Naquada

MagicJJ from the magicwoods has got what we think is the ONLY box from the the ‘unlock’ page AND it’s open… head over the the magicwoods to find out more

And TheCuso has photos of one of the other three from discover over here

Technorati Tags: theory11, WhatIsTheory11

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It’s been some time, and to be honest, it’s all getting a bit confusing.. Theory11 is something.. more than a puzzle but a puzzle non the less.. TheCuso has some more information on the numerous locked boxes pictures (there are to two sets of these now).

People have claimed to how found some odd artifacts in the images, but to be honest, they are just as likely to be jpg artifacts than encoded letters, and if they are letters… what code are they in now!?

if we read them from left to right across the photo we get : 9 3R ??? 9 ?? xyz ? but I’m struggling to see that to be honest, and they arent as clear as the ISBN numbers and ‘ISBN’ in the Gravity photo..

I still like my quite wild theory that still point to Theory11 being a shop… just because I’m quite proud of the logic and digging on it…

If we take the houchin video.. you’ll get the numbers 02851, and on the locked box page you see the number 7 on the lock together you get: 702851 - a valid north vegas area code…

now take the bloopers on kenner video.. he fluffs a line.. and then seems to deliberately say 82 twelve… add this to the end of the above and you get;

702 851 8212 ring it and you get the NORTH vegas housing authority.. (bear with me! - norths come up a lot in the pages and also is it luck that cobination gets direct through to them… another oddity is if you check their website the number 702 851 8212 isn’t their listed number.. again odd!!), the other unsolved clues are ’superhero’ and we also have ‘a team of rivals’

thecityofnorthvegashousingauthoritysuperheroateamofrivals

now start to re-arrange.. and you’ll start to get: Theory Eleven is a shop that is going to… (still working on the rest!)

I also spotted the word novarum (latin for ‘new things’) in there…

I think to be honest I’m just rambling on ideas now… also there must be something new.. as Chris Kenner popped up a few hours ago and asked if there was ‘..anything new.. ‘

Technorati Tags: theory11, WhatIsTheory11

In the 1990’s Simon Drake managed to further magic on television by breaking with the Rabbits from hats image of the magician to bring a darker and more shocking type of magic into peoples homes. The Secret Cabaret ran for two series of six episodes each on Channel 4.

Simon was praised by the magic world and reviews for giving a new and shocking twist to the presentation of illusions. Each show featured sideshow acts and vintage archive footage, including freak show material, and various mini stories and presentations on fraud and confidence tricks.

The Secret Cabaret reflected heavy gothic, punk and heavy metal influences, almost all the illusions and tricks having a very shocking side to them, including being embellished with realistic blood and gore, similar to Richiardi Jr’s presentations in the 1970’s that involved often gruesome presentations of effects such as sawing a lady in half.

The show had major input from the cream of magic, Ricky Jay had a major hand in the show, as well as performing on it, as well as name such as Jim Steinmeyer. Other notable appearance were by James Randi, Max Maven and David Berglas.

The show became a cult icon, and it’s a shame it only did two series, Simon has for a long time been asked when he would release The Secret Cabaret on some sort of media, as there has never been any official release of the program. Thankfully now Simon Drake has released The Secret Cabaret- The Directors Cut, due to copyright it only contains Simons Performances from the show, not the many linking features by Randi, Berglas and others. He has however added additional linking material that he says continues the feel of the show

I remember the show from my youth, in fact I still have some episodes on tape in my loft, and loved it, it was again one of my early influencers in magic. So it’s great to see that the official DVD is now available directly from Simon Drake. And for fans of the original show, Simon Drake also runs The House of Magic a show in the style of the Secret Cabaret at a secret location in London. Housed in a permanently themed 4,000 square foot Victorian residence, it’s open to the public on a once a month basis for shows by Simon Drake, drinks and dancing, as well as being available for private hire..

The Secret Cabaret is only available directly from Simon Drakes site - www.secretcabaret.com priced £24.99 plus postage and packing, it’s shippable worldwide.

Technorati Tags: DavidBerglas, HouseOfMagic, illusions, JamesRandi, MaxMaven, SecretCabaretDVD, Richiardi, Secret Cabaret, SecretCabaret, Simon Drake, SimonDrake

Very few new things happen in the magic world, if you look back, pretty much any effect can be traced back to it’s roots in the original tomes of magic. David Copperfield’s right hand man Chris Kenner, Aaron Fisher, Lee Asher, and others say they have come up with something new.. something that breaks the mould of magic, and they are running a little ‘treasure hunt’, well I say little, because at the moment it’s actually using up most of the various magic forums on the internets bandwidth in discussions, so little is probably the wrong word for it..

The WhatIsTheory11.com site runs new videos each Monday evening, seemingly innocent, the videos are full of quick flashes of numbers, binary and hex, hidden clues, hints and links onto other parts of the site.

It’s becoming a little bit like the Da Vinci Code for magicians, with the clues becoming ever more cryptic and complex.

So far nine pages have been uncovered; The Main Page, The Buck Twins Footage, The Las Vegas, Via Del, Via Del Nord, 444, Phantoms, Vasari, VIII, Darkness, and Light

For those wanting to watch frame by frame the various video’s can be found at the following locations: (you’ll need an adobe flash video FLV player) - I’ll move these to viddler at some point..

Main page Vid 1 Asher Main page Vid 2 Bucks Main page Vid 3 Kenner Main page Vid 4 Fisher Main page Vid 5 White Bucks hidden Vasari Chris Kenner bloopers VIII Anonymous Coin vid Phantoms Asher hidden Darkness Darkness/Light Houchin Video

People have also confirmed that following ringing the number obtained from some of the clues, they got phone calls back from Kenner with more clues, and some have received signed Jerrys Nuggets (cards!) and signed copies of Magicman Examiner..

I also have a complete copy of the site thats been exposed so far on a machine at home, hoping for some more ideas (some clues have been found in the HTML source)

So why Theory11 ?? Well in magic there are ten theories of magic:

Production, Vanish, Transposition, Transformation, Multiplication, Penetration, Restoration, Suspension, Levitation, Mentalism

Whatever Theory11.com is.. (which the assumption is that it’s some sort of underground magic store) the wait is over at 11 on the 31st of August 2007..

I’ll keep updating as I go but at the moment I’m stuck on ‘The Username is the beginning, the password is unknown…’ (which found by playing the audio section of the darkness and light videos backwards) and what the book ‘ A team of Rivals’ (ISBN - 0684824906 ) has to do with this…

Technorati Tags: AaronFisher, ChrisKenner, LeeAsher, Theory11, WhatIsTheory11

I’ve started playing with Ecto 3 Alpha on the Mac, I’ve been looking forward to it for sometime as I love Ecto version 2 on the mac (it’s not so cool on windows though).. Generally it’s pretty good Andy Piper has a good post on it, but I’m really hoping that there is a lot more coming.. namely the right click insert image from clip board

I use this functionality all the time in ecto 2 and I cant seem to see where it is in ecto 3, sure the auto upload of images to my blog is great, as is the auto fixing of html, but unless this is coming in a later release.. or I’m meant to implement this through the Ecto 3 scripting system, then I’m currently prefering Ecto 2 still..
Don’t get me wrong, Ecto 3 does seem to be a big step for Ecto Development but I’m feeling a bit uncomfortable with the use of it at present..
Categories and Tags seem a big confusing too.. they initially are all mixed up.. both categories and tags showing in one list.. if you add a tag.. the categories vanish.. and it took me sometime to work out that the search box at the bottom of the tag/category list had an all, Tags or Category option. I prefer the tabbing of Ecto 2 in that respect..

Having explored the URL helper a bit more it seems that selecting some text, and the using the URL helper almost recreates the functionality, in that I can highlight some text and pop the URL in (or it’s picked up from the clipboard) and it will replace the text with a hyperlink… although I’m still confused how I get the same old functionality for an image that I dont want uploaded to my blog (say from flickr etc)

I am giving Ecto 3 a change though.. I’m posting this from Ecto 3 alpha 3.0a15.. I think once it gets past alpha stage it will be a nice update to Ecto, and Adriaan does a great job of maintaining what I think is the best OSX blogging client in addition to his normal day job at Technorati

p.s.  I ended up having to post this from Ecto2, for some reason ecto 3 wanted to upload the image to my blog and then crashed.. even though the entry appeared in wordpress’ dashboard, it didn’t appear in the main blog.. I had to end up editing it in Ecto2 to fix it… go figure… I’ll try again with another post..

Technorati Tags: Apple, ecto, OSX, ecto3

We were feeling up for going out last night to the Spice Thames Valley 18th Birthday party.. The theme was 80’s, so I took that literally and decided to go through an aging process to fast track me the forward the odd 45 years or so..

Michelle decided to go the opposite direction and head back to the 80’s, big hair, lace gloves and all. Surprisingly both of us took the same amount of time to do our make-up!! It was a great party and we took a few photo’s and I also like this one

We’re feeling a little jaded this morning, me possibly down to the antibiotics, antihistamines and wine, on reflection possibly not a good combination.

We’re off to the cinema tonight, and an early night I think, although I’m feeling a lot younger this morning, I could have possibly got an OAP’s discount to see Harry Potter later on…

..next project is America for longleat center parcs..

So it’s been quiet this week, mainly as last weekend we decided to tackle the garden, which some help from some friends..

Now it seemed like a good idea and the 6 foot high grass, and weeds, and the brambles that seem to have almost taken over the 120 foot plus of garden were submitting to the trimmer, and mowers. However I’m allergic to insect bites, I blame my parents, as both of them are also reactional to the little buggers, at least four insects of some description decided I was breakfast, lunch and evening meal.

My arms swelled to twice their size (more in fact) my limbs ached like someone had just broken my arms in two, and I started to get a red tracer line up the inside of my arm along my veins..

Tuesday, when nothing seemed to be getting rid, I submitted and headed to the doctors, confirming a blood infection and allergic reaction to the bites.

The rest of the week I spent on strong antihistamines and antibiotics so combat the injections and swellings, plus pain killers. Thankfully I slept most of the week. We’re planning to go out tonight, to a fancy dress party in town, although I guess I’ll be on the non-alcoholic stuff as I’m still on the antibiotics..

I think I will be wrapping up and covering up tomorrow when we attack the garden again!!!

I’d like one of these, I’d like to replace our Mini Mac in the front round that we use to play DVD’s and music and videos with a nice small slim wireless N compatible Apple TV, but, and this in my opinion is a huge issue, there is no support for DVD’s.

sure before anyone shouts, I can rip the DVD into iTunes and play it from there, but I’d actually like to have my menu systems, and heavens forbid, just get a normal DVD and slide it into the system and play it direct from the shop/friend/rental place without having to wait for it to encode!

I think this is the only reason I’ve not got a Apple TV yet, and it seems like a glaring error on Apples part not to have a DVD slot in there.. There doesn’t even appear to be a breakout box supplied by anyone to get round it either..

Technorati Tags: Apple, AppleTV, DVD