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Extreme Yo-Yoing
Roland Piquepaille writes "Unless you're a dedicated yo-yo fan and a serious competitor, I doubt that you'll hand over $400 for a yo-yo. Even if it's a state-of-the-art hogh-tech yoyo made with a forged-magnesium-alloy and coming with the latest in axle technology. With this one, you can use the freehand style, meaning that your hand is not connected to the yo-yo, but is replaced by a small counterweight. In 'Reinventing the Yo-Yo,' Science News Online says 'its balance is ensured with precision tooling to micrometer tolerances by a computer-controlled lathe.' This long article doesn't solely focus on this luxury item. Instead, it looks at the history and the physics of the yo-yo, and includes many references. A good read for a weekend! This overview contains other details and extra references about the Freehand yo-yo."
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"The original Freehand yo-yo was the only yo-yo in the world that didn't need to be tied to your hand. With its patented counter-weight system, you can let go of the yo-yo in mid-trick, making the impossible look easy"
No wonder it costs $400! It's got an amazing antigravity device that allows the yo-yo to remain suspended in air after you drop it.
It's made from porcinite!
Honorary Member of Jackie Chan's Kung Fu Process Servers
Wow, that a nice yoyo. I have had good experience with the Yomega's before. It always seemed a lot smoother than a Duncan. I preferred using a bufferfly model at virst to get down the tricks, but the classic model is the way to eventually go. I could do lots of tricks at one time, but I could never do the dual tricks that required using a second yoyo with your left hand. BTW, a nice Yomega will set you back less than $20.
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Retail Retreat
An activity OTHER than browsing slashdot that will guarantee I'll never get laid again.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Modern technology has brought us to the point where, finally, we have better yo-yos .. again!
The article is slightly mistaken, the Silver Bullet II (All metal yo-yo) and a number of other wooden TK Yo-Yos models had steel axles with replaceable ball bearings and a finely adjustable string gap based on a threaded inset that could be adjusted with a coin - this was the real innovation the adjustable string gap and it was the main innovation that they patented.
The ratcheting, telescoping and other means of trying to adjust the string gap were too imprecise and difficult to set and retain on a quickly moving high g-force yo-yo. An amazing amount of work and prototyping (years) went into that yo-yo and even though they patented aspects of it, other yo-yo companies went right ahead and copied the design and innovations. The Silver Bullets came in these cool anodized versions, too.
The yoyo is one of the oldest known toys. It's also not evolved from a weapon, country to popular myth.
All the stuff I know that is useless... I don't need no yoyo to prevent me from getting laid ;)
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Well that's just great! You spend the whole damn year learning elvish and then some annoying kid comes along with a $400 yo-yo and steals the show.
I'd be interested in seeing how many of these Duncan expects to sell. After all, professional yo-yoers are a pretty niche market as it is, and I'd expect the number of people willing to spend $400 on one to be even smaller.
With all of the popularity all of you "early adapters" will recieve, you may have to use your new yo-yo for its original purpose ... to beat off your attackers .......
For a yo-yo to sleep at all is a fairly modern development.
mmmm-yeeees, no doubt due to the great advances in the field of hypnotic drugs.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"Extreme yo-yoing"? Am I the only one who remembers the guy with the buzz-saw yoyo in the James Bond "Octopussy" movie?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
As a notable public figure, I have to remain anonymous.
Due to some injuries with yo-yo fanatics in our school systems, we have decided as a whole to ban yo-yos in our state in public buildings; schools included.
Recently, a teacher had to have surgery done on her eye to fix a laceration caused by a yo-yo hitting her eye while a student was showing off in show in tell. It cost taxpayers $37,000 to repair the damage caused by an item no more than $4.
Yo-yos being banned here will set a precedent.
Yoyo Baggins, is that you?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Highlights from the 2003 Japan National Yo-Yo Contest
http://www.antra.dk/-- get the video here, down the bottom of the page. It's 60mb or so, but it's pretty amazing. Some of those guys have way too much time on their hands. (But here I am reading /., so......)
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
An activity OTHER than browsing slashdot that will guarantee I'll never get laid again.
/. I will never get laid again.
You added an extra word. Your post should have been as follows:
An activity OTHER than browsing slashdot that will guarantee I'll never get laid.
The word again gives you a false sense of hope because I know that if I continue to browse
Remember what the NYYA says: "If yo-yo's are outlawed, only outlaws will have yo-yos".
We must protect the right to bear arms, and the right to arm bears.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The freehand described in the article is a special yo-yo based on a popular yo-yo that is much cheaper. Chillax.
See here.
well, hmm. $400 for a yoyo is the most ive ever seen for a non-vintage yoyo. i think the next one was something like 150... Anyway, I jsut looked in my bag of yoyos (i used to be a competitive yoyoer... now i do it occasionally for fun) and I see a duncan freehand that doesnt look like the picture and cost about 15 bucks. this is the first yoyo ive seen that was designed for freehand use, but not even close to the first one used for that. This one i have might just be an earlier version, seeing as how it's made of plastic and all, but i think it's wrong to claim this as the first yoyo that you dont need to attach to your hand. Even older is the "off-string" style where the string is attached to your finger, but not to the yoyo. in this method, one throws the yoyo into the air, and catches it on the string, going on to perform one of several tricks. Either way, the most i ever paid for a yoyo was 45 bucks for an aluminum yoyo. excellent quality, but still... still, I dont know anyone in who would throw something so expensive around on a string, while not attached to your hand, that could be permanantly broken if you drop it. With a normal yoyo, at least it's attached to the thrower's finger, but this... it would make me nervous. oh, one more thing. about yomega, they make decent yoyos, and I learned on a yomega fireball, then a saberwing fireball (fireballs use a transaxle system, which is like a ring around the axel tied to the string, and the saber wing means it's a butterfly shape), but after learning, I have come to realize that there are much better yoyos availabe imho. I use a pro-yo "Stunt Pilot" for all my yoyoing these days. it's great to use, and it beats any yomega or duncan ive had the oppertunity to use.
If I could rearrange the keyboard, I'd put U and I together.
...to beat off your attackers .......
Uh, you may want to re-phrase that.
What?
can be seen here: Apple's iYoYo
Your hand is not connected to the yo-yo?
So, what's the point?
For 400 bucks, I want real magnesium alloy, damn it!
Or, if you don't want to spend $400, you can see him play in person for about $40-50 or so.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
This reminds me of diablo juggling. Think of a whacking great yoyo, about 8 inches diameter, and a 4 foot long string attached to 2 sticks. Loop the string around the diablo and move the string side to side rapidly to spin it up, then unloop the string and the tricks commence. Experienced performers can use a few diablos at once. I found some video here.
Like ancient guitar strings on collectors guitars people tend to wait until the string breaks. So check out someplace like the yoyostore and by yourself some strings, especially if you've never purchased any strings since getting your yo-yo. You'll be glad you did!
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
The article credits Tom Kuhn with the Silver Bullet 2, the first production yo-yo with a ball-bearing axle, but they don't truly give the man his due credit. He is also the creator of the world's largest functional yoyo, and the first yoyo you can disassemble. The article mentions that gap width is now adjustable, but doesn't mention that Tom Kuhn was the first person to do that (in the aformentioned SB2, nonetheless). His Silver Bullet 1 was the first yo-yo weighted out the outside, and the first manufactured from aircraft aluminum. Basically, he defined state-of-the-art for yo-yos up until the mid 90's, when his business started having problems (his San Fransisco shop closed down, sadly).
If you are doing an article on bringing the YoYo from the 1950's fad to the mid 90's high-performance device, Tom deserves a lot of credit. He doesn't have the revolutionary influence that he once did, but that's like saying Chuck Barry doesn't have the influence that he once did. Both defined where we are today, and their industries would be tremendously different without them.
The ______ Agenda
Seriously, finding the right combination of string, loop tightness, gumming agents, and time will teach you a lot about what your yo-yo is actually doing. I used to create yoyo strings from kite string for the other kids in the neighborhood. I started with a traditional yoyo weight cotton fiber kite string, would soak it in water for several minutes, and then would twist it to a 4 foot length (slightly longer than usual). Then I would dry it slightly, coat it in honey, and leave it outside overnight. In the morning, a quick spray of hairspray would add even more to the tackyness, and the string would be ready to go. Metal cores would chew through the string like knives through butter, but maple axles would have significantly improved spin times. You would have to wind it a little more tightly than normal to wake it up at all, but improved sleep times were far more valuable than a somewhat groggy wake. Besides, if you caught it in free-flight it woke up without problem.
The ______ Agenda
If you'd read the article (hell, even the Slashdot blub!), you'd see that the $400 yo-yo has not yet been released. The $16 one you found is an example of the first model utilizing the design of a counterweight, which the $400 not-yet-released model also uses.
Funny and true. Yo-yo's were major weapons in the Earthbound Series.
And if it's in Earthbound, it must be true.
and spending $400 on the newest video card isn't?
This new $400 yoyo that duncan are releasing isn't really designed for 'serious yoyo'ers', duncan made it purely so they could get lots of publicity (just like this article) for having the worlds most expensive retail yoyo. (and probably a world record aswell) They probably will produce just enough to give one to each of their competition team members, and enought that all the hardkore yoyo collectors to buy.
A few other notes:
all the major freestyle competition winners have used yoyo's such as duncans freehand1's (no longer in production) yoyojam hitmans's, yoyojam nightmoves etc etc - all yoyo's ranging from around 20-40bucks.
The most expensive yoyo's that any actual player would buy would probably be Dif-e-yo's (www.difeyo.com) - they are very very nice