hardware

Megaminx Re-Stickering (Cubicle Stickers)

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I’m not a big megaminx solver, as you can tell from my walk-through post. But I do find it a fun break from cubic puzzles. I prefer Dayan megaminxes (with ridges). Like all things Dayan, the stickerless version is excellent. I also have a black one at work, but have never liked the look of the cheap OEM stickers — with their darker shades and poor contrast between like colors. The greens, for example, always seemed too similar, as did red and orange. And cream is just a nasty color.

So, when The Cubicle added Megaminx stickers to their totally awesome sticker picker series, I ordered replacements for the OEM stickers Here’s an overproduced video showing the before/after results (complete with explosions!):

(music: Easy Star All Stars, “Any Colour You Like”; puzzle: Dayan Ridged Megaminx)

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Maru CX3 / 60-Second PLL Time Attack

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It’s been a little while since my last post — that monster parity article that still has my head hurting.  I’ve got a couple things in the works, but I put them aside when I got a Maru CX3 the other day.  I’m really impressed with the cube, and I found my turn style and speed improving with it.  On a whim, I thought I’d give a sub-60 PLL Time Attack another go with the CX3.  I came awfully close, at 60.65 seconds.  Here’s the video (with apologies for some of the out-of-frameness):

(music: Lettuce, “Outta Here”; cube: Maru CX3 w/ stock stickers)

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Clearly Zhanchi

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clear-zhanchiI discovered a couple months ago on the speedsolving.com forum that Dayan made a small run of Zhanchis in clear plastic around April 2011. They were prototypes, and only about 100 were made. A few vending sites, such as 51morefun.com and lightake.com list them, but as sold-out at this point. Given the rarity, they’ve been hawked on Ebay for over $800!?!

I’ve always dug clear products. Getting to see the inner-workings of intricate machines is fascinating. So, the chance of getting my favorite puzzle in a translucent model was intriguing. The rarity of it made it that much more so. But I wasn’t going to drop 8 Franklins for what is otherwise a $12 puzzle!?!

I eventually found someone on the speedsolving.com forum who was willing to part with a new DIY kit at a reasonable price. I received it a couple weeks ago and finally got a chance to assemble it. Here’s a video:

(music: “Timestretch (West Coast Lo Fi Remix)” by Bassnectar)

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DIY Panshi — FAIL!

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video-setupI had grand plans for this post. I figured I’d say how excited I was to get the new DaYan Panshi DIY kit; that I put together a highly sped-up video of me assembling, lubing, tensioning, and stickering it; that it’s a very good cube but not necessarily better than a Zhanchi or Guhong v2; yadda yadda yadda. My posts are always so verbose; for once, I figured, this one could be video-driven.

Well, things didn’t quite work out as expected.

I did setup my video camera and assembled the Panshi as planned. And the resulting video is below. But instead of ending by showing H and F and U perm executions on a new cube, it ends with a 42mm Zhanchi sacrificed for its (now-ruined) core and a defunct Panshi with a broken core, four broken torpedoes, and one broken corner stem. All the result of a badly-made screw.

(music: String Cheese Incident performing “Galactic” on 7.30.03)

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