It’s been a while since i got a twitter account, you read a couple of posts about twitter in the past but now i thought i should write about it once again. The first months i found it to be a bit boring so i mainly used it to send free sms text messages to my friends. Then twitter restricted the sms service to the US only so i stopped using it for a while. But now Twitter has become the Next Big Thing among the card guys. Almost everyone has already got an account and is having fun with it. Are you going to miss it? I’ve heard that sometimes people post tweets with links to exclusive videos you won’t be able to find elsewhere. You can use Twitter to tell your followers what are you doing , where have you been, how many drinks you had last night, when will your Vegas finish rendering your next video, what tv series are you watching, what flourish are you practicing, post interesting links to weird stuff, cheap card auctions …I’m going to make a list of the card guys i’m following that you might be interested in.

Want to join us? Get started at www.Twitter.com and start following us! If i’m missing someone please leave a comment and i’ll add you to the table

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email newsletter. You can also try Twitter if you want to know more about Alejandro Portela. Thanks for visiting!

Here is another Myles Nakouzi’s vlog video with Dan Buck (the first half of Dan and Dave) about “andthensome”, the sequel dvd to The Trilogy, they decided to make it TheCuso.info exclusive so here it is!

Not many information about the dvd but you can watch them enjoying their donuts as they reveal their Jerry’s Nugget’s source dealer, damn bastards!

As you can see I’ve been messing around with the design of the site, it’s almost 6am and i should go to get some sleep now.

I’m not sure if this is going to be the one I will keep but i would like to hear your opinions anyway.

Making a thumbnail for every post is a bloody tough job considering there are like 700 published so it would take me a while.

The design looks clear and easy to navigate, i have to do a lot of tweaks to it but I think it can be decent.

Please tell me what to include and if you prefer the old one better but please don’t refer to the logo or minor bugs, they will be fixed as soon as I can.

I’ll keep working tomorrow.

Thanks for reading guys,

Alejandro

These playing cards were supposedly printed in the 70′s for the gaming tables, but never saw any ‘real action’. They were immediately sold in the gift store thereafter. The classic Jerry’s Nugget playing cards were made from top of the line US Playing Card Company card stock, that is not available today, which makes the cards much thicker. The U.S.P.C. also used a chemical finish then, which is also not available today – due to environmental reasons.

Jerry’s Nugget playing cards were printed in Cincinnati, Ohio, and then were driven to the North Las Vegascasino via trucks where they sat in storage for many years. The highly prized playing card eventually sold out in the summer of 1999. Jerry’s Nugget Casino does not have any plans to reprint them either.

Dai Vernon, Larry Jennings, Ed Marlo, Lee Asher, Frank Simon, Chris Kenner, Earl Nelson, and many other notable magicians have been seen playing with Jerry’s Nugget playing cards. The playing cards are stiff, hold their form, and are easily manipulated. Flourishers have taken a liking to these pasteboards as well. [...]

You can read more or edit the content in the wiki page here: Jerry’s Nugget Cards at Wikipedia.
Here are some ebay auctions ending within two days:

I’ve just installed a new WordPress plugin that allows users to rate the posts, displays the total number of votes and the average rating for each one.

WP-PostRatings will hopefuly help me to select the topics or videos you like more and will be a great tool for upcoming competitions and contests.

Now it’s time to dive in the archives and start rating the good old posts, i will blog the top rated ones every once in a while so now it’s your chance to exhume the best videos, articles and interviews.

Do you want to be featured again in the front page? Tell your friends to rate your videos.

What do you think about this? Leave a comment and click any number of stars.

-Alejandro

Cardshark88, YouTube’s #1 “card guru” with over 4200 subscribers and founder of The3c has put up a video in which he reveals his identity and the keys to his unnatural “success”.

A funny and long video that you might be interested in watching if you want to know more about what’s going on in the parallel cardistry scene.

No cards involved at all in this video but you will get some answers. If you have any questions leave them in the comments section and he’ll come here to discuss them with us.

“Today we’re rolling out a big new feature: Vimeo Groups.

So, what’s a group? It’s a way for mini-communities to share videos within Vimeo. Groups makes it easy to get a bunch of contributors together and upload directly into a group, then have conversations entirely contained within that group. You can add forums, share calendars, photos, and even music with members of the group. And, most importantly, we’ve added six really killer themes so you can take customization to a whole new level.

Some of you might have noticed Groups shares a lot of functionality with Channels. The best way to differentiate the two is that Groups is for lots of people to collaborate and contribute and Channels is for individuals to showcase a bunch of videos the way they want. If you think your Channel is better suited as a Group you can convert it to a Group by going to your Channels settings page, but be warned, there is no going back! In the coming months we’ll be building Channels 2.0, which is going to remove some features better suited for Groups (like forums and calendar) and add some Channels-only features, like tools to change the order and display style of videos.”

by Andrew Pile June 17th, 2008

The Cardistry Group

I have created the official CARDISTRY GROUP at Vimeo and i want you guys in. As you have seen, videos at Vimeo look much better in the blog since they are big and “HD ready”. Come join us and share your good quality videos in the group.

-Alejandro Portela

The deadline has come and all the videos are already submitted. Now it’s time for us to judge them and find the winners.

I’ll be posting some of the videos here in the blog but if you want to watch them go to the new media section at themagicreview.

Here is one i’ve been looking up to ever since i knew he was entering the competition:

Brendan Conner – Naffstyle

If you want to know more about the competition rules and the prizes go to www.twozwozer.blogspot.com

Youtube has just released a new feature that could change the way we make tutorials. Here is the info:

Video Annotations are a new way for you to add interactive commentary to your videos! Use them to:

• Add background information about the video.
• Create stories with multiple possibilities (viewers click to choose the next scene)
• Link to related YouTube videos, channels, or search results from within a video
• All of the above!

You control what the annotations say, where they appear on the video, and when they appear and disappear.

How do I get started?

Please visit our Help Center for more information on Video Annotations.

Are there examples?

The Worlds Best Card Magic Teleport Trick by TheCuso with explanation!

What else should I know?

Annotations, once published, are shown by default. You can turn them off while watching a video through the player menu—just click the button on the bottom right of the video player.

Video annotations are available now as a “beta” feature. We’re working hard to get this out of beta and, once we do, annotations will support more languages (not just English) and appear on videos embedded in other websites.

I met up with this guy last weekend and we had a nice little jam in a classy café here in Vigo.
He is now a good friend of mine and he also has a blog so let me introduce him to you…
From Guimarães, Portugal…

Marinho, aka V4Viktory.

Gotta love those Split Spades Lions…

Hey guys it’s being a very busy week for me so that’s why you won’t see many updates, probably until weekend. I won’t even be around msn or mebeam so if you want to reach me please send me an email to thecuso@gmail.com.

All of you have seen the numerous spam comments that the blog has been receiving but don’t worry, i think i have found a way to fix the problem, or at least cut them down a bit.

Once again, sorry for the lack of updates and i would really appreciate if you could send me the lastest news to my email so that i could post them under your name, whether they are videos, articles or whatever you think would fit in the blog.

My french friend Mattgic might be posting some news every now and then as well as John Aragi (Aceking) but i would really want you to help us don’t let the blog die.

Thanks for your understanding and support in advance.

 Yours,

Alejandro Portela, aka TheCuso

Time for a contest.

Here’s the deal. What Matt (Blink) and Tom (Twozwozer) would like you all to do is to make a video. Not just any video, a video showing us your style.

Your style of Magic Or Flourishing.

Here are the rules:

• The video theme must be about “Your Style”
• The video must be no longer than 3 minutes long.
• The video title must be just one word describing “Your Style”
• The video can include both Magic and Flourishing
• The video must be family friendly.

And now, the prize for the winner:

• 12 of David Blaine’s new ‘Lions’ of your colour choice (Or mixed)
• 1 DVD Copy of ‘Control’ by Wayne Houchin
• 6 Brown Wynn Decks
• 1 WH & DG Ultragaff Deck

All of the above is up for grabs, and dependant on the amount of entries, 2nd and 3rd Prizes will also be given.

ENTRY DATE CLOSES MAY 31st 11.59pm EST
Check out www.themagicreview.com & www.twozwozer.blogspot.comfor more information
So get out there and start filming!

Thanks,
Matty

—-

Whenever you have your video leave the link to it in the comments please.

Those of you that have been following the discussions in the comments section of my previous post know that I received two emails from Superhandz (De’vo) in which he asked me to remove the content concerning these files because what’s in them is protected with copyright of his company.

I’ve been told not to publish these two emails (and I won’t) but I’ll sum them up for you to understand my position:

• He said that I commited ILLEGAL acts against himself and his company and told me to delete them or I would be in BIG trouble.

• He told me that he retirieved my personal information and my website server’s and he would take actions against me if I didn’t do what he said.

• He’s been kind enough to let me rectify with time because he said he would normally have had my site shut down first and go after me in court.

• As for now i have removed the link to the podcast’s episode 2 because there where some screens of the saved forum pages which he claimed to have the copyright to.

After some days of deliberation and talking to many people directly involved in this issue as well as others who have been ruling blogs and websites for years and have had enough experience with laws, copyright, privacy and security over the internet, I’ve finally come up with a decision.

As a blogger, I’m not going to host or promote these files in any way and won’t even say if they are, in fact, real or fake. I’ll keep this information for myself and my private conversations with other people in a different place than a forum, because I’ve learned with this that the internet is not a place to keep your privacy intact.

However, for those of you that might think I’m backing out, I want to let you know that my job in this field has been succesfuly completed.

Since the beginning, my main motivation was to share with my readers, both new and old, that there are some Handlordz saved webpages and files regarding the behaviour of the, as they like to call him, XCM Leader De’vo vom Schattenreich, that have been leaked and are in the hands of many people now.

I, as a blogger, never shared in public if I support what is in them or if they have been edited or left intact. I don’t have the files in other place than in my head for what I’ve read in them, somewhere, somehow. And, as I said, they won’t be posted in this blog to respect the laws.

However, as I also said, my job is complete up to this point because the information about the existence of these files has been made public and now NO ONE can stop them from being spread all over the internet.

I’m sure you won’t see any link to them in the blogs or forums, but there will always be illegal or alternative ways of sharing them like p2p networks, public file hostings like rapidshare, megaupload, zshare, yousendit… public chatrooms, private msn conversations, emails, PM’s at places like myspace and facebook and so on.

I don’t need to suggest, nor will I, for people to start sending these files around because I know this will be automatically done.

So, as a human being and card flourisher, I’ve learned a lot through this experience and now I know who to trust and who to give my money to in the future.

There will be no more posts about Superhandz / Handlordz unless I’m told to publish them by the staff and I won’t make any reviews or free advertising of their products or events as I’ve been doing for other companies.

If they want to stay apart and don’t want to see us all united, that’s fine with me – it’s their loss.

I want to give big thanks once again to all of you that participated, HLers or not, for sharing your opinions and being so kind and respectful. You have my regards, and I’ll keep praying for a united world for our beloved Art.

I’ll leave the comments open here and I hope you guys understand my position.

-Alejandro Portela,
also known as TheCuso.

Well here is an interesting thing i came across a couple of days ago .. as some of you know when you subscribe to people on Youtube, every time they post a new video you get a notice of the video on the youtube front page. Which is a very helpful feature rather than going through all the people you are subscribed to and seeing if they have anything new up on their accounts. Now what if you could have your favorite accounts on youtube updated straight into your ipod?

I was looking around http://Vixy.net and noticed that they have something called “YouTube Podcaster” which allows you to create a podcast feed. So the feed will automatically update you on the videos through RSS or Itunes. You can see a demo of what i am talking about here:

so after you see the video you will get what I’m about to describe to you … go to the Youtube account that you want (for this example I”m using Richard’s) and click on the videos on that account to see the list of all that person has posted.

http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=richkzad

Now you copy the link above and post it on http://vixy.net/podcaster/ .. and click “Make a Feed” which will give you 2 options an Itunes feed and an RSS feed. Open up Itunes and then drag and drop the Itunes feed into the Podcast section of Itunes. Now all of the videos that are uploaded by Richard will be automatically downloaded into Itunes for you in .mp4 format so that you can have them on your ipod in the future.

-C3rb3rus at Decknique

Ok guys, i’ve opened this poll because I want to see if I’d get your support if I happened to post the HL Files / De’vo Behind the Scenes / Handlordz exposed / De’ vinci code / whatever, here in the blog.

I do this to cover my back in case I end up with a dagger stabbed in my neck or deadly bitten by a King Cobra.

I’m not sure if this is going to do me any good or any bad, i just happen to have the files as many other people do and i thought that it would be good to open people’s eyes.

I wouldn’t do this for any personal profit. I wouldn’t do this for revenge, i didn’t get banned or anything. I wouldn’t do this to ruin anyone’s career.

I’d do this for the pure and objective information about the history of our Art.

I want you guys to participate in the comments section of this post and encourage people that have been involved to do it aswell.

I’d also like to see some Handlordz / Superhandz people comment here in a friendly way.

I know these are private conversations and stuff but there are some articles that are interesting. To name one that caught my attention the “Pro XCMers vs Kutkiddies” thread.

I think this whole thing won’t end up splitting us more but can be the definitive way to join and unite everyone that share the love of playing card flourishing and manipulation, xtreme or not.

I’d like to see the big names contributing with their thoughts without disrespecting anyone and talking like if we were adults for once.

Of course if you are against this initiative i’d suggest you to contact me to thecuso@gmail.com before trying to hack the site or anything like that.

Let’s be friends and we will all buy your dvds and products in the future.
Having enemies doesn’t lead anywhere, keep this in mind.

Thanks for reading and now go post a comment.

Alejandro

Bone Ho was born in the Southern part of Vietnam and grew up in a small family. Being motherless at only 4 months old, gave Bone Ho the strength to strive and to never stop at what he sets his mind on. Starting performing magic when he was 10 years old, the first trick that Bone Ho ever learnt was a penetration effect with 2 matchsticks. Bone Ho travelled abroad in 2001 and lived for 5 years in Singapore. Since then, he has met and performed to many artists all around the world, an experience that gave him the inspiration to forever stay with the art.

Check out Bone Ho’s Anaconda Dribble DVD

Bone Ho always has a dream to bring his magic closer to the people in the country of his own – Vietnam.
To make his dream come true, in 2007, Bone Ho went back to Vietnam and started traveling throughout the country, fulfilling his first chapter of a lifetime project called “I’mpossible”.

The Legendary Bone Ho is releasing his very own website on 15th of April.
BoneHo.com will not be a forum and he will NOT sell any DVD yet.
However there are some goodies for us card lovers to celebrate the release…

Check out Bone Ho’s Anaconda Dribble DVD

-HOTSTONES Tutorial and TOP Tutorial taught and performed by the evil vampire himself.

-10 Hot high quality Wallpapers for download.

-10 Trailers with live performances of his shows and some other stuff that he doesn’t want to reveal yet.

There will also be a forum apart of the site called Bonehofanclub.com for you guys to discuss and talk to him.
Will this be the next cheaterscheater? is up to you.

If you can’t wait to know more about Bone you can check the interview we made a while back. TheCuso interviews Bone Ho

Stay tunned for more updates and subscribe to the feed or the email newsletter if you didn’t already.

WordPress 2.5 upgrade
I’ve just upgraded the blogging system to wordpress 2.5 and it works like a charm.
The install process was really easy using the WordPress Automatic upgrade plugin and I didn’t have any problems with it, takes like 10 mins to download and replace the files but it is worthy.
It has a lot of new features and the dashboard got a nice redesign, check it out if you are already using wordpress or download it for free if you are still a blogger/blogspot user.

Avatars in your comments
If you want to use an avatar in your blog comments you have to go to Gravatar and sign up for yours for free.
A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.
The good thing is that whenever anyone clicks on your avatar or name they’ll be redirected to any url at your choice.
If you dont have a blog or a website you can use your youtube channel, myspace or facebook account or whatever you want, so the more you comment the more exposure you get.

Entrecard Widget
This is mostly for bloggers. Entrecard is a free 125×125 banner exchange system that im testing on top of the sidebar. Every day a new blog ad will show up there. If you have a blog or you plan to do one I would highly suggest you to give it a try because it is driving me a lot of incoming traffic every day.

A couple of months ago i signed up for twitter, a micro blogging system that allows you to instantly tell people what are you doing during every second of your dull life.

I found a video at youtube created by the guys at commoncraft that explains what is twitter and how it works and i thought you would like to take a look at it.

I suggest you to sign up for an account to see how funny and addictive it is. We could use it to let other flourishers know what we are practicing, recording, editing… Well, give it a try and “follow me” at www.twitter.com/thecuso.