Fortune-Telling With Playing Cards: An article by Richard Webster on how to do a quick reading using a normal deck of playing cards, includes a link to his book Playing Card Divination for Beginners.
Magic Links
Free Paper Models from FreePaperToys.com: links to lots of different models, airplanes, animals, buildings, cartoon characters, puzzles, dolls, science fiction etc. The Origami link is well worth a look as it lists lots of other interesting sites.
Canon 3D Papercraft: Origami and Chiyogami (paper with a coloured pattern), make a Dog, Fish, Crane or Samurai Helmet and download coloured paper patterns to print and use as origami or wrapping paper.
Joseph Palmer’s Paper Airplanes: make models such as the PL-4 Hybrid, PL-2 Gullwing and the PL-1 Joe’s favourite. Apparently unlike the common ‘dart’ designs, these planes are designed to have lift; if you throw at a point on the ground about 10 feet away
Stackview: a new program from Nick Pudar that allows you to explore variations of various actions to a stacked deck. Allows you to do shuffles, poker deals, faros and even control selections from the deck.
Jay’s Journal: Hear Ricky Jay every week on LA Radio Station KCRW, here you can also find the archives of all shows, Ricky talks about a number of things including as you would expect weird performers and performances.
L&L: L&L Publishing have a brand new re-designed site, with a new Forum to discuss their products.
Hit or Stand: Blackjack Game and Trainer, written in Flash, you get to play Blackjack and the computer teaches you based on your moves and shows you what is right and wrong. If your interested in Blackjack then some other links are Stanford Wong’s BJ21 forum, where you can read the free forum or subscribe. Blackjack 2002 gives you rules, tips and terminology. All About Blackjack talks about card counting, shuffle tracking, the social issues and strategies. Finally Black Jack Info offers a basic strategy engine to calculate custom charts.
All this searching was inspired by my tinkerings with Bob Farmer and Harold Cataquet’s Black Jack stacks that have been appearing in Bob’s new Flim-Flam corner in Genii an excellent stack that acts like the Jonah 10 Card Poker deal, which has just been exposed in The Telegraph in an article trying to debunk Derren Brown of all things!
Deck of Cards: Worth1000 is a photoshop competition site where people doctor and manipulate photos, they don’t take bad photos so this is high quality stuff. See how people have incorportated card suits into photos, also check out Deck of Cards 2 and Deck of Cards 3
Shuffle, Cut & Flip: the problem, to unshuffle a deck of cards, the solution a C computer program. Read all about the problem and the way that the winner solved it.
Devin Balkcom: wrote a thesis proposal [PDF 500k] on robotic origami folding, he then went ahead and built the robot, which you can see in action in this quicktime movie [QT 14MB].
Antony Gerard FFFF 2003 Pictures: Antony has posted 312 pictures from this years 4F convention, also check his Lectures page for other excellent photos of lectures and conventions.
Star Wars Origami: for the actual models look at the Gallery and there is also a great Origami Basics tutorial.
LEGO Tarot: A deck of Tarot made from lego figures. Also of interest might be Vertigo Tarot, Vampire Tarot, 80’s Tarot, Hello Kitty Tarot, Star Trek Tarot and Pomo Tarot.
Copperfield Videos: some short clips from David Copperfield TV shows from courtesy Dr Jakks, includes the infamous Torn Asunder.
MSN Closeup Magic: a new MSN group on closeup magic.
Neo Cheating: The Unbeatable Weapon for Poker, Blackjack, Bridge, and Gin. Neocheating is a new, scientific kind of cheating,an invisible, incredibly easy kind of cheating based on simplicity and low skill. Moves used include Cutting Aces, Stacking four of a kind and controlling hands. Includes defences and attacks and a chapter on becoming a Neocheater.
Cool-Magic Demo Videos: featuring Bernard Sim, Alvin and Jimmy Lee. Performing Coins Across, Spellbound, Ambitious Card and Bernards Linking Rubber Bands.
Shoot Ogawa Clips: some video clips of Shoot on TV in Japan, the whole story was in MAGIC magazine about how some people considered this exposure, but Shoot was basically trying to show the skill behind the Magic and to get people to appreciate the hard work that goes into these things.
Martin Gardner Profile: Kadon Enterprises short profile of Martin highlighting two of his games that they sell, Game of Solomon and Lewis Carroll’s Chess Wordgame.
Magic Supply: have just opened a new web-board, with forums such as Most Wanted, Advice, TV Magicians and Street Performances.
FFFF 2003: Mike Powers has just posted his photos from the FFFF 2003 with Meir Yedid as special guest of honour.
Andrew Miller: see some video clips of Andrews magic, some very nice card and coin work.
R. Paul Wilson: Paul’s new website gives you access to buy his lecture notes and other routines in e-book format such as his new extended 3-Fly called Completely Crowded, as well as his other products such as Richochet and his new ‘Predator Wallet’.
Free Articles for Magicians: from Jim Snack’s Success in Magic course talking about such things as ‘Will entering a magic competition help my career’ and ‘Creating a video demo tape’.
The Magic of Kainoa Harbottle: read about Kainoa’s new book release called Coins on the Edge.
BBC Radio 4 - The Number Seven: related to this post, a BBC radio show on Percy Diaconis’s discovery of needing to shuffle 7 times to get a true random shuffle.
Origami and Math: See the relationship between Origami and Maths, learn about Origami, Geometry, and the Kawasaki Theorem and lots of cool folds and links.
Adam Grace Magic: read the adverts and buy Adam’s tricks, currently you can get ‘Death Breath’ a booklet of tricks with mints, and the Titanic Card Trick.
Linebroke Magic Videos: Matt Warren’s posted some videos of his card creations, featuring Power, Rub-a-Dub and Shaken.