Steven Blair`s blog of magic & life

Hey people of the interwebs Steven back again with yet another blog post. This post is going to be 100% aimed at magicians so apologies in advance to my non magician readers.

As I type this post I am chilling out in the sun listening to some music and enjoying the few days of sun we get a year in Scotland.

As many of you will know I spend a lot (probably too much) of my spare time online chatting magic with fellow magicians. In today’s post I thought I would discuss and rant about the pros and cons of the internet in magic.

First let’s start with the pros.

Pros

1. Using the internet you can get feedback on what you’re currently working on. This is one of the ways I improve on trick I will make an unlisted YouTube video and send it to magician friends who live all over the world and get feedback. Another way I will get advice is by jamming and sessioning with other magicians on Skype and various magic video chat rooms. I have found that using these tools they will help you improve in both your technical and performance ability. Also using these tools you can also get feedback from those who you respect in magic. Another thing is you can record effects you think are original and send them to friends who may know where they are published. This happened to me not to long ago with a handling of a mystery card I came up with and it turns out it was a Stephen Tucker trick. Excellent trick check it out.

2. The internet also gives people who don’t have a local magic shop a place to purchase products. I am lucky enough to have a magic store nearby ( Tam Sheperd’s run by the famous Roy Walton) but I do order most of my magic online due to the fact I don`t have the chance to go to the city as often as I would like. I feel magic stores like Alakazam, Theory11 etc give people who live, where there is no magic community a place to buy all the latest magic products. So these stores can be a great thing.

3. Using the internet you can meet magicians who you probably won’t have met if the internet hadn’t been invented. I have met some of the most amazing magicians you will ever see online and I have become great friends with them. I hope one day we can all meet up and have a session sometime in the near future.

4. One of the main advantages of the internet is that you can find reviews of tricks that you are considering purchasing. Places like The Magic Network , theory11, The Blue Crown and loads more online forums offer a section where there members can submit reviews and from these you can work out if this product is worth the money (this could also be a bad thing for those who release really rubbish products). Also in case you don’t know my blog has a reviews section. Click the reviews section above for a list of products I have reviewed.

5. Internet downloads are currently one of biggest trends in magic and these can be a good thing. These downloads as I said can be a good thing because you can watch the trailer of a trick, think the trick is for you, pay for it and then watch it. This can all happen in less than 5 minutes whereas years ago people would have need to go to the magic shop, watch someone demo the trick, purchase it, come all the way home then watch/read it and this would take probably a good few hours or even a full day and even then the store may not have the product you are looking for in stock.


I know there are probably a million more reasons why the internet is a good tool for magic but these are the ones I felt that matter most. Now on to the cons. Before we start I admit this section of the post will more than likely turn out to be me just ranting on and on but I have to get my point across.


Cons
1. The internet makes it easier for people to illegally obtain magic that they haven’t paid for. The reason this is really bad is because people make a living from selling these products and by illegally obtaining these products you are basically stealing food out of these creators and their families mouths. You wouldn`t go up to their dealers stand at a convention and steal one of their products from under their nose so WHY THE HELL would you do it over the internet. These products you illegally obtain you may never use or perform but you are still taking away from these people. I hope that any of my readers of this blog post who illegally download magic DVDS/books will stop.

2. As I said above I use YouTube a lot for feedback but a lot of magicians have never performed for real people and only ever showed magic to a webcam. I have nothing against these people they may not be confident enough or magic could be a guilty pleasure they have or something else. The thing that annoys me most about people like this is when they act like they know everything about magic. Sure they may know about technical ability and such like but when they talk about how to interact with people or even anything performance related they have no say because they have never experienced performing for a crowd of people (drunk people are the worst) and when they do their views on both magic and performing will change a lot. I know mine did.

3. This brings me on to my next point and it is that people can easily be misled into believing that people know what they’re talking about when I reality they have no clue. I have been on a few well known magic forums where the moderators of these forums have not had a clue what they’re talking about and the people who do know what they’re talking about end up arguing with these moderators and eventually end up getting banned when they are right and the moderators are wrong. I like to call these people “TROLLS WITH POWER” and that is the main reason I try to stay away from a certain magic forum you all should know what one.

4. One of the things I really dislike about magic online is that magic producers can print “limited edition” playing cards and sell them for a load of money. I know this is there business and this could be a good thing but when they over hype them for months and then kids come up to you at conventions/ magic club meetings and say “have you seen these card” and that’s all they care about and these cards are just an advert for a magic company (D+D do this a lot) all I will say is what I told a friend of mine “THERE JUST CARDS WHO GIVES A DAM”. I will be honest I do own custom cards but I will never try and sell them on EBay for 10 times the price like most kids now days do.

5. One of the worst things about the internet is the amount of people who expose tricks on YouTube. Yeah these are a good place to start out but these people probably fall into the category of the people I have listed above and most of these people (usually kids) handle and perform the trick really bad and if you’re learning from people like that you are more likely to follow the trend.

Now I thought I would add some extra pros or cons I got from some friends.


Bonus pro

As my good friend Edward Boswell said the biggest pro of the internet is that you get to see how good/bad other people are. This is a great thing in my mind.



Bonus con of magic on the internet

When I asked my good friend Aaron Smith a magician from right here in Scotland what the pros and cons of magic and the internet were he said “The Magic Café need I say more?”


A bonus con of technology and magic

This one came from Dain Miller and he said tricks with devices such as the iPhone can make the trick less impressive because the audience know that there is some kind of technology involved.


One of the biggest pros of the internet is that the internet gives youngsters and some older people a place to start in magic. Overall I think that the internet is a great tool if you use it appropriately and I encourage people to use it to their advantage.


Well that’s it from me I hope enjoyed it, be sure to share with your friends on all the social networks you use. If you want to discuss this topic further with me be sure to contact me on any of the ways listed below.


Would like to thank everyone who helped me out with this post. Can`t list everyone but thanks for helping out.

Steven Blair :)


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Hello people of the interwebs its Steven again with yet another blog post. This post is going to be 100% aimed at magicians so apologies in advance to my non magician readers.

So recently as many magicians will know one of the biggest online magic stores have released a thing that they like to call “the iTunes of magic”. Yeah that’s right I am speaking about Theory11`s The Wire. So I thought in order to keep my blog modern I would review 2 downloads that are available on The Wire that friends of mine have released. As before just because the people who have released these effects are friends doesn’t mean I will give them a good review.

Anyways let’s get into product number one………


Name of product:
Sticker prediction by Joshua Geddes

Price:
$1.95 or £1.27


Available from:
http://www.theory11.com/wire/joshua-geddes/sticker-prediction/?ref=s?ref=s


Quick Description:
You take out a packet trick wallet which contains a sheet of stickers, a pair of black kings and a mystery card. You place the mystery card on the table underneath a glass so no one can touch it. You then have a card selected and a coloured sticker chosen. Then any letter of the spectator’s choice is written on the sticker. You then turnover the mystery card and it matches. No wires, no magnets, no threads, no palming, no memory work, resets instantly, works from all angles. Hope you enjoy and please download

Trailer:

Quality of the Download:
The quality of this download is good it is shot in HD and the audio is really clear. Only issue I had was the music used wasn`t to my taste but that is a personal opinion. The teaching of the effect is really well done and is simple and straight forward to follow what’s going on. There is also no live performance so you don’t get to see how people react in the real world.



Now like every other review I have done I am going to split it into the following 3 sections


1. Description of effect

2.My honest opinion on the effect

3. Rating out of 10

My honest opinion on the effect:
This effect is rather good but there is a few issues I have with it. The first issues is that using the sticker and only signing the sticker doesn’t add anything to the effect. The idea of signing a card is used for 2 reasons so they know there’s no duplicate and so they can keep it. In this trick there is no duplicate, but when I performed it people would want to either look at the card or keep it because it was personal to them with their name on it and because the trick uses a gaff card they can’t keep or inspect the prediction. Another issue I had with this trick was that I can do the same trick using sleight of hand therefore removing the use of the gaff cards. Although I do like this trick I feel there are better methods out there and some even let you have the card signed and you can then do another trick and then go back to the prediction.
Just to point out: This trick is a bit expensive for what you get. If it was 99 cents then I would consider buying it. Also this reminds me a lot of something I saw Caleb Wiles teach in his lecture a few months back (sorry but the name escapes me at the moment). Also this idea isn’t new and I feel it doesn`t bring anything new to the table.

Rating out of 10:
If you want to just do a Mystery Card trick and nothing else then I would give this a 7/10. However if you want to do a trick ( e.g. 75million phase ACR) then go into the Mystery Card then I would give this a 4/10

Overall rating:
Overall this is not a bad trick I would give it 5.5/10


Name of product:
Playback from Aaron Williams

Price:
$4.95 or £3.20

Available from:
www.theory11.com/wire/aaron-williams/playback/

Quick Description: 
Imagine: You walk up to a random person. You ask if they have an iPhone or an iPod. They do. You turn around while you ask them to go through and pick any song they like. If they have earphones, great, if not - you supply them with your own. They fast forward the song to their favorite part just so it's fresh in their head. They turn off the music, the screen, and you turn back around. Instantly, by just looking into their eyes, you can tell them what song they picked. Sounds impossible right? Wrong. This is playBack.

playBack works with any iPhone, iPod Touch, iPod Nano, or iPod Classic. It doesn't require any set-up or gimmicks. It's 100% impromptu and can be done with their device. It's extremely easy to do and no one will ever suspect the method. Plus, the song they pick doesn't even need to be in the "Music" program. It can be used with Pandora, Youtube, or any program that allows music playback in the background.

NOTE: This is not to be confused with "Fate" by Geraint Clarke. Though they are both great iPhone/iPod magic effects, they are also VERY different in nature and method.

Trailer:


Quality of the Download:
The quality of this download is great looks like the explanation was filmed in a home studio and the live performance looks like its to people in a café and the second performance looks like its people in the street and the third looks like its in another café or maybe a social club or common room. The quality is great audio is clear and the music used fits my taste.

My honest opinion on the effect: 
I remember when Aaron showed me this effect and I really liked the idea. I then performed it for a few friends in a casual setting the reactions were really good but for some reason I never performed it again. Aaron then released this effect and I restarted to do it and have done it almost every day since. This effect as I like to describe it as ”a peek for the apple music products” and because it can even be done with a borrowed it makes it so much better. With a bit of playing around with the routine you will have a super powerful routine. Really like this trick.
Rating out of 10: 
I would give this an 8/10 reason it’s not a 10 is because if you have ever played around with any apple music product you will have probably came across the method without noticing.


Well that’s it from me for just now but I will be back in a few days with another blog post.

Steven Blair :)


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hey people of the interwebs Steven back again with yet another blog post. In this post I will be telling you about a video I posted and how I created the trick featured in the video.


Well lets get down to business. As i type this up it is currently 1am and I am sitting eating some grilled cheese so don't say I don't work hard for this blog. First off I want to say thanks to everyone who sent me ideas for future blog posts.there were some awesome ideas and some not so awesome but I will be posting about some of these ideas in the near future. Second of all I want to say thank you to all my readers who have shared this blog on all the social networks and also for reading because without the readers I would be talking to myself. OK that's the business end taking care of so now lets get in to the post.


Below you will see a video of me performing a trick I created about 2 or 3 years ago. Let me tell you a little bit of history of this trick and how I went about creating this trick. First off let me start by saying that Hofzinser Ace Problems is something I have always liked and I have seen/learnt millions of the dam things but I have never found one that I have found to be amazing.


Some I have learnt and performed include:

Larry Jennings A Problem with Hofzinser can be found in The Classic Magic of Larry Jennings. First published in 1986 and can be found on p.17.

Benjamin Earl`s Shades of Hofzinser can be found on his 3 DVD set past midnight on the first disk.

Elm – Zinser by John Gelasi found in the cardshark issue 3.

Peter McLanachan Hofzinser 2001 this can be found on page 6 of his lecture notes A force much greater than luck.
There are some more but names and crediting at this moment escape me.


So how did I go about creating this trick? Well I didn`t sit down and say I want to invent a new Hofzinser Ace Problem oh no. I first developed the idea for this trick when I saw a performance of Dan and Dave Buck`s Hoffzy Osbourne posted by a friend of mine on YouTube. I then asked him where the trick can be found and went and bought myself a copy of the trilogy by the Buck twins where the trick can be found (I later found out it was first published in there lecture notes called FIVE http://magicref.tripod.com/books/buckfivenotes.htm ).


I learnt the trick but I noticed that I didn`t like a lot of the sleights used in this trick so I made a few changes to this trick. I performed it a lot and got feedback from some magician friends of mine but for some reason I stopped performing it. A few months later I attended a lecture held by Peter McLanachan in which he taught his version of the Hofzinser Ace Problem which is a really good version might I add and this gave me a few more ideas. A few months later I started messing around with it again and I made a few improvements to the original routine. Yet again I stopped doing this trick for some reason.


A little bit later I had an idea that idea was that I would show this trick to a few really knowledgeable magicians I know and see what they thought. I showed the trick to a few of them and they all said it need work so I started to think of ways of changing the handling to make it a little bit better and I couldn’t so yet again I stopped doing it. I then had random thought at 5am and that thought was what if I used a move by Luke Dancy called "to the table" (which can be found on his sin city DVD) but apply it to the display of the aces would it work. So I tried it out ad it worked. I had hit the eureka moment.


I started to play with it a little and made some more improvements then I showed it to a few magicians that had previously said it sucked and they liked it. That is the story of how I made up Ace-diction but there’s one thing I haven`t mentioned and that is how I came about naming this trick. Well the name was really easy to think up. I had simply looked at the finished image that the spectator is left with and I thought to myself how the spectators would describe this effect to their friends. The way I thought the spectator would describe this effect was “the aces predicted my card” so from that I came up with the name Ace-diction.


Well that’s enough of me talking about the creativity process of this trick now time to watch the video. Let me know what you think.


(note: all video editing and production was done by my self)

Well that’s it from me today I will be back soon with a new post. Let me know what you thought by posting below, contacting me on any of the ways listed below or commenting on the video at youtube.com.



Steven Blair :)


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