Category Archives: interests

interests

We Rule is Fun!

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We Rule

We Rule

When I was in high school and university I was a big gamer. However after I finished university and especially after I moved to Japan I haven’t really played a lot of games. Since I bought my iPad I have been playing the game We Rule a lot. I first heard about this game from Leo Laporte from the Twit Network. I downloaded it in December and since then I have to play it a few times a day. The concept of the game is simular to other popular “farming” games you find on Facebook and around the internet. In We Rule your goal is to create your own little kingdom. Some of the reasons I like it are that in some ways it is simular to SimCity where you can design and build your own village. There is also a social aspect to this which I like that allows you to order things from friends for extra coins and experience points. I find this type if game relaxing and I enjoy designing and building my village. If you enjoy these types of games I suggest you check it out. There are both iPad and iPhone versions of the game. You can visit the We Rule website is here. Aslo if you decided to give it a try feel free to add me as a friend. My user name is AaronJonesMagic.

Aaron

A Relaxing Drive

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I have been having a busy year, however last Saturday (Feb. 5, 2011) some friends and I went for a drive around some parts of Shikoku. It was a nice and relaxing drive just what I needed. First we went to Kinmi Shrine in the mountians of Tokushima Prefecture near the centre of Shikoku where Ehime, Kagawa, Tokushima, and Kochi Prefectures join together. The view of the snow on the mountains there was very relaxing and it is always great to visit old places like this old Shrine.
After visiting the shrine we drove along the Yoshino River. We stopped a rest area for resting as well as a site for people who raft or Kayak in the river. There we had soba (Japanese noodles) then Tokushima Ramen. It’s always great to enjoy good regional food.
After this we visited Sameura Dam. This is an interesting dam because where is holds water once was a village and the city hall building is still there under the water. The water from this area is the source of a lot of drinking water for Shikoku. They call this area the “life” of Shikoku. After this we stopped to get food and headed home.
It has been a while since I have been able to really enjoy a drive like this so I need to do more of this!
Aaron

Going Digital

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well I have been thinking recently that this year I should try to see if I can consume most of my content digitally. For example I will plan on buying only ebooks, digital magazines etc. I think that this year really will be the year that this can be done easily as most content, that I read anyways, is now all available digitally. Also being here in Japan it is sometimes hard to get a hold of magazines and books from North America. However now with online books and many digital magazines available internationally on the iPad it has become a lot easier to get a hold of them. During the year I give updates about how this is going. Should be fun and I find it exciting to try to make this change.
Aaron

Wow 36

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ShrineWell yesterday I celebrated my 36th birthday and I am now ready to takeon 2011! This year in my blog I will be blogging about magic, techand stuff here in Japan. It now has been just over a year since I switched to Mac from windows and man I am happy at that change. As I posted last month I also bought an iPad which I love, not sure what I did without it. I will also have more time to work on some of my Internet Inspiremagic.com projects so keep a look out for some of those in in the next few months. Well now time to go and eat!
Aaron

The Conjuring Arts Research Center & Ask Alexander

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Ask Alexander

Ask Alexander

Sometimes there are services and products that you didn’t think you needed but once you tried you now can’t live without. This happened with me for Twitter. Now I don’t know what I would do without Twitter but before I used Twitter I never really thought much about it. Well askalexander.org is like that for me now. Those of us who registered with the Essential Magic Conference all received a free month preview of Ask Alexander. Can I saw wow! Ask Alexander is run by the Conjuring Arts Research Center whose Executive Director is Bill Kalush. What is the Conjuring Arts Research Center you may ask well here is a quote from their site:

“The Conjuring Arts Research Center is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of magic and its allied arts, which include psychic phenomenon, hypnosis, deceptive gambling, mentalism, ventriloquism, juggling, and sleight of hand techniques.”

Ask Alexander one of the services that they run is a search database of magic books, magazines, and newsletters. I can say it is fantastic. After my preview month I will continue with the service. You can save publications in the database in a personal bookshelf as well when you research on a topic you can keep them in collections and download them as one PDF or have it emailed to you. Very useful. It even works well on my iPhone. If you are a magic creator, lecturer, magic consultant, magic historian, or just love magic you should have a look. It is not free and there is a yearly membership price and a few levels of membership depending on what your needs are. You can see those listed here. It is well worth it, and like I mentioned I will be continue with a membership after my preview.

In the picture you can see one of the searches I did. You can see my vanity as I searched myself . It turned out to be cool because I found a bunch of Ring Reports I did for the Victoria Magic Circle in the Linking Ring in the late 1990′s that I forgot about and and other places where I was mentioned and this brought back a lot of memories I had forgotten about.

I want to thank Bill Kalush and the staff of the Conjuring Arts Research Center for giving us at the EMC the free month preview.

Aaron

No Sleep This weekend!

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This weekend I will probably get almost no sleep! Lucky it is a long weekend here in Japan. Why is this? well, with the Essential Magic Conference and Shikoku Magic Friends activities in Takamatsu I will be doing magic all day and all night. Most of the Essential Magic Conference live broadcasts start after 12:00AM Japan time so that means no sleep. Then driving to Takamatsu on Saturday coming home at around 12:00AM then online for the conference. Going to be a great time and hopefully it will motivate me even more. Today is just a short blog so below enjoy a video of Lance Burton from the Essential Magic Conference site.
Aaron

More On Doing My Show In Japanese

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Japanese Flag

Japanese Flag

I have written about performing in Japanese and in other languages before in my blog, but today I wanted to write a little more on the subject and this is, it is not just enough for me just to translate or write my show in Japanese but I have to take care to incorporate cultural aspects of the culture into the show. This goes for pop culture, political culture, history, and much more. The reason that this is important is that here in Japan my audience is 99.99% Japanese people. In many of the causes many of the people in a show may or may not know each other depending on the venue. In those cases it is my job to be able to connect the people in one way, with a shared common experience. This I can achieve by making some joke, or commenting on some shared Japanese cultural experience they all have and that I have. I do this by making a comment at the beginning of my show or by making a joke in my introduction. This then right off the starts makes the audience connect psychologically by connecting them to this mentioned shared cultural experience. This really breaks the ice between the audience members so that they are now “primed” to react better to my performance. It also benefits my relationship to them. One it brings me into their shared experience as well. This is very important for me in Japan as a non-Japanese performer. They seem to one find it interesting I know and understand some cultural Japanese experience that they thought that I would not possible have had. This breaks the ice between me and the audience and creates the bond of the shared experience between us. They become more relaxed with me and they start to talking to me like I am Japanese rather than a foreigner, which can be a problem for foreigners living in Japan. This technique I use for my show I also do in my real life in Japan and it has the same effect. So remember if you are performing a show in a different language in a different country make sure you add this shared cultural experience into the show it will go a long way.

Aaron

What I Learned From Jamy Ian Swiss

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Before you read my blog you need to watch the video below if Jamy Ian Swiss on the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

I really enjoyed Jamy’s spot on this show. Thanks to the Internet I was able to see it here in Japan. There are a few things that I really learned from this spot, and they are also the main reasons why I really enjoyed it. One of the reasons is that Jamy had a conversation with Craig. The whole performance is like a conversation with magic as the glue. He interacted well with Craig without any strange awkward feelings of trying to get back on “script”. He was able to go with what Craig said and worked it into his performance frame work and used it for the effect. This made it feel so real and at the moment, which make it very entertaining.  Another reason each of the effects he performed had a reason why it was next. When Craig asked him to do one more he had it ready and linked it with the previous effect by talking about the ways one can choose a card. I loved this premis and made sense for this set. Lastly his effects were perfect. The effects were simple to understand to Craig, the studio audience and on TV. They were powerful and enjoyable with out needless ramble.

So what did I take from this and what should we take from watching this as Magicians. Well we need to enjoy showing magic to our audience and engage in a conversation with them. Clearly Jamy enjoyed talking with Craig and the same with Craig. This then transferred to the live studio audience and to the TV audience. Magic allows us to interact with the audience and Jamy does this without any awkwardness as I mentioned. I feel motivated to create this same kind of feeling in my own shows. For me it really shows how magic should be performed, no ego, no showing off, but and entertaining experience of magic between the Magician and his audience. Well done Jamy you are truly one of the greats of our time.

Aaron

The First Magician I Ever Saw

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Yesterday I posed about David Copperfield well I have to mention the first Magician I ever saw. It was on TV when I was a Kid around 1981. I saw Doug Henning on TV and it is where my first fascination with magic began, but I didn’t get more into magic until the mid 80′s. It was Doug Henning planed the original magic seed in me. Here is a clip of Doug performing. This is not from the TV special I first saw, I searched for the routine I remember the most from that time but could not find it. However enjoy another in full Doug Henning glory!
Aaron