Variations on the 2 Card Transposition

August 5, 2008 · Filed Under Uncategorized · Comment 

Regarding the recently published 2 Card Transposition trick, I’ve got some extra stuff you might want to check out. First, comes this email from Peng Huang, who goes by the name MountainDew on various magic forums.

As per usual, some sleight names have been changed to their respected section number in Royal Road to Card Magic.

Hi Andrew,

Here is a minor variation on the handling of the two card transpo. The
below handling seems to be cumbersome and unnecessarily ‘woolly’, but
the payoff is a greater clarity of effect.

We’ll use the 4S as the first card. After ‘it’ has been placed in the
pocket, rather than doing a RRTCM XI to show the next card (in which there
is no guarantee that the card is a nice contrast to the 4S), do a
Braue reversal of the top card (4S) - you end up with face up deck and
the 4S face down at the bottom. (Alternatively, you may turn the deck
over and do a half-pass of the bottom card, the 4S) Now, as you
casually spread through the face up deck, you ask the audience to
choose a card that contrasts the 4S - a red card that is high in value
e.g. JH. This handling does three things - 1. there is now a guarantee
that there are two contrasting cards in play, which IMO is so
important for this card plot, and 2. subconsciously emphasises that
the card in the pocket is the 4S and 3. gets the spectator more
involved in the trick

After a red, high card has been chosen (we’ll use the JH), turn the
card face down and place it on the bottom. The presentational
justification is highlighting the point that any red, high card can be
chosen, gesturing to the face up card spread. Close the spread, turn
the deck over - now the JH is in the RRTCM XI position ready for the switch,
and the trick continues as you’ve already described in your blog.

And that’s it…I hope this handling is useful and thank you for your time. :-)

Cheers,

Peng

PS - Just as an afterthought, I realised that a more simplistic way of
guaranteeing two contrasting cards without having to do a
reversal/half-pass, spreading through the deck etc…is right before
the trick, casually fan through the deck towards yourself face-up,
find two contrasting cards that are next to each other, and cut the
deck at that point and go into your handling from there. Of course,
the handling above eliminates the need to do this ‘2 sec prep’, which
I’ve assumed you think is ‘weak’. But I may be wrong here…

It’s an interesting idea, if you don’t mind doing the extra sleight, and it should help accomplish the three things Peng mentioned earlier.

Also, Andster had an idea for dealing with the cleanup of this trick that he published a long time ago…

Moving on to B D Erland’s Two Card Transpo. One thing I noticed right away, and I’m sure it’s just common sense, is that you’re left with a random card in your pocket. Which is slightly annoying. If you perform a trick before the transposition and control that selection to the top, you’re left with a selected card in your pocket. Which is just fantastic. Here’s what I did at work one day: …

Click here to read the rest of his idea

If anybody’s got any more ideas that they want to share, don’t hesitate to send them in. Incidentally, I’ve noticed that this trick has been published over on some site that advertises “Free Magic Tricks” and doesn’t bother with the coding system that I’ve got here. I only just noticed this, so I have no idea if their idea predates mine, or if they saw mine and just decided to explain/expose it over there. That said, since the handling really is so straightforward it should have been published a long time ago, I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they didn’t take it from me.

Keep coming back here, though, as I’ll be adding further ideas to the tricks here as they come in. Thanks both to Peng for sending his in, and to Andster for publishing that (sorry if I didn’t say thanks earlier as he’d published his variation a long time ago).

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No sense of style

July 6, 2008 · Filed Under Uncategorized · Comment 

So I’m learning the hard way that trying to design the overall look and feel for a website is freaking difficult if you have no sense of style. Sleightly is supposed to be a directory, so I’ve been looking around at other directories, trying to figure out how they do things, and I’m amazed at how little I know.

Take a look at this Yellow Pages listing for “Magic” in “Vancouver”. Forget about the content of the results, just look at it.

There’s over an inch of good whitespace on either side of the listings. Where did they come up with that idea? Don’t get me wrong, it looks good, but at what point did somebody decide that it would look better with that much whitespace? And why THAT much? Why not an inch more? Or a half-inch less? And notice, for those at a resolution that’s higher than 600×800, it’s not like that because of the window being expanded all the way and it automatically spaced itself out. Shrink the window, and you’ll see the whitespace was deliberately set at that length.

(EDIT… Ah, I see it’s because it’s a blank space left for company logos such as for those listings further down. Fine. But why keep it that length with a big strip of white space for regular listings? Is that “good” design? I’m not being sarcastic here, I honestly don’t know.)

And why that much space between listings, while we’re at it? I suppose one could say that just because we were forced into compact styles because of print costs doesn’t mean we need it for the web (technically, it makes no discernable difference to the webpage’s size on the computer), but what inspired that? And what are we supposed to extrapolate from that?

So, I’m just going to throw this out there to the blog readership. Yup, all five of you guys.

What font do you like? What size do you like? Do you like things spaced out or compact? Do you think the Yellow Pages listing is one to emulate in terms of overall spacing and layout? What about the layout for a Google search result? Or is there something else you prefer?

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Andi Gladwin’s Jack Parker tribute

July 1, 2008 · Filed Under Uncategorized · Comment 

Jack Parker died a year ago, and Andi Gladwin, to commemorate his friend, is putting videos all week of Parker’s material. He’s on Day 3 at the moment. If you like interesting card plots and techniques, Parker’s got some nice work, as can be seen in Jack Parker’s 52 Memories.

Here are the videos Andi’s got thus far.

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3

Apparently some of this stuff hasn’t even been published. I especially like the Aerobic Switch. Lots of potential uses for that one. So, give them a look. In the meantime, Andi, I just wanted to say that I thought this was a very touching gesture to make, and the next time we meet, I shall be forced to hug you.

PS: I messed about with the URL to see if day 4 was up early. Unfortunately, Andi saw that coming…

“This day’s video has not yet been uploaded. Nice try though :o)”

I officially rescind the hug offer.

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