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I don't know if I mentioned this already, but... among the shirts and
DVDs I got for Christmas, my little sister bought me a diabolo.
In fact, she bought two:
http://www.oddballs.co.uk/radiant-diabolo-p-3059.html
(The orange/yellow one.)
http://www.oddballs.co.uk/juggle-dream-lunarspin-diabolo-with-light-kit-p-3323.html
(No, it actually looks nothing like that in real life. The LEDs aren't
nearly that bright.)
The idea being that the illuminated diabolo looks fantastic, but you
probably don't want to drop it too many times. So the plain one is for
practise, and the pretty one is for show. (So far, my mother hasn't
actually let me use it at all.)
I also got a pair of very basic wooden block handsticks with yellow
string. (Well, it *was* yellow... now it's a sort of dirty black colour.)
Oh, and an instruction DVD. It's better than diabolotricks.co.uk, but
it's not absolutely fantastic.
Thus far, I'm not doing too badly. I don't have "mad skillz" yet, but I
can just about manage a few basic tricks. (Most of the time...)
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On 12/01/2011 2:07 PM, Invisible wrote:
> (So far, my mother hasn't actually let me use it at all.)
What?
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 12/01/2011 02:09 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 12/01/2011 2:07 PM, Invisible wrote:
>> (So far, my mother hasn't actually let me use it at all.)
>
> What?
Well, if I *used* it, I might break it, right? And that would be a
catastrophe. Obviously.
*sigh*
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On 12/01/2011 2:17 PM, Invisible wrote:
> On 12/01/2011 02:09 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 12/01/2011 2:07 PM, Invisible wrote:
>>> (So far, my mother hasn't actually let me use it at all.)
>>
>> What?
>
> Well, if I *used* it, I might break it, right? And that would be a
> catastrophe. Obviously.
>
> *sigh*
A man or a mouse?
Squeak! Squeak! :-P
--
Regards
Stephen
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On 12/01/2011 02:48 PM, Stephen wrote:
> A man or a mouse?
>
> Squeak! Squeak! :-P
Oh, I *have* used it. I just don't tell me mum that. :-P
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I've been practising "open orbits". That's basically where you make the
diabolo travel in a circle, by rolling it along the length of the
string, throwing it from one end, and catching it on the other (and then
rolling it along the string back to the first end again).
The only actually difficult part of all this is the catching. Assuming
that you actually catch the damned thing, it's obviously pretty easy to
roll it along the string and then throw it (although throwing it in the
right general direction is mildly tricky).
A practised for an hour or two at the weekend. Generally I either miss
the first or second catch completely, or I manage about 6 catches and
then drop it. I kept a tally, and my personal best was 7 catches. On one
fluke occasion I reached 9, and eventually even 10.
On Monday I had a go in my lunch break, and managed to reach 11, 12 and
eventually even 14. And on one particularly fluky run, I hit 16.
I didn't practise at all yesterday, but I had a go just now. After
several 4s and 5s, I somehow managed to pull off 51 consecutive catches,
utterly /annihilating/ my previous personal best of 16. That's over 3x
better performance!
Astonished, I of course immediately tried again, and scored 33
consecutive catches. Nowhere near as impressive as 51, but still more
than double my previous best.
Since then, I haven't managed to get near 50 again, but I have managed
several teens and a few twenties. For whatever reason, I seem to have
suddenly made a quantum leap in my skills. O_O
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Le 13/01/2011 14:36, Invisible a écrit :
> For whatever reason, I seem to have suddenly made a quantum leap in my
> skills.
You are now expecting a high count... that's more pressure on you, and
therefore you fail.
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On 13/01/2011 01:36 PM, Invisible wrote:
> I've been practising "open orbits". That's basically where you make the
> diabolo travel in a circle, by rolling it along the length of the
> string, throwing it from one end, and catching it on the other (and then
> rolling it along the string back to the first end again).
http://www.diabolotricks.co.uk/trick/orbits.html
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On 13/01/2011 01:41 PM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 13/01/2011 14:36, Invisible a écrit :
>> For whatever reason, I seem to have suddenly made a quantum leap in my
>> skills.
>
> You are now expecting a high count... that's more pressure on you, and
> therefore you fail.
If I had just made one run of 51 catches, and then gone back to being
able to only do 2 or 3, that would be very fluky, but not too
surprising. However, I now suddenly seem to be able to regularly exceed
10 or sometimes even 20 catches. I have no idea why I can suddenly do
that - but I like it!
Need to figure out how the hell to correct for tilt though. (Something
that none of the tutorial videos or websites ever talk about. Actually,
most learning resources are fairly minimal...)
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On 13/01/2011 01:36 PM, Invisible wrote:
> The only actually difficult part of all this is the catching.
Suppose the probability of a catch is unconditionally P. How does the
length of a typical series of consecutive catches vary as a function of P?
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On 13/01/2011 02:27 PM, Invisible wrote:
> Suppose the probability of a catch is unconditionally P. How does the
> length of a typical series of consecutive catches vary as a function of P?
Apparently catching or dropping the diabolo can be regarded as a
Bernoulli trail, and thus performing an open orbit is a kind of
Bernoulli process. In particular, the number of failures before a
success is achieved (or, conversely, the number of successes before the
first failure) follows a geometric distribution.
Specifically, if the probability of catching the diabolo is P, then the
probability of *not* catching it must be 1-P. Apparently the probability
of K successes followed by one failure is
Prob K = P^K * (1-P)
Thus, each series of catches of length K+1 is a factor of P less
probable than a series of length K.
All of this of course assumes that the trails are *independent*, which
they manifestly are not...
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On 13/01/2011 02:51 PM, Invisible wrote:
> Specifically, if the probability of catching the diabolo is P, then the
> probability of *not* catching it must be 1-P. Apparently the probability
> of K successes followed by one failure is
>
> Prob K = P^K * (1-P)
If P is the probability of an event happening, than P^K is the
probability of it happening K times, and 1-P is the probability of it
not happening once. Hence the above formula.
I tried plotting it:
http://tinyurl.com/6bsfnol
As you'd expect, as the catch probability goes up, the probability of
longer chain lengths increases sharply.
Paradoxically, as P becomes very close to 100%, 1-P obviously becomes
extremely close to zero. In other words, /every/ chain length becomes
very unlikely.
If we look not at chains of length K but chains of length /at least/ K,
we get Prob K = P^K. Plotting this:
http://tinyurl.com/5wlkdmf
we discover that indeed, as P increases, the typical chain lengths
increase very sharply. (If Wolfram had bothered to label their axies, I
might even be able to tell you what the probability of 50 catches is. :-P )
> All of this of course assumes that the trails are *independent*, which
> they manifestly are not...
I have no idea how to account for that mathematically, however.
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> On 13/01/2011 02:51 PM, Invisible wrote:
> I have no idea how to account for that mathematically, however.
If you dedicated as much time to learning to catch the diablo as you did to
analysing the catch stats, you'd probably be on 501 catches by now ;-)
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On 13/01/2011 03:41 PM, Bill Pragnell wrote:
> If you dedicated as much time to learning to catch the diablo as you did to
> analysing the catch stats, you'd probably be on 501 catches by now ;-)
Plausibly, yes.
From the modelling I've been doing, it looks like once your drop
probability falls below about 10%, small improvements in your catch rate
yield massive improvements in consecutive catch stats.
In other words, the effort required to get from 6 catches to 16 catches
is bigger than the effort to get from 16 to 26. According to simple
mathematical models, at a certain point it should suddenly become easy
to do catch chains of almost limitless size.
I suspect that if you incorporate such factors as limited concentration
time, the reality of the matter is different. ;-) None the less, I'm
excited about the possibilities.
(Now, if only I could get all the *other* stuff right too...)
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Invisible wrote:
> Since then, I haven't managed to get near 50 again, but I have managed
> several teens and a few twenties. For whatever reason, I seem to have
> suddenly made a quantum leap in my skills. O_O
This happens to me a lot. If I practice something for a while, then walk
away for a day, when I come back, the practice seems to have "taken hold" or
something and I'm far better than I was before.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
Serving Suggestion:
"Don't serve this any more. It's awful."
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On 13/01/2011 04:13 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Since then, I haven't managed to get near 50 again, but I have managed
>> several teens and a few twenties. For whatever reason, I seem to have
>> suddenly made a quantum leap in my skills. O_O
>
> This happens to me a lot. If I practice something for a while, then walk
> away for a day, when I come back, the practice seems to have "taken
> hold" or something and I'm far better than I was before.
Well, I started practising again today, and managed a few 4s and 5s, and
then suddenly just pulled off 51 out of nowhere. Then a 33. And then
down to 10s and 20s for the rest of the session. I have no idea why. I
guess I just figured out some crucial piece of technique, but I have no
idea what!
Well, maybe I do. The throws are smoother now, which probably makes the
catches easier. I'm still having issues with tilt and direction though...
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Le 13/01/2011 17:17, Invisible a écrit :
> And then down to 10s and 20s for the rest of the session. I have no idea
> why. I guess I just figured out some crucial piece of technique, but I
> have no idea what!
The centipede was a very good dancer, making marvel at all kind of
complicated dances, and it was happy.
The naughty and jealous spider ask it: when you do that move, are you
moving foot 95 before or after foot 54 ?
The centipede had no answer, but from that day it was unable to dance as
before, always thinking about the ordering and details. Its dancing
skill was gone.
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> I didn't practise at all yesterday, but I had a go just now. After
> several 4s and 5s, I somehow managed to pull off 51 consecutive catches,
> utterly /annihilating/ my previous personal best of 16. That's over 3x
> better performance!
Yeh it's funny how your body is capable of learning stuff like that,
isn't it? Reminds me of learning to do tricks on my bike, I went
through a similar process of how many times I could bounce on the rear
wheel, at first it seems impossible, then before you know it you can
just go on for as long as you want.
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On 14/01/2011 09:03 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> The centipede was a very good dancer, making marvel at all kind of
> complicated dances, and it was happy.
>
> The naughty and jealous spider ask it: when you do that move, are you
> moving foot 95 before or after foot 54 ?
>
> The centipede had no answer, but from that day it was unable to dance as
> before, always thinking about the ordering and details. Its dancing
> skill was gone.
As a somewhat skilful dancer myself, I can tell you that this effect is
_real_. o_O
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On 14/01/2011 09:50 AM, scott wrote:
>> I didn't practise at all yesterday, but I had a go just now. After
>> several 4s and 5s, I somehow managed to pull off 51 consecutive catches,
>> utterly /annihilating/ my previous personal best of 16. That's over 3x
>> better performance!
>
> Yeh it's funny how your body is capable of learning stuff like that,
> isn't it? Reminds me of learning to do tricks on my bike, I went through
> a similar process of how many times I could bounce on the rear wheel, at
> first it seems impossible, then before you know it you can just go on
> for as long as you want.
Partly it seems to follow from the mathematics of the geometric
distribution. (The number of consecutive successes is not linearly
dependent on success probability; after a certain point, potential chain
length skyrockets.) But partly it's probably something to do with the
inner workings of the human brain. Playing BWV590 used to seem almost
impossibly difficult. Today I do it while not even paying attention. And
it didn't take as long as you might imagine to reach this point.
The high throws are actually easier to catch than the low throws.
Presumably because you have far more time to react. Indeed, the hardest
part of catching a high throw is having the nerve to stand directly
under an object that's accelerating towards the ground at almost ten
meters per second squared! o_O
Also: You cannot practise high throws indoors. It doesn't work.
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Am Thu, 13 Jan 2011 13:54:23 +0000 schrieb Invisible:
> On 13/01/2011 01:41 PM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>> Le 13/01/2011 14:36, Invisible a écrit :
>>> For whatever reason, I seem to have suddenly made a quantum leap in my
>>> skills.
>>
>> You are now expecting a high count... that's more pressure on you, and
>> therefore you fail.
>
> If I had just made one run of 51 catches, and then gone back to being
> able to only do 2 or 3, that would be very fluky, but not too
> surprising. However, I now suddenly seem to be able to regularly exceed
> 10 or sometimes even 20 catches. I have no idea why I can suddenly do
> that - but I like it!
I experience similar things with juggling. Quite amazing what one can do
suddenly after some practice (tricks one would have never thought
possible). Not that I'm good... but it is fun.
>
> Need to figure out how the hell to correct for tilt though. (Something
> that none of the tutorial videos or websites ever talk about. Actually,
> most learning resources are fairly minimal...)
IIRC (it has been quite some years since I played with diabolo) try to
move one stick more forward.
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>> If I had just made one run of 51 catches, and then gone back to being
>> able to only do 2 or 3, that would be very fluky, but not too
>> surprising. However, I now suddenly seem to be able to regularly exceed
>> 10 or sometimes even 20 catches. I have no idea why I can suddenly do
>> that - but I like it!
>
> I experience similar things with juggling. Quite amazing what one can do
> suddenly after some practice (tricks one would have never thought
> possible). Not that I'm good... but it is fun.
Heh. I'm hoping that I might eventually /get/ good. But we'll see.
Currently I'm beginning to wonder if I've worn the string out. That
would be rather alarming, considering I've had it less than a month. On
the other hand, the handling seems to have changed fairly radically, and
the string is now nearly black...
>> Need to figure out how the hell to correct for tilt though.
>
> IIRC (it has been quite some years since I played with diabolo) try to
> move one stick more forward.
Yeah, for whatever reason I seem to be throwing at an angle. That's
probably the problem. It's easy to correct when you're just holding the
diabolo on the string. Not so easy to correct for while also throwing
and catching it.
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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Need to figure out how the hell to correct for tilt though.
> >
> > IIRC (it has been quite some years since I played with diabolo) try to
> > move one stick more forward.
>
> Yeah, for whatever reason I seem to be throwing at an angle. That's
> probably the problem. It's easy to correct when you're just holding the
> diabolo on the string. Not so easy to correct for while also throwing
> and catching it.
Everyone has a dominant arm, so when learning to juggle / diabolo / devil stick
etc you need to overcome the dominance to make both arms behave similarly. Easy
to do when concentrating on a single throw, as you say, but as soon as you start
to focus on the ongoing task of keeping whatever it is moving continuously, it
needs to become subconscious.
I learnt a new juggling pattern last year, first time in ages. I too was amazed
at how quickly I advanced one day to the next (once I'd actually worked out what
to do, at any rate!)
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> Everyone has a dominant arm, so when learning to juggle / diabolo / devil stick
> etc you need to overcome the dominance to make both arms behave similarly. Easy
> to do when concentrating on a single throw, as you say, but as soon as you start
> to focus on the ongoing task of keeping whatever it is moving continuously, it
> needs to become subconscious.
Mmm, indeed.
It's like with the dancing. I do the flick steps wrong. I know it's
wrong, I know what the correct version is, but it's difficult to make my
feet do that.
Or, for that matter, skiing. You're supposed to learn forwards, not
back. This simple instruction is maddeningly difficult to follow.
> I learnt a new juggling pattern last year, first time in ages. I too was amazed
> at how quickly I advanced one day to the next (once I'd actually worked out what
> to do, at any rate!)
Well that's just it. I spent ages practising, making little or no
progress at all. And then suddenly one day, I pull off this freak run of
51 (which I have yet to repeat). Although, the other day I managed 44.
Just once. (It would have been 45, but there was an obstacle in the way.)
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On 12/01/2011 02:07 PM, Invisible wrote:
> Thus far, I'm not doing too badly. I don't have "mad skillz" yet, but I
> can just about manage a few basic tricks. (Most of the time...)
I wish I had somebody I could impress with this stuff. (My girlfriend
absolutely hates diabolo, so she's not interested at all.) For that
matter, I wish I had somebody I could learn some more technique from...
Still, I'm getting moderately good now. And hopefully soon it will be
possible to practise outside. (It's just about warm enough today, but
far too windy.)
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On 14/01/2011 09:52 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 14/01/2011 09:03 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>
>> The centipede was a very good dancer, making marvel at all kind of
>> complicated dances, and it was happy.
>>
>> The naughty and jealous spider ask it: when you do that move, are you
>> moving foot 95 before or after foot 54 ?
>>
>> The centipede had no answer, but from that day it was unable to dance as
>> before, always thinking about the ordering and details. Its dancing
>> skill was gone.
>
> As a somewhat skilful dancer myself, I can tell you that this effect is
> _real_. o_O
It's perhaps most amazing when it strikes one of the dance teachers...
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On 13/01/2011 03:54 PM, Invisible wrote:
> I suspect that if you incorporate such factors as limited concentration
> time, the reality of the matter is different. ;-)
Apparently the limiting factor is how long I can hold my arms
outstretched without my shoulders hurting. Or possibly the length of
time before my noise starts itching. But the other day, I managed
precisely 80 consecutive catches without really trying hard, at which
point I purposely stopped. I could have done more, I just chose not to.
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Le 2011-02-07 08:32, Invisible a écrit :
> On 13/01/2011 03:54 PM, Invisible wrote:
>
> Or possibly the length of time before my noise starts itching.
What does an itchy noise sound like?
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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>> Or possibly the length of time before my noise starts itching.
>
> What does an itchy noise sound like?
Damnit! >_<
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And lo On Mon, 07 Feb 2011 13:28:34 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did
spake thusly:
> On 12/01/2011 02:07 PM, Invisible wrote:
>
>> Thus far, I'm not doing too badly. I don't have "mad skillz" yet, but I
>> can just about manage a few basic tricks. (Most of the time...)
>
> I wish I had somebody I could impress with this stuff. (My girlfriend
> absolutely hates diabolo, so she's not interested at all.) For that
> matter, I wish I had somebody I could learn some more technique from...
>
> Still, I'm getting moderately good now. And hopefully soon it will be
> possible to practise outside. (It's just about warm enough today, but
> far too windy.)
*snigger* I'm still reading it a different way. I know, I know childish
sue me :-)
--
Phil Cook
--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com
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>> I wish I had somebody I could impress with this stuff. (My girlfriend
>> absolutely hates diabolo, so she's not interested at all.) For that
>> matter, I wish I had somebody I could learn some more technique from...
>>
>> Still, I'm getting moderately good now. And hopefully soon it will be
>> possible to practise outside. (It's just about warm enough today, but
>> far too windy.)
>
> *snigger* I'm still reading it a different way. I know, I know childish
> sue me :-)
You infant. :-P
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