7 ms·

Library of Juggling

140 points by tontony 8mo ago

bartonfink 8mo ago
[flagged]
xnorswap 8mo ago
I find it fascinating that it uses a 2-9 scale to grade difficulty. The rating is described as a rating "1 - 10" But every trick is actually graded 2 to 9. ( https://libraryofjuggling.com/TricksByDifficulty.html https://libraryofjuggling.com/TricksByDifficulty.html ) Presumably no-one ever wanted to define a grade 1, just in case an easier one was discovered, and similarly for 10.
- IAmBroom 8mo ago
  Well, do we really even need to discuss juggling 1? I just call that tossing the ball around...
  - pavel_lishin 8mo ago
    > do we really even need to discuss juggling 1? When I was learning to juggle, that was the first step - and for someone who's never really tried to juggle, or toss a ball up and down in a very consistent way, it's surprisingly hard. Honestly, probably not a 1 on the scale.
thom 8mo ago
Juggling is one of hobbies with the highest ratios of being able to impress random people versus the actual effort you have to put in, and I generally find I never forget 3-ball stuff I learned as a kid. It's also as good as a long walk for getting you out of your head when needed. Shout out to anyone that remembers the Mushy Pea juggling shop in Manchester many years ago, where I learned all sorts of circus skills.
- c22 8mo ago
  I've also found it to be a magical incantation to silence crying babies. Sometimes I'll quickly flash (juggle for one round) three random objects to shut up a baby in public and their parents don't even notice.
- LanceH 8mo ago
  Juggling 3 is a skill that is way easier than people think until they do it. But the very next question is will be, "how many can you juggle?" as they apparently think juggling 4 is just 33% more difficult than 3.
  - vunderba 8mo ago
    It’s also fun that you can tweak it without the layperson even noticing the change in relative difficulty. Cascade pattern = easy difficulty Shower pattern = normal difficulty Box pattern = hard difficulty As someone who loves to run their hands up and down in the piano in grand sweeping arpeggios, I'm a huge fan of patterns where the perceived difficulty is higher than the actual difficulty.
  - Someone 8mo ago
    For those wondering: to juggle 4 balls, you either have to decrease the time between catching a ball and throwing it again or increase the time a ball is in the air. Unless you start throwing feathers or balloons, the latter requires you throw higher. That requires you to either spend more time launching them up (bad for the ‘decrease time between catching and throwing’) or use more force (bad for throwing accuracy. Also, even assuming you juggle 4 balls keeping “time in hand” equal, you have to throw it higher by a factor of (4/3)². That’s almost 2. And even if you manage to make those throws with the same accuracy in angles, the errors in location by the time you catch the balls scale by the same factor.
    - dsclough 8mo ago
      In my experience people can’t even tell how many balls you’re juggling after 3. 4, 5, 6, 7 all get “how many balls is that”, silly stuff like 3 ball factory blows more minds than 5 ball site swaps
postsantum 8mo ago
As a Java developer, I recommend Factory trick. Simple, but impresses people the most https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/Factory.html https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/Factory.htm...
- ronjouch 8mo ago
  Sadly, doing the trick with a single ball yields a FactorySingleton and scores an extra Java point, but doesn’t impress as much. We can’t have nice things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .
mfsch 8mo ago
Perhaps of interest: I came across this retrospective of the author of that site and how he moved it to static hosting a couple of years ago [1]. I would also say that this library covers more or less the “lower half” of solo ball juggling in terms of difficulty. With lower ball counts (say ≤ 4), there are a lot of these patterns that have complex arm movements and can be difficult to explain with words, so having such a listing with animations and step-by-step instructions is very valuable. Starting with 4 balls, there’s less and less time for moving your arms around and it is more about the sequence of heights of the throws, which are well described with just their numeric “siteswap” pattern and you can learn them just from knowing the number sequence. The site has only the most basic of those (e.g. 534) and even very common 4-ball (7531, 633) patterns are missing with hardly anything beyond that. [1]: https://ianconvy.github.io/projects/other/libraryofjuggling/libraryofjuggling.html https://ianconvy.github.io/projects/other/libraryofjuggling/...
ragazzina 8mo ago
The website is great, but I find the lack of hyperlinks maddening.
- stronglikedan 8mo ago
  Are we looking at the same website? The one I'm looking at is like 40% hyperlinks.
  - ragazzina 8mo ago
    I click on Box pattern. It says that before trying the Box, one should master the HalfBox pattern. I want to see how the HalfBox pattern looks like, so I try to click on HalfBox, but it's not a hyperlink. So I look to the left, where Box is, and try to look for HalfBox under Box. It's not there (it's not even under the letter H, because it's under the number 441). On the Box page, HalfBox is in a square frame on the top-right. If wikipedia were like this it would be unusable.
flyosity 8mo ago
What a great website aesthetic, takes me way back to when the Internet felt a lot smaller.
- nephihaha 8mo ago
  It takes me back to a time when I could find a wide variety of websites online. I love this kind of thing... Not something I would deliberately look for but great to stumble across it.
pavel_lishin 8mo ago
Those animations - the stick figures moving red balls - were all over Tumblr a few months ago, with people creating all sorts of interesting animations out of them. You can find them by searching for "juggling lab".
columk 8mo ago
I remember happily going through these each day after school until I could do everything. There wasn't much on YouTube at the time but I also think YouTube is a worse resource for pretty much all of these simple tricks. All you need is a slow loop to learn any ball juggling trick. There was also a similar site that let you input siteswaps. The noob gains once you get comfortable with 3 balls are addictive, compared to later patterns or tricks that can take hours, days or even weeks to pick up.
tomcam 8mo ago
Usage map indicates that either Alaska is a heretofore undiscovered hotbed of juggling or Cloudflare analytics are countrywide

140 points by tontony 8mo ago

[flagged]

I find it fascinating that it uses a 2-9 scale to grade difficulty. The rating is described as a rating "1 - 10" But every trick is actually graded 2 to 9. ( https://libraryofjuggling.com/TricksByDifficulty.html https://libraryofjuggling.com/TricksByDifficulty.html ) Presumably no-one ever wanted to define a grade 1, just in case an easier one was discovered, and similarly for 10.

IAmBroom 8mo ago
Well, do we really even need to discuss juggling 1? I just call that tossing the ball around...
- pavel_lishin 8mo ago
  > do we really even need to discuss juggling 1? When I was learning to juggle, that was the first step - and for someone who's never really tried to juggle, or toss a ball up and down in a very consistent way, it's surprisingly hard. Honestly, probably not a 1 on the scale.

thom 8mo ago

Juggling is one of hobbies with the highest ratios of being able to impress random people versus the actual effort you have to put in, and I generally find I never forget 3-ball stuff I learned as a kid. It's also as good as a long walk for getting you out of your head when needed. Shout out to anyone that remembers the Mushy Pea juggling shop in Manchester many years ago, where I learned all sorts of circus skills.

c22 8mo ago
I've also found it to be a magical incantation to silence crying babies. Sometimes I'll quickly flash (juggle for one round) three random objects to shut up a baby in public and their parents don't even notice.
LanceH 8mo ago
Juggling 3 is a skill that is way easier than people think until they do it. But the very next question is will be, "how many can you juggle?" as they apparently think juggling 4 is just 33% more difficult than 3.
- vunderba 8mo ago
  It’s also fun that you can tweak it without the layperson even noticing the change in relative difficulty. Cascade pattern = easy difficulty Shower pattern = normal difficulty Box pattern = hard difficulty As someone who loves to run their hands up and down in the piano in grand sweeping arpeggios, I'm a huge fan of patterns where the perceived difficulty is higher than the actual difficulty.
- Someone 8mo ago
  For those wondering: to juggle 4 balls, you either have to decrease the time between catching a ball and throwing it again or increase the time a ball is in the air. Unless you start throwing feathers or balloons, the latter requires you throw higher. That requires you to either spend more time launching them up (bad for the ‘decrease time between catching and throwing’) or use more force (bad for throwing accuracy. Also, even assuming you juggle 4 balls keeping “time in hand” equal, you have to throw it higher by a factor of (4/3)². That’s almost 2. And even if you manage to make those throws with the same accuracy in angles, the errors in location by the time you catch the balls scale by the same factor.
  - dsclough 8mo ago
    In my experience people can’t even tell how many balls you’re juggling after 3. 4, 5, 6, 7 all get “how many balls is that”, silly stuff like 3 ball factory blows more minds than 5 ball site swaps

postsantum 8mo ago

As a Java developer, I recommend Factory trick. Simple, but impresses people the most https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/Factory.html https://libraryofjuggling.com/Tricks/3balltricks/Factory.htm...

ronjouch 8mo ago
Sadly, doing the trick with a single ball yields a FactorySingleton and scores an extra Java point, but doesn’t impress as much. We can’t have nice things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ .

mfsch 8mo ago

Perhaps of interest: I came across this retrospective of the author of that site and how he moved it to static hosting a couple of years ago [1]. I would also say that this library covers more or less the “lower half” of solo ball juggling in terms of difficulty. With lower ball counts (say ≤ 4), there are a lot of these patterns that have complex arm movements and can be difficult to explain with words, so having such a listing with animations and step-by-step instructions is very valuable. Starting with 4 balls, there’s less and less time for moving your arms around and it is more about the sequence of heights of the throws, which are well described with just their numeric “siteswap” pattern and you can learn them just from knowing the number sequence. The site has only the most basic of those (e.g. 534) and even very common 4-ball (7531, 633) patterns are missing with hardly anything beyond that. [1]: https://ianconvy.github.io/projects/other/libraryofjuggling/libraryofjuggling.html https://ianconvy.github.io/projects/other/libraryofjuggling/...

ragazzina 8mo ago

The website is great, but I find the lack of hyperlinks maddening.

stronglikedan 8mo ago
Are we looking at the same website? The one I'm looking at is like 40% hyperlinks.
- ragazzina 8mo ago
  I click on Box pattern. It says that before trying the Box, one should master the HalfBox pattern. I want to see how the HalfBox pattern looks like, so I try to click on HalfBox, but it's not a hyperlink. So I look to the left, where Box is, and try to look for HalfBox under Box. It's not there (it's not even under the letter H, because it's under the number 441). On the Box page, HalfBox is in a square frame on the top-right. If wikipedia were like this it would be unusable.

flyosity 8mo ago

What a great website aesthetic, takes me way back to when the Internet felt a lot smaller.

nephihaha 8mo ago
It takes me back to a time when I could find a wide variety of websites online. I love this kind of thing... Not something I would deliberately look for but great to stumble across it.

pavel_lishin 8mo ago

Those animations - the stick figures moving red balls - were all over Tumblr a few months ago, with people creating all sorts of interesting animations out of them. You can find them by searching for "juggling lab".

columk 8mo ago

I remember happily going through these each day after school until I could do everything. There wasn't much on YouTube at the time but I also think YouTube is a worse resource for pretty much all of these simple tricks. All you need is a slow loop to learn any ball juggling trick. There was also a similar site that let you input siteswaps. The noob gains once you get comfortable with 3 balls are addictive, compared to later patterns or tricks that can take hours, days or even weeks to pick up.

tomcam 8mo ago

Usage map indicates that either Alaska is a heretofore undiscovered hotbed of juggling or Cloudflare analytics are countrywide