Many people asked for a tutorial on Isolations, and here it is. Pretty straight forwards once you get a sense for it... but yes, it can take a lot of practice to do it well :)

The videos are going to roll in for a while. Remember to send your requests soon, as Jocelyn goes home in two weeks!

Hey, check it out, we finished our flowtoys.com: video. These are my favorite LED poi, produced by the amazing Sean and Prisna. (Yes, this is what we are using in most of those photos). This is exciting as they've signed me up as an affiliate member, so if you click through and buy something, I get a percentage, which puts me all the closer to getting my own video camera! Oh, and they are selling and wholesaling our DVDs in North America so it is overall very exciting :)

The flowlights were designed from scratch by Sean and Prisna and co. This took a lot of vision, time, money, and love. I'm quite inspired that people from my own circle of friends are doing this kind of production, and I am hoping that I can help rally the community behind them (which will be easy as long as they keep making the best toys.)

The flowlights replace the “streetlights” that used to go inside the flowtoys casings, but the flowlights are brighter, much more durable, and they have better strobing options, designed specifically for spinning.

They also have... removable/rechargeable batteries! In fact, they refuse to sell disposable batteries altogether. Each flowlight takes a single AAA battery, which means you can have extra batteries when you're at a festival. They're using some high-tech circuitry so the lights stay bright the whole charge.

They are sold with tube shells in various lengths, so you can have various lengths of poi, wands, staffs, etc. (We admit that we're looking forwards to Soft covers, which are coming in a few months.)

And the BONUS SURPRISE FEATURE: Flowlights make great handles!

Need I say more?

Firstly: If you go to the poi videos page you will find Under The Legs, 5-beat-weaves, and of course superduperuberlooping.

I write from Halifax, my home town. This is my first visit in two years and I'm awash with memories. I'm also awash with loot! My parents decided to be patrons of the arts and I have a new external hard drive and a better suitcase. That leaves a new laptop and a video camera as the remaining pieces of gear on my wish list :)

So very much has happened since I last wrote. Jocelyn and I flew to Play Festival in England at the end of July. We then spent a week visiting Cole and Lisa in London, during which time we filmed a couple of tutorial videos. Then we went to Poland for a fire festival, then to Austria to visit Andy and to film more tutorials, then to Switzerland to visit my friends Adrian and Naomi, and then to Cortona to an amazing science/spirituality convention, and then I flew home to Halifax and Jocelyn went back to Switzerland to work on the videos.

It's all been very... different than what I thought it would be. I imagined it would be easier to find time and locations to film the tutorials... but time is a funny thing and there were a lot of logistics to deal with. We definitely got some great material though, and we'll be rolling out new videos for the next few weeks.

On Sunday I go back to Germany. I'll be in Europe for about six-eight weeks and then I'll return to Bali for about six months. I am once again spreading word to see who wants to join for a winter of poi investigations. A few of my favorite spinners have once again decided to join me so here we go!

Regarding videos, we've finally begun to put up new tutorials! Go to the videos section and you'll already see three new videos from this summer, and many more will follow over the coming weeks. If you like what you see please do remember to spread the word :)

Peace and poi,

Nick

Jocelyn and I flew to Singapore for several days to get new Visas, to visit our friend Johari, and to make use of high-speed internet and telephones that work. Singapore is fun if you have a friend to show you around.

Uberevents.org is a new and very important website related to the spinning arts. Rob (Bluecat) Thorburn began this very Uber series of spinning events a few years back when he organized the hugely successful “Uberstaff“ in Scotland. The next year he organized “Uberpoi,“ which I attended. It was a monumental experience, in terms of spinning, friend making, and evolving as a person. I also went to UberOz (Brisbane, Febuary 2006) and UberEurope (Vienna, August 2006). I will sadly not make the next event: UberPARIS, which takes place June 15-17th. There might only be a few spaces available, and if I were you, I would go.

As I've mentioned before, Ronan is one of those amazing spinners you probably haven't heard of. He's here in Thailand, and we were both spinning fire at a party last Friday. I mixed together a simple little video from Gusti's camera. It doesn't fully do Ronan justice, but it's a start. (If you'd like to see better quality videos, visit the poiticipate page and maybe we'll have an actual video camera by the end of the winter.)

rate or comment on youtube | Watch as .mov

Introducing Chris "Rovo" Baily, another amazing poi spinner.

I first met Chris in Toronto, during the Great Canadian Poi Adventure Tour. He seemed very... enthusiastic, and definitely good with poi... but I wasn't particularly expecting him to become a superstar per se. I tend to be wrong about such things.

(CLICK "READ MORE" TO SEE MORE EMBEDDED VIDEOS)

Hurray! As part of my catching-up-with-myself agenda, which continues to mostly go as planned (minus some down time for the flu) I have just finsihed Traditional Maori Poi with Migoto, shot in Wellington last March. Migoto showed Dan, Jocelyn and myself some Maori short poi. Enjoy!

Guess what? I've been playing with YouTube, and this is my first blog with embedded videos, of fire spinners and fire balloons (see below). Oh, and I've been spinning fire, as you can see to the right :)

In case you missed it: I've just posted The Secret of Flowers . It's the first of what will hopefully be a long series of tutorial videos.

I've also just re-posted
nickwithfire.. I didn't even realize it wasn't up. In looking for it I found that I had a higher res version than was posted before, so hurray.

Oh, and remember that I will often be posting little videos in blog entries, like the videos of Ronan in the Europe Tour Update :)

On Sunday night I went to "En," a poi event organized by Yuta, Nao, and other members of the Tokyo spinning community.

When I first heard about the "poi event," I didn't know what to think. A fire festival, sure. A pagan dance party in the desert, of course! But an indoor, no-fire-allowed, cover-charge-to-get-in, "poi event?"...