Early in my career, when I was working on Unix systems I started collecting fortunes, quotations, etc and put them into a “fortune” program. Click the button below to see a new fortune.

Old magician who likes old cars, and old whisky
Early in my career, when I was working on Unix systems I started collecting fortunes, quotations, etc and put them into a “fortune” program. Click the button below to see a new fortune.
In 2013, when I was working with HB Design, I had my personal website hosted on a company web server. That server that was used for hosting employee websites has long since been decommission, and between that and my retirement the HTML table generator web tool that I wrote disappeared.
Now with my new site up I found that the link to the table generator was broken. After looking through all of my backups and archive files, and not finding the code, I decided to try the Way Back Machine and I found the code. Which illustrates how hard it is to lose a web page on the internet.
I was able to copy the source code off the Way Back Machine and, with some simple edits to remove code that the Way Back Machine inserted into the archived page, was able to recreate the tool on this web site.

You can play with the table generator at https://robertjwallace.com///tablegen
I just setup WordPress on Amazons EC2 service. I didn’t find a good set of instructions on how to do it, but pieced together the following from various sources. Note that my PC is Linux based.
Continue reading “Setting up WordPress on AWS”In a linux terminal on the awm ec2 VM, enter the following commands:
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &
mysql -uroot
use mysql;
update user set authentication_string=PASSWORD("mynewpassword") where User='root';
flush privileges;
quit
The four aces are fairly inserted into the fanned deck, in different locations. The fan is closed and the deck is cut, then shuffled twice. At the completion of the second shuffle, all four aces are on the top of the deck.
Continue reading “Fan control”Effect:
Four aces are displayed on top of the deck. They are turned face down and inserted (and left protruding) in the front of the deck in different locations. The deck is turned face up to display the aces, then turned face down and the aces are pushed flush into the deck. The deck is then cut and shuffled once. The four aces are back on top of the deck. An alternative is a faux demonstration of a center deal.
Continue reading “Bluff Shift, bluff center”Some of the most magical effects are effects that have an element of luck involved. While such effects are often impossible to repeat, they are also impossible for the audience to figure out. They are effects that build reputations.
Continue reading “Using Luck….”If you want to learn to use a memorized deck stack such as the Aronson stack then you can use my Faro shuffle simulator as a training aid.
Continue reading “Memorize deck tool”I worked for Intel Corporation from June 1994 to June 1998 (approx.) I eventually came to my senses and left the company. When I first started working there I was in the Supercomputer Systems Division (SSD) and published this page which has been saved Jan. 9th 1997 by the Internet Archive:
https://web.archive.org/web/19970109235501/http://ssd.intel.com/
This is not a tutorial on the double lift, there are a lot of sources for that already. Instead this is a look at how lay people turn over a card compared to how magicians turn over a card.
Continue reading “Double Lift”