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Messages - Shawn Fumo
3
« on: August 05, 2008, 07:45:48 PM »
One thing is I'd urge people to avoid the Henry yo-yos if possible. They are pretty old technology at this point and you can get better for cheaper now. The viper really doesn't have much going for it for offstring anymore. It's gap is really tiny, so it's hard to land and it doesn't sleep very long either.
If you live in Europe, you may need to pay a bit more shipping to get some decent yo-yos, but you don't have to break the bank. For regular string tricks, something like the Kickside or Lyn Fury from Yoyojam plays very well and are just $16. I believe the Velocity from Yoyofactory is supposed to be nice and is just $20. The higher end like a Dark Magic tend to be around $50. The metal yo-yos can be very nice, but you don't need to spend $100+ unless you want something shiny.
For offstring, the Big Ben from Yoyojam is actually pretty neat. It's big and while it's all plastic, it is pretty durable and about $16. It also tends to bounce off of a hard floor instead of running off on you so you can recover from a miss. I saw a bunch of people at the World yo-yo contest using the Duncan Hayabusa, which is about $23.
4
« on: August 05, 2008, 07:22:53 PM »
Here's a thought.. you know where you whip a diabolo with both strings going into the gap so that it winds up and you can redirect it outward again? There's a similar move in offstring yo-yo where you just whip the entire length of the string at the yo-yo, which causes it to wind up. But lately there's been many variations of it like draping the string over the shoulder so that as the yo-yo lands on it, it winds up. I wonder if all those variations would work on a diabolo as well? It's a little trickier since the string will be somewhat shorter in that it's doubled up, and probably harder to control in general, but certainly worth looking at. I haven't watched nearly as many diabolo videos as I should, so these variations may already be explored, but I figured it'd be worth mentioning in case... Another thing might be the trick helicopter, which uses a counterweight. Generally the yo-yo moves in a circular plane while the counterweight moves in a horizontal plane, so that the two cross with each other. This should be possible with a diabolo by rotating it with one stick and then swinging the other strick around horz by holding the string near it. I tried it a bit but it's difficult to pull off because of the weight of the diabolo. I'm sure one of you could manage it though. Here's a video of it with a yo-yo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cbxrnus50M
5
« on: December 30, 2006, 05:05:23 AM »
I find it fascinating to watch all this since I've been involved closely in yo-yoing for like 8 years now, and have been watching the poi and juggling communities almost as long (though not as closely). I think what's happening with diabolo has similarities to what happened with yoing, though a bit from a different angle.. Here's one thing.. Why is yo-yo so big in the USA and Diabolo so big in France? I'd guess part of it has to do with past history. From what I've heard, diabolo was always a toy in France. That most people played with it as a kid for generations, even if it was a cheap model and just throwing it in the air. In the same way, grandparents in the US will remember when the Yo-yo Man came to their playground. But for the diabolo, most people in the US have never heard of it before. Sometimes I will get recognition if someone saw the ladies in Cirque du Solei, but that's it. Most people here have never juggled either. At most, it'd be throwing two balls in a circle. So there's the view of it being a circus thing as someone mentioned. At first glance, it seems like prior knowledge can be a handicap, since most people still think of yo-yo as walk the dog or rock the cradle. But it provides an opening where you can go "but look at what's possible now!". It seems more likely to get parents involved because of nostalgia, there's cheapo models in stores for someone to try first, etc. I've never seen even a cheap diabolo here except in a specialized hobby shop. I'm not really involved in the skating scene at all, but I think again the overlap is more with yo-yos (I've seen various yo-yo players that are also skaters, people that listen to skate music etc). I think in the US, the jugglers tend to be more of the somewhat geeky and/or hippy people at more college age, while skaters tends to be younger more punkish rebel (or like to think so anyway..heh) types. Another thing that's helped yoing is lots of different manufacturers trying to get people's attention. There used to be teams that'd tour the world to show off yoing. This is why diabolo got big in Japan I think, from the Bandai push some years before. There isn't as much money to go around now in the yo-yo world, but still many of the local clubs and message boards are at least related to a store of some kind. And there's still a couple of teams for manufacturers (though touring is less of a thing and perks are smaller). It's still enough to get some attention here and there in the media. There's also a couple of demonstrators who do school programs (like Science of Spin). The juggling communities tend to be more scattered and free-form and so slip under the radar a bit more. I'm lucky in Massachusetts since the Umass juggling club is nearby and I could go east for more clubs.. Booms are kind of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they can be nice to expose a large portion of people to something. Even if 99% stop it fairly soon, they may still remember it when they have kids and be more open to the idea or come back to it themselves. It has negative aspects too, like causing stores to drop merchandise after it crashes, give an impression of "fad" to people, and put some strain on resources at the time with all the new people coming in. I think having a strong base of people is important and an occational boom can be nice now and then to infuse some new blood... But yeah, I think it'd be hard for diabolo to really take off here. The combination of lack of history here and no companies to really promote things makes it difficult to get momentum going. The internet presence is helping a lot for people that do get interested, though. Both for inspiration and general instruction. The role of that can't be overstated! The amount of stuff I learned from this forum in months after years of just fiddling around was amazing. And the more kids that get involved, the more it'll help. Yo-yoing got going faster I think because of the amount of younger people involved. So there was quite a lot of message boards, freestyle and clip videos, etc since so many people were already comfortable with the technology. I'm glad to see diabolo spreading to many other countries now. It's probably easier too in smaller countries like someone else mentioned. If a couple of people can start interest and get enough people involved in the diabolo world online, that can really help things. I mean there are even yo-yo clubs in mainland china now. There's hot-spots in places I wouldn't have expected like the Czech Republic. If you can get a critical mass of a couple of talented players in one spot, things tend to take off quicker due to people feeding off of each other. Sorry for the length.. 
6
« on: December 30, 2006, 04:13:02 AM »
Nick, His full name is Yukihiro Suzuki. Yeah, he was a very gifted two-handed yo-yo player. I think he was on THP (Team High Performance) Japan, which was technically run by Bandai but promoted Yomega's yo-yos (among others). To this day, many two-handed players use modified Raiders from Yomega for their freestyles. I think Yukki's strength was his incredible control over pure looping tricks (as opposed to stuff like wraps that'd come later) and his charisma. I believe he joined a french circus school at some point. Not sure if he's still there or not.. This is one of his freestyles from 2002. The thing he does right before his yo-yos tangle (kurukuru reverse staircase... where he reverses the direction of his turn with his wrists going around each other) is something I think only a handful of people could do even today, especially with that level of control. It's like three-diabolo type level stuff.. http://www.yoyoing.com/videos/play.php?vid=1719&w=528&h=426Two more freestyles in this folder (the Yajin ones.. another of his nicknames..heh) http://yoyoing.com/shawn/videofiles/misc/Anyway, back on topic... I love that people are exploring loop diabolo more. There has to be a ton of possibilities out there! I need to get some gloves and break out my Beach or something. Also, for that picture that you posted Nick, have you tried to do a figure 8 type motion with your hand so that the loop and diabolo circles on both sides of your arm? (For a larger diabolo, it'd probably easier to go on the opposite side of the body instead of just the arm) This shows what I mean: http://www.mastermagic.net/TrickVideo/Expert/Frames/Revolutions.htmlShawn
7
« on: October 16, 2006, 12:41:22 AM »
Guy, Yeah, hopefully someone will clone the functionality of the Wii. If the console becomes popular, I could see PC game manufacturers wanting to get in on that. I'll also check out those others you mentioned and the webcam tracking (that could be really interesting). For the string simulation, I already looked into a couple of existing physics libraries. They'd suffice for some of the simpler diabolo stuff, but I think it could break down. When I was researching for yo-yo simulation, the main problem was the self-collision. I posted on some of the engines' forums and as soon as I went "well, I'd like to have a knot type formation", they were like "uh-oh". The combination of having a string with very little stretch and needing multiple string segments sliding against each other makes for something most of the physics engines weren't really designed to handle. I'd ideally like a program that could handle Spirit Bomb. Even something like Tiger Cradle in diabolo would be tricky I think. Now I think about it, I quite like the idea of creating a real-time diabolo sim/game myself. Unfortunately, the physics library I've currently got isn't up to the job. However, there's a replacement due sometime this year, so if I'm able to get that (could be a funding issue...), I might try a few experiments and see what happens.
That'd be cool to see. Let me know if you get any more information on that. It isn't loading for me at the moment, but hopefully just down temporarily. This page has Joel Brown's research paper on simulation of knot tying, as well as some videos: http://biocomp.stanford.edu/people/joel/Shawn
8
« on: October 16, 2006, 12:20:27 AM »
This was posted on a yo-yoing blog a couple of days ago. CCTV (a chinese-oriented station) aparantly did a short profile of an older diabolo player. Not super-long, but still makes for interesting reading: http://www.cctv.com/program/cultureexpress/20060918/101888.shtmlI did notice that they seem to have all of their episodes online. Judging from one of the screen captures, this was Culture Express. And the transcript is dated 9-18-06. They didn't mention "Kongzhu" in the preview portion, but perhaps it is still part of that episode. Or it might be in one of the episodes from a couple of days earlier. If someone has the time to watch through some of these, it'd be awesome to see the actual video for it. http://www.cctv.com/program/cultureexpress/01/05/index.shtml
9
« on: October 02, 2006, 10:22:49 PM »
Let's think about this a little deeper. Sure, there's no way it'll happen on the Wii itself (and probably won't be as hackable as something like x-box). But, perhaps someone will create an adapter for the computer at some point? Or maybe there are some like that already (I think I'd heard of 3d mice before)? For instance, I play DDR on my computer using a playstation to usb converter I bought online. So, now you have it on the computer and can program something. The genocide thing is actually easy to solve (click a button to release or grab the stick), but I think it is more interesting as a simulator than a game. And even then, I think less as interactive and more for creation. In order to learn tricks, it can be helpful to see it in slow motion and from different angles. But that means you need a video camera, the video takes up space, someone has to download it, etc. Anyone who's used a ball juggling simulator knows about the benefits (I can see hundreds of patterns on my pda!). But when it comes to more complicated string tricks in something like diabolo or yo-yo, you can't boil it down to a notational system. You can theoretically simulate the physics of the diabolo and string (and sticks when not in the hand), to cut down on what has to be moved manually. However, you still need to be able to record the hand movements. Motion capture is possible but that gets into work and expense again. But having controllers that sense your motion could make that a lot easier (way more intuitive than trying to manually animate them like you would in a 3d animation program). If you can input those motions either in real-time or keyframe positions, then the computer can fill in the rest and now the move is recorded and can be played back at any speed and from any angle. Theoretically, moves could be strung together to make combos on the fly, etc. If you hadn't guessed already, I've been considering trying to make a simulator (for yo-yos), but maybe a diabolo one would be a better idea to start with. Because you're dealing with sticks instead of 10 fingers and there is a little less string self-collision in diabolo (though still enough). I'll have to see if there's any off-the-shelf 3d motion controllers, etc. Or if any amazing programmers are out there, I can give you links to the research papers on string simulation I was looking at..  On another thought, an actual useful live simulation could be for learning the correct motion for the 2-diabolo shuffle. I'm not entirely sure how useful it'd be without feeling the weight of the diabolos, but perhaps you could train your hands to the correct overall motion before having to use live diabolos. Could perhaps cut the learning time a bit...
10
« on: September 12, 2006, 02:53:06 AM »
The yo-yo physics booklets on this page might be something to explore. Many of the properties should be similar I'd think.. http://www.yoyoguy.com/yoyo/bookmag/
11
« on: August 29, 2006, 08:20:53 PM »
First, many thanks to Martijn for the tutorial. It looks really helpful! Just a quick question. The "hover" was mentioned as an early trick in Martjin's video, but I'm not sure if that was in reference to the old tuturial vid or not. So, is the hover doing a wrap and then small tapping-ish pulls so that it stays in one spot? And then "backwrap" is wrapping and immediately getting out again? It's just a little confusing since everything in the tutorial seems to start with a wrap onto the back side of the diabolo.. Thanks!
12
« on: August 29, 2006, 07:37:19 PM »
Thanks for linking that IJA vid. Very interesting to see each person's own style. Hmm.. I think Shimizu did a beesting. That and the arm grind whip seem yo-yo influenced. I found it interesting that no one in the contest did any slack that I could see.
I think it is hard to pidgeonhole the styles of people even in the broad sense since there will always be exceptions.
13
« on: August 26, 2006, 03:07:23 PM »
I could be wrong.. but I'd guess the style shown in the Taiwan demo is more from western heritage (though I'm sure there are people in Taiwan who use Chinese diabolos). Because it probably got influenced from Japanese players, many of whom got started due to a Bandai campaign in the 90s. And that had brought in Australian players from the YoHo team to demonstrate and teach. Like this: http://yoyoing.com/shawn/videofiles/diabolo/DiaboloInternet1.mov
14
« on: August 26, 2006, 05:46:56 AM »
Well.. if you just mean there wasn't pressure (besides wanting to look competent) because he wasn't competing, then that's true. But I don't think you could actually use a diabolo in a yo-yo division. I'm not sure on exact rules, but a rule of thumb is probably method of gaining spin. Using friction on the axle for diabolo and winding and unwinding for the yo-yos. So I guess if you had a small diabolo that you could consistantly wind up (like in indiana whip), that could probably work. But the issue is the big width of a diabolo axle makes it tricky. Looking at it from the other side... I've seen offstring yo-yos done like loop diabolo (and two offstring yo-yos on one string can be done, called Soloham) but still always wound up. I wonder what'd happen if someone used a fixed axle yo-yo like an Apollo Pro and accellerated it using loop diabolo method or regular diabolo type pulls. I'd think it might be disqualified, but I don't think anyone's actually tried it! This does make me think... I don't think anyone's tried making a yo-yo with a one-way bearing. I wonder how that'd work with normal string tricks with the string attached. If you could do most of the same tricks but not wind the yo-yo until the end. Or for offstring with diabolo accelerations working, but also yo-yo style regenerations. Sorry for thread hijack. I just like thinking about issues like this... I thought he did a nice job for seemingly not having it all planned out. I'm glad he was able to show off diabolo to everyone at the contest. As an aside, this past world yo-yo contest had to be the most juggling-ish I've seen. There was two diabolo players that could do 3-low (Hadrien from France and Rei from Japan) and Jason Garfield was there to promote the WJF. Nice to see more crossover..
15
« on: August 18, 2006, 02:10:21 PM »
I think GReg does plan on expanding the scope of the yoyoing.com site eventually to have multiple portals, though that hasn't been worked out yet. But it does have "diabolo" as one of the tags, so any uploaded vids could be found through the advanced search. He did institute a limit on filesize for downloadable videos (I think it's 50 or 70megs), under which you can d/l the original.
Shawn
P.S. Nice seeing ya here Dana. Working on diabolo?
16
« on: July 29, 2006, 06:23:36 PM »
LaNgErZ, you can see the ladder here with videos. It is pretty permissive since it is aimed at beginners right now: http://www.worldyoyocontest.com/2006worlds/diabolo.phpI think Worlds this year will be the most juggling-ish that it's been in a while. Sounds like a fair amount of diabolists (I'm sure many of the japanese players do diabolo too) and Jason Garfield doing workshops.. clickdeath, very cool. Congrats on winning that.. Shawn
17
« on: July 29, 2006, 01:42:00 AM »
I've been meaning to get a ratchet diabolo for a while, so I think I'll grab one of the spinabolo pros. Hopefully they'll be for sale at the world yo-yo contest, since there's a diabolo ladder contest going on there. You're not attending that are you LaNgErZ? clickdeath.. what's this about a spinabolo and yo-yos for free? Shawn
18
« on: July 22, 2006, 06:50:17 AM »
Thanks for posting the links to galleries. This looks like a really amazing time! I only hope I can make it there some year...
19
« on: July 22, 2006, 04:10:34 AM »
LaNgErZ, my advice is.. never post when you're angry! Guppy's post had kind a weird tone to it, but being reactionary never helps things. Especially with a first post no less, as sean said.. Hopefully this thread will stay on track, since I think it is an important video in a lot of ways. Let's all play nice people... pranay: i don,t want to say diabolo is better than yoyo but with the diabolo you have simply more possibillities.In yoyo you need different yoyos to make different styles. Hah.. let's not even go there. That way lies madness like trying to compare diabolos and ball juggling or something. Just for the record, for four of the five main styles in yo-yoing, you could easily use the same yo-yo. The exception is Looping, where you need a thinner yo-yo than most would prefer in the other styles. For everything else it is just preference. You don't actually need big rubber hubs for offstring (and in fact the winner of Japan nats for offstring uses a regular yo-yo). Think about this... most people use a smaller diabolo for solid-loop since it is lighter and the string doesn't cut your hands so much. Or a wider axle for finger grinds. Different kinds of sticks.. Not to mention fixed axle versus ratchet diabolo which have different strengths. I don't know that yo-yos and diabolo are quite as different as you may think in terms of needing different equipment. Anyway, I'm just glad to see overlap of styles in all kinds of juggling props and skill toys. I hate any kind of elitism from one skill to another because we all have lots to learn from each other. Like a lot of jugglers didn't give poi a chance, but it has developed a lot of tricks over the last couple of years (both in traditional, glowstringer, and yo-yo circles). I'll have to see if I can try to learn some of the tricks in this vid.. I think I'll have to stick with mostly the slack whip stuff for now though, since it seems like the quad-on trapeze type stuff would be a lot easier with a bearing diabolo.
20
« on: July 17, 2006, 05:29:25 AM »
Different people learn at different speeds and are better at different kinds of tricks. The person who's a natural and gives up likely won't be as good as the person that learns slower but keeps plugging away at it over the years.
Sometimes knowing what it's like for other people can even make things worse. A trick that people might think is hard is sometimes just new or they didn't learn it for a long time because other people said it was hard. Maybe you'll try it and find it isn't so bad after all...
Learn the basics and give stuff that you think looks cool a shot. If it ends up being too hard, just try something else. Keep at it and you'll get better...
Shawn
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