talkmagic.co.uk

A_n_t wrote:Not a scientific background per se, more scientific and logical mindset.

I personally feel that for a performer arty, creative types are better suited than us logic monkeys as we are characteristically anti-social.

I am a naturally quiet, shy and analytic person [typical logic monkey I guess] but put me in front of a small audience in a close-up environment and suddenly I'm funny, outgoing, thinking on my feet, ad-libbing and chatting in a way that I would not normally do. It is like an escape or release from my day job. It brings out aspects of my personality that I did not even think I had a few years ago. I believe it is my enthusiasm and comedy style that is entertaining rather than the strength of any magic trick.

If I see a magic video, or trailer, I then spend ages trying to reverse engineer the effect. If I analysed the time I spend on reverse engineering it would probably be cheaper in the long run if I just bought the effect !
Once I have worked out how to do a magic trick I spend much more time thinking about the context and the outline of the words I will use [I hate working from a fixed script unless some specific words are essential for a dual reality effect. ]

</psychoanlysis>

I think Lommy might be right. There seems to be many more maths and science people in the magic community than I realised.

Just adding my two cents

I can be 'techy' and am comfortable using technology, computers and there countless frustrating / boring programmes, smart phones, tv’s / dvd, wireless stuff bla bla bla...

It just doesn't interest me in the slightest

I am fascinated by physics, astro physics / astronomy but apart from that I am far happier with a pack of paste boards in hand, behind the piano or playing the guitar.

I prefer to be away from computers or technology when I am feeling creative.

Having said all that, after reading Discombobulator's post abourt reverse engineering:

Discombobulator wrote: If I see a magic video, or trailer, I then spend ages trying to reverse engineer the effect. If I analysed the time I spend on reverse engineering it would probably be cheaper in the long run if I just bought the effect !
Once I have worked out how to do a magic trick I spend much more time thinking about the context and the outline of the words I will use [I hate working from a fixed script unless some specific words are essential for a dual reality effect. ]

... this is me too, so I guess that could be my 'techy' side coming out

Tomo wrote:Einstein also played the violin and piano...

One of my favourite Einstein stories concerns him having a little jam session in his rooms at Princeton with a musician friend (whose name I can't recall). Einstein, on the violin, missed his cue and came in late a couple of times. The exasperated friend finally burst out, "My God, Albert, can't you count?"

The story's in several places on the internet, mostly heavily embellished (putting Einstein in a chamber orchestra, etc.), so I don't want to rely on any of them for the friend's name. It's in Feynman's memoirs, but I don't have that book to hand.

More HERE on Einstein, violin playing, and cross-fertilisation.

I love it that there are some many different types of people, I totally agree with Tomo that it's good to mix different ideas from different areas. It's when you get that mixture than some really good things can come out of it. I've made up some quite useful little gizmos with ideas that I adapted from Jon's Electronics for Magicians, I'd never even have been able to do that on my own. I've also been playing around for a while now with a principle that's been used in art for years but it'd never occured to me to use it in magic until Jon released his ebook on hybrid images.

Although I'm mainly doing mentalism now, I constantly mix and match ideas and principles from all sorts areas of magic. It really quite suprises me some times when people do seem to put ideas in boxes and dismiss them off hand.

Tomo wrote:Fred Hoyle wrote sci fi. James Clarke Maxwell wrote terrible poetry.

Turned out his science was science fiction too.

TonyB wrote:

Tomo wrote:Fred Hoyle wrote sci fi. James Clarke Maxwell wrote terrible poetry.

Turned out his science was science fiction too.

Tee hee. Didn't he also write the standard rules for Bridge? According to Hoyle, and all that?

Tomo wrote:

TonyB wrote:

Tomo wrote:Fred Hoyle wrote sci fi. James Clarke Maxwell wrote terrible poetry.

Turned out his science was science fiction too.

Tee hee. Didn't he also write the standard rules for Bridge? According to Hoyle, and all that?

Not unless he was a lot older than I thought. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Hoyle

Robbie wrote:Not unless he was a lot older than I thought. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Hoyle" target="_blank

Ah! And thus was the disciple enlightened!

I have been looking & reading the forum for a while & this thread interests me, what qualifies someone as a techy type? Is it a use/love of new technology or someone who has some basic electronics etc knowledge?
I hold a full radio amateur licence & understand a few of the principals of electronics & even less about the mathematics of the physics behind electronics. I built my first very basic broadcast transmitter in the mid 70's as a teenager & I have played with radio in one form or another ever since, but my interest is not in high tech but simplicity. Things like valves & crystal radios holds more interest for me than 1981 technology like DAB radio.
I do not text & only switch my mobile phone on a few times a month at most. But I have spoken to the guys on the International Space Station, sent & received TV & used digital modes years ahead of anything commercially available & spoken to other amateurs all over the world.
So I'm not sure if I am techy or not. As I have & use a soldering iron & multimeter, I know ohms law & how to use it. I know about EMC & lots about antennas, the ionosphere & know the resistor colour code. But I hate some of the rubbish thats sold as modern technology.