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

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

I ordered the effect from Char Long’s website and was delivered to me here in Japan in 8 days which is great service. The props are well made, better than I thought they would be. Basically you don’t have to worry about the USB flash drives breaking as they are made from rubber. They are also easy to clean. There is a nice carry case to keep the flash drives together when not performing so that you don’t lose them. Note that these are not working USB Flash Drives, they are made just for this effect with no memory inside. They come with instructions that teaches the basic moves and a nice routine. The nice this about this product is that it is the colour changing knives as flash drives so you can use many of the moves and routines for the knives with these flash drives. This gives you a big pond to create your own routine.

This is a product that I recommend and that I will be using all the time. Below is a video of Chad Long performing it and it can be purchased from Chad Long’s website here for $30.00 US.

iForce Prediction in Japanese

I had been hearing about this magic App for the iPhone called iForce. Being an iPhone lover I decided to download it and WOW. I love many of the great magic apps on the iPhone but I can’t really use them in my close-up show, however iForce is one that I can use and will use. So what is iForce? Well unlike other magic apps where the app does the magic or the magic is contained only in the app,  iFoce magic app doesn’t do the magic it is just the medium for a prediction. With iForce you tell the spectators that you are going to make a prediction. You open up a doodle app on the iPhone and show how you can draw on the app. You can even have the spectators try it out. Then you ask them for example, to think of any day of the week. You then say you will read there mind and write what day they are thinking of. You then do this and lay the iPhone face down. You then ask them what day they thought of and then turn the iPhone over and the day they said is written on the doodle program your prediction was correct. So as you can see the iPhone just becomes there medium where you write your prediction down rather than on a piece of paper. After the prediction is shown the spectators can play with the app. What is great about this app is that it is fully customizable. As I live in Japan I can customize all my predictions into Japanese. In  the picture in this post you can see my day of the week prediction for Monday.  This is very versatile as you can create many many great effects with this. It comes with a bunch of presets so you can use it right away. There are a few different methods to do the effects with iForce so you can do a repeat with a different method. There are teaching videos built into the app but an internet connection is required. There is also a practice mode so you can practice it repeatedly with out resetting the effect which is great way to practice. iForce also works on the ipod Touch. Because of the great customization, and that the effects that are done will be credited to you not the app makes this a real magic effect that you can use in your close-up show and just for fun. For more information here is the iForce website and here is iForce in the app store.

Aaron

Rising Card App by Chris Kenner

Here is my review of Rising Card App by Chris Kenner on Audioboo. For more information of this effect click here.

Thats all for Today.
Aaron