Monday, April 19, 2004
Best yo-yo article ever!
I think it is safe to say that when you are a part of any kind of fringe hobby, you quickly realize that news isn't as reliable as you might hope. Articles are frequently full of misinformation and stereotypes that you don't notice unless you actually have knowledge on the subject. I'm happy to say that Reinventing the Yo-Yo from Science News Online is really well done.
It manages to cover the basics of what has really changed in yo-yoing over the years, in terms of general history, technology, and even talking about the newer styles of tricks. They even thankfully leave out the mythology of yo-yos starting as weapons.
There's a couple of minor quibbles (the reason for making a yo-yo so unresponsive that a bind is needed to get it back up is less about sleep times and more about the yo-yo not winding up prematurely during specific kinds of tricks), but they're just that: minor, especially considering the ground covered in such a small space. People from three or four different companies are quoted from, most of them people I've met or talk to online. The top illustration is nifty, and I'm pretty sure I know what trick it is from. Plus, there's the nice list of website at the end of it. Lastly, it was nice to see the SB-2 mentioned, as that was my first ball-bearing yo-yo and really what got me seriously back into yo-yoing as a young adult.
Cheers to Peter Weiss for a well-researched article, a seeming rarity these days... :)
[Thanks to TheFRC for pointing this out]
It manages to cover the basics of what has really changed in yo-yoing over the years, in terms of general history, technology, and even talking about the newer styles of tricks. They even thankfully leave out the mythology of yo-yos starting as weapons.
There's a couple of minor quibbles (the reason for making a yo-yo so unresponsive that a bind is needed to get it back up is less about sleep times and more about the yo-yo not winding up prematurely during specific kinds of tricks), but they're just that: minor, especially considering the ground covered in such a small space. People from three or four different companies are quoted from, most of them people I've met or talk to online. The top illustration is nifty, and I'm pretty sure I know what trick it is from. Plus, there's the nice list of website at the end of it. Lastly, it was nice to see the SB-2 mentioned, as that was my first ball-bearing yo-yo and really what got me seriously back into yo-yoing as a young adult.
Cheers to Peter Weiss for a well-researched article, a seeming rarity these days... :)
[Thanks to TheFRC for pointing this out]
