Older cubers discussions

[newtonbase]

Mark I think if I stuck to 2 events I'd be getting last place at the others which I prefer to avoid.
Andy I'm jealous of your practice time. My commute is a short car journey. Nice in itself but lousy for practice. There's only one set of lights! I'll maybe get half an hour at lunch in a kitchen full of people and a bit at night if the kids sleep. I got lucky at the weekend and did my 2nd ever AO50 on 3x3.

 

[Logiqx]

My commute is a short car journey. Nice in itself but lousy for practice. There's only one set of lights! I'll maybe get half an hour at lunch in a kitchen full of people and a bit at night if the kids sleep. I got lucky at the weekend and did my 2nd ever AO50 on 3x3.

Take up OH then you can practice it whilst driving.

I'm joking of course!

In my last job, I used to disappear to my car for 30-45 minutes of practice during lunch time. That was about the only practice time I was able to guarantee during the week. It works better in spring / summer when it's not cold outside.

 

[newtonbase]

Take up OH then you can practice it whilst driving.

I'm joking of course!

In my last job, I used to disappear to my car for 30-45 minutes of practice during lunch time. That was about the only practice time I was able to guarantee during the week. It works better in spring / summer when it's not cold outside.

My car is a viable option. I had to go for a half hour nap in it yesterday due to the kids restricting me to 3 hours sleep the night before.

 

[mark49152]

I keep a cube in my glove box just in case.

 

[newtonbase]

I keep a cube in my glove box just in case.

Me too. Plus a spare in my desk and a couple in the boot of the car as giveaways* and then another giveaway in my man bag.
* I need to replace these. I did buy new ones but my son unboxed them for me.

 

[EvilGnome6]

I keep a duplicate set of mains at work and practice in the break room during my lunch hour. It's some of the best practice time I get during the week and I've set many a PB there.

 

[h2f]

Yes, races to 4x4 sub-1 and 4BLD sub-7 I've not been able to do much practice the last 4 days though.

6:19.xx at the moment with double parity. But off by 3 wings - I skipped one pair during execution. Scramble from WC. Memo was around 3:20 so execution was fast - I wasnt thinking a lot during centers, just automatic execution. Sub-7 is real!

 

[Selkie]

Been very busy with work last couple of days so trying to catch up.

there it goes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NT7s-omR_A

Oh wow that is just awesome, very impressive and I agree would make an insane official event :tu

Got the shirt updated

Just ordered one Jason, hopefully it will be here for Exeter Open

Nothing beats a pb! I'm going to try to reconstruct this because it's so easy. I did a few tries and got down to 11.25. The scramble is on this image (I clicked "last" for the pic).

Awesome, your PBs are coming very regularly at the moment

Not many (is there any?) Megaminx videos in this thread, so...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w01RperI4rQ

Best ao12:
4:15

Well, David, you know, I had to upload my own sub-4 Mega solve
It's not as good as yours but watching it I see that there is some room for improvement. Mistakes here and there and long pauses searching for pieces as well.

Best Ao12 = 4:12

Nice solves gents and very motivating, will try and do an average today

3x3 ao12 PB: 21.872 (old was 22.703 from 23 February)

Very Nice

Just having a plan is good I think. I can share mine, which is different and designed to make best use of my limited practice time.

For each comp I have two focus events, and I don't seriously practise anything else, just do the minimum to not be too rusty. For the focus events I try not to switch too often -maybe once a week so that each gets a few good runs of several days exclusive practice.

I've been doing this for my last four comps and it's the reason I made rapid progress in 3BLD and 5x5. For Exeter, my focus events are 4x4 and 4BLD. For London, undecided and it depends on how it goes at Exeter.

I like this idea, concentrated practice. Also unfortunately I did not know when registration opened so I am 3/3 on the waiting list for North London.

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I also practice at work when I go into the office once a week, the rest of time I work from home. I even take cubes camping and to VW festivals, often turns a few heads

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@Grzegorz

Thanks I eventually watched your skewb sample solves together with sarah's own and at long last learned to solve it. Usinf Sarah's beginner method plus I did learn H and Z perms. Think I may be sub 20 and ready to solve at Exeter

number of times: 50/50
best time: 8.50
worst time: 32.51

current avg5: 18.23 (σ = 2.85)
best avg5: 15.05 (σ = 2.93)

current avg12: 19.28 (σ = 2.51)
best avg12: 17.05 (σ = 3.43)

session avg: 19.42 (σ = 3.40)
session mean: 19.53

 

[mark49152]

I like this idea, concentrated practice. Also unfortunately I did not know when registration opened so I am 3/3 on the waiting list for North London.

Oh no, that's annoying. Registration only opened last night and that's 83+ already. The competitor limits are too low these days. They should not accept comp proposals with limits less than 100 people these days, IMHO, for comps in the south east. Maybe even more. It's growing fast and a lot of those registered are first-timers.

 

[mark49152]

6:19.xx at the moment with double parity. But off by 3 wings - I skipped one pair during execution. Scramble from WC. Memo was around 3:20 so execution was fast - I wasnt thinking a lot during centers, just automatic execution. Sub-7 is real!

Wow, that is pretty fast... I think I am a long way off 7 mins to be honest!

 

[Shaky Hands]

Also unfortunately I did not know when registration opened so I am 3/3 on the waiting list for North London.

Sorry to hear that Chris. Hopefully a slot will open up for you.

Oh no, that's annoying. Registration only opened last night and that's 83+ already. The competitor limits are too low these days. They should not accept comp proposals with limits less than 100 people these days, IMHO, for comps in the south east. Maybe even more. It's growing fast and a lot of those registered are first-timers.

The slots filled up really fast for this one, considering it had little advance notice compared to Exeter. The number of competitors may not be the best thing to be used to set a cap on competitor numbers when you have people registering solely to do shorter events like 3x3 and/or 2x2, but I guess there's limitations to what the WCA can do for this within the website's code.

 

[h2f]

Wow, that is pretty fast... I think I am a long way off 7 mins to be honest!

Yes, Im very surpriesed with it. I do a lot of dnfs because my aim is to solve and memo as fast as I can. I hope it will force my mind to get better times sooner or later. The second attempt was 6:53 with more mistakes on centers.

 

[mark49152]

The number of competitors may not be the best thing to be used to set a cap on competitor numbers when you have people registering solely to do shorter events like 3x3 and/or 2x2, but I guess there's limitations to what the WCA can do for this within the website's code.

I think the main issue is how many people the venue can take, but it's true there's a lot of people only there for 3x3. At Manchester, it was heaving during 3x3, and much quieter the rest of the time. Same room with same capacity though. Not sure what organisers can do about it.

 

[EvilGnome6]

I think the main issue is how many people the venue can take, but it's true there's a lot of people only there for 3x3. At Manchester, it was heaving during 3x3, and much quieter the rest of the time. Same room with same capacity though. Not sure what organisers can do about it.

As an organizer, it is incredibly challenging to scale up the competitions. I almost burned myself out doing all the prep work for a 65 competitor event. Getting enough people to pitch in is the biggest challenge.

 

[mark49152]

As an organizer, it is incredibly challenging to scale up the competitions. I almost burned myself out doing all the prep work for a 65 competitor event. Getting enough people to pitch in is the biggest challenge.

Sure, but how do you decide your competitor limit?

 

[EvilGnome6]

Sure, but how do you decide your competitor limit?

My biggest concern is how much help I can get. I could probably fill a venue with 100 competitors but I can't manage an event that big on my own. Leaning heavily on the delegate I could manage 65-80 but that's not their job.

 

[MarcelP]

Sure, but how do you decide your competitor limit?

My venue allows 80 people, I set the limit to 45. I am allready stressed by that amount since most competitor have said that they take one or 2 guests along.

 

[mark49152]

My biggest concern is how much help I can get. I could probably fill a venue with 100 competitors but I can't manage an event that big on my own. Leaning heavily on the delegate I could manage 65-80 but that's not their job.

The UKCA team does a great job and there always seems to be plenty of experienced people helping out with things like scrambling and data entry. Sometimes they have to call for judges but that's OK. The UK is small enough that you always see the same hardcore, experienced people at every comp, so there's plenty of support for the organisers. They have run at least one non-championship comp of size 120 in the south east and it was almost full. Comps further away tend to be smaller, like Exeter and Manchester at 60, because it's a long way for many less hardcore cubers. I'm sure the team would have no problem running a comp at 100-120 and I suspect the reason this one is smaller is because those who led the organisation of this comp couldn't find an economical venue big enough in their area, given that London is expensive. That's just a guess though.

 

[EvilGnome6]

My venue allows 80 people, I set the limit to 45. I am allready stressed by that amount since most competitor have said that they take one or 2 guests along.

I made that mistake at my first comp. I had a room for 100 people with a 50 competitor limit and 150 people showed up.

Your best bet is to get through 3x3 early on. You'll be fine after that.

Getting the numbers to work with so many spectators is difficult. Big venues are costly. I barely broke even after selling as much in t-shirts and mats as I collected in registration fees.

 

[Selkie]

Yes indeed the UKCA does a great job and it is not big deal to be fair. It is not like I am having to wait a year for a comp to come round again like a few years ago there is another comp in the same month being 3rd on the list there is every chance I will still attend. The UKCA has given a lot of great structure to cubing in the UK and I am currently writing an article on them and UK cubing for the Speedsolving front page, having joined the content team.

Well following a slight delay my Cubicle order finally arrived and I did an unboxing video. Not completely rich in content I have to confess and I have no clue how but it is half hour long. Going to try and upload to Youtube now but I may need to split into two parts. Will post it here asap