Monday, May 20, 2013

Lightning

Lightning blew up the electronics in my house, so the mini hiatus is now full hiatus until I can get a new computer and modem and all that jazz.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Mini Hiatus

Expect a drop in posting as I have started a real job and getting into the swing of a 40hr work week is taking a bigger toll than expected.

Monday, May 13, 2013

It's built in.

One of my posts got a link in another blog and that got a link in another blog. And after reading those I got to thinking on all the ways companies are trying to stop online piracy. When it comes down to it I don't consider piracy to be all that damaging to any industry, really all that is lost is a sale. And that's working on the assumption that those doing the stealing would have bought it had they not been able to steal it and the assumption that if it's good that the thief won't buy a legit copy.

If I pirate a movie from FakemagicInc then FakemagicInc is out one sale and so theoretically they are out whatever they charge for that movie. A movie, I probably wouldn't have gotten had it not been free to pirate.

If I steal a DVD from BigboxstoreInc, then BigboxstoreInc is out what they paid for that DVD, the profit they would have made off the sale of the DVD, and the DVD meaning they can't sale it to the next person.

Do you know what shrinkage is? Well for companies like BigboxstoreInc 'shrinkage' is industry jargon for "stuff that will be stolen". Now most Big box stores do things to discourage people form shoplifting mostly in the form or visual security  And they do catch people, but the number they catch is far lower than those that get away. Less than one percent of thieves are caught. And still these companies are not taking crazy measures to try and stop the theft. They work around it, they figure shrinkage into their business models, and purchase orders, and profits. And I'd like to remind people that I'm talking about actual physical items being stolen. That is to say the actual loss of money not just a loss of theoretical business.

In light of the fact that all that is lost with piracy is a theoretical sale, I'd like to see the various industries just accept that as long as there will be items made there will be pirates, and spend more time making their product the best they can be.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Dealing black jack

No one showed to play blackjack except one person whose husband decided to spend all their cash on Texas Hold'em. But I had fun hanging out so it's all good.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Gotta stop reading old threads.

I gotta stop reading old forum threads. I keep wanting to resurrect threads just to point out pointless things. Like earlier today I was looking for Reviews about Jeff McBrides Magic at the edge and one person posted "The whole "henna hands" thing just made me feel like she needed to go clean up before the shooting." And that really made me want to post how no amount of cleaning would have removed the henna from the hands. Henna stains the skin cells deeply and for some can take up to three weeks to fade. It's basically a real tattoo that fades faster.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Move by Gianni Vox from Ellusionist

As you may have read on other faster sources the effect can not be done as shown in the clip. I'm not too upset about that because it's a recreation of how it should appear to the spectator if you do it right, but lay spectators should not be viewing a trailer, magicians should be. Plus doing the effect for real in the video would have resulted in another moron kicking up sand because he saw through the effect in the trailer.

The idea I had when I saw the trailer turned out to be wrong (due to faked trailer). I don't know if I'm happy about that. The idea I had was that the signature that does the jumping was on a clear something that was ditched later.  The reason I might not be happy about being wrong about the method is because the complaint I have about this effect is the same as I had with Modulate and I'm not sharing it here for the same reason. And it really does keep me from doing either of the effects until I find a solution I'm happy with. Beyond that it requires a minimal amount of props, and is shown two ways one that uses the deck and one that starts free of the deck.

The video is under nine minutes and starts with the trailer, it's the same level of quality as the other recent downloads I've purchased. I can't really say any of them really felt scripted more like they were just making up what to say as they go along. But for five bucks I see no real reason to complain about that.