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Videos of Algorithms in the Wiki?

Carson

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What would you guys think about adding in links to videos of some of the algorithms on the wiki pages? I think it would be a nice feature and would be willing to do some of the work, but I wanted to get some opinions before I just started throwing links around.
 

minsarker

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I think this would be a great idea. Some of the algorithms are confusing for newcomers and videos can never do anything but help.

I would help with it but you guys are much better at cubing than me.
 

Lucas Garron

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Seriously, that's what http://alg.garron.us/ is for, although I admit it doesn't convey grip or finger tricks.

Nevertheless, linking to alg.garron.us is quite easy (I could add another field on the page to make it easier to generate wiki links), and I'm even planning to clean it up, and work on a tool to display popup algs on a page.

Is it simple to implement alg tags and have their function be revisable?
 

Caedus

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Seriously, that's what http://alg.garron.us/ is for, although I admit it doesn't convey grip or finger tricks.

Nevertheless, linking to alg.garron.us is quite easy (I could add another field on the page to make it easier to generate wiki links), and I'm even planning to clean it up, and work on a tool to display popup algs on a page.

Is it simple to implement alg tags and have their function be revisable?

Can't anyone just plug an algorithm into a javacube or another program though? It would probably be useful to have that feature easily accessible, but I don't feel that it could ever replace a video of the hand motions. That's just my opinion, but how I perceived it was that the video would help with the grip/hand motions rather than just the twisting of the cube.
 

Carson

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Seriously, that's what http://alg.garron.us/ is for, although I admit it doesn't convey grip or finger tricks.

That was my basic premise behind wanting videos. I think seeing the fingertricks would be very beneficial.

Nevertheless, linking to alg.garron.us is quite easy (I could add another field on the page to make it easier to generate wiki links), and I'm even planning to clean it up, and work on a tool to display popup algs on a page.

Is it simple to implement alg tags and have their function be revisable?

I am no wiki expert, but I believe every algorithm would have to have a separate link to be passed off to your site. I don't believe there is any way that we could automate this.
 

blah

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Seriously, that's what http://alg.garron.us/ is for, although I admit it doesn't convey grip or finger tricks.

That was my basic premise behind wanting videos. I think seeing the fingertricks would be very beneficial.
Seconded. That is the whole point of videos.

To be very honest, Lucas, I think the only purpose of alg.garron.us is for stuff like instant scramble display, for example, FMC. It's also helpful for people who don't have immediate access to a physical cube. Otherwise, there really isn't any point in seeing how the cube moves if you can read notation and perform it on your own cube, no?
 

nickvu2

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I really like the idea, and hope that it would one day include videos for OH and other puzzles.

Sure you could search YouTube or plug algs into software, but it would be nice to have a central hub or index of high quality cubing resources.
 

ChrisBird

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Lucas: Your program never works for me, it says 'access denied,' and I can only assume it is the same for others. So maybe links to youtube videos might be a good idea.
 

Lucas Garron

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I am no wiki expert, but I believe every algorithm would have to have a separate link to be passed off to your site. I don't believe there is any way that we could automate this.
When we're talking about making and uploading individual videos, how is non-automation an argument?

And actually, running a script to add alg tags automatically to the wiki would be easy to do once offline, and not too difficult.

Anyhow, I don't think you got my point. The idea of an alg tag would be that the algs link to an animation, yes. But then we can change what exactly happens when you click on an alg, by changing the code only in one place.
(It's decomposition. Think of the spoiler tag. PJK can easily make the text go blue, or blink, or anything, instead of hidden.
With an alg tag, we could link to alg.garron.us, but change that easily. Although systematic YouTube linking would not be as simple.
)


Seriously, that's what http://alg.garron.us/ is for, although I admit it doesn't convey grip or finger tricks.

That was my basic premise behind wanting videos. I think seeing the fingertricks would be very beneficial.
Seconded. That is the whole point of videos.
False. Like, really. The point of a video is to show, visually, the execution of an alg. Quite a bit of that is covered by an applet (and not really by the text of the alg itself).
But the fingertricks are an actual argument. (Don't forget grip, people!)

To be very honest, Lucas, I think the only purpose of alg.garron.us is for stuff like instant scramble display, for example, FMC. It's also helpful for people who don't have immediate access to a physical cube. Otherwise, there really isn't any point in seeing how the cube moves if you can read notation and perform it on your own cube, no?
Yes, alg.garron.us is good for showing effects of algs. But the animation can be important for people who are learning, or even those who should know notation.
When I do 7x7x7 algs, I sometimes make certain of moves by following an applet, and seeing the actual moves done for you can be a lot of it for wiki users.
Anyhow, my main use of it is AlgTyper. It's awesome for typing up algs fast and sharing them.
It's also good for lots of random things, like random-access playback, not requiring a physical cube, blacking out LL during F2L algs, etc.

Not that I think alg.garron.us is the greatest tool in the universe and should be used everywhere, but I don't like people using arguments based on limited opinions/ideas. Where's Stefan when you need him? :rolleyes:

Lucas: Your program never works for me, it says 'access denied,' and I can only assume it is the same for others. So maybe links to youtube videos might be a good idea.
Are you assuming it's the same for me, then? ;)
The only time I've ever heard of anything like this is that my site used to be blocked in China.
YouTube is sometimes blocked, too...
(I'll talk to you on IRC some time to see what's going on?)

Anyhow, it is rather buggy, and I'm reserved about advertising its use until it's cleaned. And apparently I should add a comment/report field to figure out what's breaking for people.


So: I'm not against videos. But I think applets could do a lot, and would be more reliable than people uploading videos here and there.
 

Lucas Garron

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Well, almost:

http://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/Sandbox

The wiki does bad things to the input I'm afraid, mabie it is fixable? I'm not a wiki guru...

EDIT: solved it but it was not the cleanest solution...

Maybe if I recreate the template so it has got two inputs, "ALGO" and "TEXT"?
Well, I tried to do the best I could, and you can see the edited version now. Wikimedia templates actually a pretty decent system, except disallowing spaces in parameters (like algs).
 

TioMario

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I love Lucas' applet, I use it all the time.
And is easy to make your own fingertricks after you know the algorithm's moves.
For instance, I discovered that the headlights OLL: [R' U2 R F U' R' U' R U F'] is faster to perform by changing that F for a b z (so it will be [R' U2 R b z U' R' U' R U F'])
I don't know, I think fingertricks are a very subjective thing.
 
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Cride5

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Having videos for algs would be pretty useful, but in reality I find it difficult to believe that enough videos will be uploaded to represent even half of the algs available on the Wiki. The important thing about using a tool like alg.garron (along with some kind of alg tag) is that every algorithm will be animated.
 

Kenneth

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Well, almost:

http://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/Sandbox

The wiki does bad things to the input I'm afraid, mabie it is fixable? I'm not a wiki guru...

EDIT: solved it but it was not the cleanest solution...

Maybe if I recreate the template so it has got two inputs, "ALGO" and "TEXT"?
Well, I tried to do the best I could, and you can see the edited version now. Wikimedia templates actually a pretty decent system, except disallowing spaces in parameters (like algs).

Hmm, if you look at the template I created, the history of it you will se edits done by Etu. I asked him if he had any ideas and he tried a function that merges words in URL's using "+" (as when googling for "cube+alg"). The only problem with it was that the applet you have bugged from those. If you put a filter at your page that removes pluses and put spaces there instead it will probably work with or without spaces. :)

Edit... forget it, it shows the algs with pluses at the pages, it looks ugly.
 
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Carson

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I really like this idea. The only thing I would be worried about is the quality of the videos -_-'.
That is why we would be picky about what was posted. It would be much better to have no video than a poor one. I'm sure we can get some of the "pros" to make some videos. If a few people with good fingertricks were to just record "raw" videos of them doing the algs both fast and slow, I would be willing cut the videos.

Having videos for algs would be pretty useful, but in reality I find it difficult to believe that enough videos will be uploaded to represent even half of the algs available on the Wiki. The important thing about using a tool like alg.garron (along with some kind of alg tag) is that every algorithm will be animated.

I like Lucas' tool very much. I just think that the uses for this tool and the videos would be different.

I don't invision a video for every single algorithm, in fact I would only imagine that the most common one's would have them.
 

hawkmp4

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Maybe we could have someone do one video of PLLs? Like, go through like a PLL time attack but pausing in between algorithms? It'd be very easy to annotate and label and would cut down the work involved in this considerably.
 

Lucas Garron

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Lucas, now it looks pretty nice but bugs up the animator : http://www.speedsolving.com/wiki/index.php/Sandbox

If you are intrested in puting a filter at your side it will work :)
Enabled. :)

I wanted to use _ for spaces in URLs instead of +, because it's easier to see the alg in the URL, and I see the possibility of using + as a suffix modifier for puzzles/notations I might support in the future. But if there's no simple way to bend the wiki, I'm happy to support it.

Also, it shouldn't be terribly impossible to use VisualCube for previews, but that would involve putting it on this server.
 
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