Guelph Juggling Mini-Fest HLGCBS

Mike Moore - 2016-06-20 02:20:10 UTC - Parent #

**Highs** (loads!)

* So many lovely people coming, including some I didn't know, or know very well! I'm so happy they came.

* Juggling rave on Saturday night, which went well.

* Learning Tichu

* Running another fest! I enjoyed organizing and facilitating this event so much.

**Lows**

* Not being able to find my beautiful, new LED balls for the juggling rave

**Goals**

* Have this fest be a bit bigger than last year's: CHECK! I never felt pressed for space, but the energy was high.

* Break at least two records - not check, but I WRECKED the "most catches of 4b in one minute" record, taking it from 408 to ~472

* House reasonably an out-of-town group - checkish, I could've done a few things better for them, but it was mostly good.

* Run two new workshops well - checkish. They went okay, but I'll make some changes with scaffolding in the future for the intermediate cherrypicker variations workshop. I didn't get a good feel for how the breaking plane workshop went.

**Crushes**

* Out of ~~towners~~ contriers (Matan, Alex, Jake, Jared, Kai, Garrett, Mason.

* Terry for running the world record drive, which added so much value to the fest. Also for bringing some wonderful games, and even donating one!

* The JOUG exec, who did everything I asked, and did it quickly and competantly. I'm really impressed with them.

* Emily, for helping with a handful of things

**Banes** (pretty minor)

* I didn't sleep that much, but I wasn't in bad shape, either.

* Oh, and the mosquito bites from painting the cannon are a bit annoying.

* Not being as prepared as I should have been. This resulted in having to take about an hour away from the fest on Saturday to finish writing trivia questions/otherwise preparing for games.

**Surprises:**

* Both finalists in Simon Says not being able to do 6 consecutive under the leg throws. Twice.

* Pizza provided by an anonymous donor!

* The games table being utilized less than expected.

* Not forgetting anything important (knock on wood)

I'm sure I'm forgetting loads of stuff...

Thanks to everyone who came! I really appreciate it. Next year, I think I'm going to go all in and drop the "mini"

Orinoco - 2016-06-20 11:58:17 UTC - Parent #

So tell me more about the cannon.

& a big welcome to the new members from Guelph.

#GuelphJugglingMiniFest2016

Mike Moore - 2016-06-20 13:15:06 UTC - Parent #

The cannon is an old naval cannon that's seen at least one world war, and became a (fairly) permanent fixture on our university campus. It's been used for political statements (aimed toward administration offices) and engineering pranks (being put on rooves, and even moved to another campus). It's since been stuck to a block of concrete to stop that stuff from happening.

Somewhat more recently, since the ~50s or 60s, students started painting it. The rules of the cannon are:
i) painting may only take place after dark
ii) the first group to claim the cannon (may be done at any time) gets to paint it that night. Claims must be done (and maintained) through physical presence at the cannon.
iii) You may paint at any time after dark. As such, if one group paints it at midnight and leaves, another group can paint it at 3 am legitimately.

Painting intentions have included everything from wedding proposals, group celebrations, corporate advertisements, just for kicks, and everything in between. In my time here (~7 years) there has been hate speech on it once and only once, which was painted over rapidly by students in violation of rule i (but obviously, to no one's disagreement).

The jugglers have painted it twice, now.
The first photo here is from 2009, the second from 2016: https://imgur.com/a/6jkEb

It has a (now inactive) Tubmlr account: https://oldjeremiah.tumblr.com/

And for more details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Guelph#Painting_Old_Jeremiah

Orinoco - 2016-06-21 17:43:12 UTC - Parent #

That's a great tradition! Interesting to see the rise in siege weaponry at juggling festivals recently.

Thanar - 2016-07-05 20:09:40 UTC - Parent #

Congrats on your new record. Juggle Wiki updated.

As the sponsor of this World Record Challenge (as well as other ones at different festivals), I think this is a good example of why tracking records for various tricks is valuable. It encourages competition by a wider variety of jugglers who have areas of particular interest/strength.

You make valid points about avoiding "silly proliferation" of records and avoiding having records that are "unreasonably low". To this end, I have a list of minimum times/catches that must be met in order to set a record in a missing record category on Juggle Wiki. Juggle Wiki also limits the records it tracks to juggling with a single pattern (or catch type, etc.), not tracking combinations. This avoid endless multiplication of categories like "4 ball Mills Mess with penguin catches while doing a head bounce on a rola bola".

Mike Moore - 2016-07-06 23:31:52 UTC - Parent #

That's the spirit!

Mike Moore - 2016-07-07 21:16:50 UTC - Parent #

For fast juggling, I believe you must start from cold (otherwise you'd get an extra few catches, due to not having that brief period of all throws, no catches at the beginning.).

For slow juggling, I believe you may start from warm, because it's to your (theoretical) disadvantage. I'm less clear on that, though.

Brook Roberts - 2016-07-07 22:04:08 UTC - Parent #

Yeah, that's kind of what I figured. Although I can understand you might want to include the launch as part of the task. But you can't do that quite in the same way for 933 since it's excited anyway!

Thanar - 2016-07-07 22:12:43 UTC - Parent #

I agree that starting from a warm start for speed juggling is an advantage and wouldn't be allowed.

I posted a comment on your Youtube video, which I'll repost here:

Thanks for posting your video.

The general rules for juggling records are here: https://juggle.wikia.com/wiki/World_records#Rules - The subsection Duration of the record states that "Time is measured from the moment the first throw leaves the hand..." (I realize these rules would be tough for a casual user to find)

You're right that Juggle Wiki is ambiguous on which throw counts as the "first throw". Usually it refers to the first throw that matches the particular pattern/trick you're going for (e.g. the first throw that is caught with a penguin catch in the case of penguin catch record). So for this video, I would say that the run begins with the first "high throw" (which would be at time = 4.29 seconds, the moment the club was released from your left hand and went high) and continues for 1 minute after that.

If you could repost an unedited version of the video, I will count the catches using that method. If you do any edits, I would suggest not stopping the footage at any point, since this makes independent time measurements more difficult.

Mike Moore - 2016-09-11 15:11:56 UTC - Parent #

Wait, that was only in June? Wow I have a bad sense of time.