Little Paul - #
Bungay Balls Up 2012 HLGCBS
H: Tim Hunkin is ace. Apart from him, I had a lot of fun all round and the sunshine on the last day was very welcome indeed.
L: Being ill. Again. That's 3 bungays in a row I've been ill for at least some of it
G: Do some juggling (shutit)
C: my better half was there with me, and he's deffo my crush.
B: "Wow! I don't think Ive ever seen you juggle before" or variants there of. pretty much Every Single Bastard on site said it at some point.
S: I done learned a siteswap! I know!
#hlgcbs #bbu13
Just got back from #BBU13
I was only able to make the final weekend & unfortunately it took me until Monday to really let go of the real world & capture the Bungay spirit.
I submitted myself to a BKA Exam & managed to progress from the Kyu list into the Pre-Dan hall of fame under the watchful eye of Chief Examiner Void. I managed to get through the 'regular' tricks required with relatively few problems. The test finishes off with Moshi Kame which has to be maintained at 134bpm & the number of catches determines your ranking. I was shooting for 200, but failed at 189 so only 100 counted. I found the test a tough & worthwhile challenge, Void is a strict & very helpful & encouraging examiner. So if you like to click, give it a go. It will help & encourage you to hone your skills. 1st Dan next...
Oh, & my other favourite Kendama has a turquoise badge on it too. Sorry, also not for sale!
The game playing was excellent as usual but the highlight for me was on Monday night when Kat, Duncan, Ron, Ewan, Becky, Andy, Sam & I had an epic game of Kill Dr Lucky. We'd already played one round to learn how it works which lasted under an hour. We began round two at midnight. One of the features of the game is that turns are not regular so if you are unlucky you can get bypassed, sometimes seemingly for ever. So by 3.15am we were still going & Andy & Ron had been particularly unlucky (I won't accept any suggestion that they were picked on) & had been bypassed on many occasions, to the point where Ron was deliberately not blocking other players in an attempt to make anyone win & Andy was just banging his head on the table. I was laying in wait for Dr Lucky just a couple of rooms away with an impressive arsenal of weapons & an unbeatable amount of spite tokens to back it up with. But somehow Andy got a turn & was able to make an attempt on Dr Lucky's life & every one of us was out of failure cards. Andy's elation in victory is something that will stay with me for a very long time.
& interestingly Kill Dr Lucky was invented by contact James Ernest. Small world.
So back to the Edge then. Unfortunately, after discussions with Ewano I will be focusing my immediate efforts (when the Bungay spirit wears off of course) on a new website: willitfelch.com
Little Paul - - Parent #
I'm just about back as well, although i don#t have to face work until monday (hurrah!) - more of a writeup will follow from me once I've had some kip as the 2 hours I managed to get last night, and the 8 hour journey home have left me somewhat frazzled!
ObGaming: I've never really been a huge game playing type, I had a lot of fun with elkfest, no thanks, bananagrams and a few others this year.
I think Jay has persuaded me to build a games shelf into the van. If I ever get anything done with the bloody thing.
Rude bananagrams FTW.
Much more entertaining than proper scrabble.
We also played child friendly rude bananagrams at one point, surprisingly difficult!
I definitely enjoyed the bananagrams food queue :D
Very much enjoyed BBU13, my first one and definitely not my last!
My photos: https://tlmb.net/galleries/BBU13/
Plus one of Orin:
https://kendama.co.uk/galleries/gradees/mediafiles/l10.jpg
https://tlmb.net/BBU/Archive.html updated with some links. More wanted, send them through!
Little Paul - - Parent #
finger finally extracted, photos here: https://www.paulseward.com/blog/20120613/bungay/
Last night was our last night at the Camden Centre in Tunbridge Wells. I was getting a little worried because despite selling things in dribs & drabs over the past few weeks we still had an enormous amount of kit left over. But thankfully ambassadors from from Crawley, Falmer & Chatham paid us a visit to give pretty much all our kit a loving new home (still got a few bits left some of which will be coming to #BBU13). Others were worried for a different reason & I had a number of people ask me, "we're not selling the coffin are we?", "we're still keeping the coffin right?"
As well as visitors looking for kit we had a good turnout for the party including many familiar faces from years ago who it was nice to catch up & reminisce with. Peter Bone sadly demonstrated to the kids that Simon & I aren't actually that good. There was a wonderfully gooey chocolate fudge cake courtesy of Karina. Although I only had 3 slices I can confirm that it would have been worth the drive from Bungay.
Nostalgia was rife throughout the evening with lots of laughter about memories from our years at the hall. Jo in particular enjoyed going through some of our scrapbooks, when she came across the first photo of me from ~15 years ago she said, "Wow, you used to be quite the looker, but now you've got this (waves at all of me) going on". We enjoyed returning to the alarming inaccuracies, mistakes & blatant falsehoods being peddled by local journalists. It was quite alarming the amount of wigs & painted faces that were about in the 90s but fortunately I am proud that the record shows that I always performed in a shirt & waistcoat.
From our archives here's a picture of a club night when we were near the height of our powers taken on the 8th of March 1993:
https://www.jugglingedge.com/userfiles/Orinoco/TWJC1993-03-08.jpg
#twjc
I had a great time. It's a shame you'll no longer have that hall as it was ideal and made me wish that I'd visited before. Hope you find a new venue soon.
Thanks for the walking globe. The #USCS members enjoyed playing with it last night.
Sorry I didn't thank you for your work on this site while I was there. I confess that I only just made that connection (you don't make it easy). Hopefully see you down at the #USCS sometime.
I know, it's hard to be a lurker & run a major website at the same time!
To be clear:
Orinoco = Jon from TWJC = Yeah that one
Dave Cheetham - - Parent #
If you feel like being any clearer, would you care to point out which one you are in the photo above?
I have a question about rola-bolas. I just bought a pvc pipe for the cylinder and found a board today, but I don't have stoppers on the end of the board yet.
Are they necessary?
If so then what is the best thing to use for them.
Assuming you mean something that stops the board from rolling of the pipe, no they aren't necessary if your board is long enough.
I use a very long board (90cm) and I never even come close to leaving the pipe.
I have no experience with shorter boards so maybe it is a good idea to add them if your board is a lot shorter.
What are the 'normal' sizes for rola bolas?
In my case pipe diameter(16.5cm) and board length(90cm) are determined by what I had laying around.
Little Paul - - Parent #
The stoppers are a handy safety measure if you're learning, but they're not essential. They're there to stop the pipe from going outside your footprint (which can be the cause of some pretty spectacular wipe outs!)
A fairly reasonable rule of thumb is to make the board a little wider than your natural "feet about shoulder width apart" stance.
With pipe diameters, the larger the diameter the easier it is to ride but the more impressive it looks. I think most commercially manufactured rolabolas I've seen have been 6" pipe (about 16cm) although my preferred rolabola is 15" mains gas pipe (about 38cm) diameter.
I used to have two made from that pipe, but I lent one to swamp circus a long time ago and am unlikely to ever see it again (not that I'm in any rush to)
If anyone wants it, I've got about 1.5m of 5" gas pipe which is probably enough to make 4 rolas. I can bring it to #bbu13 or you can pick it up from Bristol (UK) some time reasonably soonish.
If I've still got it by the time I get back from #bbu13 it'll go to the tip.
mike.armstrong - - Parent #
The stoppers on mine are just offcuts from the board screwed to the underside. They are useful when you're learning, but you'll find that you need them less as you improve. Good luck!
magicalmarkwatson - - Parent #
Hi there,
Yeah, stoppers are useful, if you can find little bits of offcut then screw them to the underside and that'll do nicely.
I will just say that whilst they're useful whilst learning and will save a lot of accidents initially, they don't completely stop you wiping out. If you seriously lose your balance, and fall giving the board enough force, the stoppers won't do any good. Just a warning, but accidents like that won't happen if you take it steady whilst learning...
Blessings,
Mark
thanks. Rola bola is not as hard as I thought it was. I have heard some people say that non jugglers aren't that impressed by them if you only have one roller. IS that true?
Anyways rola bola is a lot of fun.
Little Paul - - Parent #
Impressiveness to non-jugglers almost entirely depends on how "hard" (or dangerous) you make it look.
For example, my rolabola skills are sufficient that I can stand on a single tube without moving at all. That's not the slightest bit impressive to an audience.
Yet if I "drive" the balance so I'm wobbling all over the place making it look like I'm having a hard time staying up there it increases the feeling of jeopardy which is much more "impressive".
Using a small platform such as a suitcase isn't significantly more difficult than doing it on the ground, but that extra bit of height makes an audience more worried about your safety - which increases their reaction.
If your board is shorter than your inside leg measurement, go for a jump mount, but only land with one foot. The board will swing up and slap the inside of your leg. It's a bit "slapstick" but it's never failed to get an "oooh! that was close" reaction for me.
If you want an example of how to sell a single tube to great effect, Phil Blackmore springs to mind:
https://youtu.be/1DMs9xBDnIc
All that said, learn a 2 roller stack, or use a bowling ball instead of the pipe. It's much harder than any of the above and you sound like the sort of person who would enjoy the challenge anyway!
That's the video I watched before deciding I should try rola bola.
I especially loved the 'what? Is that not impressive enough?' since I'd watched gladiator only a few hours earlier.
Bungay Balls up 2012 - Countdown starts now!
Just a month to go until Bungay Balls Up, folks. The world's longest, and mellowest, juggling convention returns for 11 days of buttercuppery indolence.
This year we have the lovely www.cafechameleon.co.uk as our caterers, so start working up a hunger now!
Bring all your games, kites, frisbees, sun lotion, croquet sets, wellies, deck chairs, geek toys, sunglasses, badminton rackets, table tennis bats, snooker elbows, photographers eyes, poker chips, trebuchets, cricket stumps, rainbow calibrators, RC sofas, plantswaps, and senses[1] of silliness.[2]
The dates are Saturday May 26th to Tuesday June 5th (Hooray for bonus bank holidays! Cheers, Queenie!). You may arrive from Friday evening to set up your tents[3], but NOT before then please.
Hoodies and t-shirts are pre-order only. See website.
More details can be found at:
https://www.juggler.net/bungayballsup/ including an email address for further enquiries.
Right, now where did I leave my towel?
The Void
Head of Marketing and Generally Saying Good Things About BBU
[1] You do have more than one, right?
[2] Oh, I suppose you could add "juggling equipment" to that list if you really want to.
[3] Providing you know where you towel is.[4]
[4] https://towelday.org/
Edge event page: https://jugglingedge.com/event.php?EventID=16 Add yourselves if you're coming!
Little Paul - - Parent #
Oh, and I'LL BE THERE!!!!
After a trebuchet came up in conversation at the pub last night we got around to discussing doing a small project along the lines of this https://youtu.be/GU3fOeDctbY in Bungay this year. Disposing of a baking tray of cornstarch/water isn't nearly the same problem as a paddling pool full of the stuff.
Excited to be going to her first Bungay!
A few years ago in the sauna Charlie asked for suggestions of what to do next year. I suggested filling a sheep trough with corn flour & water.
I've heard that it is possible to form juggling balls with this stuff & juggle, then when you stop they turn to liquid & drip through your fingers.
We discussed this idea - then decided that we were more likely to do something on a scale that wouldn't be so difficult to dispose of. We also have to remember, that although we've just had the wettest May on record, we're still in a drought, so we don't want to waste too much water...
Dave Cheetham - - Parent #
The juggling ball idea sounds really interesting. Just thinking, though... wouldn't they go back to liquid form and disperse while they're in the air?
Anyone actually tried this?
You mean like this (the first video hit for non-newtonian juggling that came up when I searched).
https://youtu.be/aJtCkhj31rY
Dave Cheetham - - Parent #
Yeah, I saw that one. And that stuff looks a lot more solid than the water/cornstarch mixture that I've played with in the past. That's why I was wondering if anyone had actually tried it themselves, and might have said something like "Yes, it works. But you need to make a denser mixture than normal." Or something like that.
Cedric Lackpot - - Parent #
What, you mean in the exact same way a droplet of water in free fall doesn't?
Dave Cheetham - - Parent #
Correct me if I'm wrong (I very well may be), but I always assumed that the reason that water "droplets" stayed together was that the surface area to mass ratio was high enough that the surface tension was stronger than the inertial forces acting on the contained water. Then, the reason that water "blobs" (or anything larger than a "droplet") split into "droplets" as they passed through the air was that the inertial forces were stronger than the surface tension, so the water blob broke up until the ratio equalised. Is this not the case?
I'd wondered whether a similar thing might happen to the cornstarch/water mixture.
Cedric Lackpot - - Parent #
"Correct me if I'm wrong ..." - I'll just correct you regardless, thanks ;-)
On the few occasions I've played with very small amounts in the past, a cornstarch mixture strong enough to become thixotropic is quite gloopy compared to water, and is likely to want to hang together even when unstressed. What with it being starch and all. But I don't recall having thrown any.
The weirdest thing is dragging a teaspoon through it slowly, when it's like thin custard (not surprising really), but as you up the speed there's a fairly well-defined tipping point when drag on the spoon spikes sharply and it just feels so ... different. Fascinating stuff, worth playing with.
I know folks who played cricket with a cornstarch/water mixture ball. I can't find videos at present, but I think one exists.
Dave Cheetham - - Parent #
Thanks for that. Now that I've got a few more experiments in mind, I might have to make up a batch.
Cedric Lackpot - - Parent #
I probably have enough Scalextric* to get from Leicester to Bungay (if I rob Felix of his :), but I doubt very much whether I will be able to make it this year :(
*"Scalextric". I spelled it the other way for about thirty years.