[usaneisfiecup]

I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it myself...

This guy is good!

Hey, 'Dipity... you do this kind of stuff... How many hours do you suppose he has devoted to practice?

http://marketplace.espeakers.com/flavplayer_content.php

[requires Flash plug-in]

[Nabeqiv]

Couldn't get it to play, even with a Flash plugin. Is it that ukelele player? If so, many many many hours!

[usaneisfiecup]

Oh NO!! ...that link doesn't work for ME now...


This is a guy [Chris Bliss] who does incredible 3-ball juggling to a Beatle's song. The vid is a live performance somewhere and he doesn't drop a single ball.

I figured that YOU, especially, would really get a kick outta him...

edit: Here... try THIS one:


http://marketplace.espeakers.com/mov...5290&aid=10558

[Nabeqiv]

Cheers, I still can't see it, even with Flash plugins and everything, but I found a mirror site where I can download it - all 53 Mb - so I'll give you my verdict in about an hour! Thank goodness there's an active juggling community online!

[peakyesno]

Quote:

[Nabeqiv]

He is very good! A sweet slick routine, and it worked well with the music.

...and compared to me (sorry, can't help it!)? About the only move he did that I can't do was the 3-in-one-hand trick (I have been juggling for over 20 years, so I'm not kidding). I'd like to see some more movement, as I favour routines that use the body as part of the overall performance as well as the balls (titter ye not! I stopped laughing every time a juggler uses the word "balls" about 15 years ago...), although he certainly wasn't as rooted to the spot as some jugglers can be. It was refreshing to see the behind-the-back multiplex shots (where he throws two behind his back), as this is one of my favourite moves and it's not very common, nor very difficult. Like many jugglers he has a dominant right hand - the behind-the-back throws were all done with the right hand except at the very end, for example. There were a few mistakes which he covered well - guess you have to be a juggler to spot them - but all in all an excellent routine. Thanks Sin.

[Nabeqiv]

You can get the 53Mb mpeg download Here. Takes a while...

[usaneisfiecup]

53 Megs??? shock


DANG!!... I'm sorry guys... I didn't check on the filesize, thinking it was some sort of streaming thing, as it began to play almost immediately when I went to the site.

Dipity--If you can do most/all of that stuff, I'm truly impressed. I was a juggling "student" for awhile, but never got past the very elementary three silk scarves. ...so it ALL looks positively incredible to me.

I really like to see stuff like this... there's a online video of a guy who plays a keyboard with thrown balls and another who bounces balls rhythmically off the inside of a large triangular frame. Another of my favorites is a guy with a clear glass sphere who has it roll all over his hands, arms, legs and body.

Ultimately useless stuff ...and undoubtedly taking many hundreds of hours to master, but hugely entertaining [to ME, anyway].

[Nabeqiv]

Useless? *Harrrrumph! In itself, maybe, although it can pay well. There's a few things that juggling develops, such as the senses of spatial awareness and rhythm, which can be helpful with other things people do, such as martial arts, playing a musical instrument, or even driving a car. Also, it's good exercise and keeps the brain alert. So, it's not altogether useless.

The rolling-a-glass-sphere thing is called contact juggling. I can do a few basic moves, but that's a whole other discipline which I haven't pushed too hard - I do quite a few other circus skills, but I'm not obliged to learn them all, and I like to be amazed at what other people can do. Those balls are made of acrylic, not glass, and there's a hidden danger with just owning them. Ask anyone who ever left a clear acrylic ball on a windowsill on a sunny day - quite a few fires have started that way!

On watching the video again, I was wrong about him only doing behind-the-back multiplexes with his right hand, although he still displays dominant right hand traits.

I'll have to shoot a video and post it up here, let y'all see what I can do

[usaneisfiecup]

I'm sure all of us would be interested in seeing a vid of your stuff! Do you have a place to "park" it on the net?

Your point regarding sunlight and refractive/reflective mediums is well understood. A friend of mine was helping his girlfriend move some stuff... part of which was one of those magnifying make-up mirrors... about 10" in diameter. Well, he put a box of things into his car and went back for more. The mirror was on top, and it happened to focus the bright sunlight upon the headliner of the poor guy's car. In just a very few minutes, it charred the headliner fabric, melted the foam backing, and filled the car with thick, acrid smoke. Luckily, the smoke effectively shut-off the process, although it left the car with a permanent nasty chemical smell to it, and some stains from melted foam on the seatbacks.

"No good deed goes unpunished."

[peakyesno]

I finally got it to load. Great Stuff! I got tired just watching him.

The co-ordination to the music was outstanding!

[usaneisfiecup]

Apparently, this guy's act is getting some serious attention...

Here's a streaming feed from Google that you can expand to full-screen. Perhaps Dipity can see it a bit better and tell us if this is really as hard as it looks or not.

I've watched a couple more times and I'm STILL impressed!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...640&q=juggling

[Nabeqiv]

It's still good, slick, and works well with the music, but still technically it's not too difficult. You're right, it's been getting a lot of attention, but mostly among non-jugglers. It was posted on another (UK) board I'm on, and one friend of mine who went to a juggling club I was involved with running said that she'd seen me doing all those tricks and many more - and I know that in the juggling world, I'm not bad with 3 balls, but I'm an entertainer who happens to juggle. What Bliss does very well is work with the music. And he didn't drop. Other than that, frankly, in terms of what jugglers are doing these days, and even in terms of what the oldtimers did - people like Enrico Rastelli and Bobby May - he's not very good. I know 10 year old kids who can do better, and I'm not kidding.

So, if you're a juggler, he's average; if you're not a juggler, he's good.

Watch this, from Jason Garfield, a proper juggler, who is just a little fed up with the response Bliss's video is getting - this is among the best juggling you'll ever see. It's cocky, as it's a 5-ball parody of CB, but you'll see what I mean about CB's stuff not being difficult:
Click me and make sure you have room for your jaw to hit the deck

Jason Garfield's comments about Bliss's routine, and about putting together his parody of it: Click Me

And now please stop going on about how good Bliss is. He's good, if you don't know anything about juggling.

[newwebstar]

god talk about sour grapes!
but i can see his point!
that second guy was much better than the 1st!

i have trouble juggling with 3 balls for more than 1 minute! so doing it with 5 balls to music, or even with 3 balls for 11 hours is bloody impressive!

MJ

[Nabeqiv]

And, if anyone thinks that Jason Garfield must be a humourless s.o.b., check his Promo Video (which also knocks spots off Bliss)

[usaneisfiecup]

I agree with MJ here... petulant, juvenile, sour grapes...

It seems that Bliss thought of an entertaining routine first and everybody else has their nose out-of-joint because he's selling the sizzle, not the steak. ...and Bliss does it with fairly decent production values... Garfield ought to take notes on how to properly video juggling... [dark clothing, dark background, dark objects and side lighting just ain't the way.]

But I understand where you're coming from. I can admire skills in MY line of interests that the average Joe has no grasp of. I've impressed some people with shooting six ten-inch metal plates, 15 yards away-- in a little over two seconds with a 9mm Glock... "WOW! That's really fast shooting!" is the gist of the usual comments. "Really fast?" Perhaps it might seem so to the uninitiated.

However... it that's NOTHING compared to...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VHKrc70kM...ast%20shooting

THIS guy, USING A REVOLVER, shoots six rounds, RELOADS, shoots six more onto the target in under three seconds!

and the last part of THIS video shows some gawdawful skill with a shotgun...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s13Y7SKrF...ast%20shooting

It's OK to let YOUR light shine brightly, but not to blow-out the other guy's candle and leave us in the dark.

Got a vid of YOUR stuff yet, Dipity? :question

[Nabeqiv]

I agree that Garfield was rubbing it in - Bliss had entertained his audience, and that's what counts at the end of the day. It's just that as a juggler, I'm not overawed by his routine. Also remember that Garfield put together that routine in response to, and as a parody of, Bliss's routine - whaddaya want now, proper lighting and all that? It's not as if he's going to go to all that expense just to make a point! Just the last two moves of Garfield's routine - 5-ball flash with 720, straight into 5-ball back cross (in English, throwing all the balls high in the air, pirouhetting twice, catching them all and then immediately juggling them behind his back) - that alone is several months' work.

I agree about not urinating on other people's fireworks, but it was a little bit much to see the Bliss vid getting all that publicity when it's not the best juggling out there. I'd have left it, but that vid made it on to a few other boards I'm on, so it seems right that the juggling world points out that he's actually pretty average. Garfield is a competetive juggler, but he wins competitions.

That is one hell of a fast shooter! 6 shots and a reload and 6 more shots in 2.99 secs! I sure hope he's on my side!

Still waiting for the Beretta vid to load, and I have to go out - looks amazing so far, quite a weapon - and the guy can shoot or what!!!!

[usaneisfiecup]

Pretty-much off-topic .... but since you mentioned slow downloads and all...


Do you guys have DSL or something equivalent? Is your phone system compatible with DSL?

I started out [1980's] on dial-up with a 300 baud modem. When I went to 14.4 baud modem and sometimes got connected at 9600, I thought I was FLYING! Of course most everything was text-based back then, and it loaded very quickly. Today's graphics-intensive stuff would undoubtedly choke on 14.4. or 28.8.

The same feeling was present when I went from 56.5 dial-up to DSL @ a couple of MB/sec download [I don't recall the exact speed]... I've messed around with a T-3 line when I was working and a neighbor's cable modem... and they are even faster.

It would be real hard to go back in speed.

Just curious if you Euros might have something available that uses common phone lines that is better than DSL.

[Nabeqiv]

Hmmm... According to this infomercial site: Broadband Resource Centre UK:

Quote:

[actrisski]

Broadband data

http://www.dslreports.com/

FIOS ....what's new

http://www.fioslive.com/california-fios.html

I use cable, they claim 5MB per second, 3 is more like it, and that's only one way down, uploads are .5 mbps.

The shotgun video streams, but the server is slow, it's not the pipe.