October 13, 2007

Flip Flop, US nats, UBU trophy, Federation, Tachometer

The US Nationals spintop contest took place in Chico, California, and Jon Gates collected another national title (won in 02 and 05). Silver was Takeshi and bronze Boyd Seth. I could not attend and so I missed the first "Ultimate Battletop of the Universe" organized by Mark Hayward. It had an amazing mechanical trophy that was won by "Dazzling Dave" Schulte.

I came up with a way of reversing the Gyro Flop, so it can be done in any direction. I will try to post a tutorial soon for the conventional Gyro Flop and for the new Flip Flop (video). The secret is mostly in the bind of the tip.

There is the idea to start an International Spintop Federation. The website will eventually be at ispintop.com

A while ago I took some tachometer measurements on a few tops. I was surprised how fast I can spin a Bearing King (7000 RPM). Here is a comparison between the BK and the Gates. The slow decay of the Gates's bearing is impressive.

This is a poster from 1964 of the major spintop contest of all time, just before Duncan declared bankrupcy.The $5000 would be equivalent to $32000 today!

Jorge Sanjuan.from Madrid, Spain, is trying to popularize bearing top play over there.

A 9 year old juggler, Ty Tojo, includes Japanese throw tops in his act.

I got the September 10, 1945 issue of Life Magazine. The table of contents under sports has no mention of baseball, football or basketball: just top spinning! Three grown-up top spinners show their tricks, including the "jerk system" regeneration, that they learned a generation before in Chicago's South Side.

From youtube, an old cartoon from Cuba with pegtops and a bully pump top.

August 25, 2007

Worlds 07 plus !

The World Spinning Top Contest was held August 2-4 in Orlando, Florida. Matt Ritter won as in 06 and 04. Takeshi Kamisato got silver and ta0 (!) bronze. Other players qualifying for the freestyle finals included David Buhrmester; Michael Hout, Boyd Seth and Titi Yokota. The winners in the sport ladder divisions were by age group: up to 12: Seam Micca, 13 to 16: Jonathan Feldman, 17 to 29: Christopher Oneil, 30 to 44: Alex Ayers, 45 to 106: Jeff Smith (77!)

Honor Guest : the city of Miamisburg, Ohio, is honoring the world spinning top champion by awarding him a $1000 prize to attend the “Whirled Festival of Tops." Matt gets it this year by virtue of his 2007 championship and also in recognition of him being the first ever to win three world championships.

There was so much opportunity to throw tops at Worlds 07 that sometimes we had to quit out of exhaustion. We had two beginner workshops, an advanced tricks breakout and the first ever regeneration class. Eric Wolf gave a workshop on turning tops with a lathe (there may be a spinning top modding contest next year.) At midnight the last day, we had a mini version of a “pro-contest” (Top Pro II) between some advanced players with a pool of money and a modded spintop as booty. I should mention that at Lucky´s barbecue Mike Hout did a “juggling 3 bowling balls while having a top spinning on the head” routine!

Isaac Kanarek, president of the Mexican yo-yo association, has started inviting trompo players for the Mexican nationals next March in Mexico City! With their great tradition in spinning tops this could eventually have a big impact on the level of play, perhaps as big as the Japanese had in yo-yos! By the way, the famous Japanese yo-yo player Taka(hiro Hasegawa) entered the spintop sport ladder this year. I was glad to see Titi represent again Brazil in the championship finals.

This is Quick Silver, the new all aluminum Trompo Bearing from Dale Oliver. He sold the first prototype batch of 20 at World's and after trying it I can say it is a winner! Quick Silver weighs 130 grams (not as heavy as you would think because the walls are thinner than on the HP). The cap screws on very nicely.

David Buhrmester has developed a regeneration version of the blizzard trick. He showed it a Worlds and he also made a video here. It seems the name will be Magnetic Wire or Magnetic String.

Mark Hayward is pushing along to have a spintop-battle contest at Nationals. Here is a link to his discussion on planning the event.

June 19th , 2007

Videos Galore plus Gasing!

I was contacted by Gerardo Montero Rivera from Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico. He is really good with a spintop. See some videos of him on youtube including his creation: “La mejor suerte.” 

He does some very good teleféricos (cable cars) that inspired me to add a tutorial of the basic cable car to the tricks section.

Something I wanted to have for a looong time was a Malaysian gasing top set. I finally got one! Mine weighs 6.5 pounds (2.9 kg) and it won a contest in 2001 in Kota Bahru, Kelantan province, with a time of 1 hour and 27 minutes!

Gasing [ga-sing] is a popular traditional game in Malaysia and giant gasing is played specially amongst the villagers in the states of Kelantan and Terengganu, who compete each season after the rice harvest. A low quality video of how it is thrown is here.

Here are two nice video web-finds of traditional spintop craftsmen: one from Japan (Masa-aki Hiroi) and the other from Colombia (Octavio Londoño).

A group from Osaka, Japan, has been trying to introduce a new spintop sport. It is called ASPHIP: A SHPere and a wHIP. Paul from Asphip contacted me. He is the main American player on the site video. That was filmed 15 years ago in Atlanta in advance for the 96 Olympics there. I would like to try it.

I posted an old video (1970's?) (40MB Quicktime) showing Joe Mauk, one of several “spintop preachers” from the Jim Schreiber tradition, spinning his giant 60lb spintop in Philippines.

Finally, I found what I think is a nice spintop related song: .
Artist: Mozez; Title: Spinning Top; Album: So Still (2006)
Video with lyrics here.

March 11, 2007

Championship Compulsory videos

The last few years both the US Nationals and Worlds have had a fixed set of compulsory tricks to qualify for the freestyles. But there was no place to see videos of every trick exactly as described in the list. See them here. Some players would like to change them or even change the freestyle qualification process but it seems 2007 will continue with the current rules.

Mark Hayward posted a great story about a new version of battle top that happened at the 2007 Madfest Juggling Convention. He wants to organize a "Super Battle-Top Championship of the Universe" at the Nationals in Chico this year. It could include three weight classes: Stock, Mid-Weight, and Heavy-Weight. I hope it happens.

You can click these links to hear the difference between the sound made by a Duncan Hummer and a Duncan Whistler (both from the 1960's).

A really charming video of finger tops was posted on youtube: Spinning-Top Circus.

January 28, 2007

JUGGLING SPINNING TOPS VIDEO!

At last there is proof that spinning tops can be juggled!!! I filmed the video JuggleTopFest last weekend. I juggled 3 tops in a cascade pattern and also did some related goofing. I started the cascade by loading my hands with the 3 tops spinning, one of which had a double-tip. In another version I started directly from a nested boomerang of 2 of the 3 tops. I filmed the video Friday and Saturday nights, somewhat in a hurry. With more time I could have gotten longer and better runs. Juggling spinning tops is indeed possible!

Juggling tops is an idea that has been bounced among spintop players for a long time. This is not surprising as many top players are also jugglers. But it wasn’t clear if it was really possible. The first challenge is that of simultaneously starting 3 or more tops and getting them in the air. But there are more fundamental problems. If you push a top along a line different than its axis it will precess and tilt. When landing a top on the hand players generally correct the tilt by a hand movement that requires dwelling time not available while juggling. Furthermore, these corrections require looking at the top on the hand but in juggling “catches” are generally blind: you look up at the peaking of the juggled objects.

I noticed while I practiced juggling one top and two balls that I was slowly getting better at catching the spinning top and throwing it again without disrupting the spin. Perhaps my subconscious was reading the tilt in the air and catching the top in a move that compensated. Probably not, but I am not sure.

Wrapping 3 tops and getting them spinning on the hands or arms takes time and can be tiresome after a while. What I want to pursue in juggling tops is the boomerang start. The first time I attempted juggling tops was when I got the nested Triple Play top from Alan Gray, around 2002. For a solid weekend I was throwing boomerangs without success. I named the imagined trick “Too Much Trouble” (throwing a boomerang with a Twin Spin was called “Double Trouble” in the Duncan trick book of the 60s). Ideally one would want to have the lower two toplets coming back low and close together while the third toplet should go into a high arch. Designing such a top may be as much a challenge as then hitting the trick. But on the JuggleTopFest video I showed a start in which I already have a top spinning on my left hand and I throw a boomerang with two nested tops (Hollow Point and Sidewinder). It should be possible to boomerang the left-hand top at the same time as the two nested tops: that’s my future goal.

January 14 , 2007

New Year, New Videos!

Happy New Year everybody!

I taped two new videos in the first two weeks of the year! I WISH I could keep that up, but I will be happy if I can finish the year averaging more than one per month.

The first one, "Stacked Odds" shows some fooling around stacking two spinning tops one over the other. The Yoyojam tops have a round hole at the crown that allows this to be done. Unfortunately, they are out of production (temporarily, I hope; a Gates top just went for $81 on Ebay!). The Spintastics and Duncan tops have non-circular holes but it may be easy to mod them for that. The “stacked arm-walker” was the second trick clip I ever posted (circa 2000) but in a very low-resolution video. At the time I also posted a photograph of a stacked bind: now you can see how I got into it. The forehead stack is new. It is the first time I use swimming goggles and a mirror as props! You can see it here.

At the topspinning.com forum I posted a quiz about a mistery top. The answer was: "It’s a Lulu!" The packaging says: “The Exciting, Swinging 3 in 1 GO – GO Spinning Toy." I got this vintage toy that transforms from a (bad) diabolo to a (terrible) spintop and finally to a (-n awful) yo-yo on Ebay. Hull-Ottawa Wood Products, Ottawa, Canada, manufactured it (but it is made of plastic). My guess is that Lulu is from the 1950s, but I would appreciate any information I receive. The zip code is R.R.4: that may help dating it. The name of the toy inspired me to use the old Little Lulu comic as the theme (here 15MB).

This video is the first on a series of videos I plan to make (eventually) showcasing vintage tops. It will start the legend (museum) section at ta0.com.

November 18, 2006

Topspinning.com - Pro Top I video

The discussion board about tops, formerly Button and String, has moved to Topspinning.com. It is sponsored by the Infinite Illusions shop. It runs the same software that was developed for yoyoing.com so it will work very well for our purposes. A very nice feature is that it links directly to the huge II video vault with the spintop videos tagged and filtered. I will probably post my not-so-well finished videos there, but my main videos will still appear and be hosted here first.

Unfortunately, my taping of the national freestyles failed and nobody has posted them yet. But I managed to get some of the action at the informal Pro Top I competition. I uploaded it here (the sound is delayed a couple of seconds). I think I had a good regeneration run.

Two contests that will include spintops are coming up before the end of the year. Indy States will take place Saturday December 2 in Indianapolis. Just announced, the 2006 Greater DC Open Yo-Yo & Spin Top Contest will be held December 27 at the "Sounds Like Fun" event at The City Museum Building, in Washington DC. A great thing to do between Christmas and New Year.

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Chico in name, Grande in fun

Cliff Coleman (from the Spinology video and skateboarding pioneer) wanted to have the first ever "Spintop Pro Competition" and made it happen. He got us a small conference room at the hotel late Saturday night for the hard-core spintop challenge. We rounded up seven advanced players who had to fork $20 each into a prize pool to compete and judge on a peer-scored two-minute freestyle. Takeshi got the bragging rights to the first "pro" title and $100. Myself, I got a $10 balance, becoming a de-facto "professional". There was also a best trick contest (2 tries) but no money on it (stairway to heaven won).

Alan Gray presented Boyd Seth with Mjolnir (in norse mythology, the hammer of Thor, the god of lightning, thunder, wind, and rain) his latest giant top creation. What a beautiful top!

World Spinning Day was October 11th, according to the Spinning Top Museum of Burlington, Wisconsin. To celebrate, I tried to beat my personal record for drumbeats. On the first try I did 293, which, at about 24 drumbeats per minute, is over 12 minutes. I had noticed in Chico that my drumbeats seemed smoother than they used to. Sunday morning I drumbeated myself from the hotel lobby to the elevator, pushed the button to call it, entered and pushed the 4th floor button, exited and said hi to the guy that won tops in the older ladder division, went to my room, got the top into the hand, opened and entered, without dropping once! I wish somebody would have followed me with a camera!

Look for the videos of the freestyles and pictures of the meeting soon (I renamed the photo section "Visions").

ATTENTION: The Button and String bulletin board is moving to www.topspinning.com next week!

Last Quarter in Review

I inaugurated the photo section with a Figaro Gallery. This will be a gallery of spintop players having my giant top Figaro spinning on their hands (or heads, etc.). It is just starting but it should turn into a great project.

The Worlds Spintop Contest took place August 12th in Orlando, Florida. I could not attend this year. And the winners were . . .1) Matt Ritter (repeat from 04) 2) Takeshi 3) Alan Gray. All the freestyles are here. Titi Freak (Brazil), David Buhrmester and Boyd Seth are up and coming exiting players that will be very competitive in the future. Dale Oliver was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award.

I did compete with success at the South Central Regional contest in Dallas, Texas. For the first time I completed in competition an upside-down whip and boleadoras. I had the chance to visit the retail shop of yo-yo manufacturer Buzz-On and throw tops with Dave Bazan. The shop is really hip. At the front it has displays with Dave's yoyo and top collections, as well as trophies (including his two world spintop championships). Val and Dale Oliver (Spintastics) invited my family to have diner at their house. I got to see the very nice collection of vintage spintops and yoyos they have on display. You wouldn't believe how big the spintop trophy Val's brother Forest got in 1964 is! Got their pictures for the Figaro Gallery.

Talking about contests, I am going to the U.S. Nationals Contest, October 7th in Chico, California.

Chad Lunders posted a clip of a new trick: horizontal corkscrew. I need to learn it. It seems there is always a new corkscrew variation to be discovered.

Spintop trick playing had a fleeting appearance on primetime TV back on July 6th. On the ABC program Masters of Champions, during a yo-yo challenge, Dave Bazan brought out a spinning top! The whole segment is here.

On the shop of the very interesting Grand Illusions site from the UK, there are new motorized little finger tops with lights that can keep spinning for hours.

I expect lots of new stuff after Chico.

The World Spins

There are some new amazing spinning top videos from Colombia (taped by Japanese yoyo master Takahiro Hasegawa) at the yoyoing.com video vault: short, long. Part of them was taped at a tournament. The full-body corkscrew (by who appears to be the winner) is one of the many wonderful tricks I want to learn. I loved to see really small kids doing difficult tricks: a future generation of champions! There is also a video of a Colombian man making a top on a lathe in a very short time.

Tony Stein from South Africa sent me pictures (1, 2) of his amazing tops that spin for a super long time. He throws them by hand with "no mechanical means of launching." His spin time record is 1 hour 7 minute 5 seconds! This is still not as long as the record for a big Malaysian Gasing top, but incredible for a 10cm-diameter fixed-tip top. Moreover, his record for number of revolutions, 54416, is probably a world record (his smaller tops should spin much faster than the Gasing tops). He decorates the tops with holographic paper and makes them spin in elegant pedestals: really beautiful work.

A friend that visited Paris brought me a metal finger top with the Eiffel tower as the stem. The base is a reproduction of the medal it won in 2003 at the Concours Lépine of toy designs. It was created by a Véronique Lemesle. The proud little top has its own website. It does spin well.

Rabitt out of a top hat!

I corrected the link to Nickel-Eye. They dropped the second "Bad Ass" video of Matt Ritter but I uploaded it here with his permission.

A page of top related photos is coming soon . . .

I am working on three new tricks that have a lot of potential but they are still half baked. At least one of them would be a classic if I a figure out how to do it correctly. Wish me luck!

Back from el Sur!

I found a giant Perinola (teetotum) in the streets of Montevideo's Old-City. See it here. They had a huge storm about six months ago that felled thousands of trees. Some artists took advantage of the wood to make a street display of sculptures with the theme of the children of the world. The inscriptions on this Perinola were adapted to the subject of hunger. Fortunately, the face looking up says: "everybody eats".

I have added some new links and bibliography (see Papyrus).

HAPPY SPINNING HOLIDAYS!

I have established a "posting contest" at the Button & String message board. The best post from now until January 15th gets a one-of-a-kind peg top made from exotic wood, postage paid anywhere in the world.

I wish everybody a Top 2006!

Spinning Times

I proposed the following benchmark for bearing tops: number of crazy 8 loops until extinction (C#). There are some advantages but also some problems with this approach: the complete discussion thread can be found here. I performed measurements on several of my tops.

My limited results seem to show that the bearing king and blizzard are very similar in spin times; the trompo is significantly better; and the old topdog and gates are much better (with the gates having the advantage). Of course, spin times and number of loops are only part of the story about bearing tops. For example, the smaller tops have an advantage for doing many loops but are more difficult to lasso.

I also measured the plain spinning times on my hand and the rankings I got were similar to C#, so the value of the proposed benchmark is debatable. Hand spin times varied from 60 seconds for my best stock BKs and Blizzards to 3 minutes 40 seconds for the best (cleaned) YYJ tops.

Talking about long spin times, it is now available on the internet the LSX (or hypno-top) finger top that has the longest spin recorded on the Guinness Book of World Records (almost 3 hours). Actually, the spin on this top is regenerated by manipulating the board where it spins and thus it is a regeneration record. The website of the creator, Ed Rubin, is here. However, there is an earlier patent for this concept from June 19, 1965 (US pat. 3,191,341) by an L. W. Martin, from Wichita, Kansas. I suspect that most finger tops can be regenerated in similar fashion if the tip is made blunt. The discussion thread on B&S can be found here.

I posted the freestyle videos from the US nationals. They can be found on the tricks page.

Chico

Takeshi Kamisato, who finished third, blew everyone away with his Top Tangler. He first taped a perfect one off stage and then he started his freestyle with one! He has already posted a video here, a must see. The reaction of the crowd is priceless. We are much honored that he dedicated the video to us. I'll write more about this trick on another post. Takeshi gave several of us bearing kings moded with a yoyo ring: a beauty!

Jon Gates won the national spintop championship. He had his typical amazing play but smoother with little dead time: a joy to watch! He got, besides a medal, a nice size cup, and the use for one year of Alan Gray's masterpiece. That is a giant top that will be a traveling trophy to pass on to the next national champion. Jon is in the YYJ team and had a YYJ shirt but actually used Duncan tops! That was in protest until YYJ makes new tops, he said. But André Boulay from YYJ (who is a spintop player himself) just posted on B&S that those tops are coming soon (yeah!).

How nice to see Alan again! His collection of handmade tops and yoyos is superb. He took a big risk on his freestyle by taking only 3 tops on stage. Actually, he wanted to do the whole thing with just one of his wooden tops but it eventually went off stage.

There is some new blood coming to the sport. Jared Villareal, Boyd Seth and David Mellon will soon be competing for the title.

I was happy that on my freestyle I nailed staircase to heaven and upside-down corkscrew. I started again with the back stab.

We had a small trick throwdown (horse style) with the players that were around at the time (Jon, Alan, Jared and I). My winning trick was an upside down lasso. We need to do this again at other meetings.

Thanks a lot to the judges Dick Stohr, Dave Bazan and Dale Oliver: without them this could not happen!

The freestyle videos should be available soon.

Colombian Street Video

The guy with the big top says that the one he is showing is the smallest of his big ones. It weighs a hefty 12 pounds. He also has 15, 17, 18, 20 and 23 (!!!) pounders, the last one being the largest he has been able to spin ("bailar" = dance).

One of the comments by the reporter is that the mark of a good player is not only his ability to control the top, but also his ability to withstand the top spinning on any part of his body. A shot showing how they spin spike tops in their tongue proves the point!

UD corkscrew and updates

I have several ideas to incorporate to a new clip video, but it will take a while to make. My guess is that I will release it sometime in October.

I temporarily uploaded the rest of the W05 freestyles. Right-click the following links (MPEG, around 30 MB each): Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth. The first place is on the tricks page. They were taken with an unattended camera so there are no close-ups.

2005 Worlds (Part II)

First, Lucky's BBQ, which is a series of events in itself. Many official yo-yoing world records were broken (three by Luke Roberts) but the talk was Bill de Boisblanc interminable Shoot the Moon (1057!): just having the arms up so long is difficult! I was the only one to participate in the "15 seconds of fame" using a top. My idea was to throw Pencil Sharpener and then inverted on my head. I miss the first throw and with the time it took me to rewind the second (successful) attempt was outside the time limit and it didn't count. I was afraid of getting hurt before the spintop contest, so I did not enter the air trick (while diving on a swimming pool) challenge.

The Iron Chef of Yo-Yoing was very popular: Takeshi and Seth Peterson against Rob Tsou and Kyle Weems competed trying to modify several surprise yo-yo's in an hour. The surprise yo-yos turned out to be vintage Duncans. But it coincided with the pizza-throwing contest, so I missed most of it.

The Wheel of Penalty was probably the funniest event. Dave Bazan almost hit somebody while yo-yoing blindfolded. Jon Gates had to freestyle with two Brazilians on his face (and one emptied a jar of water over him). Rounding the strong presence of spintop players, Mark Hayward was the MC. The winner was Rafael (Red) Matsunaga who had to freestyle with his pants on his ankles!

The Fast challenge from Yoyofactory (Hasbro) was fun. Not everyday you see elite players challenging each other with basic tricks like walk-the-dog. But of course, $1020.10 is a big incentive. And boy, were they fast!

One thing I noticed was that there were less commercial booths compared to 2004: for example, Spintastics, Buzzon and Extreme Spin were not officially present this year (Buzzon pushed their yo-yos from a violin case in the hotel lobby). The reason is that the yo-yo market is flat except, perhaps, for the heavily advertised Fast yo-yo. If the commercial presence was a little depressing, the yo-yo player presence was the largest ever!

Now, back to the spinning top scene. We missed Alan Gray (and son), Eric Wolf and Val Oliver, as well as Matt Ritter (who has probably retired from the sport). In fact, the only giant top this year was my Figaro (last year there were five). By the way, I sheared Figaro's metal axle (wow!) on a bad drop (but it should be easy to machine a new one). Compared to last year we had fewer advanced top players, even with the addition of Hayward and Matt Byam. In that sense it was a little disappointing. But there were more non-competitors that approached me with questions on spintops. My impression is that there are many beginning players out there and the challenge is to get them to the next level. All the advanced contestants in spintops have been from the U.S.A. until now, but at least one Brazilian (Titifreak) will probably compete next year. And Taka(hito) Hasegawa was very interested in taping some of my tricks after the competition so something is brewing in Japan. I also tried to convince some Mexican yo-yo players to pick-up tops.

I gave the spintop beginner workshop and it was very well attended. In fact, the interest was so high that it ran well into the time scheduled for the advanced breakout. When we finally got to it we had a very nice exchange of tricks. Thanks again to Jon for taking the time to teach me a better way of doing the snap start. It was the type of explanation that has to be given one-on-one as it would be very difficult to describe in text. On my part, I disclosed the secret to doing multiple around-the-world tricks and explained my (weird) upside-down throw. So I expect to see other players attempting world hitchhiker and pencil sharpener in the future.

Surprisingly, the compulsory scores were lower than last year. I got exactly the same score, in spite of being much better prepared. On the freestyles, the main comment from the judges was that there were many tries but also many misses. I think that in general we tried more difficult tricks (not counting Matt's 2004 freestyle). Last year I regretted not having tried some of my more unique tricks. So this year I went for broke and paid the price. Anyway, it felt good trying to do my latest tricks. What I do regret is not having thrown at least one simple boomerang and done a regen series out of it. Dave had a pretty solid routine and Takeshi hit the most spectacular tricks.

Here is a link to a video of Dave's routine (32 MB). This is temporary until Shawn Fumo posts all the freestyles on his site (look for them on the links page).

See you in Orlando in 2006? (Worlds 2007 may move to Japan).

The day after . . .

Worlds is such an intense experience. There is always something going on: workshops, breakouts, contests, especial events, filming, playing horse. After the official program of the day was over, people would remain in the ballroom and lobby to the wee hours of the night exchanging tricks, talking and having fun. Saturday I had to take a nap between the compulsories and the freestyles because I was already feeling crashed. Anyway, I stayed at the ballroom until 4AM because I didn't want the thing to end.

First, I need to thank a lot of people that helped me learn stuff at worlds. I would like to start with Jon Gates who took time to teach me a better way of doing the snap start without hurting my fingers. Jon is such a great guy besides being a superb top player. Dave Bazan showed me several neat tricks such as his BB pass to one hand trapeze (including some that I new only by name from Hornbeck's old postings). Mark Hayward showed us his trademark Claw (finger nails required) and explained the secret to Steve Brown's perfect looking Bermuda Triangles. Many thanks to Takeshi Kamisato (Mitch) who taught the moding with hand tools workshop and also showed me an amazing bounce trick (how on earth can he do all what he does at worlds?). Thomas Connolly showed me a nice looking trick that he calls (?) Spear. And Jack Ringca showed me the basis of an upside-down (tip up) corkscrew he saw in Singapore. Many special thanks to Cole Rominger who with a lot of patience gave me tips on yoyo looping (and a Russell yoyo to take home). And last but not least, top thanks to Matt Byam who was the main player with whom I threw tops and bounced trick tips.

Some other people I would like to thank for making worlds more fun for me are Dale Oliver, Dick Stohr, Greg Cohen, the Brazilian crew, Shawn Fumo, Taka(hito) Hasegawa, Dale and Sue Myberg, Lucky Meisenheimer, and Marvin Takahashi. And the list could go on and on . .

Bazan won the spintop championship, Gates was second and Takeshi third. I recorded the freestyles so I will try to post them soon. I will post more on the spintop competition and worlds in general later in the week.

Worlds news and new lathe

I purchased a mini metal lathe and should receive it today! I am ready to start a new facet of the sport and turn my own custom tops. I will start by turning replacement tips. I have some ideas that I want to try on how to improve their performance, especially for regens. We'll see the results. The lathe seems to be a very good deal; it is sold by Cummins Tools for $399, including several accessories. There are a few other brands out there (Harbor Freight, Grizzly, Homier) but all are made by the same manufacturer in China.

I finally saw the Czech movie Kolya, winner of the 1996 academy award for best foreign language film. It is a very good movie, but the spinning top scenes are very short. First there are a few seconds turning the top on a lathe, then about 20 seconds spinning the top and, later in the movie, a few more seconds of an imaginary top spinning above a kid having a nightmare. Interestingly, the top is played as a whip top (even though it is shaped more like a classic throw top).

I don't know if I will have the time to post new videos before worlds. But at least I will try to post to this blog more often.

Corkscrew Tricks

As you may have guessed already, I added Corkscrew and its variations to the Tricks page. There are descriptions and videos. Eventually I want to add drawings showing in detail the string wraps . . . but don't hold your breath.

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It seems few people have found the new URL for the Button and String board. Please, follow the link under Links and join the best place to talk about tops!

Fire top and more

The caps are easy to drill and mod so I decided to revisit the design of a fire top. I had previously some success using a Hollow Point after been inspired by Matt's video at nickel-eye, but the flame didn't last long enough. These caps are larger than the HP, so I can stuff more wick inside. Also, I had the idea of drilling holes close to the tip as air intakes. Boy, did it work! Truly extreme top spinning! I had to cover most of the holes as the flames were huge. I need to experiment and optimize this fire top prototype, but you can preview a picture and a short clip. CAUTION: this can be dangerous! Follow fire juggling safety precautions. Above all, do not use glass or open containers for the fuel.

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I have already reserved airline flight and hotel for the 2005 Worlds Contest in Orlando at the end of July! It will be great!
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The Button and String forum changed URLs a couple of weeks ago, but few people have found out yet. I updated the link, so go ahead and visit it. Hopefully, Richard will soon be able to add the thousands of posts from the old board.

Jugglefest and rollercoaster vids

Like last year, I had a blast at Jugglefest XII at the University of Texas (Austin). I gave two workshops on tops, a beginner and an intermediate. There was again plenty of interest. I met Christopher George who drove all the way from Amarillo (8 hours). John Hornbeck introduced him to tops just a few months ago and I am sure he will become a very good player. This year I didn't perform at the public show but I have all the intention of participating again next year. By the way, the show had some high-caliber performers (a silver medallist from the IJA festival and the 8 ball juggling Guinness World Record holder) as well as some really unusual performances (e.g. "bubble gum manipulation").

HAPPY NEW YEAR! (+ videos)

The tricks I selected are of the diabolo-regeneration type: drumbeat, sewing machine and joker choker. All these are classic tricks but quite advanced. I taped them from two perspectives.

About the Tricks

I have just finished filming the first single-trick instructional videos (diabolo-type regenerations) and I plan to post them in one or two weeks. It has taken me a long time to select a format for the tricks page. The first version will have static hard links. Eventually, I would like to have a database-driven list, but that is in the far future.

I have made some minor updates to several pages. In particular, I added a little book on Taoism to the bibliography.

Have a happy new year! I wish you all lots of spinning in 2005!

"Over the Top" trick Video

Papyrus

I am working on a video clip with several tricks, some new, I believe. I promised the clip on the B&S bulletin board two weeks ago but I should finish editing it in one more week. Practicing with the unicycle is taking its share of my "hobby" time. If only the day had more hours . . .

Yesterday I tried for the first time a fire spintop made out of an aluminum Hollow Point. I was inspired by the one used by Ritter. I need to improve the design of mine as the flame goes out too soon (I am trying to tape Staircase to Heaven from Hell). It is a real kick to boomerang that thing.

First Post

The Yang of this site is the art of trick top spinning as an extreme sport. Its Yin is the contemplation of a motionless sleeping top, defying gravity with its inner energy. Between the two, there will be space for anything related to spinning tops, including history, science, games, collecting and curiosities

I will be populating the Links page in the next few days, so you can begin to explore the world of this ancient and fascinating toy and its current metamorphosis into a high-skill art and a competition sport.