Until March... — The Jerx

This is the final post of February. Posting resumes on Monday, March 4th.

The next newsletter will be coming out on Sunday, March 3rd.

If you’re a supporter at the Rich Uncle Millionaire level, and you have an ad to place in this month’s newsletter, try to get it to me by the end of the month. It’s leap year, so you have an extra day.

Speaking of Leap Day. As that beloved movie, Leap Dave Williams taught us, “nothing that happens on leap day counts.”

You can prove this to someone on Leap Day.

In the final minutes before March 1st, shuffle up a deck, light a match, and tear up a card (ideally a $500,000 baseball card, if you can get one). When the clock strikes midnight, show that nothing you did mattered. The deck is unshuffled, the match is unlit, and the card is restored.

For those of you looking for a digital way to track the effects in your magic library, Eli “Quarter Horse” Bosnick sent along this. I’ll let him explain it in his own words:

Soooooo here’s a project I’ve been working on for just over two months now. A way to digitally organize my magic collection. If you're interested, I’d like to gift my work to you and your readers because my GOD this was a lot of work and someone should benefit but me:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qLuUqW2N8srwiHxjgN0yDO1HqoiqV--AN74dh7QTEP8/edit?usp=sharing

So you’ll be able to see it on the sheet but the main page is your basic data entry page with spots for creator title, time stamp, page number etc.

(I’ll note that most of my collection at this point is digital so the spot for a hyperlink would be for the actual location on my google drive.)

Where it gets really exciting is the categories.

As you can see on the right hand side of the sheet there are dropdown menus for categories, sub categories, all the way down six levels. [Andy’s Note: You won’t see those as dropdowns until you make a copy of the spreadsheet to be able to edit for your own purposes. Go to File -> Make a Copy.]

If they look familiar its because I personally scraped each and every category and subcategory from the conjuring archive (with Denis’ generous permission).

I figure if anyone knows how to categorize magic it's Denis so why not use his system? Plus if I have a book that Denis has done I can just copy and paste his results into my entry sheet and save myself the time.

So here’s the cool thing about those dropdowns. They now allow the entire sheet to be searchable. So if you then click over to the filter TAB [at the bottom of the sheet] and search for those filters EVERYTHING you enter shows up in the box below it.

Its the easiest way I thought of to filter an extensive collection and after all that work I wanted to spread the love. I hope you and your readers enjoy

Andy here again. To understand the spreadsheet, you can just start replacing the holder text on the first tab with information from tricks in your actual library, and I think you’ll figure it out.

This would (most likely) be overkill for tracking your repertoire. Even a 100-trick repertoire doesn’t need this much granularity. But if you want to categorize everything in your magic collection, this is a great idea.

If you want to use something similar to track just your repertoire, you could take a look at the structure of how the spreadsheet is set up, douche out the categories you don’t need and just keep/make up your own, much simpler list of categories and sub categories.

Thanks, Eli!

In Tuesday’s post, I was talking where you could place the words used in the Joshua Quinn effect and I mentioned you could have them on a poster, in an email, or on a game of Scrabble. I was going to say you could have them in a poem you read to your friend. And I went to ChatGPT to write up the poem for me, because I wasn’t going to waste my time trying to write a poem for something that I just wanted to use as a quick illustration. Here’s my actual chat with that fucking stupid machine.

Write a five line poem where the last word in the first line is "aisle," the last word in the second line is "pickup" the last word in the third line is "hey" the last word in the fourth line is "purple" and the last word in the fifth line is "lane."

Down the grocery aisle, searching with a smile,
She caught his gaze, a chance encounter, a quick pickup,
Their eyes met, a silent exchange, a hopeful hey,
In a world painted with passion, shades of royal purple,
Hand in hand, they stroll down love's winding lane.

What did I ask the first line to end with?

My apologies for the mistake. You asked for the first line to end with "aisle." Here's the corrected version:

Down the wedding aisle, adorned in white and style,

What does that line end with?

The first line ends with "aisle."

The one you just wrote does?

No, it doesn't. I apologize for the oversight. Let me correct it:

Down the wedding aisle, adorned in lace and smile,

What did I ask the first line to end in and what does what you wrote just end in?

You asked for the first line to end with "aisle." However, the line I provided ends with "smile." I apologize for the mistake. Here's the corrected version:

Down the grocery aisle, searching with a smile,

Did you make the same mistake again?

Yes, I apologize once again for the oversight. The line I provided ends with "smile," not "aisle." Let me correct it:

Down the wedding aisle, adorned in grace and style,

Are you allergic to ending the first line with the word "aisle"?

My sincere apologies for the oversight. Let me rectify that mistake:

Down the wedding aisle, adorned in flowers, a sight worthwhile,

I beg of you, just write a sentence that ends with the word "aisle."

Of course, my apologies for the oversight. Here's a sentence that ends with "aisle":

She walked down the grocery aisle, contemplating her dinner choices.

Write a sentence where the word "aisle" appears right before the period.

Certainly:

Down the aisle, she strolled with aisle.

That sentence doesn't make sense

You're correct, I apologize for the oversight. Let me correct that for you:

Down the aisle, she strolled with a smile.

are you fucking braindead?

I apologize if my responses have not met your expectations. If you have any further questions or need assistance, please feel free to ask, and I'll do my best to help.