Life Savers and The Paper Engine
I am really staring to miss my magic library. When I worked for Tony Eng at his shop “Tony’s Trick and Joke Shop” I collected many magic books over the years. I would end up spending all my pay on magic stuff and books. Now living in Japan the majority of my magic library is still in Canada and I wish I had here! However at times I have my mother send me some of the lighter books to me. Next time when I head back to Canada I will bring an extra suitcase and fill it up. This week I ask my mother to send me Michael Weber’s Life Savers and Aaron Fisher’s The Paper Engine. I asked my mother to send these two because one, they are not so thick and heavy and second they have a lot of great material. I want my Tarbell Course, my Pallbearer collection books, Paul Harris Art of Astonishment series plus many more but they are so heavy! For now I will read through these books, as I have not read them over in about 7 years. They should fill my recent need to read magic books for the next few weeks.
Back in Canada I loved having my good close by because whenever I had an idea, I would go searching through them for ideas, and material that would fit the idea I had and I really miss that now. I remember when I would read a magic book and it would reference another book I would to then next to get a hold of those.
One other book I would love to have with me here is my reprinted copy of Greater Magic. That book is a old but it is a goldmine of information. I think I need to start planing another trip home partly so I can bring these great books back with me! Until then all I can do is say thank you mom for putting up with my requests and having you search through my library for the books I ask for!
Aaron
Magic Goods Collection
This weekend I came another cool find at the library. The book is called Magic Goods Collection by Masayoshi Tsuchiya. It is of course in Japanese and is about magic collectables. It contains a lot of explanations as well as pictures of many magic collectables from North America, Europe and of course Japan. The Japanese memorabilia is the most interesting part of the book for me as many other books I have come across don’t have a lot of detailed information on Japanese magic collectables. The books covers many aspects of magic collection from books, posters, magic sets and magic props and other magic related goods. I will probably will end up buying a copy of this book.
Aaron
MobileRSS
If you are like me and read a lot of Internet sites keeping track of them all can be hard. Living in Japan the Internet is my primary source for English related content on magic, technology and news and I follow a lot of websites. So it has always been a challenge for me to organize how I go through all the content I keep track of. The system I use now has saved me a lot of time and kept me up to date on all the information I enjoy reading. Over the years I have tried various RSS readers but now I just use Google Reader. I can make folders to keep track of subjects, and also I am able to easily share any articles I find on twitter etc. It is like my own newspaper custom made for me everyday. You can also follow other people who have google reader set up and easily read any interesting articles that they share. I like the star feature where I can star the ones I want to keep and go back to them anytime I want very easily. Along with the regular Google Reader I use mobileRSS on my iPhone to keep updated when I am not at home. Once I read an article from mobileRSS it marks it as read on Google Reader as well. It also has all of the great sharing features of the Google version. Combining both of these has been great for me. I am able to keep track of all the sites I like and I like a lot so this keeps me organized and informed. I also like to share cools stuff as well. You can see my shared articles form Google Reader here. If you have any other great ways that you use to keep track of your favourite sites please let me know!
Aaron
My MacBookPro
It has now been over a month and a half since I made the switch from Windows to Mac. In December I just got tired of Windows which I have been using since Windows 3.1. Over the years I enjoyed it but recently I just wanted things to work. So this December I got so frustrated with Windows I did the big jump and ordered a MacBookPro. I am not an Apple Fan boy but having an iPhone helped me make the decision. Another point is if I need to I can run Windows as well on the MacBookPro so I always have that option to use it if I never need to. Well so do I like my new Mac? Well yes very much so. Honestly it is the best computer I have ever used. It has also increased my productivity, work flow, and much more. I am happy that I have made the switch. I wish though that Google soon updates Google Chrome so that I can use extensions with it. I also want gears to work with Chrome for Mac. I like Google Chrome and so far it is the only downside to my new Mac is that the Mac Google Chrome development seems slow. As you can see in the photo when I am at home I can easily hook the Mac to my 22 inch screen and it works perfectly. For me switching to Mac was a good choice and so far a very positive experience.
Aaron
Magic Pot
Today I went into Takamatsu the capital city of Kagawa Prefecture for a show I had to do at a Cafe. The show was well, interesting as I thought when I originally booked it ( I knew it was going to be a challenge). Was not easy but went over well. 25 years of experience got me through this one. The show was well received but I was burnt out. I’ll leave this story for another day. Anyways, I wanted to visit the magic shop in Tamakatsu but it was closed. I had some time before the show so I went by. I always seem to get there when it is closed. Eventually I will get to the shop when it is open. Magic Pot is the magic company here on Shikoku that puts on the Shikoku Magic Convention as well as many other magic events and run the magic bar chain “Tejinaya” on Shikoku and the Chugoku area of Japan. This year the convention is in Takamatsu again and will be held in May. Once I know more information about this years convention I will post it! I hope they get the same venue as last year because it was very good. I also dropped by one of the big book stores there and WOW they had a lot of Japanese translations of influential magic books usually found only at magic shops such as the Card College series, books by Derek Dingle and a whole lot more. When I have more time going to go back there and look through them all. Now I am going to have a hot bath and head to bed!
Aaron
How To Do Impersonations
I went to back to the library today and I found this book: Do Impersonations in 5 minutes! 100 Japanese Celebrities. I thought it would be an interesting read and I may be able to find some things I can use on my Japanese show. Though it may be strange having a Canadian doing the odd one line impersonation of a Japanese celebrity but hey it is worth a try! I’ll stick to those in the book I know well. Always looking to try new things that fit better in with Japanese culture that wont seem so weird. Wish me luck!
Aaron
Watching a Magic DVD.
If you have read my magic blog or listen to my Magic AudioBoo’s before, you know that I love magic books. However I do enjoy a good magic DVD or video. When I was young and just starting magic there were very few magic VHS tapes out and those that were out were too expensive. But in the late 90’s DVDs came. Most of the first magic DVDs that came out were VHS ports to the new format. Then a few years later when DVDs took off and magic DVDs grew. And now in the last 10 years because anyone can easily create a DVD there has been an explosion of Magic DVDs and it seems “everyone” has a DVD now.
Now like I mentioned I do enjoy a good magic DVD for example, the Tommy wonder 3 volume set, the Johnny Thompson set, plus many many more. The problem it seems to me anyway is now there are so many DVDs that have just one effect and often of poor quality and poor content, I have been burnt by this a few times. I have seen so many that are so poorly produced I can’t believe they even put them out. I found the adds and cover art was much better than the quality of the DVD or even the quality of the material presented. Video is such a great medium to use along with books to learn from. If one makes a DVD they should go that extra mile and take advantage of what the medium can do. This is very true from some of the great DVDs out there. My suggestion when you see a DVD for sale read reviews before you buy. There are so many to choose from I know, but be smart and choose the ones that get good reviews. This same thing goes as well for instant downloads videos.
As well with watching magic on video it’s important to learn the content right and not use the video format to copy the presentation from the video. With video this is easy to do and I have seen this case too many times. Remember take the effect and make it you.
These are some of my thoughts on this issue what do you think?
Aaron
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The Party Magic by Hiro Sakai
If you listend to my last Magic AudioBoo you will know about the magic trick a week from a magic book challenge I put out. I have already started this with other books but today I decided to drop by the local library to see what they had. They had a few basic kid’s magic books but I came across this one called The Party Magic by Hiro Sakai. Hiro Skai is a brillant Japanese Magician who recently performs under the name Dr. Leon. This books seems to have been written for beginners who just want to be able to learn some tricks for parties etc. But there seemed to be some cool effects in it. It also came with a DVD with the presentations of the effects. I havent watched the DVD or read through the book yet. I will probably not use anything from it but I will use it to work on my Japanese presentations as I can learn useful phrases from reading books like this. When I was around 9 or 10 years old I constantly took out magic books from my school’s library and the local library and I learned a lot. Anyway, You never know what kind of gold you will find at your library so head out to your local library and check out what magic books they have!
Aaron
Shikoku Magic Club Street Magic Show
As I write this there us just about 14 hours left for 2009 here in Japan. This his been a great year. One thing I am glad is that I got back into Social Networking. The reason why I did it was I missed the magic community back in Canada. I am involved in the magic community here on Shikoku but at the same time I missed doing some magic discussions in English. My Japanese is ok but when I try to talk about magic theory my meaning in Japanese goes out the window. So getting back to blogging here and talking with people on Facebook, Twitter has been great and keeping up with magic pod casts makes me feel like I am back in the loop. I was glad to discover that IBM publishes a digital version of the Linking Ring and SAM does the same with the MUM. Now I can keep up with the magician community news. I feel with all of this I am getting a really good international view of the magic community and I like this! I have reconnected with some old friends and made a lot of new ones. Now I am looking forward to a great 2010. Happy New Year Everyone!
Aaron
MAGIC!
Today instead of my blogging about a bunch of magic nonsense I wanted to hear what you have to say. I want to hear from both magicians and non-magicians about what you like about magic. You can post your thoughts in the comments here on the blog or in the Facebook comments if you are reading this on face book. I will then collate them and post them as a blog post. I want to hear what you like about magic! Look forward to hearing from you all!
Aaron
