This month's issue of Genii finally arrived! Only 2 weeks late, but at least it's here. My morning coffee has been missing its periodical companion. I know that I have other monthly subscriptions too, but they're digital and I really don't want to spend all my waking time staring at a screen... you know?
The cover of the issue features Fenik, a magician from Mexico. The name sounds familiar, but I can't for the life of me remember how or where I know it from. I just cracked open the magazine this morning and am only a few pages in, but soon I'll hopefully know more about him.
I read the intro and it spoke of FISM. I hope I'm able to attend it myself one day, either as a spectator or even a performer. We'll see!
The winner and now-titled World Champion of Card Magic is Markobi. His routine, haptic and disorganized, has tells of Lennart Green all over it -- except, his projected lack of care or even interest. He controlled cards without the appearance of possibly being able to. He demonstrated actual skill, "for technical points", and his kicker ending was enough to make anyone's jaw drop! Check out the whole performance here:
I don't know why but I've been doing a lot of color changes lately. Color changes are, in my opinion, a fun fidget style thing to practice every now and then and can add a bit of fun to a routine -- and they are always nice for video -- but I've been practicing them with no regard to utility. Simply, just to do them.
If you're interested in the specific ones (with names) that I've been fidgeting with, here's the short list:
- Candle Change by Patrick Varnavas (@patch.god), taught by Chris Ramsay
- 3P by Alan Rorrison, taught by Chris Ramsay
- Stiletto Change by Chris Ramsay
- Fabien's Change by Fabien Desfaucheux (@fabiendefaucheux), taught by Chris Ramsay
- Savant by Dennis Kim
Not including the last in the list, I think you may be able to spot a pattern =P
Speaking of Savant though, I started tinkering with it because of a move I came up with a few years back that uses a pinky-clip to steal the bottom card of an out-jogged double. This routine, which is less a color change and more a routine of color changes, also leverages that pinky-clip so when I started practicing my move, this one naturally followed. I play around with this move (the steal, not Savant) off-and-on as a fun fidget.
Here's a peek at said move that I recently posted:
Matt Baker is this month's MasterClass lecturer on Vanishing Inc. I really enjoy The Buena Vista Shuffle Club and am looking forward to seeing his lectures. I've rarely ever been able to tune in live, as is still the case this month, but it's all good because the videos are added to my account to let me watch whenever I want. The bad part about it is that I miss out on the chat with the other folks watching; it would be neat if the chat history was saved for others to read -- at least for those who are subscribers at the time of the recording.
Vanishing Inc sent an email, as did Matt, that there's extras added to my account for the lecture too. I took a quick look and wouldn't you know it, 2 ebooks! How cool is that?! Video lectures and written material to come along with it. Color me old fashioned, but that's a real class right there! =P
I don't know when I'll finally get around to watching everything, but when I do, I'll add a review here. There's already close to 4 hours of video material and there's still one more video to release (live streamed this coming Sunday), so it'll be a lot to go through.
I just registered for Google's AdSense to put an ad on the blog. I have it configured to be super lower annoyance, I think it is based on how long the individual page is and Google will automatically put a couple of ads, but for the few I spot-checked there will be only one or two in-line. I'm not going crazy with the whole overlay video and sticky ad stuffs -- just a simple one that's in the middle of the text.
"Why ads?!", you ask. I know, it sucks. In all honesty, I don't need to put them on the site yet. However, I figured that there's enough content here now that it might be better to have them now instead of later when there's even more traffic. I only pay for the server that the site's running on which, currently, runs me about $5 a month. I put in a lot of time working on the site though -- not just writing posts and entering content, but also writing code and whatnot to make the site run.
If the ads were able to cover the monthly cost, I would be ecstatic. As the site grows, the number of users will grow and I'll need to bump up the server specs, which will cost more so having that tiny bit of income helping towards it now will help towards it then too. I ran some preliminary numbers, and I don't think they'll actually get me enough to cover the monthly bill but we'll see. If they end up bringing in more than the monthly bill, I still have a little wiggle room in their settings that I can scale them back too so there will only be one on each page, regardless of the length of the page! Only time will tell though.
I was thinking that, in the future, I will publish a book or two (or routinely) and that will be the income stream to help cover the costs here. That's in the future though, so for now, a fun little Google Ad.