Thank you Steve
Crazy Week at Bar Initki Magician!
This past week from August 10 to August 17, 2011 I got to perform at Bar Intiki Magician in Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture. The Bar owner was out doing magic in Nagasaki for the week so some other magicians and I ran the bar for the past week. We had great audiences all week which made it easy to perform. It is always fun performing at the magic bar. I want to thank the fellow magicians I worked with this week, Shinnosuke, Masahsi, Wakadana, and Kinikun.
Aaron
Public Performances for August 2011
At Bar Intiki Magician
This month I will be performing at Bar Intiki Magician in Takamastu, Kagawa Prefecture. I will be peromfing close-up magic at various times during the evening with a few other magician. The dates and times I will be there are:
August 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16th from 8:00PM until 12:00AM
Aaron
My Review Of The Essential Magic Conference 2011
Luis de Matos, Rudy Coby, William Kalush, and David Copperfield only at EMC!
The second Essential Magic Conference was held July 7, 8, and 9 2011. And wow it was another great year. Here is my review from last years event. Again this year the event was 3 days packed with great speakers. There were some returnees from last year like Eric Mead and Max Maven who are always great to watch and hear, but also some new presenters like Rudy Coby, David Kaye (Silly Billy), Fuji Akira, David Berglas and a whole lot more. The event and the content was excellent and was equal to if not better than last year. Both events had very high quality performances and talks that all magicians should see. One of the best parts of this years event was the tour David Copperfield gave of his magic museum.
On the technical side there were a few updates to the viewing system like the ability to now watch the event from an iOS device like an iPad. They also seemed to move the live chat which I believe was under the video feed last year to the side bar which I think was better. There were some technical glitches this year especially during session 7 which was the first session on the third day. From the EMC staff explanation it was a problem with their provider’s stream leaving Portugal. This caused session 7 to be unwatchable. However by session 8 the problem seemed to have been solved and during that time they created an backup stream to help those that where still having issues through another provider. I know some people where upset by this but the EMC staff was working hard to resolve this issue and they did. Sometimes problems happen unexpectedly and there is nothing you can do about it. However I applaud the EMC staff who got things back on track.
One sad point was that the live chat seemed to be a place this year from a lot of complainers which caused me not to want to use the chat. Most of the event seemed fine for me except the one session where they had big issed but other times it was working great. People who had difficulties at really brought the feeling down with what I think where complaints there we too strong. Such as this is a rip off etc. EMC is far from that. Anyways such is the net.
Overall I loved this years event and I applaud Luis de Matos, Marco Tempest, and David Britland from another great event and I look forward to next year event.
Aaron
Tagged with: EMC2011, Magic, Magic Conventions, Reviews
Posted in Magic, Magic Conventions, Magic Reviews, magicians
Posted in Magic, Magic Conventions, Magic Reviews, magicians
iOS App Recommendation # 3: Wunderlist
Wunderlist
This weeks iOS recommendation is a free app! Not only is it free it is available for almost any platform, iOS, Mac OS X, windows, Android etc. You can find out more about what platforms it supports at the Wunderlist website. This app is a task management app which there are 100s of in the app store. However the reason that I like this one is that I can easily sync via the cloud to my iPad, iPhone, my MacBook Pro, and my Windows machine. You can make a various lists with tasks within them. Like most to do list programs you can set a due date, priority etc. The fact this this program is free and automatically syncs betweens devices makes it so easy to use and I use it almost everyday. It will be interesting to see how it will go after iOS 5′s task manger is added to our devices. I think that because this program syncs easily between platforms makes it so attractive and will last even after iOS 5 arrives.. Give it it try it’s free!
Aaron
Aaron Jones
Stupid Magic Stories #2 What Language Is this Suppose To Be In?
AHHHHHHHHHH!
Today I would like to share another stupid magic story of mine. I have shared parts of this story in a post from over a year ago but today it gets it’s own post. My story has to do with forgetting what language I have to perform in. When I went to Japan in the summer of 2001 I performed my regular show except for one effect that I worked on just for Japan and of course in Japanese. I put the effect together and rehearsed before going to Japan in Japanese so I had only ever performed this effect in Japanese. In Japan the effect went over well and I still perform this effect to this day. Well, after I came home from my 2 month trip to Japan I had a stage show the next evening in my hometown in Victoria. This show was at a restaurant near my home and seemed like an easy event to do while still jet lagged. So I arrived at the venue set my stage show and then started the show. Everything was going well until I got to my final effect and this was the effect that I had performed only in Japanese. Now of course I was in Victoria BC Canada now and performing in English not Japanese. It was at this moment that I realized I had never performed this effect in English. All the timing, jokes etc. were written in Japanese for a Japanese audience. Lucky I was able to pull the effect off in English but man did I sweat. Luckily I had rehearsed the technical parts and performed it enough that this part was automatic and I just had to quickly stumble creating an English script as I performed it. As far as I know the audience didn’t notice anything but I was sure happy when I finished that effect. Lesson I learned from this is be careful if you are a bilingual performer and performing in different countries and in different language while suffering from jet lag.
Aaron
Magic AudioBoo Stand-up Magic Props
This Magic AudioBoo is on stand-up magic prop management.
Tagged with: Magic, magicians, stand-up props
Posted in Magic, Magic Boo, Magic Ideas, magic props, magicians, Productivity
Posted in Magic, Magic Boo, Magic Ideas, magic props, magicians, Productivity
iOS App Recommendation # 2: GoodReader for iPad
GoodReader for iPad
This week my iOS App recommendation is GoodReader. Now GoodReader is not an RSS reader like I blogged about last time, it’s a multiple file reader. It can read and display PDFs, text files and some audio and video files. This program basically creates a useful file system on your iPad. There are several ways in which you can upload your files to GoodReader. You can sync with Dropbox, Box.net, Google Docs and your own FTP file space plus others and it can sync whole folders which is very useful. You can also add files through WiFi and by using iTunes. I use this app for viewing PDFs and keeping track of various files and PDF magazines I get. It also allows you to annotate PDFs which is very useful. This app is a very powerful and one of the most useful if not the most useful app on my iPad. I am excited to see how they will integrate this app with iCloud in the fall. This app is a MUST for all iPad users. This app is not universal so there are 2 versions one for the iPad and one for the iPhone. You can learn more about this program here on their site and it is available in the iPad App store here for $4.99US.
Aaron
Tagged with: GoodReader, iOS, iPad
Posted in Apple, interests, iOS Recommendations, iPad, iPhone, technology
Posted in Apple, interests, iOS Recommendations, iPad, iPhone, technology
Summer Is Almost Here!
Fan
Well the summer feels as if it is almost here. It’s hot and getting more humid everyday. Today I especially felt that summer is on its way. Ever get that summer feeling in your chest? I am looking forward to the summer as it means summer clothes, summer events like B-B-Q’s! I love Japanese B-B-Q and beer gardens. I always feel like I get regenerated during the summer and I can feel that coming now. I don’t have any big plans for this summer but I hope to hit a few onsens (hot springs) and some nice parks and sight seeing places. I can’t wait! I hope that all of you will have a great summer!
Aaron
Stupid Magic Stories #1 You Cut My THUMB!!!
Ouch My Thumb!
Going to start another section to my blog and is is “my stupid magic stories”. These will be stories I have of things that happened to me because of doing magic, things that happened during my shows, at magic conventions etc. I hope you will find some of the storie interesting!
The first story I would like to share happened when I was 15 in the December of 1990. This was during the height of my Christmas shows and this year was really the first year for me to have a large amount shows where I made a lot of money. I remember well that for this Christmas season I had bought myself a nice stylish tuxedo like suit with a shirt with some cheesy frills. It was in a style that was hip for 1990. Anyways, it was a family Christmas show for a kind of boat club if I remember right. As I was 15 I could not drive yet so my mother was my driver and was at the show. The show stared well but the problem came when I did the cut and restored rope. You can probably smell what is coming. Anyway I started the routine in my regular way as I was taught by Tony Eng at that time and there is a sequence where a member of the audience cuts the rope. So I had this about 8 year old boy come on stage and cut the rope. I even did all the cheesy lines of “don’t cut the pink cut the white, the pink’s my finger” etc. Well the kid cut the rope and at the same time he did cut through my thumb. At first I thought it was just a scrape. I sent the kid back dipped behind my table and sucked the blood off and all seemed fine. I quickly finished the rope trick and moved on to the next effect which was the magic colouring book. This is where things got worse. I realized when I riffled through the colouring book that there was red all over the pages, well that red was you guessed it my blood. At this time audience members also noticed that I was bleeding very badly. A nice lady came running up with a band-aid and I patched up my thumb and went on with the show. After the show when I got home I was heart broken as my frilly shirt sleeve was covered in blood and I was never to use it again. And here is the kicker to this story the next day I was helping Julie Eng with her Christmas shows as her assistant at one of the shows the kid that cut my finger was there!!!! It was like he was he was coming back for seconds. Anyways when you perform a cut and restored rope effect be careful or if you are an audience member asked to cut a magicians rope be careful! I am lucky I didn’t need any stitched but my left thumb still bears the scar.
I hope you enjoyed the first of my stupid magic stories.
Aaron
Tagged with: Magic, magicians
Posted in interests, Life, Magic, Magic Reviews, Productivity, Stupid Magic Stories
Posted in interests, Life, Magic, Magic Reviews, Productivity, Stupid Magic Stories
