Author: Adventures in Cubing

1500 Subscribers + Christmas = Backlit Cube Give-Away!

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1500b_300pxWith repeated thanks to CrazyBadCuber, I’ve hit 1,500 Youtube subscribers. (At the same time, my blog subscriptions have increased, but certainly not as dramatically.)

1500 is a big milestone that coincides nicely with the holidays. Time for a give-away!

THE GIVE-AWAY CONTEST

One of the most popular posts on this blog and videos on my Youtube channel surrounds a LED-backlit Ghosthand Crystal Cube that I “hacked” for constant-on, blink-free illumination. As showcased in the how-to video below, I’ve hacked another one, and I’m giving it away through this contest.

The contest opens immediately, and there are three ways to enter: Continue reading →

Chairlift Solve

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Super quick post from a shared computer on a ski trip to the Canyons/Park City, Utah.

33-second solve on a chairlift. Cold hands. Cold cube. Decent execution until the terrible G perm.

GoPro strapped to my helmet. Black Zhanchi.

More Tough F2L

Adventures in Cubing5 Comments

My post on “Weird” F2L is the most viewed on this site, and features the most popular video on my Youtube channel — with continuing thanks to CBC! So, I decided to copy the same format to showcase three more tough (at least for me) F2L cases. It turns out that these actually are easy cases. It’s just that the “intuitive” approaches are clunky, and the easy approaches non-intuitive.

Here’s the video tutorial, followed by table contrasting my old (intuitive) approaches against these improved ones:

(music: New Mastersounds, “You Mess Me Up”; cube: Maru CX3 w/ stock stickers)

Continue reading →

Two Years In – Thanks, CrazyBadCuber!?!

Adventures in Cubing2 Comments

I had planned on posting a two year cubeiversary video this weekend, it being almost exactly two years from the first time I solved a Rubik’s cube. It was going to show a 30-second solve, before self-deprecatingly mocking myself for not really improving much this year. Yes, my technique is better. Yes, I know more algorithms. Yes, I’m more consistent. But my cross still sucks and my speed just isn’t falling much. Oh well. I never proclaimed to be fast, and even anointed this blog as one for the mediocre.

Well, instead of waking up and editing the video, I found myself laying in bed puzzling over why I had 400 emails (almost all from Youtube). I finally realized that CrazyBadCuber had done one of his Crazy Bad Promo videos featuring my youtube channel! Sweet! Hundreds of new subscribers! Here’s his video:

I’ve always thought that my video production and blog quality both eclipsed my cubing skills. There’s a bias against slower cubers, and I figured I wouldn’t get much attention until I sped up. Continue reading →

rubik’s building

Adventures in Cubing

Dude, I have the best idea. We’ll, like, put a whole bunch of, uh, multi-color high-intensity LEDs on like a square building and it will totally look like a Rubik’s cube when it lights up. Like a million throwies got stuck on the building in a totally organized way — like the most regimented rave on the planet. And, man, we’ll use one of those magic 3D printer things to make a cube with room for sensors and trick it out with an Arduino kit. Oh oh oh…a bluetooth modem, too. Duh. And then we’ll make the cube talk to a computer that talks to another computer that’s connected to the building, like a friggin’ twenty-first century game of operator. And people can like use the cube to solve the building, man. And it would would be epic — serious nirvana sublime sh#t, dude.

Like sharks with frickin’ laser beams. Only some Austrians really did it:

Right on, man. Right on.