So… This Blog is Ending...

It's a sad thing, to be sure. But I've moved on to bigger and better things. I really just stopped cubing for most of the summer, but now I'm back at it. However, now that I'm in college there are other interesting things going on in my life, and I figured I should be talking about them, too.

So please go over to my new blog: earlymorningstudent.blogspot.com and see what's been going on in my life since about a week and a half ago. But that blog will get updated at least weekly (and more once finals season stops).

You may be pleased to hear that version 3.00 of my ZBLL documents is now online. It's much better, but still not quite where I want it. Oh well. Here's the link: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B2g-oMdOeacZNTAwMjBkMDUtOTU5NC00MjBkLWFhNDEtMmNhODUxOTU2Njc2

Update

Well, it's been more than a month since I last updated. Here's the scoop:

Baseball has started and it's eating away my energy. I'm doing pretty well this year with a 1.81 ERA through 31 innings (the most in the state of Oregon right now) so I don't see this dying off.

Constitution team has really kicked it up a notch. Nationals is in 2 weeks. I want to win this thing and my unit is putting in some serious hours, especially late at night. I'm really nervous but this ends on May 2nd.

Senioritis has hit. And this applies to cubing also, unfortunately. But not to baseball or conteam, strangely enough.

I am almost done with refining (but not learning) 2GLL algorithms. I have to make new images for Anti-Sune because I decided that the recognition system I had was stupid when there was an oriented corner just right there anyway.

And I've been thinking about this: to be effective, ZBLL must be STRICTLY FASTER than perfect execution for OCLL + PLL. So what I'm seeing is that some of the Sune / Anti-Sune cases might be faster with Sune / Anti-Sune + PLL. Though annoying to do this, it would really cut down on not only memorization but also on recall. I've been thinking about this more and more, especially with fast PLLs out there like A, J, and T. It's definitely worth looking into. I want some feedback, but I'll first put them in as other options.

Update

Well, I have been thinking hard about this for a while and I've made a more informed decision. OLL + PLL is faster than COLL + EPLL once you factor in the time spent on VHF2L. I know I said it was about equal before but I've been testing and it seems clear. This has kind of made me lose confidence in ZBLL, but I work that out to be even with OLL + PLL. I'm really not sure what to think of this because it's a rather large blow to my idea of ZB. I'm seriously considering learning ZBF2L to help out the speed even more, though I'm not looking forward to learning the algorithms.

I'm thinking the best way to go about with learning ZBLL (learning in the easiest progression) is:

2-Look COLL (using 2-Look OLL to orient, then COLL)

VHF2L

Some ZBLL and ZBF2L here and there

2GLL

ZBF2L

ZBLL

At least that's the organization I plan to follow. Though right now I'm working with an all-nighter so there's no guarantee any of this is rational.

Update

I'm just going along trying to finish 2GLLs. Not much to report. I've found some nice algs that I didn't notice before and I changed my Anti-Sune recognition system to recognize off the oriented corner. It makes mirroring from Sune sooooooooo much easier, which is basically the purpose of everything.

I lost my CII cubies + FII frame hybrid the other day. I don't even know where I lost it. But it's gone, and none of my cubes have anywhere near the same feeling. I'll be buying some more cubes soon. I also want to get gray stickers for a new color scheme. Before my funky color scheme used color opponent theory to try and optimize recognition on opposite sides (White-Black, Green-Red, Blue-Yellow). Now I have a different idea: use opponent colors next to each other. That way opposite sides are more similar and thus orientation is easier to recognize. I want to put it on a black cube though so I would need gray (preferably darker) instead of black. Basically, similar colors would be opposite (White-Yellow, Green-Blue) while color opponents would be adjacent (Blue-Yellow, White-Black/Gray, Red-Green). Basically, I just have to replace the orange side of the cube with black or gray.

Also, I will be buying a 2x2x2 V-Cube and likely trying to get a replacement 7x7x7 core. My other one is broken...

Update

Well, it's been quite a while, and I haven't been cubing much at all until recently (when the relatives showed up and I needed to get away). The past 3 weeks I haven't even had my cube at school, but the progress I've made has been substantial.

My first average of 100 back I set a personal best at 19.46 (previously had two 19.90s). The next day I had a 19.36. Then I had an 18.85, the biggest drop in an average of 100 since I first started doing them. My standalone average of 12 went from 18.43 to 18.13 and then 17.95. Last year at this time I averaged in the high 26s, meaning my times have dropped 8 full seconds in 12 months, despite my lack of motivation at times. My one-handed solving has also improved quite a bit, dropping my from just under 40 seconds to just over 36 seconds. My blindfolded times have also dropped significantly, going from around 7 minutes to a consistent 3:20-4:40 range, even enough for me to try averages of 12 (they take too much work, though, so I stop at 3 or 4 usually).

It's really fascinating how much I've improved even after forgetting sooooo many ZBLLs. I think I've decided that I will work solely on the 2GLL cases so I can get my confidence up, as working with the really stupid H cases didn't work out that well in the end. I won't be releasing a new version for the new year, but I will continue to learn cases as quickly as I can. If I can learn all the 2GLL cases, I have a very solid shot at getting a ZBLL case I can use. There is a 1/27 chance for a PLL and a 1/6 chance at having all the corners permuted correctly in an LL case, giving me a 16/81 chance (or 19.75% chance) of a planned 1LLL and a 1515/5882 (or 25.76%) chance of a 1LLL (factoring in COLL chances). That means that in an average of 5 I could expect at least 1 1LLL, which would be amazing. I still remember most of the H set I learned before, now I think I'll move to U (because I already know 4 of them) and then T.

Happy holidays, everyone!

Update

It has been quite a while. I finally got my first BLD solve, and it has really made my day. Actually, nothing else has been happening, as school is taking up too much time. All I can hope to do is keep myself sub-20 till I get more time (college, anyone?). Speaking of college, it's that time of year. I already sent off my app to University of Chicago (don't expect to be accepted) and am planning on applying to Swarthmore College, as well. I'm so stressed out about that stuff right now it is downright ridiculous.

But my BLD skills have gotten much better. My first success had no parity and 3 solved edges in place. The second one had about 6 cycles and parity and some nasty flipped corners. My memorization is based on a number-letter system, with the format [piece position][orientation]. So a corner could have position 6 (DRB) and orientation of either O (orientated, or U/D, color in buffer position), D (depth, or F/B color), or S (side, or R/L color). Edges can be O or U (unoriented). What I've found most surprising is that once I can trace the pieces with my number-letter pairs, I don't have to remember them for the solve - I just know what piece is where. It's quite extraordinary.

Update and Early BLD Attempts

Not a big update here. I've been working away with ZBLL and constitution team (which eats up 10-12 hours of my week). More importantly for me, however, is that I've been working with blindfolded solves. I thought I could share a few thoughts on that while it's fresh in my mind.

I use the Old Pochmann method: placing one piece at a time from a buffer position using "pair swap" PLLs (PLLs that swap 2 edges and 2 corners each). Basically, this entails learning 6 algorithms to shoot the buffer piece to its appropriate slot (I might decide to do a video on this). This is not that hard, and there are plenty of good YouTube videos on it, though, again, I still might make on.

There are 6 algs to know:

T permutation

Ja permutation (swap blocks to the left (1), to the back (2), and to the right (3))

Jb permutation

Y permutation

Ra permutation (corner swap to the right)

My memorization time is down to about 10 minutes on a good attempt and at about 6 if I write down piece positions. The problem is, I always remember the last few corners wrong. So how do I memorize? Every edge has a number of 1 to 12 in this order: UF, UR, UB, UL, DF, DR, DB, DL, FR, FL, BR, BL (notice though that you will never send to position 2- it's the buffer). I then mark whether the edge is oriented or not, marked with an 'o' or 'u', respectively. Basically, an edge is oriented if it can be set up with the group (basically, it isn't out of your way to solve it with a T perm). Then I get a string of number-letter pairs. So one edge sequence might be: 12u 9u 4o 10u 11u 8u 5u 7o 6u 3o 6u. This edge sequence is bad for memo for 2 reasons: (1) there is an odd number of edges to place so there will be parity and (2) the two 6 spot edge placements means I broke into a cycle. blah...

I memorize the corners in much the same was: counterclockwise around the top starting with UFR and the same around the bottom starting with DFR, numbered from 1 to 8 (so 3 never gets used). I use the letter 'h' to stand for a top/bottom sticker on the top of the buffer piece. 's' stands for a side-colored sticker (in my case that is always red/orange) and 'd' stands for the front/back-colored sticker (blue/green for me). So a corner position might be: 8s 1d 2d 4h 6d 5h 4d 7h 7s. Again, an odd number of corners to be moved means parity, and the appearance of more than 1 4 and 7 indicates that cycles have been broken.

My solution to the above cube configuration? It's complicated.

d L' [T] L d2 L' [T] L d [T] d' L [T] L' d2 L [T] L' d' D M' [J(b)] M D' M' [J(b)] M' [J(b)] M2 D' M' [J(b)] M D [J(a)1] D' M' [J(b)] M D [R(a)] F [J(a)3] F' R [J(a)2] R2 [Y] R [J(a)3] R' [J(a)2] R' [J(a)2] R2 F R [J(a)2] R' F' D2 R2 [J(a)2] R2 D R' [J(a)2] R D