Introduction
"I need more help!"
Contacting the editor
History
Conventions and Structure
Copyright and Usage
Introduction
"I need more help!"
Contacting the editor
History
Conventions and Structure
Copyright and UsageThese pages -- the Juggling Information Service Help Pages -- contain friendly advice and information for jugglers of all levels. They are grouped by topic, so you'll easily be able to find the information you need, or browse to find lots of interesting commentary on subjects you didn't know you cared about! In particular, a few essays included here offer some perspective on the art and science of juggling by some well-respected jugglers, and should be considered "required reading" by novices and experts alike.
It is not our intent to write a book here; plenty of good books on juggling are already available. These pages pick up where the books don't go -- personal accounts, different descriptions from different viewpoints, openly biased opinions on equipment -- and all in an accessible, informal, friendly style, since we've tried to retain the flavor of the original rec.juggling posts (although this means sometimes the spelling gets a bit creative).
These files are periodically updated, cleaned up, edited, and such. We occasionally cull posts from rec.juggling as good stuff flits by, but principally rely on direct contributions from folks who've searched the rec.juggling archives on some topic and compiled a summary. Feel free to send comments, suggestions, and contributions to us.
The best possible way to get juggling help is to meet other jugglers. Check the juggling club listings on the JIS to see if there is a club near you.
You can find a lot on information right here on the Juggling Information Service. The help section Table of Contents lists every page in the help directory. You can search for keywords using the JIS Search Tool.
If you can't find what you're looking for on the JIS, you can turn the rec.juggling newsgroup. Go to the rec.juggling homepage for more info, including the FAQ and the r.j archives.
If you have submissions, suggestions, comments, or questions about the help pages, send them to the editor.
The JIS Help Pages editor can be reached by e-mail to help@juggling.org. Personal mail for Matt Brubeck should be sent to brubeck@wport.com. Please, send only mail regarding the Help Pages. See the above section if you need help with juggling.
see also: Guidelines for Submissions
Mail regarding the JIS in general should be sent to: jis@juggling.org.
The original "rec.juggling helpfiles" (version 1) were text files collected by terry jones and made available by ftp from "piggy" and later "moocow", two machines at the University of Indiana. In early 1993, Michael P. Gerlek took over maintenance of the files for Terry (version 2).
In the spring of 1994, moocow went out of commission and the entire rec.juggling archives went into limbo. Around the same time, Barry Bakalor started the JIS and used all of the moocow material as a starting point. Michael P. Gerlek began to slowly evolve the plaintext rec.juggling helpfiles into the hypertext JIS Help Pages (version 3).
Under Michael P. Gerlek, by early 1995 (version 4), the structure of these pages had finally converged and settled, and most of the pages had been converted to hypertext. We began increasingly relying on the the rec.juggling community for help in updating old material and contributing new sections.
Around the beginning of 1997, the help pages had been stagnant and without an editor for quite some time. Now, Matt Brubeck has taken on the position of editor. Our plans for the future (version 5) include making the pages more graphical, as well as working more closely with the online-juggling community to keep the help files growing.
The Help Pages are laid out hierarchically in a tree, starting with about a dozen major topics and growing out from there into minor topics and pages. Each topic resides in a distinct directory, with the 'index.html' page containing a menu of that topic's pages and subtopics. (The Table of Contents shows this structure better.)
Most of the menus will use icons (balls) to indicate subtopics and pages, according to the following color scheme:
a help page (in HTML )
a help page (in mostly plaintext )
some other information (outside of the JIS) a link internal to the current document
a link to a subtopic directory
pointer to a Usenet newsgroupThe help pages are the collective effort of the on-line juggling community. The Juggling Information Service does not hold the copyrights to the original material in these pages; those copyrights are held by the original authors, who have given the JIS permission to use their writing.
Remember, this is a community resource. You can make copies of the help files and share them, but the JIS will not allow or cooperate with commercial use of the Help Pages.