video

Clearly Zhanchi

Adventures in Cubing3 Comments

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)

Continue reading →

DIY Panshi — FAIL!

Adventures in Cubing11 Comments

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)

What happened? Continue reading →

U Perms (Revisited)

Adventures in Cubing11 Comments
Slow-Motion videos of these algorithms are available here.

U Perms. Round 3. I sort of accidentally learned the U Perm (edge cycling) through the Beginner’s Method and its clunky final algorithm: F2 U(’) R’ L F2 R L’ U(’) F2. Then I started learning PLLs and wrote about the more efficient approaches I had found (now-stricken in the table below). When I did my foozled PLL time attack, that Ua was my fastest with Ub second. But those still involved a lot of moves, and Ub had a sort of clunky flow.

When I learned double M flicks, I started doing Ua with the new M/U algorithm. But I couldn’t get Ub figured out, with my hands mis-positioned for the U’ turns. Then I stumbled onto Anotine Cantin’s video on how to fingertrick Ub. A little awkward at first with the right index finger pulling left to right for U’, but it wound up being pretty easy after a little practice. Here’s my video showing both:

Once I got the finger-tricks figured out, these wound up having a really nice flow. And, in contrast to the older versions, there’s an elegant symmetry to the clockwise and counter-clockwise algorithms.

U PERM (Edge Cycle)

Ua PLL
Counter-Clockwise

M2 U M U2 M’ U M2

(R U’ R U) (R U) (R U’) (R’ U’ R2)

Ub PLL
Clockwise

M2 U’ M U2 M’ U’ M2

(R2 U) (R U R’ U’) (R’ U’) (R’ U R’)

Onward….

Double M’ Flicks

Adventures in Cubing3 Comments

I’ve been working on double (ring-to-middle finger) M’ flicks for H Perm, rather than the paired single (ring finger) flicks that I’m used to. This wasn’t so much about speed as smoothness; at about 2.2 seconds, H is already one of my fastest PLLs. But I did pick up speed. With just a few minutes of practice, I got H Perm down to about 1.75 seconds. Here’s a quick video (my first edited in Final Cut Pro X), showing both approaches.

(music: “Cissy Strut” by The Meters)

Transferring this to Z Perm is going to take some work. It’s easy in H Perm to just go double-double-double-double. Much harder in Z Perm to go double-double-single-double-single. Working on it, though. More helpful, still, would be double U flicks. I’ve been having a hard time with those (these stumpy fingers of mine!). Maybe I’ll get the smaller 55mm Zhanchi to try to work on mechanics.

As for the Camcuber Zhanchi popping montage at the end: That might have been a little too (indirectly) critical of a cube that I’ve come to like even more since reviewing it last week. More than anything, I was just surprised to have so many pops on it — especially since I almost never pop a Zhanchi. I suppose I was pretty rough on it when I was learning the double-flicks….