Perfect Doubles

Doubling out in darts is one of the most important aspects of the game to practice and improve upon. There are several different practice routines you can find and follow. In this post I will describe what I call the “Perfect Doubles”. It’s not that these doubles are better than any others, each double is the same size as any other double (aside from the red bull), they just allow you more opportunities to get your out; and, although there are five perfect doubles on the board you can focus on the top three alone if you prefer.

These perfect doubles provide three chances to get out, one for each dart when you step up to the oche. Let’s use the 20 as an example:

  • You throw at double 20; miss; and, get a single 20. You now have 20 left.
  • You now throw at double 10; miss, and get a single 10. You now have 10 left.
  • You still have one dart left to make the double 5 out!

Of course, if you miss the double and get something other than the single you targeted you will have to adjust what you throw next in game play. This practice is more about being able to throw at different targets around the board with each dart you throw.

The perfect doubles are (following the example above):

  Starting Double Second Chance Double Last Dart Double
1 20 10 5
2 16 8 4
3 12 6 3
4 8 4 2
5 4 2 1

You might notice that the last two perfect doubles follow from the double 16 (8 and 4).

For clarity’s sake, the practice round goes along these lines: your first dart is at double 20; your second dart is at double 10; and, your final dart is at double 5. Ideally you will hit each double but if you miss carry on to the next target all the same. Repeat for each of the perfect doubles you want to practice.

Enjoy!

First Throws

Almost everyone has their own method of preparation and practice for any game involving physical activity, including darts.

I thought I would share some of my habits as I get a bit more serious about the quality of my game. In this post I’ll describe my first throws when I step up to a dart board either in practice or before playing. Feel free to give them a try and let me know if they help your game.

This practice routine is a quick dozen throws you can do in a few minutes and should help you get in range for scoring and doubling out while also preparing to “diddle for the middle” at the beginning of the game.

Step up to the oche; get into your stance; and, prepare to throw.

  • Throw three darts at the red bull, twice.
  • Throw three darts at the treble twenty, twice.
  • Throw three darts at the double twenty, twice.
  • Throw three darts at the double sixteen, twice.
  • Throw three darts at the treble sixteen, twice.
  • End with three more darts at the red bull, twice.

There you have it. You’ve practiced some good scoring trebles; some common outs; and, you focused on the bull’s eye preparing you for the start of your game … or, a great out!

You’re ready to win!

Dreaming

Never put any restrictions on pie-in-the-sky ideas, the bakery might not be that far away.

IDxD

Wait? What?!

Some days are a bit of a challenge around home but we always try to find a way to makes things light and continue to look for the bright side as often as we can.

Although a topic for a much longer series of posts, Terri has been diagnosed with a rare brain disease, Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy (Autoimmune) (HE). Among its many varying symptoms and issues the ability to communicate will at times have us use “Identification by Description” (IDxD) for Terri to get her point across. Fortunately this is not often but it can be infuriating, frustrating and downright demoralizing when it does but being together for over 20 years we know each other well enough that it works.

Coming up with this little acronym gave us both reason to laugh … and laughter is the best medicine!

 

Jetpack local Environment Patch

I was reading a recent article on WPTavern and thought to myself, “Hey, this is a great little plugin but doesn’t Jetpack already handle this?”

More or less it does but there are a few “local” conditions that may have been over-looked and I thought I would offer a patch to pick up on some of those conditions.

Currently Jetpack looks to the site_url() for its conditional test on whether or not the TLD has a “.” (dot, period, point, etc.) which is all well and fine but what about “.dev” or “.local” or even certain IP address ranges that are considered “local”?

My initial patch was just expanding the existing conditional statement to include the “.dev” and “.local” extensions but after some discussions I also included a filterable case to also be available for the environment test conditions.

Here’s a link to the pull request on GitHub, what do you think?

Work With WordPress Not On WordPress

“Working with WordPress” and “Working on WordPress” may seem synonymous but the philosophy of each phrase will definitely affect the code you share and support going forward.

When you work with something, it becomes a partnership, a collaboration, a team effort and more often than not an ongoing relationship; while working on something is more like getting it done and moving on … like fixing a car.

All of the major functionalities of most any application, plugin, theme idea can be found in WordPress core code already, the key is in the creative implementation of that code.

Obviously you may need to add some custom code to accomplish building your idea or adjust some specific functionality to be applied differently but that is also the basis behind using the various API and hooks readily available in WordPress. You just need to extend where needed and fine tune the rest. It’s WordPress … anything is possible!

It’s all there for the … taking. Yes, you can take the code and use it as you see fit, just remember to give credit where credit is due and provide the proper attributions.

Not sure where to find something, or even if it exists? Try these developer references:

Maybe you just need a nudge in the right direction? Have you tried any of the numerous Slack channels where many WordPress community members share their time and thoughts (not to mention ongoing development conversations)?

Stay in touch with what is happening with WordPress development, too. Keeping up with new functionality and corrections to core will only benefit you in the long-run. It might even spark an idea using some new functionality being added to core.

As you continue to improve your own WordPress projects, especially with a community of thousands contributing back to it, you will most likely need to build less and less on WordPress while moving to building more and more with WordPress. You may even be one of those contributors that makes life easier for another WordPress developer.

Why work on something, some might even say re-inventing the wheel, when you can simply get behind the wheel and start driving with WordPress from the start … or work with WordPress and help others get the start they may need to bring their awesome ideas to life.

I will always advocate working with WordPress, what are your thoughts?