It Started with One Betta Fish.

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Aaron Jones

My Aquarium

It all started with one male Betta Fish I saw for sale at a home centre this summer. It was all alone in a small bowl and I thought about using it my show. Years ago I had used a Betta for a trick in my show and I had thought about doing it again. This little guy looked lonely and was only 400 Yen. So I bought him and went to another store and bought a bigger tank for him. Then it began. After that I decided to buy a few more fish! I bought some Rummy Nose Tetras and some Penguin Tetras. After that I bought some Ghost Shrimp. Then I realized that perhaps the tank was to small. So I bought a bigger tank. This is the one posted in the blog. In the smaller tank I now keep the Male Betta and separated from him a female Betta. The big tank has, those same Tetras plus some small Green Neon Tertas, and a flying fox and is filled with water plants and a CO2 system. Buying just one Betta fish turned into an expensive yet fun hobby! I have yet to use the Betta in my show.

Aaron

Sightseeing!

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Aaron Jones

It’s been a long time since I have been able to go sightseeing. Last week December 11, 2011 I went to Kurashiki which is located in Okayama Prefecture. I went to visit the old town in the Bikan district. What a wonderful place! The place is filled with 19th century buildings. There are a lot of great shops and good food! Japan has such great food! What I enjoyed was the relaxing and peaceful atmosphere of this place. I could really imagine 19th century Japan. I was there for only a few hours but I could have spent a lot more time there looking through the various shops and enjoying the good food. It was such a refreshing day trip for me. I can’t wait until I can go visit another great place soon!

Aaron

Been Busy Studying!

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Aaron Jones

It has been a while since I have last blogged! The reason is I have been preparing for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test N1. N1 is the most difficult but it has been my to pass this since I started studying Japanese. I took the test yesterday Dec 4, 2011. I may or may not have passed this time but I did improve my Japanese skill a bit during my recent study. However now that the test is done I will take a short brake from studying and get back to my normal blogging!

Aaron

iOS App Recommendation # 3: Wunderlist

Posted on June 17, 2011 by Aaron Jones

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?

Posted on June 14, 2011 by Aaron Jones

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

iOS App Recommendation # 2: GoodReader for iPad

Posted on June 8, 2011 by Aaron Jones

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

Summer Is Almost Here!

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Aaron Jones

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!!!

Posted on June 5, 2011 by Aaron Jones

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

iOS App Recommendation # 1: Reeder for iPad

Posted on June 4, 2011 by Aaron Jones

Reeder for iPad

I have decided every once a while to blog about the iOS Apps I use the most. I will only recommend ones I use and truly do recommend. As I have mentioned I am a heavy iPad and iPhone user so I thought I would write about the Apps that I think are useful. I have blogged about iPhone apps before but this starts my formal recommendations blogs! Aslo please share your thoughts in the comments.
Today I want to talk about an iPad App that I use everyday and that is Reeder. Reeder is an RSS reader that links to a google reader account. I have used google as my RSS reader for a long time so I was happy when I found Reeder on the iPad. It links to my google account and brings in all my RSS feeds and I have a lot of them. Then I can use my iPad to read through the many headlines and articles while I am online or offline. It also easily allows me to share them on Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper and more. At first it was hard to figure out the UI for this app because it is so simple and minimalist but once you understand the icons this is why it is good. It does not have a busy interface so you can concentrate on reading the content. It is not a free app and as I write this it is $4.99US. This app is also not a universal app so if you want it for the iPhone you have to buy the iPhone version which I did. There is also in beta testing a Mac OS X version which is very simular to the iPad version. It is available in the iPad App Store.

Aaron

Walking

Posted on June 3, 2011 by Aaron Jones

Walking

Recently I have been talking random walks around the city I live in. Now I have done a lot of walking in my life but I have never really just went for a walk with no goal of arriving somewhere, just walking around and enjoying the area. Sure I have gone for walks through parks etc. but the walks I take now I just walk around the city enjoying the city. This is something I wish I had started doing years ago. I have found it very relaxing and gives me undistracted thinking time. I have also found a new appreciation for the city I live in. One thing I enjoy doing on these walks is taking picture using instagram and posting them as I go. Can’t wait for my next walk!
Aaron