Gardyloo #35

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This coming weekend, in New York City, I will be helping conduct some focus-group style testing on card forces. This is something I've wanted to do for a long time but didn't know quite the best way to do it. But after speaking with a couple of friends I think we've come up with something that will work. We'll have time to test maybe 8 forces. A couple of them will be ones I'm working on. Then we intend to test the classic force, a touch/cull force, the cross cut force, riffle force, and maybe a couple more. If you have a suggestion on something you'd like us to test, let me know.

These will all be mechanical forces, not psychological forces. We actually tested psychological forces many years ago with someone who was a big proponent of them. They don't work. The only ones that did work (that is, the person named the card we wanted them to name) were ones that were transparent to the spectator. If anyone believes they have a psychological card force that works reliably and is invisible to the spectator (in other words, they're not able to unpack what happened immediately after the force), then let me know. 

Recently I came up with what I think is a really powerful new force. Actually it's a new technique you can add to existing forces which almost "proves" the card couldn't have been forced. Depending on how the testing goes on that, you'll likely hear about it next year (if this site is still around.)

Scott Douglas from Dark Foundry put together this great set of faux-instructions for Panther Across The Sky from The JAMM #6.

Panther1.jpg
Panther2.jpg
Panther3.jpg

There are a couple ways you can go with this. You could print them off on some specialty craft paper, age it up some, and then claim it's something that was torn from an actual book. (The church demanded that page be removed from all copies of the book and burned. This is one of the ones that was smuggled out.)

Or you can print it up on normal paper, tape that into a book of the same size, then go photocopy the book. So you'll end up with something that looks like it was photocopied from some actual book somewhere.

The file for this document is here. It contains both sets of instructions (both hands). The password is the first word on page 18 of JAMM #6.

Sadly, the technology used in this effect is being phased out. You might be able to use the ISS for the final version of Panther Across the Sky in JAMM #6 (the strongest version). But I’m not sure.

Found this old footage of a young Gregory Wilson picking pockets.

Apparently it was the humiliation of being put in this headlock which inspired him to commence his dojo training

I miss the days when the Magic Cafe was the only place to go to talk magic. Back then it made sense to have a passionate distaste for the site because you had very few other options. Certainly nothing that was anywhere near as popular. These days, if you don't like the Cafe and you still stick around and use it, that's on you. Now there are a number of other outlets to talk about magic. Go hang out there. 

I was thinking about the Cafe because I stumbled on an old thread there that was clearly an entry in a contest I had for who could create the most boring/least interesting thread at the Cafe. That all went down 12 years ago!

If you ever have nothing to do, go search around for posts that were made in mid-September of 2005. You'll find a lot of overwhelmingly dull posts which were then replied to with enthusiasm by other people who were playing the game. (Responding to a post was a way to sabotage other players in the game. Making their thread (theoretically) more interesting.)

Here's the thread I found. It's a short example of what was going on at the time. Here Steve V let's us know some completely inessential information, that the 9/15 episode of Mindfreak is a re-run.