pll_trainer: helps you practice PLL's

[badmephisto]

This program basically randomly chooses a PLL, and then it has a timer inside it that you use to record times for every PLL. It then tracks the stats, like average and standard deviation for each PLL, and shows them to you in (what I think is) a nice format. This can help you see what PLL's you need to work on, or get new algorithms for, and you can also see how you are progressing in speed, which I think is nice. You can also save/load sessions, and create reports of your times if you wish to share them with others.
I've been using a simpler version for a while now, but i decided to make it a little more user-friendly and just release it to the public, so hopefully someone will find it useful.

It is made in Visual Basic; Yes i know the language is crap but it is so simple to make quick and dirty programs in it that I couldn't resist. Therefore, this is only guaranteed to run on XP or Vista, but you may be able to run it under Linux with Wine.
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edit: To run under Linux with Wine: (thanks to tegalogic)
Linux/Wine: Download MSVBVM60.DLL (the Visual Basic DLL) and put it in the ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32 directory, then using the terminal, navigate to where you extracted the trainer, then type
wine PLL_Trainer.exe
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I'd appreciate any comments you guys have about it, if you decide to try it.

Screenshot: http://www.cdf.utoronto.ca/~g6karpat...ainer/scr1.jpg
Download: http://www.cdf.utoronto.ca/~g6karpat...ll_Trainer.zip

edit: fixed the bug with overflow.
edit2: now tracks your records for each PLL as well
edit3: released 1.1: you now have a chance to have the program generate the PLL's with correct probabilities, i.e. the chance of a PLL coming up in the program is equal to the chance you have of it coming up in a real-world solve.
edit4: released 1.2: now you can ENABLE/DISABLE PLLs, so if you dont know some PLL you can just disable it by clicking on its picture and it will not be generated for you. This was a hotly requested feature

[FU]

Simple but should be pretty useful. I was wondering when you time a PLL, do you start with the cube in your hands?

Edit: I tried the program out. How the heck do you recognise the G's by the diagrams? :P

[Lt-UnReaL]

Pretty cool program. However I popped my cube one time, so the timer was going in the 40's while I fixed my cube. So I stopped the timer and it said "runtime error overflow 6" and crashed.

EDIT: Just did like 20 PLLs and it crashed, it gave an error but I pressed spacebar to start the timer and didn't see...I didn't save either. So, hopefully you can find these errors.

[Todd]

Simple but should be pretty useful. I was wondering when you time a PLL, do you start with the cube in your hands?

Edit: I tried the program out. How the heck do you recognise the G's by the diagrams? :P

Mentally rotate the image to look like how you execute it?

[badmephisto]

1: the program simply loads all PLL's from the directory. To rotate them as you want, just use Windows Image viewer or something to rotate the actual picture, and it will appear like that in the program

2: Yes I am aware of the overflow issue, i just got it myself. I am internally tracking times in milliseconds, and i was using integers to compute averages. I am now using LONG's, so hopefully that's fixed.

3: You start with the cube in your hands, naturally. It takes too much time to pick it up, and it's way too much work in my opinion

So, issues were fixed, re-download the fixed version, should be ok now

edit: and im sorry you lost your session, when it happened to me i wasn't please either

[Lucas Garron]

edit: and im sorry you lost your session, when it happened to me i wasn't please either

Auto-save the current session every 12 attempts or so?
And inbetween, write to a delta/recovery log?

By the way, I'll try this some.
I've timed my PLLs before (and CCT is nice for this, with a stackmat connection), but it seems bsically good.

I might think of a lot of things. For now:

• Can you allow a menu option to set the scale to xx.yy instead of the max?

[Let1Hang]

Thank you for this nice little app. Great timing too... I've got just 2 more PLLs to learn. This will definately help me lower my times and recognition.

[badmephisto]

• Can you allow a menu option to set the scale to xx.yy instead of the max?

I'm not sure i understand what you mean... you want to be able to set that bar to be anything? Right now it shows average time, not max time.

I made a few modifications to the program - it now tracks your records for each PLL, which motivates you much more to do better, because you feel like you HAVE to break the records Btw, someone wants to share times?

Corners_Three_Cycle_Clockwise_(A1):_____avg: 2.75, std: 0.65, num: 3
Corners_Three_Cycle_Anti-Clockwise_(A2):avg: 2.64, std: 0.49, num: 3
Parallel_Corners_Swap_(E):______________avg: 3.04, std: 0.12, num: 4
Adjacent_Edges_Swap_(Z):________________avg: 3.34, std: 0.59, num: 8
Opposite_Edges_Swap_(H):________________avg: 2.72, std: 0.30, num: 9
Edges_Three_Cycle_Anti-Clockwise_(U1):__avg: 1.60, std: 0.33, num: 5
Edges_Three_Cycle_Clockwise_(U2):_______avg: 2.11, std: 0.31, num: 7
Push_Push_(J1):_________________________avg: 2.96, std: 0.39, num: 9
Push_Push_Upside_Down_(J2):_____________avg: 2.21, std: 0.35, num: 4
T_perm_(T):_____________________________avg: 1.92, std: 0.16, num: 7
Lucky_7_(R1):__________________________avg: 2.68, std: 0.30, num: 10
Lucky_7_Upside-Down_(R2):______________avg: 3.70, std: 0.28, num: 10
Parallell_Lines_(F):___________________avg: 3.49, std: 0.36, num: 7
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G1):________avg: 3.04, std: 0.11, num: 6
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G2):________avg: 3.04, std: 0.34, num: 6
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G3):________avg: 2.65, std: 0.21, num: 7
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G4):________avg: 2.38, std: 0.19, num: 6
V_Perm_(V):____________________________avg: 2.89, std: 0.33, num: 10
N_Perm_(N1):___________________________avg: 4.35, std: 0.51, num: 9
N_Perm_(N2):___________________________avg: 3.65, std: 0.21, num: 7
Y_Perm_(Y):____________________________avg: 2.69, std: 0.38, num: 6
Total Average: 2.99

I'm desperatly in need for a better N perm

[Lt-UnReaL]

Nice program now. This will help me get sub 3 sec for PLL.(or something like that if I am not sub 3 already)

[Pedro]

it works fine for me in Vista

nice program, man

I averaged 2:48 for all PLLs, but your program seems to like E and V perms a lot :P

Corners_Three_Cycle_Clockwise_(A1):_____avg: 2,40, std: 0,44, num: 8
Corners_Three_Cycle_Anti-Clockwise_(A2):avg: 1,70, std: 0,25, num: 13
Parallel_Corners_Swap_(E):______________avg: 3,14, std: 0,54, num: 12
Adjacent_Edges_Swap_(Z):________________avg: 2,40, std: 0,51, num: 10
Opposite_Edges_Swap_(H):________________avg: 1,75, std: 0,35, num: 10
Edges_Three_Cycle_Anti-Clockwise_(U1):__avg: 1,54, std: 0,29, num: 5
Edges_Three_Cycle_Clockwise_(U2):_______avg: 1,65, std: 0,35, num: 5
Push_Push_(J1):_________________________avg: 1,94, std: 0,32, num: 15
Push_Push_Upside_Down_(J2):_____________avg: 1,88, std: 0,26, num: 12
T_perm_(T):_____________________________avg: 1,90, std: 0,49, num: 6
Lucky_7_(R1):__________________________avg: 2,29, std: 0,30, num: 12
Lucky_7_Upside-Down_(R2):______________avg: 2,36, std: 0,27, num: 14
Parallell_Lines_(F):___________________avg: 3,16, std: 0,68, num: 5
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G1):________avg: 2,87, std: 0,47, num: 4
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G2):________avg: 2,47, std: 0,40, num: 11
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G3):________avg: 2,31, std: 0,37, num: 9
Edges+Corners_Three_Cycle_(G4):________avg: 2,29, std: 0,27, num: 11
V_Perm_(V):____________________________avg: 2,43, std: 0,35, num: 16
N_Perm_(N1):___________________________avg: 3,72, std: 0,40, num: 10
N_Perm_(N2):___________________________avg: 3,22, std: 0,40, num: 6
Y_Perm_(Y):____________________________avg: 2,28, std: 0,44, num: 8
Total Average: 2,48