magic show tips – Page 39

Inject 2 is Denied by Google!

Well, I can’t say that I’m surprised that this has happened with Inject 2. Here’s the latest from Greg Rostami about Inject 2:

Greg is going a good job of spinning the issue with Google on a competitor reporting him, when the bigger issue is how fake Google page will work going forward. Blaming a competitor on something he was doing that technically he shouldn’t have been doing is like getting made at someone turning you in for a crime you committed. The fake Google page was always not “legit” and the very least (in my opinion) it infringed on Google’s trademark.

Supposedly Greg has this backup plan that he says he hasn’t implemented because it would take a month to put up. If he had implemented it at the first time that Google pulled Inject 2 over a month ago, we’d be up and running. However running it on another server or whatever doesn’t solve the problem with the fake Google page infringing (in my opinion) on their trademark and still open to being shut down by Google even if it’s not on their server.

Inject 2 can do a lot more than just peek what someone Google searches, however those take a bit of work to get set up (or at least they used to), where the Google Peek was a plug and play thing and probably what most were bought for as it’s easy.

I’m very curious what the future holds for Inject 2. I find this whole thing very fascinating and it highlights the HUGE problems with internet based apps, which is you can’t control if they work or not. Apps that live on your phone are a bit more reliable, but still have some issues that are out of your control, like your phone’s OS auto updating and your app is not longer compatible or has a lot of glitches.

If you use apps, you need to figure out your backup plan for what to do if the app stops working, or worse yet stops working mid trick!

-Louie

Story Master Class with Jeff McBride

One of the things I’m trying to be better about in 2025 is being better. Just improving at anything/everything that I do. It’s to not plateau, which is easy to do, you just get lazy.

One of the things that I did was take a class at Mystery School with Jeff McBride. This was the Story Master Class, and was all about telling your story. This was an online class, so it happened over Zoom.

This was my first time taking a class from Mystery School, and I was impressed. It was really well thought out, was homework each week for the three weeks and even David Copperfield popped in to give his thoughts on storytelling!!

I feel like I learned a lot from the class and really covered a lot of different styles of telling stories, with an emphasis on telling your personal story. I really liked the class and while I try to have some sort of personal hook for every routine that I do, I think it makes me want to dig a little deeper and put more of my story into the full routine.

If you’ve been on the fence about a workshop with Mystery School, I really liked the class that I took, jump in an take one!

– Louie

Shipping Your Gear

For the last few years I’ve kept Apple AirTags in my luggage when travelling. Now that I’m flying to more events with my Crank Organ, which is shipped ahead, I’ve added one of them it so that I have an extra layer of tracking.

Normally I ship it to a UPS Store, but recently for an event in Reno, I didn’t have that option. I sent it to the casino directly and in the past when shipping thing to hotels, it’s been less than a good experience. In the past I’ve gone to the desk to pick up a package and they can’t find it. After 10 minutes of me insisting that it was delivered, my package magically appears.

Now with the AirTag, I can help them find it by making it make noise, or showing them where it is in the app!

If you travel, put an AirTag in everything that you don’t hand carry!

-Louie

False Shuffle Sequence

A couple of weeks ago I started playing with a shuffle sequence. Essentially it’s a few zarrow shuffles:

@louiefoxx Every day I’m shufflin’#cardtrick #magictrick #cardmagic #shuffle #cards ♬ original sound – Louie Foxx

What I think it fun about this is that in the middle there’s a display of the deck mixed before they end up back in order. In my stage show when there’s video projection I do a shuffle sequence where the deck stays in order, however I’m currently not doing the mixed display. I think that this is interesting for magicians, I don’t know if non-magicians appreciate the it.

I’ll give it a try…

-Louie

Stages!

It’s crazy how the stages that I perform on vary. One night I’m on this stage that’s state of the art with a 7 person tech crew!

Then the next show I’m on a stage like this with very minimal tech and no crew.

How I do my show, the core show is without any production and when I can use production, it’s a bonus! However it’s a bonus that I’ve planned for!

-Louie

The Story of One Card Pete – Elmer Applegate

I love finding old magic, and recently I found something really cool (I”ll post about it another day), but inside of that there was a folded up piece of paper. This is from the mid 1940’s and it had the typed routine for Elmer Applegate’s The Story of One Card Pete!

Elmer Applegate's The Story of One Card Pete

This is a routine for a six card repeat style where you have five cards, take away one and still have five. It’s an interesting routine, and the patter is rhyming. Jeff McBride has a really cool version of it and worth trying to track down the video of.

-Louie

Inject 2 – Down for the 3rd Time This Year!

Another day, another Inject 2 outage! We’re just over 3 weeks into 2025 and this is the 3rd time that Inject 2 has stopped working. The first two times it was down about a week each.

Once again, this highlights the problems with internet based apps and sort of apps in general. If a magic app stops working, there’s not much you can do. It’s also hard to run a backup method with an app. You can’t have someone type into Google AND write it on a piece of paper at the same time.

The now frequent outages can affect performances:

I’m appalled that Greg doesn’t immediately let the major magic shops know when Inject 2 is down so they can pause sales. It’s still available at Penguin and Vanishing Inc AND Greg is at MagiFest, where both companies are right now!

Finally, Greg Rostami has talked about this “back up plan” for Inject 2 for almost a month now, but hasn’t started to implement it. He says it will take a month to do, well guess what, if he started it the first time, it’d almost be up and running.

Here’s my theory: If Greg switches Inject 2 to another server or whatever the backup plan is, he’ll have to relist it as a new app. That means current users will have to rebuy it, and he’ll have to deal with refunds from people who just bought it.

I hope that the app does get back up and reliably running as many magicians like it, but it teaches magicians that you can’t rely on technology that’s out of your control.

– Louie

Showcase

Last week I was at an entertainment showcase. These are where performers do a bit of their show for people who book acts/shows. When watching bands, my number one note for them is to not talk! The amount of banter they do is ridiculous, it’s not a show, you’ve got 15 minute to wow a booker and when they waste 3-5 mins on uninteresting talking on the mic, their show doesn’t look tight.

I love it when I see an act come in to get booked. A good example is Patrick, he came in did a high energy 15 minute set with no wasted time!

I was there showcasing my crank organ as a “roving act”. This is different from stage showcase, you can connect with people differently and have more time. My roving showcase had 45 minutes.

With that time I try my best to connect with people and educate them on how they can use this act at their event. Trying to sell something like the crank organ for events is a bit harder because most people have never seen one and don’t know how they’d use it for their event.

If you’re not using showcases to sell your show, you should look into them, virtually every market has some sort of showcase!

-Louie

Magic Travel Tips

When I travel I hand carry my audio/electronic stuff box. I’m paranoid about losing this, so I put an Apple AirTag in it. I set this AirTag to alert me if I leave it somewhere. So if I walk away from the audio case, my phone will let me know!

While I’m mentioning travel tips, I don’t use luggage tags on my bags. Instead I write my name and phone number on my luggage with a marker!

Now there’s no luggage tag to get ripped off, my info is on my luggage permanently!

-Louie

Inject 2 Still Not Working

We’re 22 days into the year and Inject 2 has only been working for about a week. Greg Rostami’s last update was two days ago:

While hindsight it 20/20, if Greg had started to move Inject 2 during the first outage almost a month ago, it’d almost be done and up and running. He keeps claiming there are back up plans, but we have yet to see any of them implemented. There’s no reason he couldn’t start working on the backup plan while still trying to resolve the current issue. Sure it takes time, but it appears he’s just in a holding pattern with Google.

App’s are interesting, but if they’re internet based, they aren’t reliable. This is for many reasons, and this is just one of them. There’s plenty others, like I work a lot of GIANT events where there are just soo many people the internet works at a snails pace. There there are times with magic apps where the server that the app lives on gets overwhelmed because there are a ton of magicians using the app at the same time. This happened to an app (I don’t remember which one) on New Years Eve a few years ago.

Then there are times when your phone that the app is on updates overnight and now there are compatibility issues with the app and your phone that weren’t there the day before.

Before you buy an app you need to consider how you’re planning on using it and how it can fail you. If the app goes out mid trick, what are you going to do? If the app glitches and all of the sudden the spectator’s screen shows something they’re not supposed to, what would you do?

Plan for failure!

-Louie