It seems that there’s a new sheriff in town. I awoke this morning to a youtube stream full of buzz about Mats Valk’s 5.55-second solve yesterday at the 2013 Zonhoven Open. For those keeping score, that’s a new world record — topping Feliks Zemdegs’ 5.66 solve from the 2011 Melbourne Winter Open.
Unlike Feliks’ solve, there’s a pretty decent video of Mats’ that he posted on his youtube channel just after the Open:
Pretty remarkable solve. Continue reading
I wrote last week in Part 1 of this post about hacking, so to speak, a Ghosthand Crystal Cube. As detailed in that post, I wired past the motion sensor and on-board IC that caused the irritating and impractical blinking. That forced the cube into a constant-on state once I connected two leads that I had temporarily extended through the core for testing.
As described below, I solved that problem with a switch inside the core that could be reached with a paper clip. Here is a video of the final result, showing the cube powering on/off and a sample solve in the pitch dark. It’s not a speed-cube, and it is prone to pops and lock-ups, so I solved at a casual 55-second pace.
Part 2 available here.
I thought it would be a fun novelty to have a cube that lit from its core. It would make it easier to cube in dim light — and, let’s face it, not being able to cube in dim light tops the serious first world problems list!?! And it would be fun. There are some decent glow-in-the-dark cubes (e.g., the C4U ones). But those have to be “charged” and need a very dark environment to glow. They also don’t help one bit with sticker colors.
It turns out that there is at least one model of light-up cubes: The Ghosthand Crystal Cube, which is a bargain at a mere $5.99. Knowing I’d want to “hack” the cube, I bought three.
Hack it? Yep, hack it. Continue reading
I just got my fastest recorded (on video) 3×3 solve of 36 seconds. I’ll cut to the chase, and put the long-winded commentary below the media content for once. Here’s the video:
(music: “The War” from the Duplicity soundtrack; cube: properly Lubixed white 57mm Dayan Zhanchi with Cube Depot light matte sticker set)
At 36.10, this was not my fastest 3×3 solve; Continue reading
My first sub-30 solve: 28.28 seconds! Pretty Lights’ “Finally Moving” played in the background.
Clearly, this is well outside of my ~40 second average. Even with the benefit of the 28-second solve, the session average was over 40 seconds. Everything just came together easily: I visualized the cross perfectly and performed it in six moves; my four F2L insertions went off without a hitch and with minimal hunting; and I knew the OLL (#23).
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I got lucky with a PLL skip, which probably saved me 4 seconds. But, even if you throw in a 2-look PLL, I should have been below my previous personal best of 34 seconds (with best-recorded of 39 seconds).
I guess my recent F2L work is paying off!
adventures in cubing 