Magic Sites Galore

Step Towards SEO

2007-04-28T22:28:00.000+01:00

Here is another article about SEO which may be useful.

It shows the steps that should be taken when trying to optimise a site for search engines.

This Blog has moved

2006-10-25T11:50:00.000+01:00

Just in case anybody reads this, this blog has moved to the wordpress site.

You can find it here: http://ukmagician.wordpress.com/

Wordpress is much better than blogspot - toodle pip.

Magician-Entertainer.co.uk

2006-08-26T12:36:00.000+01:00

Magician-Entertainer.co.uk is another site of mine.

I created as a place where I could put more detailed information about magic and having magicians at events, info that doesn't really fit on my main site. I've recently added a page about wedding entertainers.

It also has info about other magicians so I send people to this site if I am already booked up.

2006-08-21T11:40:00.000+01:00

devoted.to/derren is an unofficial Derren Brown fan site. The best bits on here the links to sites about NLP, ESP, coercive persuasion, brainwashing, etc.

You too could be a master mentalist.

Also there is a link to a page of Derren Brown interviews. I've heard a couple of interviews with Derren on BBC radio which were very interesting.

Midlands Magician Dan Gifford Profile Page

2006-08-08T16:41:00.000+01:00

This is a site of mine, a profile of Midlands and UK Magician Dan Gifford.

It's a basic profile of me, with a bit about my experience as a magician and the types of events I perform at. I wrote this site a while back when I realised you can get free web space on Google pages.

It took me no more than 30 minutes to create these pages using one of the built-in templates and it doesn't look too bad. (I think)

You can even add Google Adsense to Google pages. Sounds like a recipe for spam...

Blog Review: West of Utopia

2006-08-05T22:32:00.000+01:00

Magic Utopia: Blog Review: West of Utopia

The last couple of posts on the Magic Utopia blog have highlighted a few magic blogs that I had never seen before.

There are quite a few blogs on magic if you care to look and a good list can be found at the magicforge blogosphere tracker. (Thanks to magic Utopia for highlighting Magicforge as well!)

I tend to prefer magic blogs that stay on topic, i.e. magic related stuff, although my main magic blog does go of topic occasionally. Too many people use blogs to moan about life in general.

Anyway, back to magic websites! A blog that is always magic related, in fact always magic trick related, is Cardopolis.

Practice Not Included

2006-08-05T12:39:00.000+01:00

www.practicenotincluded.com is a very basic site (in terms of design) about sleight of hand card magic. You need to know a little bit about magic to get into it and then you find the site explains some basic card moves and tricks.

(You don't need to know much to get into the site, in fact a search on Google would probably find the answers easily. Not really sure why people bother with this type of secret question password.)

The moves explained on the site include the double undercut and Braue reversal, and classic tricks like You do as I do and Twisting The Aces. The explanations aren't bad, especially those accompanied by photo's.

A good site for an intermediate card magician.

Street Magic

2006-08-01T12:30:00.000+01:00

This is a very informative page about street magic by a guy called Ace Starry (what a great name!)

I've thought about performing some street magic myself - it's a good way of getting some promotional footage if nothing else - and Mr Starry provides some great tips. It's the sort of information you only gain from experience.

All Magic - Magic Show

2006-07-24T22:05:00.000+01:00

At the moment, if you search for 'magic' on Google the top result is a magic the gathering site, www.wizards.com. I'm not linking to it here, it has plenty of backlinks - 9,430 of them - a very popular site.

Number 2 is allmagic.com (only 111 backlinks). This is a well designed site with a lot of good content. There's usually some good effect ideas, although often old techniques you've heard of but never used, but also good articles and media about other areas of magic such as routining and marketing.

The product reviews are a little odd, they all seem to be very positive.... Maybe they just review the good stuff?

The Phantom Notebooks

2006-07-18T08:46:00.000+01:00

Now, there are quite a few magic and magician's blogs out there, but one of the most entertaining is The Phantom Notebooks by the Smiling Mule.

It's supposed to be 'Personal notes on magic and sleight of hand' and there are a lot of interesting posts about sleights and magic philosophy, but the best entries concern Bish the Magish - Glen Bishop. They have something of a fued going.

Although Mr Bishop appears to have removed his half of the vitriol from his main blog, there is still plenty at his blog number 3.

Official Derren Brown Site

2006-07-06T09:35:00.000+01:00

www.derrenbrown.co.uk is the official site of Derren Brown. It's one of those slightly annoying flash sites where you don't quite know where to click, and when you do, you don't know what's going to happen.

Still, it looks great and certainly has an eerie, mysterious feel to it. Of course, Mr Brown doesn't have to explain to people that he performs at weddings, parties and barmitsvahs.

Has an interesting links page. See if you can find it.

Marked Cards

2006-07-04T10:39:00.000+01:00

This is an interesting site about marked cards - www.cardsorcerer.com.

If you delve deeply, it tells you how the various types of markings work, including ways to detect them on a pack of cards.

There are also some card trick methods on the site (not that original, but a few god ideas) and some links to videos - unfortunately they weren't working.

Some of the stuff is expensive though, there's one card marking system on this site for $900!

Music on Webpages

2006-06-21T23:04:00.000+01:00

Don't do it.

Please.

If there is one thing that is going to drive traffic away from your site it is music.

Especially inappropriate music: www.angelfire.com/ms3/mikitravis/index.html

It says 'keep clicking refresh to change the music' - I don't want to change it to something else I want to turn it OFF.

Where can I turn it off....ahhhhhhhh.

[x]

Online Visions

2006-06-19T18:56:00.000+01:00

www.online-visions.com is a site full of magic effext ideas and articles.

There's a bit of padding, but quite a few interesting effects which at the very least get the creative juices flowing.

This idea for the Paul Harris 'Reality Twister' effect is pretty cool. I'd always wondered how you could actually present it so it looked like more than just a puzzle...

The Perfect Shuffle

2006-06-18T08:19:00.000+01:00

Oops, I missed my 4th day. Is that poor or what?!

This is an interesting page:

www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/cs4fn/mathemagic/brentmorris.php

This chap is a computer scientist and interested in magic - a dangerous combination.

On this page he talks about perfect shuffles and how you can send a card to any position in the pack using a sequence of in and out faros. Of course you have to quickly convert decimal into binary and be able to perform faro shuffles to use this technique. Not easy.

There are other ways of acheiving the card to any number effect, most easier than this. But it is an interesting idea to have tucked away, maybe it could be used in conjunction with something else...?

Magic Spam

2006-06-16T12:40:00.000+01:00

What's this all about?

I found this site http://magic.bloggy4u.com which appears to take extracts from other blogs with magic related keywords (wedding magic, close-up magic etc) to create a blog, on which there are magic adverts.

This is a good magic blog though by David Britland: cardopolis.blogspot.com. Quality ideas and writing.

This latest idea is particularly good, an easy method with loads of scope for playing around with the presentation.

A bit of mentalism

2006-06-15T10:01:00.000+01:00

Today's site is devoted to mentalism, www.mentalismuk.co.uk.

No great shakes as far as design goes, but it has some interesting content including reviews of mentalism effects and some quite interesting interviews.

I also like the online effects section which includes some interesting and practical effects to try out. You can never get enough ideas and magical knowledge.....

My first post

2006-06-14T22:47:00.000+01:00

So, what's this blog all about then?

Well, I'm just going to be bringing you an interesting magic website everyday. Easy huh?
(4/7/06 No, not easy. One a day was over ambitious, it's now maybe one a week - I'm not going to commit myself!)

And the very first is....www.magicweek.co.uk the site for magic news in the UK.

A pretty safe starting point, not controversial at all. Worth checking regularly for, erm< news and stuff. One of the best bits is the private ads pages. The worst bit is that this site is designed in frames, so I'm not/can't give you a direct link to the ads pages. Maybe I'll find something more esoteric tomorrow.