A few days ago I posted a video of a packet trick where 4 one dollar bills turned into 4 two dollar bills. It’s essentially a packet card trick with dollar bills. Turning $1’s into $2’s is alright, but I got to playing with a slightly different arrangement that I like more:
The bills changing into different bills makes the trick feel a little less like the same trick four times. Also the ending with the hundred dollar bill seems like more of a finish to the trick.
For fun I’m working through the book Packet Tricks by Jerry Mentzer. This was published in 1982, so kinda when packet tricks as a trend were becoming really popular.
It’s really interesting to see where these tricks and techniques came from. The Phil Goldstein stuff is intesesting as I see the roots of some of his later stuff in the two tricks he has in the Packet Tricks book.
I’ve been posting some of these of TikTok, and you can see them and other vintage magic tricks and routines there. Plus I post some other stuff I think of on there.
If you’re not on TikTok, here’s some of the videos from the book Packet Tricks:
These are fun to learn, and I think it’s important to learn things for fun. It can be a challenge balancing my passion for magic with the job of performing magic.
Yesterday I posted about a thing I was playing with using money instead of playing cards for packet tricks. I’ll give a walkthrough of how to do it, but first here’s the video of the routine:
Needed: Three one dollar bills and three two dollar bills. These must be crisp, and the fake movie money works great for this.
Set Up: From the top down: A single one dollar bill, then the 3 two dollar bills and the remaining 2 one dollar bills.
Working: Show the packet of bills face down and then turn them face up. Do an Elmsley Count to show what appears to be the faces of 4 one dollar bills.
For the first change you will do another Elmsley Count to show that one of the one dollar bills has turned into a two dollar bill.
Repeat that, doing another Elmsley Count for the second one dollar bill to change into a two dollar bill, but this time put it the final bill bottom instead of the top of the stack.
For the third change you will do another Elmsley Count, however this time when you get to the single one dollar bill outjog it about an inch. Set the final bill (two dollar) on top of the stack.
Strip out the one dollar bill with your right hand and show it on both sides. As that his happening your left hand buckles the bottom bill creating a gap between it and the rest of the bills above it. Your right hand puts the one dollar bill into this gap above the lowermost bill in your left hand.
For the final bill to change, simply do a modified Elmsley Count to show four two dollar bills on both sides. Do the first two counts Elmsley Count, leaving you with the block of bills in your right hand and 2 two dollar bills in your left hand. Your left hand spreads its two bills and turns over to show both sides. The left hand then puts the two bills UNDER the bills in your right hand. The whole packet of bills is then flipped face down and Elmsley Counted to show four backs.
That’s it, a change of 4 one dollar bills to 4 two dollar bills. Nothing really ground breaking there, but I think this will be a stepping stone for something better…I hope!
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!
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.
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.
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?
I was looking at my magic tables and they’re getting beat up. Two of them it’s just the the top fabric was getting worn out, but the third one was straight up beat to crap!
This is my stage table, and things sit on the top of it, so you don’t see the surface of it. As long as I was recovering my two tables that I work on, I might as well do this one.
Here’s all three tables with their new surfaces. Honestly, I don’t know why I didn’t do it sooner, it only took about 30 is mins to do all three of them and it’s not hard. I have a self adhesive surface I use.
Sometimes it’s hard to know when your props are getting worn out as it happens slowly and gradually. Every now and then you really need to give your stuff a good once over !
When I do kid shows, there’s one card trick in the show. The cards aren’t really cards in the sense that one is a king of hearts and one is two of spades, they are just a stack of objects. When I kid picks a card, I draw a picture of their favorite animal on it, and we name that animal.
By creating an image with the kids it makes the card more memorable than just a two of hearts with their name one it. I will also frequently use a blank face or double blank deck of cards. That takes it a step away from a card trick and it’s a trick with a drawing.
For the second time in about two weeks the magic app Inject 2 was taken down by Google.
This really highlights why apps are bad methods, they can be taken away for no reason, and unlike a folding quarter that even if everyone stopped making them they can easily be sourced on the secondary market. With a magic app like Inject 2, you can’t just buy a used one that someone has in a drawer, or have a second one as a backup.
Before I get to Greg’s post about the outage, he’s not doing a great job communication. Sure he’s posting in the Inject 2 Facebook Group and probably on The Magic Cafe, but he should all of our email addresses from when we got the app, so why not send out a bulk email? Right now you really have to find out it’s not working by trying to use the app, then when it doesn’t work, going to the Inject 2 Facebook Group.
Anyway, here’s his post and my thought will follow:
Dear Inject family,
As of 10:22PM Los Angeles time, Google has once again suspended Inject.
Just when I was SO happy with the new ReaList Peek feature …
This time, there was no warning AT ALL.
I have started the appeal process with them.
This is really frustrating, but as I’ve said in my previous posts, Matt and I already have a plan to move Inject away from Google’s App Engine.
I am SO sorry about this.
I’m glued to my computer waiting for a response from a human at Google to resolve this issue.
Thank you again for your patience.
In that post he says, “This time, there was no warning AT ALL.” That implies that that the first time he had warning, but didn’t give it to the users! That’s kinda messes up. If a hotel and knew that power would be out at a certain time and didn’t mention it to me when I checked in, I’d be pissed!
Sure, this Inject 2 is a magic app and no one is going to physically die if it doesn’t work, but there are people who may have been about to use it in a big gig and had it fail, and can affect their income!
Another problem with how Greg has decided to market Inject 2 via physical download cards is that he can’t pull it from the market. The cards are out there and are available for sale RIGHT NOW as Inject 2 is not working. So if someone buys the download card, and it doesn’t work it’s now the magic shop’s problem to deal with the customer service issue. Does the magic shop refund, then try to get a refund from Murphy’s Magic or Greg, ask the customer to be patient, or whatever. It puts the magic shop in a strange position, and if Greg ever discontinues Inject 2, what does a shop do if they have a download card on their shelf? Can they get a refund? It’s also interesting that Murphy’s hasn’t sent out an email about how to deal with customer service around Inject 2 not working. If a customer got it for Christmas and it’s only worked half the time they owned it, I think they should be entitled to a refund. I personally have no idea how that would be handled, because once the app is up and running, there’s nothing to stop that person (that I’m aware of) from using the app.
