So I saw the app Rising Card make it to the “What’s Hot” list on the iTunes App Store and thought the description of the application sounded pretty cool. For those who don’t know, Rising Card is a magic application for the iPhone and iPod Touch, created by magician Chris Kenner. For those who dabble a little into magic, you’ll understand what I mean when I say that this guy invented Threefly (coin trick) and the Sybil cut (card flourish). For those who don’t give a crap about magic, meaning the only name you know in magic is David Copperfield, well this guy has been David Copperfield’s executive producer for the last 16 years. Seriously.
Obviously, this guy is no small-time magician. But I still wanted a few opinions on what the app was like or at least a hint as to how it worked (set-up time, difficulty, etc.) but I couldn’t find a single thing about it. Just official video demonstrations about the app which aren’t exactly the most reliable source. Besides, they didn’t even provide much useful information. Regardless, I eventually got it, hoping that it’d be good. Boy was I not disappointed.
For those of you who’re hear searching for the secret to Rising Card app, you’re in the wrong place. I’m not going to give out the secret. I hope no one does. This blog post is more for people who are thinking about getting this app but aren’t quite sure yet.
Anyway, on to the app. For those who don’t know the effect, I’ll briefly describe it here. Spectator thinks of any card (or chooses a card out of a deck, etc.) and tells you. You then take out your iPhone (or iPod Touch), unlock it, open the Rising Card app upon which you should see a hand holding a deck of cards face up. From here, you can either shake it yourself or hand it over to the spectator and tell him to shake your device. Either way, the named card will rise out of the deck.
It’s a really simple effect, but still pretty mind blowing. I’ve been pretty busy with school stuff recently, so I haven’t used this app with a particular routine or with any form of presentation yet (my bad, I know). But I’ve been getting pretty good reactions. Just to be clear, all I do is tell someone to name any card, I then take out my iPod Touch, open the app and hand it to them, tell them to shake it, and they’ll see their card rise out. Simple as that. I’ve gotten all kinds of reaction. A few of them smirked or sat there in (stunned) silence before asking how it was done. Most of them were completely shocked when they saw it rise out of the deck (I did not tell them what to expect beforehand), their jaws just dropped and they stared at me with huge eyes asking how the hell I did it. Then there are those who just freak out when they see the card. One of my friends almost tossed my iPod onto the table as if it were burning him. Not to mention he enquired as to how I did it with a significant number of expletives. All in all, I’ve gotten really good reactions for a trick that I never practiced beforehand and didn’t even bother to add ANY presentation whatsoever to the effect itself (please don’t do that 
)
Anyway there are certain limitations that anyone considering purchasing this application might want to know. First, you have to know the card (either they tell you, or force, or they pick a card and show you, etc. you get my point). One more thing is that really observant spectators might notice something amiss, but whether that happens really comes down to how well you’re able to present the trick. Other than that, I can’t really think of other limitations.
The trick itself is really easy learn and requires little practice to master the moves themselves. How you present it is obviously a different thing altogether. Even if people spot the secret move you’re making, they can take your iPhone and try it out for themselves and even if they copy your actions it won’t work for them (that happened to me once, it’s when I realised how awesome this app is). The sacred rule of magic that states “never do the same trick twice” can actually be bent slightly, at least from my experience. I’ve done this trick five to ten times on one of my friends and she never could figure out how I did it even when I did it in slow motion without any patter. Even for say groups of five people I can do this trick at least twice without them realising how I did it. In fact I’d think doing this trick at least two or more times makes it more effective because then spectators will stop thinking that you somehow set it up the first time. Yes, this trick is that strong.
The unfortunate thing about a magic app on the iPhone is that people automatically think you’re cheating the moment you pull out something that has a computer in it. Even if they don’t figure out the secret to the Rising Card app they’ll just chalk it up as you doing something fishy with a device. Unlike sleight of hand or even gimmicks where their brains just can’t think of any logical explanation for a trick. However, as far as iPhone magic apps go, this is most probably the best one out there right now.
I’ve given up on many books halfway through in the past. Books like the Lord of the Rings series and Les Miserables. They often delve too deep into describing the surrounding environment and each individual character to such detail that you’d know the exact shade of his/her clothing at times. While these books definitely allow the reader to completely immerse him or herself into the world the book is creating, it doesn’t stop them from being boring. I really can’t stand books like that.
So despite not having installed Windows 7 beta the day it got leaked onto the Internet (I was too lazy to partition my iMac hard drive), I finally got around to installing it and finally running it, with much difficulty. I’m typing this now in Firefox on Windows 7 beta build 7000, and thus far it’s more or less a love/hate relationship with this OS. I’ve heard so much good stuff about this beta that I expected it to do wonders, unfortunately it seems my expectations might have been a tad bit too high.
First, the way so many other reviewers described the OS it seemed like Windows 7 finally stopped being the naggy OS that Windows Vista was, for example allowing users to toggle how stringent they wanted the naggy UAC to be. That sounds like a brilliant feature obviously, but in reality, the ability to toggle that setting isn’t really that useful at all. There are only 4 different levels available to choose from, and the system defaults to the second highest setting. However, the only difference between the default setting and the third highest setting is that the background applications no longer dim out, allowing you to interact with them. However, the naggy UAC screen still pops up at exactly the same frequency as the default setting, which makes this feature quite useless. The lowest security setting completely disables the naggy screen (which is what I’ve chosen) and I don’t even want to find out how naggy UAC becomes on the highest setting.
If I’m not wrong, Vista did this as well, but I’m not a hundred percent certain seeing as how I’m coming from XP (I never bothered with Vista, and that’s a story for another time). In Windows 7, the traditional menu bar (no idea what it’s “officially” called) isn’t there on most Window applications. I’m referring to the one with the “File”, “Edit”, Tools”, “Help”, etc menu buttons. Windows XP had these permenantly visible no matter what application you’re using, however with Windows 7 it’s only permenantly visible in third party applications like Firefox. Stuff like Windows Live messenger and even Internet Explorer have the menu bar permenantly hidden. The only way to reveal it is to hit the Alt key or F10, which is pretty stupid.