I'm trying for a sub-20 second average on the Rubik's cube. I got pretty close tonight:
21.90 21.51 19.39 21.50 19.03 18.72 23.63 (16.58) 16.84 (23.70) 18.67 21.18
Average is 20.24.
Recently in speedcubing Category
About a year ago I made a page that let you find any last layer position and it would show the most efficient algorithm for solving that position. The algoritm data came from Bernard Helmstetter.
I've got a new version of these pages available now. This version uses a different style of diagrams, and it also allows you to select last layer cases in a different order. For example, you can select piece orientation before permutation or vice versa.
This is also useful if you want to know, for example, what is the shortest algorithm for swapping two corners without flipping any edges. To do this, you would click on the first diagram on the first page. This will give you only algorithms that don't flip edges. Then you click on the "PC" link. This gives a list of all of the corner permutation algorithms.
On Friday, 4/13, I had a meeting at my house of local speedcubers. There were five people there. We had a guy come over from Delaware, and someone from northern Virginia. This was similar to the meeting I held at my house a couple years ago. We'd like to plan a local tournament, but finding a good venue is probably the biggest issue.
Also, my finger continues to bother me. I went to my doctor at the end of February, and she put it in a splint and told me to keep it there for a couple weeks. I left it in the splint for three weeks, but it didn't help much. So, this week I went to the National Hand Center in Baltimore. The doctor there told me I need to stop doing things that irritate the finger for six weeks. They gave me some different types of splints and protective gear that I can try out to see what works best for me. If my finger isn't better at the end of six weeks, they will try giving me a steroid injection in the joint, which is supposed to be kind of painful.
I'm planning on going to another cube tournament at Rutgers in New Jersey on 12/10/05.
I'm trying to get some cubes that are in better shape than the ones I have been using. I just went to the Restoration Hardware store because I heard that they had a fresh supply. There were about twelve cubes in the store. I took each one out of the package (luckily they weren't shrink wrapped) and tried them out to find the best ones. I brought home three of them. They all seem pretty nice, and hopefully they will become my preferred cubes once I get them broken in and lubed up. There was actually an amazing amount of difference in the speedcubing quality of the cubes in the store, and they were all the exact same brand and model.
I may not get much cubing practice in for a little while, though. Prince of Persia 3 is coming out tomorrow, and I might be glued to the Xbox until I've played through it. I've really enjoyed the last two episodes.
Also, there's going to be a rubik's cube expert on the next Beauty and the Geek season (starts in January). This is a really funny series.
I got back from Orlando tonight. Unfortunately, my cell phone inexplicably lost it's internet connection while I was down there, so I wasn't able to continue blog posts from on site at the championship. There are some results up on rubiks.com. I'll try to post some more pictures and stories later.
we had fun at epcot yesterday. today we are going to mgm and maybe back to the magic kingdom.
last night there was more cubing going on in the cafeteria. there were probably about 20 cubers there. dan harris, jasmine, grant, frank m, john m and doug li were among the new arrivals.
I think that the competition registration is tonight. it's a little hard to find where other cubers are staying, so a few people are apparently putting cubes in their windows to identify themselves.
here are some pictures from this morning:
update from pop century resort
we arrived in orlando on monday night at 9:30. we used the disney magical express service to be taken to the hotel. it worked fine, other than the fact that our luggage didn't get to the room until about 12:30. also, I was disappointed to find no internet access at the resort other than analog phone lines (which i'm not set up for).
on tuesday morning we went to the magic kingdom and met our friend kelly at the gate. she got us in to the park, and she helped with fiona a lot while we were going on rides. fiona did pretty well for a 10 month old. she didn't get too scared anywhere except in a new 3-d movie called mickey's philharmonic. later in the afternoon it started raining harder and harder until I got soaked. we came back to thw hotel early (6:30 or so) and also went to bed early.
on wednesday morning we went to have breakfast at the animal kingdom with our friend kelly, who works at the park. before leaving the hotel, we saw a couple dutch cubers: peter and jaap. we had a good time at the park. I tried talking to a chinese cast member at the park in chinese. unfortunately she was from indonesia and didn't speak chinese, but she taught me a few phrases in her native language that I can try out on my friend budhi.
for dinner on wednesday, we went to kelly's sister's house and met a lot of her family. when we got back to the hotel, i knocked on one of the dutch cubers' doors and met joel. we went over to the cafeteria where there was a large gathering of cubers, including ron, ton, alexander, peter g, and lars v. I got some magic tips from alexander, who was putting down times in the 1.1 second range with pretty good regularity. ton tried out my official rubik's timer for a while. he has certainly surpassed me since the 2003 world championship.
today, we are planning on going to epcot.
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