magic.Phatus.com

The other day we wrote a post on the firing of Jim Piculas, a Florida middle school teacher, who lost his job for performing the vanishing toothpick magic trick. Well as if this story was not already wound with a kind of humor to it, apparently Steven Colbert has broadcast a segment on the very same story. Check it out below.

[via iTricks.tv]

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Aight peep this. This is a bit of an old story but its the first I’ve hear of it. Apparently a Florida school teacher has lost his job after being accused of “Wizardry”. WTF?!?!?! Isn’t that a little 17th century? Supposedly the teacher performed what sounds to me like the disappearing toothpick trick that Cris Angel revealed many seasons ago on Mindfreak, to his middle school class. The school district is claiming that it wasn’t just because of the “Wizardry” and that the teacher had other performance issues by “not following lesson plans” however the teacher is claiming that he was never aware of such accusations. The teacher goes on to state that “I still have no idea what my discipline involves because I’ve never received anything from the school district actually saying what it entails,”. I guess that’s at-will employment for ya folks. WIZARDRY!!! Cummon, Seriously? Apparently they ain’t got no cable down in dat der Pasco County.</redneck> Well I guess at least they didn’t burn the poor guy for witchcraft. Comments are welcome.
Full Story at desertoftherealecononomicanalysis.blogspot.com

We will be cleaning up our user accounts database and the end of this month. ALL INACTIVE ACCOUNTS WILL BE DELETED! Be sure that if you stop by here that you LOGOUT first and then LOGIN at least once into your account otherwise our script will delete it. The script is set to run on July 1 2008 @ 12:00am pst so be sure and just login at least once between now and then so that the script will see it and not delete your account.
NOTE: This does not apply to the forums. All forums accounts will remain the same.

Sorry for the lack of posts. I had to take a spur of the moment adventure. But I am back to reality now (i think) and with a title like “Magic Glowing Ice Orb” you can tell we are desperate for new material around here. So heres a shot in the dark.

I came across this old video at metacafe that shows you how to implant a superbright LED into a water balloon and freeze the balloon for a sweet glowing orb. However, the wires are hanging out. That just won’t do. An “LED Throwie” is in order here. If you have never heard or seen and LED Throwie, you must check out the video above. Its basically just an LED with a 3v coin battery rigged to it thus eliminating the wires. Instructions here. “But then the thing will always be on and my battery will die” you say? There may be a solution. Hanzablast over at meta cafe has a great video in which he uses a reed switch for a door alarm. Hanzablast makes great detailed tutorials and you can also check his instructables page where I am almost certian he will have a plethora of reed switch projects and information on how to use them. Basically the reed switch is just a switch triggered by a magnet. When the magnet is near, the switch is activated. Rig the reed in, tie a string going from reed to throwie to out the inlet of the balloon, fill er up, and I imagine you would have a pretty fly lil glowing orb triggered only by you and your PK ring, or strong earth magnet. The idea is to suspend the reed as close as possible to the bottom wall. I am not sure of the sensitivity of the switches but I would try to get at least within 3/4″ of the wall for start. Also keep the throwie as close to the center as possible. If I can dig out the materials in some free time I will give this a go and report results. In the meantime we invite our viewers to do the same and if desired, show us what you came up with at admin@phatus.com

NOTE: You may need to waterproof the battery first. Check out this instructable that telittleone found on this subject.

As we make our way into April, here is a list of some projects we are working on for the near future.

- A PDF ebook titled “The Phatus guide to creating gaffed playing cards” which is a much more in depth and highly advanced guide than our current video tutorial and instructable. This guide covers a wider range of aspects for the making process as well as new alternative printing experiments and even a section titled “finishing the card” which will contain updated information on our experiments with putting a new “finish” on the card to re-gain its smoothness and reduce friction. This will increase the quality of your gaff 10 fold and it will once again shine.

- Mars explanation/tutorial in PDF instant download is just around the corner for purchase to the public. Once again, Phatus.com blog account holders with sufficient credits will get first crack at the beta release.

- A highly visual and simple bottle cap through bottle routine. Perfect for bars.

- A Torn and Restored Card routine I have been working on for quite some time that was inspired to me both by Daniel Garcia’s “Torn” and “Unripped” by Gared Crawford. I unofficially call the trick “Un-Torn” for lack of a better name. This routine is basically a cross between Torn and Unripped. I loved the elegant simplicity and visual aspects of torn however I did not like the putting the 2 pieces in my pocket aspect. I saw that in unripped you could hand the card over halfway into the restore and I WANTED THAT. I was however disappointed by the fact that you could not hand the actual “Signed Card” over to the spectator at the end. (Which the teaser neglects to inform you of btw. More of that “sales deception”) So what I have done is combined the concept of the two illusions into one where the spectator signs the card, the magician tears the card, shows 4 pieces, keeps 2 and bites the other 2 in his teeth to keep in full view at all times. You then restore the first two pieces and immediately and very cleanly, hand over the half restored portion to the spectator keeping the other two torn cards in your teeth. You then take the half card back and one piece from your teeth and restore it, followed by the last piece. The signed card is then handed over to the spectator for inspection. All while allowing for highly visual restores like that of torn.

- The lost DIY magnetic quarter project. (yes we haven’t forgot…..yet) Since our posting of the DIY magnetic quarter we have ran into many kinks in the project. We have also encountered many advancements in the project though making for a kicker surprise if all works out. We still plan on bringing something to you on this as soon as we have a quality and solid system for creating them.

If there is one thing I have found just as useful as knowing the trick, its having a perfect performance video to train to. Now yes, you have all seen the following teaser videos, BUT in them contains the information one needs for a perfect performance. Now they are all in one location for you to watch till your eyes bugg out. Check out the new “Video Performance Library” page which will contain an updated, Catagorized library of performance videos for some of the best tricks we can find. Email requests to admin@phatus.com

Through my online journeys and searches over the past few days trying to find more content for the site, I am finding myself in awe over the insane amount of free information that exists out there regarding magic and illusions. I’m not talking about “exposure”, that is boring, I’m talking about good solid “Textual Data” on magic. The following are books for download at Google books, and all completely FREE. Some are only previews, while many that I came across have much of the book available.

Check this online copy of the “Memoirs of Robert Houdini” for download at google books.

My Best Self-Working Card Tricks

or The Complete Idiots Guide to Magic Tricks, a 374 page book on magic tricks

Science Experiments Index - (Science and magic Rocks!)

Presenting and Training with Magic - 53 simple tricks you can do to energize any audience.

Magic in Theory: An Introduction to the Theoretical and Psychological

Self-Working Card Tricks: 72 Foolproof Card Miracles for the Amateur Magician

Scarne on Card Tricks - 55 professional card trick

Encyclopedia of Card Tricks - 402 pages (wow)

The Little Giant Book of Card Tricks - 352 pages

The Art of Magic -352 pages

Self-Working Number Magic: 101 Foolproof Tricks - 154 pages

and the list goes on and on and on to no end.Id be willing to bet you that almost any modern effect out there today was inspired by a trick that was learned by the creator from books JUST like the ones listed above. Id even bet there is a torn and restored card routine you could tweak in one of those books. This is such a great find I am creating a page titled “Magic Library” in the upper right sidebar which will contain this list of links AND I will continue to update it and organize it as I find more relevant books to add to the library (and trust me I will) so be sure and bookmark the library and NOT this post.

Cheers

For your entertainment, we dug out these old archives of Ellusionist’s website. Whether you just want to go “Wayback” or perhaps just a good chuckle, these links are for you.

For example, check out E in November of 2001

Didn’t Change much in 2002

Take a gander at July of 2003

or how about just a couple of years ago

You can lookup any site you like at the wayback machine. Try Penguin or even Theory11

Give it a try

The Wayback Machine

The