• The Title:
  IT´S EASY, IT´S FUN , AND YOU´LL LEARN IN NO TIME! - most people put the obligatory "no, really, it is possible to learn it in just a few minutes" statement near the beginning of the page. I think this message should read "no, it really is possible to learn juggling in just a few minutes but there really is no hope in hell of you managing it from these instructions". I find that using this as the title of the page heightens simplicity of juggling yet also heightens the disappointment felt when the reader unravles their stuffed socks and and decides they are perhaps better for putting on your feet then "chucking from one hand to the other". Still...

• Last Updated: 04/25/2000 11:12:43
  How precise. I've often wondered when website has last been updated and if I know to the last second it is so much more helpful.

• The images.
  I've found that on the internet nobody actually minds if you steal images from their websites and uses them on your own website.

• The instructions themselves.
  The most important part of a page explaining how to juggle must be the instructions on how to juggle. I think someone should have been told that when writing this page. I like the 'stream of conscious' feel to the whole thing.

• A FEW HELPFUL HINTS:
  I like helpful hints to help me to juggle a bit better but for them to qualify as helpful they actually have to help. And I would like to make a funny comment about replacing my balls for hamsters but it would be crude. And it wouldn't qualify as funny.

• PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE
  I'm not really sure if the comments on juggling "driving you nuts" and "you'll get it in the end" confirm the title's claim of "easy and in no time". Still, there's nothing wrong with contradictory messages if you want to build the trust of your readers.

• Finally, the web counter.
  Over 5,000 people have visited the page? I'd find that a bit hard to believe if I didn't know that once the Sunday Telegraph listed it as one of the best kids pages on the internet. That's how I found the site any way. And yes, I always look in the kids section in the papers.

Overall: 5 stars. Out of 50. The 5 stars are for the animations. Which were made by the author of the page, of course.

To start with I'll just put some quotes:

"I highly recommend ordering a set of beanbags(at least 4; 5 if you are ambitious) from a reputable retail dealer/manufacturer, such as Dube' or Renegade." - Ok, I'll do that before I get onto the "Air Juggling(no objects at all)" stage of your instructions should I? It should only set me back £20 or so. That's fine.

"DO NOT attempt to learn how to juggle with tennis balls, rolled up socks, or any ball/object that weighs less than 4-5 ounces...." - is this guy joking or what? EVERYONE learns to juggle with rolled up socks or tennis balls.

".....I don't care if a guy does 10 pirouettes and 20 flips in the air when juggling three or four objects, because it will never be as impressive to most people as a solid Seven Ball Cascade." - I've not looked up where the writer comes from but from this statement he must live in a gravity free acrobat commune. I mean, I can do a 7 ball cascade but I still haven't cracked the 9th piroette under a 3 ball flash... must try harder.

"Ok, so you're all ready to go, right? You've got the beanbags/balls/whatever to juggle, and you're sitting there sweating with anticipation, right? No? Why not? You're about to learn how to juggle!!! Smile!!! =)" - Too bloody right I'm not smiling. I've just spent my last pay packet on a set of 7 juggling balls and have waited three days for them to arrive, staring at my 3 tennis balls with itching fingers all this time, and you still haven't even told me how to juggle no balls yet.

"..........So, this amazement leads people to believe juggling is all about making great catches and saves and not dropping..........NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH" - hmmm, then it must be about making really bad catches and dropping? That's what I've been doing wrong all these years....

Ok, that is enough of the quotes. They are starting to rock my long held beliefs in what I always thought were the fundamentals of juggling.

Now I'd like you to take your mouse pointer and click on the scroll down button on the page we are discussing. And now click it again. And again. Now click and hold it down for a bit. Now click, hold it down, put a book on your mouse, go and watch Gone With The Wind a few times, then come back and look at your screen. Notice how you still haven't got to the bottom of the page? Well, when you finally get there you find this message:

"Ok.....now you're the master of the Two-Ball Exchange, but guess what? You're still not juggling!!!....."

How much of a kick in the teeth is that?! All that squinting into a black screen with blue writing and I still can't juggle? This juggling lark sucks. I'm off to throw these BB's (beanbags, not ball bearings, contrary to the pupular acronym) into my local household waste recycling skip.

Overall: 4 stars (out of 63) The 4 stars are for the good spelling and the dead cool "sans comic ms" font. There was slightly too much "sans comic ms" font though, about 27 paragraphs too much. And no animations. And no pictures. And no diagrams. Just "sans comic ms". They say that a picture speaks a million words. This page is the Cistenne Chapel ceiling. In "sans comis ms". Ok, maybe it wasn't that cool.

(Note: due to someone taking the three ball tricks page off line just apply the below to any page you wnt.) I would point out all the features on this page, but again, there aren't any. Just text with random horizontal grey lines. And the descriptions of tricks are worse then ever...

"1up 2up- This is a pattern where you will need to learn to juggle 2 balls in columns. When you can do that, basically, you are juggling 2 ball columns in one hand, and you are just throwing 1 ball up and down with the other. So from the start, throw a ball from each hand straight up (column throws), then as they peak, throw the second ball in your right hand straight up in between them. now you just have to keep the cycle going."

I've actually picked the best paragraph on whole website, in terms of spelling, punctuation and grammar to put here, just so you aren't constantly distracted by it. Despite that, you'll still have trouble learning 1up, 2up. For a start, you're told to first go away and learn 2 ball columns. What are they? We're not told. And we're not told where we can find out. And then when you do go and find out you realise that there is nowhere else on the whole website can you find out.

Oops.

I like the statements like this one too - "Keep in mind there are 2 types of variations: tricky tricks (like mills mess), and hard tricks (like showering). Good Luck!" - well, considering that if you're not yet able to do a 3 ball half shower I'd reckon that all the hard tricks are going to be tricky and all the tricky ticks are doing to be mildly un-easy as well. I'll also mention the fact that there are no instructions for mills mess on the page either, which is a good job really. I wouldn't like to link to a text only page that takes over 8 minutes to download.

The thing I love about this "learn to juggle" page is that the whole website is exactly the same. Only the colour schemes differ from page to page. That's right, instead of eye-watering red on yellow you get eye-watering white on blue. The spelling only gets better (better for laughing at) and to prove the fact that the author doesn't even own a dictionary, I'll quote his views on siteswap notation:

"It is like a juggling diccionary..."

That says it all, I think. Unless you want to see his explanation of siteswap notaion. That takes it to another level again. Check out the notes on the bottom of the 3 ball tricks page or read the text below, if you have no job to go to in the next week or so...

Siteswaps- Here we go.... Basically, siteswaps are numbers that describe juggling patterns. Unfortunately, it will probably take you a while to get fluent in interperting siteswaps. It won't take long to understand the basics. First, siteswaps describe throw heights, not types of throws. First of all, the siteswap for a 3 ball cascade is "333", or "3", for short. It means that each ball goes to a certain height, and gets thrown agian 3 beats later. To find out how many balls are in a siteswap pattern, add up all the numbers and get the average. If it doesn't come out to a whole number, it is an invalid pattern. As we go on, a 4 ball fountain is written as "4", a 5 ball cascade; "5", and so on...etc An odd number means that ball lands in a differnt hand that it is thrown from. (you will know which one I mean as long as you dont have 3+ hands) An even number lands in the same hand from which it was thrown. Lets take a simple pattern with more than one number in it, this is where it starts to get tricky. The pattern "53" is the 4 ball async shower. If you want to start the pattern with you right hand, this is what you do: Juggle a 4 ball fountain, then with your right hand, throw a ball about twice as high towards the other hand. With your left hand, throw a ball about half as high to your right hand. Your hands repeat this, to keep the halfshower going. Basically, one hand is juggling half of a 5 ball cascade, the other hand is juggling half of a 3 ball cascade. The key is that they are being juggled at the same speed. If your half shower isnt totally sync, than the height ratio is wrong, usually you aren't throwing the 5's high enough. Once you have it, that is the height ratio of 3 to 5 balls juggled at the same speed, which is about 1:4. With siteswaps, each number is like 1 throw of that number juggled at a fixed speed. kinda complicated, huh? You'll get the hang of it some day. Keep in mind that a ball thrown to the height of "n" will be thrown agian "n" beats later. Here is a more complicated pattern. The pattern 531 is a tricky 3 ball pattern.You would throw a ball fairly high, then throw one 4 times lower with the other hand, than pass the 3rd ball. There are also siteswaps called exited state siteswaps. An example of this is 771. It is a 5 ball pattern. You cant go into it from a normal 5 ball cascade, you have to throw two 6's first, then go into 771, so it would look like this. 555555555566771771771771771... Next there are also ways to indicate sync throws, and multiplexes. an 8 ball async fountain is represented as "8" A sync fountain is "(8,8)". An 8 ball wimpy pattern is "(8x,8x)", the X's are for crossing evens. The 5 ball sync half shower is (6x,4x), the balls cross, but they are even throws. For multiplexing, lets use the example of [32]. The number in brackets are multiplexed. [32] is basically a 3 ball cascade, while holding a ball in each hand. Another example [55], is a 5 ball cascade pattern, but 2 balls are throw together, going in the same path, so there are 10 balls all together. There are also more complex multiplexing, like the "26[76]" This is a gatto mutliplex with 7 balls, the 5 ball version is "24[54]"

Yup, all one paragraph, and on the main home page as well.

Overall: One star (out of one hundred and fifty three) (thousand)

So, if you've just read all that you may be wondering which of the "learn to juggle" web pages I would send a non-juggler to for them to get the basics of the 3 ball cascade. I know that JugglingTutor and The Funny Jugglers pages are great and others have a wide range of descriptions of dozens of tricks but I would have to pick this one.