by Crazy Ivan
It was a big project, but I was convinced that I could do it inside a week. By Wednesday I started to think I'd bitten off more than I could chew and by Thursday I was starting to fear that it was a lost cause. But today I wipe the sweat from my brow and sit back in the calm rapture of accomplishment.
When I first started this blog, I intended to add new tricks to the Tricktionary every week. I figured that even a couple new moves a week would quickly start to add up and soon we would have a monstrous appendix of moves that would take days to dig all the way through. Like many grand plans, it started to sputter after a few weeks.
Some weeks I would add 5 or 6 tricks. Some weeks I would add only 1 or 2 and on still other weeks it would slip my mind altogether. By the time I got to assessing my progress last weekend I realized that I'd fallen so far behind that it would take a Herculean effort just to get all the Trick of the Day moves added to the compendium.
So that's what I set out to do.
It was a pretty big job. More than a hundred moves had to be added to the Tricktionary, complete with descriptions and video links. Just figuring out which moves were and weren't already there took a few hours. Thanks to a couple of computer glitches, my first few attempts to start updating things got wiped out altogether and I quickly became frustrated with the effort.
But I didn't give up. I kept pecking away at it and by the time I got here this morning I was only 40 or so moves shy of completing the project. I'd already added all the names and video links, but the laborious part of the process was actually filling in the descriptions of the various moves. Each trick demanded between one and four paragraphs of text and some of the moves are kind of tricky to explain when you can't just say "do this" and demonstrate it.
Slowly but surely the project yielded to me and about 20 minutes ago I put the finishing touches on it. I was caught up with all the new tricks I'd added at the beginning of the week. Of course, since then I've added a few more Trick of the Days, but I'm not going to sweat that too much. I know that the Tricktionary isn't the kind of thing you ever "finish" exactly, but rather something that just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I've added 122 tricks in the last 10 days and I think that's a pretty healthy chunk.
Out of curiosity, after I finished, I copied and pasted the whole thing to a word document just to see how big the page had grown. It turns out that at a standard font the Tricktionary is now 58 pages long and contains 218 tricks and over 30,000 words. There are still 28 moves with no video links, but they are nearly all doubles or reverses of moves that do have video links. Still others are super basic moves (like the Reverse Slash) that would make for pretty hum-drum Trick of the Days.
Anyway, I'm sick and tired of typing at the moment and I'm fast running out of words so I better wrap this post up quick before I have to switch to another language or something. Hope you enjoy the new and constantly improved Tricktionary. It would be a darn shame to put so much effort into writing it if people weren't having fun reading it.
Incidentally, if you notice any errors or omissions, feel free to email me with them... just don't expect me to correct them right away.
Showing posts with label tricktionary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tricktionary. Show all posts
Friday, September 2, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Describing Tricks
by Crazy Ivan
As many of you know, I've been doing a bit of work this week updating the Tricktionary section of this blog. Over the last couple of days I've added more than a hundred entries along with links to the Trick of the Day videos that I've done for those moves. Starting yesterday, I moved on to the harder part of the ordeal; writing the descriptions of each move.
Now, for a few tricks, you can get everything out in a few words. Take the Hulk as an example; "Toss the Myachi up and catch it between your fists". In a scant 10 words I've essentially told you everything you need to know about that move. Sure, I can add a few more words of advice to that. I could warn you about not punching too hard in case you miss the Myachi, I can specify that you want to use the portion of your fingers between the first and second row of knuckles, I could even add a gag line in there about what kind of sound effects you want to make, but by and large, a simple sentence encapsulates the move.
But that is only true of a minority of Myachi tricks. Most of them require a full paragraph or two to describe and some of them start sounding downright confusing when you put them into words. A classic example of this is the Snake. It's a relatively simple looking move, but the best description I can put together for it is:
In the early days of Myachi the Internet was not very conducive to sharing Myachi tricks. Uploading videos was a pain and even when you did it was at such a pathetic frame rate that you wouldn't really follow a complex move. On the website we had back in 2004 (my first year with Myachi) there were videos, but they were all but useless. The video of the 360 contained 4 frames. In one you saw a toss, in the next the hand was over top of the Myachi, in the next you saw a catch and in the final frame you saw a look of predictable accomplishment.
If you had nothing to go on except that video, you could think that a 360 was just a matter of tossing the Myachi up, waving hello and then catching it. You might not even realize the hand was orbiting around the Myachi. Of course, right next to the video was a brief description in text and since the 360 is a pretty easy move to explain we weren't too worried about the low quality of the video.
But this was a huge limiting factor. Even a move as basic as the Wolverine was almost impossible to share online.
And then, in late 2005, YouTube came along and made video uploads easy and accessible. That really changed everything for us. I often wonder if Myachi could have ever reached the level it has had it not been for sites like YouTube. I wonder how much longer it might have taken, how much harder it might have been if we'd started this company in the 80s.
So when you're reading a move described in the Tricktionary and you're left scratching your head at a sentence like: Keeping your hands extended outward, cross your strong hand over the wrist of your weak arm and trap the Myachi between both flat hands, just sigh and remember to be thankful for YouTube and web 2.0.
As many of you know, I've been doing a bit of work this week updating the Tricktionary section of this blog. Over the last couple of days I've added more than a hundred entries along with links to the Trick of the Day videos that I've done for those moves. Starting yesterday, I moved on to the harder part of the ordeal; writing the descriptions of each move.
Now, for a few tricks, you can get everything out in a few words. Take the Hulk as an example; "Toss the Myachi up and catch it between your fists". In a scant 10 words I've essentially told you everything you need to know about that move. Sure, I can add a few more words of advice to that. I could warn you about not punching too hard in case you miss the Myachi, I can specify that you want to use the portion of your fingers between the first and second row of knuckles, I could even add a gag line in there about what kind of sound effects you want to make, but by and large, a simple sentence encapsulates the move.
But that is only true of a minority of Myachi tricks. Most of them require a full paragraph or two to describe and some of them start sounding downright confusing when you put them into words. A classic example of this is the Snake. It's a relatively simple looking move, but the best description I can put together for it is:
Starting with the hand in a fist and the Myachi resting between the 2nd and 3rd row of knuckles, rotate the forearm and (right) hand in a counter-clockwise direction. In total, the arm will make two full counter-clockwise rotations, the first under the armpit and the second over the shoulder. When done properly, the Myachi will stay on the same spot on the hand throughout the motion.As confusing as that sounds, I would guess that if you had nothing to go on but that paragraph you could try a hundred times and never actually figure out what you were trying to do. You might wind up with some strange mutation of the move, but you probably wouldn't be able to figure out exactly what I was talking about.
In the early days of Myachi the Internet was not very conducive to sharing Myachi tricks. Uploading videos was a pain and even when you did it was at such a pathetic frame rate that you wouldn't really follow a complex move. On the website we had back in 2004 (my first year with Myachi) there were videos, but they were all but useless. The video of the 360 contained 4 frames. In one you saw a toss, in the next the hand was over top of the Myachi, in the next you saw a catch and in the final frame you saw a look of predictable accomplishment.
If you had nothing to go on except that video, you could think that a 360 was just a matter of tossing the Myachi up, waving hello and then catching it. You might not even realize the hand was orbiting around the Myachi. Of course, right next to the video was a brief description in text and since the 360 is a pretty easy move to explain we weren't too worried about the low quality of the video.
But this was a huge limiting factor. Even a move as basic as the Wolverine was almost impossible to share online.
And then, in late 2005, YouTube came along and made video uploads easy and accessible. That really changed everything for us. I often wonder if Myachi could have ever reached the level it has had it not been for sites like YouTube. I wonder how much longer it might have taken, how much harder it might have been if we'd started this company in the 80s.
So when you're reading a move described in the Tricktionary and you're left scratching your head at a sentence like: Keeping your hands extended outward, cross your strong hand over the wrist of your weak arm and trap the Myachi between both flat hands, just sigh and remember to be thankful for YouTube and web 2.0.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Big Ambitions
by Crazy Ivan
When I first started this blog at the beginning of the year, I had a lot of grand plans for it. While I knew it would take some time, I wanted to build this blog into the single most comprehensive Myachi site on the web. I hoped to create an eclectic resource for all Myachi Maniacs the world over.
Now, I can admit freely that I've yet to accomplish that goal. There's still a lot of work to do and, as near as I can tell, there will always be plenty to still do. I feel that if I'm doing this right and keeping my standards high, this is a project that will never be "finished", just closer to done than it was the day before.
Among the many ambitious notions I had for this site was the "Tricktionary". I intended this to be the largest and most comprehensive list of Myachi tricks ever assembled, complete with descriptions, video links and (where appropriate) detailed explanations of how to learn the move. I knew this would be the kind of thing that would probably take years to do so from the beginning I anticipated an unending workload ahead.
Well, in many ways, today marked a turning point for the Tricktionary. Until now, the most comprehensive and extensive list of tricks available to the Myachi fanatic was on a fansite created a while back by intrepid Myachi veteran Mantis. With the tricks divided into Beginner, Intermediate, Difficult, Expert, Master and Grand Master, Mantis had catalogued 173 common moves and combos ranging from the boringly easy to the sublimely difficult. While there were no video links, he included a brief description of each move that would be meaningful to anyone familiar with Myachi lingo.
But as of today, the Tricktionary has (more or less) pulled ahead. In the last few days, I've added 131 tricks to the existing trick list and though the majority of them still lack descriptions, nearly all of them have links to Trick of the Day videos I've done over the past 9 months. This brings the total number of tricks in the Tricktionary to 212 (ahead of Mantis' list by 39 tricks), though only 81 of those 212 have descriptions.
So in that sense, the list on Mantis' site is still the superior resource. I'm hard at work changing that, of course, and I kind of hope that this surge forward in the "race" will prompt Mantis to bolster his list with a few new moves. Of course, given that the school year is just beginning, there's a good chance he won't be able to find much time for it.
I should note that even if you check out everything on the Tricktionary, it would still be worth looking over Mantis' site as well. While there are more total moves on this blog, there's not as much overlap as you might expect. There are only 100 moves that are on both lists, so there are 112 tricks on this site that aren't on his and 73 on his that aren't on this one. Pretty good indicator that we're not in danger of running out of moves any time soon.
Of course, I don't want to spend too much time patting myself on the back here. The more time I spend doing that, the less time I can spend finishing the job. In addition to the 131 trick descriptions I still have to write there are 19 moves that still don't have video links. There are also still a few Trick of the Day moves I've done that haven't yet been added to the resource so there's still plenty to do.
I'll likely be adding a few of the descriptions yet today, though this part of the job is far more time-consuming and painstaking than simply adding the names and video links. It is still a work in progress and it always will be. 212 tricks might sound impressive but it's important to note that this represents less than 1% of the moves that we've come up with so far.
I have a book at home filled with notes and charts where I try to track every trick ever created (or even possible) and while it would be incomprehensible to anyone but myself, I can say definitively that there are over a quarter of a million tricks that can be done. Some of them might be kind of silly (a Righty Wristwatch to a Pinocchio for example) and some might be difficult almost to the point of impossibility (a Lefty Sole Stall to a Duck to a double wolverine to a righty Clipper Delay for example), but they are all possible.
Given the massive number of moves, I can't finish the Tricktionary in a single lifetime. Even if I added ten new tricks, descriptions and videos every single day it would still take another 68 and a half years to catch up with the moves in my notebook (I'd be about 104 years old at that point) and I'm perfectly willing to admit that my notebook still has a lot of moves unlisted. Heck... I haven't even gotten around to adding 2 Myachi tricks to it. It's safe to say that less than 10% of the possible moves have been described in it. That would mean that, conservatively, there are over 2.5 million moves. If I wanted to get all of those done before I reached my century mark, I'd have to add more than 100 a day.
It's spooky to look at the grand scope of this project. As much effort as I've put into it to this point, I'm less than 0.0000848% of the way finished, and that's kind of depressing. I'll try to comfort myself with the fact that generations of Myachi
When I first started this blog at the beginning of the year, I had a lot of grand plans for it. While I knew it would take some time, I wanted to build this blog into the single most comprehensive Myachi site on the web. I hoped to create an eclectic resource for all Myachi Maniacs the world over.
Now, I can admit freely that I've yet to accomplish that goal. There's still a lot of work to do and, as near as I can tell, there will always be plenty to still do. I feel that if I'm doing this right and keeping my standards high, this is a project that will never be "finished", just closer to done than it was the day before.
Among the many ambitious notions I had for this site was the "Tricktionary". I intended this to be the largest and most comprehensive list of Myachi tricks ever assembled, complete with descriptions, video links and (where appropriate) detailed explanations of how to learn the move. I knew this would be the kind of thing that would probably take years to do so from the beginning I anticipated an unending workload ahead.
Well, in many ways, today marked a turning point for the Tricktionary. Until now, the most comprehensive and extensive list of tricks available to the Myachi fanatic was on a fansite created a while back by intrepid Myachi veteran Mantis. With the tricks divided into Beginner, Intermediate, Difficult, Expert, Master and Grand Master, Mantis had catalogued 173 common moves and combos ranging from the boringly easy to the sublimely difficult. While there were no video links, he included a brief description of each move that would be meaningful to anyone familiar with Myachi lingo.
But as of today, the Tricktionary has (more or less) pulled ahead. In the last few days, I've added 131 tricks to the existing trick list and though the majority of them still lack descriptions, nearly all of them have links to Trick of the Day videos I've done over the past 9 months. This brings the total number of tricks in the Tricktionary to 212 (ahead of Mantis' list by 39 tricks), though only 81 of those 212 have descriptions.
So in that sense, the list on Mantis' site is still the superior resource. I'm hard at work changing that, of course, and I kind of hope that this surge forward in the "race" will prompt Mantis to bolster his list with a few new moves. Of course, given that the school year is just beginning, there's a good chance he won't be able to find much time for it.
I should note that even if you check out everything on the Tricktionary, it would still be worth looking over Mantis' site as well. While there are more total moves on this blog, there's not as much overlap as you might expect. There are only 100 moves that are on both lists, so there are 112 tricks on this site that aren't on his and 73 on his that aren't on this one. Pretty good indicator that we're not in danger of running out of moves any time soon.
Of course, I don't want to spend too much time patting myself on the back here. The more time I spend doing that, the less time I can spend finishing the job. In addition to the 131 trick descriptions I still have to write there are 19 moves that still don't have video links. There are also still a few Trick of the Day moves I've done that haven't yet been added to the resource so there's still plenty to do.
I'll likely be adding a few of the descriptions yet today, though this part of the job is far more time-consuming and painstaking than simply adding the names and video links. It is still a work in progress and it always will be. 212 tricks might sound impressive but it's important to note that this represents less than 1% of the moves that we've come up with so far.
I have a book at home filled with notes and charts where I try to track every trick ever created (or even possible) and while it would be incomprehensible to anyone but myself, I can say definitively that there are over a quarter of a million tricks that can be done. Some of them might be kind of silly (a Righty Wristwatch to a Pinocchio for example) and some might be difficult almost to the point of impossibility (a Lefty Sole Stall to a Duck to a double wolverine to a righty Clipper Delay for example), but they are all possible.
Given the massive number of moves, I can't finish the Tricktionary in a single lifetime. Even if I added ten new tricks, descriptions and videos every single day it would still take another 68 and a half years to catch up with the moves in my notebook (I'd be about 104 years old at that point) and I'm perfectly willing to admit that my notebook still has a lot of moves unlisted. Heck... I haven't even gotten around to adding 2 Myachi tricks to it. It's safe to say that less than 10% of the possible moves have been described in it. That would mean that, conservatively, there are over 2.5 million moves. If I wanted to get all of those done before I reached my century mark, I'd have to add more than 100 a day.
It's spooky to look at the grand scope of this project. As much effort as I've put into it to this point, I'm less than 0.0000848% of the way finished, and that's kind of depressing. I'll try to comfort myself with the fact that generations of Myachi
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Tricktionary Update (and Request)
by Crazy Ivan
I've been trying to steal away time here and there to continue to expand the Tricktionary page here on the Myachi Blog. I'd like to at least get it caught up to the point where all the "Trick of the Day" moves are included but I'm still a good 22 tricks away from that.
My goal will be to have these moves all added in the next couple of weeks and once I do it will take the total number of tricks explained on the page to 100. I have no intention of leaving it there, however. I want to keep adding new tricks every week until the Internet runs out of room.
There are no shortage of moves to add. I'm nowhere near running out of ideas, but I also want to put up the tricks you want to see there. It doesn't do me as much good to toss up a bunch of archaic tricks nobody's ever heard of before I have all of the common and fundamental tricks explained. That's where you come in.
If there's a trick you'd like to see added to the Tricktionary, let me know. You can e-mail me at crazyivan@myachi.com (but you already knew that), or you can leave it in the comments section of this blog entry.
Oh, and in case you were curious, I added moves in three categories today: Hat Tricks, Skate Tricks and 2 Myachi Moves that start with the letter "A". Those tricks include:
I've been trying to steal away time here and there to continue to expand the Tricktionary page here on the Myachi Blog. I'd like to at least get it caught up to the point where all the "Trick of the Day" moves are included but I'm still a good 22 tricks away from that.
My goal will be to have these moves all added in the next couple of weeks and once I do it will take the total number of tricks explained on the page to 100. I have no intention of leaving it there, however. I want to keep adding new tricks every week until the Internet runs out of room.
There are no shortage of moves to add. I'm nowhere near running out of ideas, but I also want to put up the tricks you want to see there. It doesn't do me as much good to toss up a bunch of archaic tricks nobody's ever heard of before I have all of the common and fundamental tricks explained. That's where you come in.
If there's a trick you'd like to see added to the Tricktionary, let me know. You can e-mail me at crazyivan@myachi.com (but you already knew that), or you can leave it in the comments section of this blog entry.
Oh, and in case you were curious, I added moves in three categories today: Hat Tricks, Skate Tricks and 2 Myachi Moves that start with the letter "A". Those tricks include:
- Ahead of the Class
- The A-Train
- The Aqueduct
- Brooksie
- Casper
- Heel Flip
- Kick Flip
- Tail Grab
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