problems yet with
abuse of information, you should be aware of the accessibility of your
personal info. We still strongly encourage you to submit an intro;
just please be careful about how much you tell about yourself.

-- 5. Current gymnastics news

In general, you will learn results of meets or other current events in
the gymnastics community fairly quickly on Gymn. This is completely
dependent on the volunteer effort of Gymn members, however, so please
be patient.

5.1: From other sources

We monitor the USOC EBB for press releases from USA Gymnastics and
other Olympic organizations, and we also monitor some other
sportswires and send summaries of new stories to Gymn. If you know
some recent results, news, or other current events, we encourage you
to post to Gymn. Please remember, though DO NOT post copyrighted
articles on Gymn (see 3).

5.2: From our members

One of the best features of Gymn is getting posts from members who
have attended competitions; if you get a chance to see a live meet, we
strongly encourage you to post about it. It's a lot of fun to read
about the competition from a Gymn member's point of view. Being able
to discuss the competition with someone who was actually there adds a
whole new dimension to gymnastics journalism-- it's truly the next
best thing to being there yourself.

If you are going to be attending a larger meet and would like to write
up a detailed report on it for Gymn, in other words be our official
Gymn Reporter, then it is sometimes possible that we can secure press
credentials for you. With a press credential you become a member of
the press: you get a seat on the floor, score sheets, and access to
interviews. However, in return, you must submit complete reports to
Gymn about the competition. Don't mistake "complete" for "technical";
we just want a report of your impressions. If your impressions *are*
technical, that's great, but if you're not well versed in terminology,
that's fine too-- there's still a lot that you could contribute to
Gymn in a report. Your articles, which are sent directly to Gymn, will
later be edited, compiled, and then published in "The Gymn Reporter".
Reporting for Gymn is not even limited to just competitions, however.
As an official Gymn reporter, you could also conduct interviews with
teams and gymnasts in your area, or anyone else that you think Gymn
would find interesting.

If you want to be a Gymn reporter, email Rachele requesting Gymn's
Press Pass Guidelines (PPG). If you already know of an upcoming
competition that you want to cover or an interview that you'd like to
do as a Gymn reporter, also ask Rachele for an application (takes
approx 5-10 minutes to fill out).

IMPORTANT: To be Gymn's official reporter at a meet or to conduct
interviews, you MUST first be authorized to do so by Gymn Admin. Only
members of Gymn may apply to be Gymn reporters. However, even if you
are a Gymn member, you CANNOT present yourself as a reporter or other
representative of Gymn unless you have been specifically authorized by
Gymn Admin to do so.

Of course, if you are attending a meet and you didn't feel like
getting credentialed, or another Gymn member beat you to the
credentials (they are limited), don't let that stop you from posting
any opinions you have of the meet!

-- 6. Trivia contests

Gymn has trivia contests every week. These aren't "contests" in the
true sense of the word because we don't actually compete. The
questions are usually somewhat difficult and are designed more to
highlight interesting facts than to test your knowledge. In general,
questions are posted on Wednesday and answers on Friday.

-- 7. What's available (via ftp, gopher, or email)

Gymn has several volunteers that maintain the various resources of the
forum. All of these files can be accessed at ftp.cac.psu.edu via ftp
or gopher. Our directory is pub/gymn. If you don't have ftp or gopher,
just contact the appropriate volunteer directly through email and
s/he'll reply with the file(s). Any questions should also be directed
to the appropriate volunteer.

Many thanks to Gymn member Dan for getting us this ftp site!

7.1: Addresses (Efton)

We have the addresses for the more popular international federations,
collegiate programs, and also U.S. private clubs. Useful for those
wanting to send fan mail.

7.2: Calendar (Efton)

A calendar is published at the first of each month. Keep an eye out
for meets near your city! If you or your kid is competing in a meet
not listed on the calendar, just throw a msg Efton's way and he'll add
it.

7.3: Back issues of digests, trivia sets (Rachele)

Every message ever posted on Gymn (minus the first two weeks of Gymn
when we didn't yet have the digest option) is archived in digests
stored on our ftp site. Digests are named yy.mm.dd-#nn where nn is the
issue number. Currently we do not have an index for the digests; if
you are interested in perhaps volunteering to do even a small part of
this, PLEASE contact Rachele -- you'll be showered with many many
thanks.

Old Trivia Sets can be found in our archives, too. The files are named
by date and Trivia Set number (yy.mm.dd-TSn). There is also an index
that lists the topic of each TS.

7.4: "The Gymn Reporter" (TGR) (Rachele)

Back issues of TGR are available on our ftp site; these are
particularly nice for printing out as souvenirs or giving to friends.
Or, copies of the original hard copy may be requested by sending a
SASE to Rachele (see address in #2).

7.5: Info on other publications (Anil)

While the discussion format of Gymn is unique, you may find yourself
wanting still more gymnastics material. We have electronic
subscription cards and addresses for several different publications,
and also various descriptions of these publications (written by Gymn
members, not the magazines) to help you decide which ones are best for
your interests. If you have a favorite gymnastic magazine not on our
list, please send a message to the forum telling us about it.

7.6: FAQ (Andy)

This is just in its conceptual stages, but we eventually hope to put
together a gymnastics FAQ (document of Frequently Asked Questions).
We'd appreciate any help with this that you'd like to offer
(especially suggestions for questions)!

7.7: History files (Debbie)

Also in its conceptual stages, we plan to create a directory on the
ftp site for files listing important results in international and
national competitions. Input help is appreciated!

-- 8. GIFs anyone?

For those interested in gymnastics GIFs, there is an ftp site at
f.ms.uky.edu, in the directory outgoing/may/gifs. This is not a Gymn
ftp site. Any questions about the site go to Ben Fu, may@ms.uky.edu.
While this resource is not maintained in connection with Gymn, it is
recommended by many Gymn members.

-- 9. An address book

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Email Addresses you need to know:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mail to the alias "***@mit.edu" will go to all members of the Gymn
forum, and will be included in the digests.

Our anon ftp site is ftp.cac.psu.edu. (Login: anonymous, password:
your_email_address). If you do not have ftp or gopher, feel free to
request files via email using the following contact list.


-- 10. About The Gymn Guide

The Gymn Guide is written specifically for Gymn members. If you have a
friend who wants to know more about Gymn, The Gymn Fact Sheet is
probably more appropriate for distribution than this Guide, as the
Fact Sheet is much shorter and written specifically for those wishing
to know more about our forum. It also contains information about
subscribing to our newsletter for those who don't have email access.
You can obtain this document by ftp/gopher or by requesting it via
email from Rachele. NOTE: Please, if you refer your friends to Gymn,
DO NOT give them the gymn@mit.edu address; this only results in
subscription requests being delivered to all members of Gymn.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Yours in gymnastics,

- Robyn
- Rachele
- George

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Date: Tue, 11 Jan 94 14:09:32 -0500
From: ***@ecn.purdue.edu

Hi! I thought I better send out a new bio since my last one is two years
old and I have been off the mailing list for a while (see below).

My name is Lori. I am currently (Spring 1994) a junior at
Purdue University majoring in Computer/Electrical Engineering. For
most of last year, I was working in Houston, TX, for Loral Space Info
Systems as an engineering co-op. Unfortunately, I do not have regular
access to my account when I am down there so I was gymn-less for 9 of
the last 12 months.

I have been following gymnastics seriously since 1987. I attended the
1991 Worlds in Indy and have been to a few other meets and exhibitions.
I competed myself for a year (Class IV - equivalent to the what is now
Level 5) and then helped coach the team at my YMCA for a year. I was
able to do some tumbling again this fall for the first time in three years
and I hope to be able to work on all four events this spring at Purdue.

Lori

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End of gymn Digest
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