Color Scheme Research

I'm starting to play around with opponent colors for a color scheme. Using a white type FI. So far it's worked out well, as I'm only 5 seconds behind my regular scheme average.

Update

It's been quite a while but not much has happened. My times have gotten slightly better but I haven't had time for a full average. I am continuing to update my ZBLL document and will soon finish re-doing the H sets. I realized that I have forgotten roughly 1/3 of my OLLs, so I have to relearn those. I recently got some pretty nice FMC solves (26, 27, and 23) that were ruined by having to undo premoves (28, 33, and 28 in the end).

The admissions lady a Grinnell asked if I could post a video of me solving. Apparently they like stuff like that.

Update

Not much happened this week. I'm preparing for a road trip to the midwest and haven't had that much time to cube. Like many weeks I had enough time to do the weekly competition on the speedsolving.com forums. I set a pb in the fewest moves challenge this week with a 28 move solve. It was the first time I got a chance to use premoves and boy did it pay off. I'm getting pretty good at this FMC thing and am really enjoying it.

I had my first sub-2 minute solve on the 4x4x4 yesterday, right after I had a dream about going sub-2 (in my dream it was 1:43.xx, in real life it was 1:57.xx). My PyraMinx solving has gotten more consistent, as well. I'm using a Fridrich-style method that gets me times around 17 second pretty consistently. I put some serious work into revamping my H sets in my ZBLL document. Some of those algs were...bad, to say the least, and I finally got around to fixing them. Now I have to relearn them all, though. Grrr...

Update

I haven't been doing much 3x3x3 recently. I performed some surgery on my C4Y DIY but other than that I've only picked up a cube that size to do the weekly competition on the speedsolving.com forums. I have been doing a lot of PyraMinx solves and have dropped my times down to just over 15 seconds. I made a cool $500 at work the last 2 weeks and have been playing baseball pretty much every day, so I have been very busy. This next week looks pretty free, though, so I'll definitely get going on ZBLL algs again.

Update

It's been about a week or so since my last post. I have done absolutely no work on ZBLL. There has just been too much other stuff to focus on. However, I have been working on my MegaMinx and PyraMinx times, which have dropped to roughly 6 minutes and 30 seconds, respectively. I can't really get fast enough at PyraMinx recognition to do much, though. It's been rather a blah week, really. I'm putting a lot of time into driving and baseball and my lack of bus time has hurt my cubing time quite a bit.

Update

I've changed the blog layout a bit. Hope you like it. I know it's much easier on my eyes.

Not much cubing has been happening for me. I've decided that the speedsolving.com weekly competitions are great and that I should take part in them as often as possible. The FMC stuff is easily the most fun and learning ZBLL would really help there. I have gotten 42 move solutions both weeks I've participated and haven't been that far behind the rest of the competition. The weeklies also let me practice my big cube solves. I haven't solved a 4x4x4 in ages and a 5x5x5 in longer but my times weren't that terrible, coming in at around 2:20 and 4:55, respectively. My 3x3x3 times haven't been great but I'll blame my ever-degrading CII for that (the plastic feels squishy now).

Update

Well, I've gotten back into cubing a little. This lack of schoolwork sure is relaxing. I though I could let you guys know what's going on around my place.

I have found that my CII is desperately deteriorating, much like an FI (another cube I love). I hate having to take everything apart and put it back together again and clean it out so I don't know what to do. My times are pretty consistently low, though. I recently had a 20.52 average of 100 and a standalone 19.66 average of 12. Also, on weekly competition 21 on the speedsolving.com forums I got an incredible 3x3 average: 17.01, (22.03), (16.95), 20.79, 18.13 = 18.66. This was with no warmup just to see what the competition scrambles were like. I know it's only an average of 5 but it is still impressive if you ask me. I went on for some mediocre OH and 4x4 solves.

I'm steadily improving my ZBLL recognition though I haven't been learning any new algs. Before I was panicking when I came across a set I knew. If it wasn't CC, CA, CO, AA, AC, OO, or OC I had no idea what was going on. Now I look at the case more calmly and my recognition time has plummeted. My execution time leaves something to be desired quite often but I find that is mostly due to lockups and my own forgetfulness.

I'm seriously debating starting up with ZZ. It gets my edge orientation done early on and I've had success with OH ZZ. It's an interesting option though I'm not a huge bandwagon guy and ZZ is very popular right now.

Just my thoughts for the moment.