Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Library of Juggling

libraryofjuggling.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 30 posts

Re: Library of Juggling

#21

Post by crystal_revenge »

vikingerik wrote: post #15
thom wrote: post #4

Juggling is one of hobbies with the highest ratios of being able to impress random people versus the actual effort you have to put in, and I generally find I never forget 3-ball stuff I learned as a kid. It's also as good as a long walk for getting you out of your head when needed. Shout out to anyone that remembers the Mushy Pea juggling shop in Manchester many years ago, where I learned all sorts of circus skills.

Rubik's cubing is another. Most people here with enough logical aptitude to be programmers could probably learn a beginner method in a day or two. I'll pick up a cube anywhere I see one scrambled, solve it in a couple minutes, and then the last flourish is to leave it in the checkerboard pattern. I also juggle, and the result of the combination is that approximately every single person on Facebook has posted to me th…

The biggest difference about Rubik's cubing is that once you have mastered 3x3x3, 4x4x4, and 5x5x5 (which is just a slight variant on 3x3x3) all subsequent cubes are just natural extensions of these. A 17x17x17 requires no new skills that aren't already mastered in a 5x5x5, it just takes more time. The nice part of about this is you can really blow peoples minds by pulling out an 11x11x11 cube and solving it at though it were nothing.

Even sided cubes are the hardest because they have issues with "parity" that are only uncovered near the end of the solve and can be quite tedious to fix (at least imho).

Re: Library of Juggling

#23

Post by vikingerik »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #21
vikingerik wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubik's cubing is another. Most people here with enough logical aptitude to be programmers could probably learn a beginner method in a day or two. I'll pick up a cube anywhere I see one scrambled, solve it in a couple minutes, and then the last flourish is to leave it in the checkerboard pattern. I also juggle, and the result of the combination is that approximately every single person on Facebook has posted to me th…

The biggest difference about Rubik's cubing is that once you have mastered 3x3x3, 4x4x4, and 5x5x5 (which is just a slight variant on 3x3x3) all subsequent cubes are just natural extensions of these. A 17x17x17 requires no new skills that aren't already mastered in a 5x5x5, it just takes more time. The nice part of about this is you can really blow peoples minds by pulling out an 11x11x11 cube and solving it at thoug…

Right, cubing scales up much more readily than juggling. Although I've found the bigger cubes aren't quite so impressive because you can't do them as fast. I take 10-15 minutes for the 5x5x5, and by then any observer has lost interest.

But yeah, some people will be impressed just because it's bigger. They always say that it must be super hard. My stock reply: "It's like a jigsaw puzzle. Is 1000 piece harder than 500? Not really harder, it's just more of the same thing." Sometimes that gets a blank look, sometimes that induces enlightenment.

My favorite cuboid variant is a 3x3x4. That blows people's minds when they see it's not symmetric, and they handle it and realize that it can't do certain turns (the long axes have to be 180° not 90°), but in fact that limitation makes it easier and I can solve it almost as fast as a 3x3x3.

Re: Library of Juggling

#24

Post by ragazzina »

stronglikedan wrote: post #22
ragazzina wrote: post #13

The website is great, but I find the lack of hyperlinks maddening.

Are we looking at the same website? The one I'm looking at is like 40% hyperlinks.

I click on Box pattern. It says that before trying the Box, one should master the HalfBox pattern. I want to see how the HalfBox pattern looks like, so I try to click on HalfBox, but it's not a hyperlink. So I look to the left, where Box is, and try to look for HalfBox under Box. It's not there (it's not even under the letter H, because it's under the number 441).

On the Box page, HalfBox is in a square frame on the top-right. If wikipedia were like this it would be unusable.

Re: Library of Juggling

#25

Post by columk »

I remember happily going through these each day after school until I could do everything.

There wasn't much on YouTube at the time but I also think YouTube is a worse resource for pretty much all of these simple tricks. All you need is a slow loop to learn any ball juggling trick.

There was also a similar site that let you input siteswaps.

The noob gains once you get comfortable with 3 balls are addictive, compared to later patterns or tricks that can take hours, days or even weeks to pick up.

Re: Library of Juggling

#26

Post by thom »

LanceH wrote: post #10
thom wrote: post #4

Juggling is one of hobbies with the highest ratios of being able to impress random people versus the actual effort you have to put in, and I generally find I never forget 3-ball stuff I learned as a kid. It's also as good as a long walk for getting you out of your head when needed. Shout out to anyone that remembers the Mushy Pea juggling shop in Manchester many years ago, where I learned all sorts of circus skills.

Juggling 3 is a skill that is way easier than people think until they do it. But the very next question is will be, "how many can you juggle?" as they apparently think juggling 4 is just 33% more difficult than 3.

Much easier to learn to juggle three clubs, and then swap them for knives. Really no harder than 3 balls but significantly more flashy.

Re: Library of Juggling

#27

Post by nephihaha »

flyosity wrote: post #14

What a great website aesthetic, takes me way back to when the Internet felt a lot smaller.

It takes me back to a time when I could find a wide variety of websites online. I love this kind of thing... Not something I would deliberately look for but great to stumble across it.

Re: Library of Juggling

#28

Post by rantallion »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #20
Someone wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those wondering: to juggle 4 balls, you either have to decrease the time between catching a ball and throwing it again or increase the time a ball is in the air. Unless you start throwing feathers or balloons, the latter requires you throw higher. That requires you to either spend more time launching them up (bad for the ‘decrease time between catching and throwing’) or use more force (bad for throwing accuracy.…

> you either have to decrease the time between catching a ball and throwing it again or increase the time a ball is in the air I think you might be thinking of 5 ball juggling. 4 ball juggling (or at least it's most common variant, "The Fountain" [0]) is fascinating because it's really juggling two balls in each hand in a way that makes it appear similar to the standard cascade. Though this may sound "less hard" than…

They're not wrong. Assuming alternating hands are doing the throwing (rather than both hands throwing a ball simultaneously), 4-ball patterns mean each ball is in the air for 4 beats, while 3-ball patterns only take 3 beats each.

And once one realises that many juggling patterns can be understood by the number of beats each ball takes to return to a hand, one can then think in siteswap (https://juggle.fandom.com/wiki/Siteswap).

Re: Library of Juggling

#29

Post by rantallion »

thom wrote: post #26
LanceH wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Juggling 3 is a skill that is way easier than people think until they do it. But the very next question is will be, "how many can you juggle?" as they apparently think juggling 4 is just 33% more difficult than 3.

Much easier to learn to juggle three clubs, and then swap them for knives. Really no harder than 3 balls but significantly more flashy.

Don't forget about fire. Even the most boring of moves amaze crowds when half your equipment is burning.
Post reply on HN