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...