BLD Memo Tools

[Lucas Garron]

I've added the scrambles for 2x2x2-7x7x7, as described above (no random state, essentially just random move sequences of length 15, 25, 40, 60, 80, 100 respectively).

can haz random state for 2x2x2 and 3x3x3?
http://github.com/cubing/jsss

 

[Keroma12]

can haz random state for 2x2x2 and 3x3x3?
http://github.com/cubing/jsss

Hopefully soon. Main problem is that I don't know javascript. But I will look into it when I have time.

 

[Keroma12]

I added more buttons so that you can immediately start over practicing memo or execution without first going back to the main page. For checking memo, you can choose to have the new scramble applied on top of the old scramble. If a reorientation was applied in the previous memo, then scramble again from how you were holding the cube for the previous memo. Otherwise, you will need to scramble in your solving/WCA orientation (depending on which you selected in settings).

(I forgot to add this to 1x1x1 and 2x2x2, will do that tomorrow, but it works for 3x3x3+ as far as I can tell.)

Future changes/additions (not in any particular order):

• Option for WCA notation for scrambles instead of automatically SiGN
• Megaminx
• Random state 2x2x2 and 3x3x3 scrambles
• A warm-up feature Roman has suggested to me, to train execution a bit without doing a full scramble and solve

 

[sk8erman41]

Thank you so much for this wonderful tool! Its really great! Is there a way that you could make the width of the input sections in the test my memo longer? When I enter the letters for the wings, sometimes the string is too long to be able to see the whole thing and when I need to figure out where to place a new cycle start I have to curser back and forth to see if letters have been previously used. I hope this makes sense. Thanks!

 

[Keroma12]

Thank you so much for this wonderful tool! Its really great! Is there a way that you could make the width of the input sections in the test my memo longer? When I enter the letters for the wings, sometimes the string is too long to be able to see the whole thing and when I need to figure out where to place a new cycle start I have to curser back and forth to see if letters have been previously used. I hope this makes sense. Thanks!

I've increased the width of the text input boxes, as requested. I forgot to mention it in the list in my previous post, but formatting is also one thing I'm going to improve.

 

[sk8erman41]

I've increased the width of the text input boxes, as requested. I forgot to mention it in the list in my previous post, but formatting is also one thing I'm going to improve.

Awesome thank you that is exactly what I was asking for.

 

[mark49152]

I've had a chance to spend some time with this tool and it is great, thanks. I now have another idea and feature request!

After a while of intensive memo-only practice, I found my memory getting exhausted, and confused by earlier solves. I also timed my splits to see where I really need to do work. Certainly my memo is weaker than my execution, accounting for 2/3rds of my solve time, but I also timed myself just tracing the pieces on the cube, without trying to memorize anything, and found that this accounts for 2/3rds of my "memo" time! So given that I average about 3 minutes, on average I spend 1:20 tracing the pieces, counting targets and breaks, finding cycles and pieces, etc. Plus about 0:40 extra (interspersed) pausing to commit letters to memory. Then 1:00 on execution.

So to avoid exhausting my memory, I started practising just tracing the pieces. That's the most obvious thing I can improve, and it doesn't tax the memory at all. I will scramble, start the timer, inspect the cube, and stop the timer when I can answer the following questions:-

• Corners: # targets, # breaks, # twisted, # solved.
• Edges: # targets, # breaks, # flipped, # solved.

For example, on a typical scramble I might find that for edges I have 11 targets (parity), 2 breaks, 1 flipped and 1 solved. Arriving at this result involves tracing and counting the targets, keeping track of number of cycle breaks, finding untouched pieces quickly at each break (took me ages at first), and knowing when to stop and scan the cube for the solved and flipped pieces. All of which can be greatly improved with dedicated practice. After doing only about 80-90 of these, my time came down from 1:20 to about 1:00, and I have started to develop much better techniques. I plan to make this a mainstay of my BLD practice.

My feature request is this: in the "check memo" screen, can you please add an option to input just the eight counts above, rather than a letter sequence? And report whether the input values are correct? If not, it's no problem, but it would be nice to be able to quickly check after each solve whether I had made any basic errors like miscounting targets and missing a piece.

 

[Keroma12]

[...]

My feature request is this: in the "check memo" screen, can you please add an option to input just the eight counts above, rather than a letter sequence? And report whether the input values are correct? If not, it's no problem, but it would be nice to be able to quickly check after each solve whether I had made any basic errors like miscounting targets and missing a piece.

An interesting idea. A couple of months ago I was thinking it would be nice to have speech recognition software involved, so you could just say the letters out loud instead of committing them to memory. But that's way beyond me.

I'll consider adding this in. But there are a couple of other things I mentioned above which have higher priority, and I'm quite busy at the moment, so it could be a while before I get to this, unfortunately.

 

[mark49152]

I'll consider adding this in. But there are a couple of other things I mentioned above which have higher priority, and I'm quite busy at the moment, so it could be a while before I get to this, unfortunately.

Thanks, and understood; I expected you might not want to do this anyway given that I might be the only person who practises like this . Actually it would be enough just to show the values on screen for checking, without input fields.

 

[Keroma12]

So I was busy with school for a while, but I've come back to this recently. I have the following updates (also listed in the original post):

Added "Trainer" tool. You select a type of piece (such as corner or wing) and an amount of letter pairs, and it generates memo of that length which, when applied to a solved cube, returns the cube to the solved state. The memo is not trivial (AB CD DC BA won't appear) and has no repeated letter pairs.

The idea for this new feature was entirely Roman's. He suggested it to me as a great tool for warming up before a solve. Personally, I like using it to practice execution.

I also made it much simpler to transfer your settings between puzzles. If you are at your bookmarked page for a puzzle (say 3x3x3), clicking on "Home" and then on another puzzle (say 4x4x4) in the home menu will transfer all compatible settings. You can then click "Change Settings" on the 4x4x4 page to fine-tune any settings which are different for you on 3x3x3 vs 4x4x4 (such as adding a wings letter scheme), and then bookmark the new page to save your 4x4x4 settings.
In particular, if you want to use the new Trainer tool to practice say corners, you can visit your 3x3x3 page, click "Home", then click "Trainer". This way you won't have to configure any settings, you can just start using it right away. You can also bookmark the Trainer page.



As for adding random-state scrambles, youSurname offered to help me out with that. Hopefully in the next week or two I will have those up and running for 2x2x2 and 3x3x3, including corners only/edges only scrambles and such.

Thanks, and understood; I expected you might not want to do this anyway given that I might be the only person who practises like this . Actually it would be enough just to show the values on screen for checking, without input fields.

I will consider doing this after I finish up with random-state scrambles. The other thing I want to do is add megaminx.

Sorry for any delays.

 

[topppits]

The link http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~krmatthe/BLD-Memo-Tools.cgi doesn't work anymore Any idea why this is happening?

This is the best blind tool ever, using and loving it for years now, thx for that! I hope you can get it back up.

 

[Keroma12]

The link http://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~krmatthe/BLD-Memo-Tools.cgi doesn't work anymore Any idea why this is happening?

This is the best blind tool ever, using and loving it for years now, thx for that! I hope you can get it back up.

Thanks!

Sorry, for some reason it seems that they haven't processed my membership renewal, even though I thought I did that a while ago. I looked into it yesterday, and hopefully it will be back up on Monday.

 

[DLeiber]

Kevin, I absolutely love this tool! Mark Rivers suggested I look into it and it's been very helpful in my 3BLD journey. I've used it a lot to check my memos. Being new at this activity, it was cumbersome in the beginning for me to keep reconstructing scrambles, memos, and solves to see if I erred in tracing, memorizing, recall, or execution, and your tool is making review easier.

However, I can't get the 2x2x2 page to work fully, even when I leave your settings at the defaults. If I click "Test my memo!", I get the next page with only the "2x2x2" header and the rest blank. But if I click "Generate memo!", it works as expected and I get a random scramble, the colorful depiction of it, a textbox for Reorientation, a button to generate memo, etc. Any idea why the first option isn't working? (The query string that it's trying is: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~krmatt...=true&Cm=1&twistm=4&Ce=1&twiste=4&Cc=CFQKUWXA .)

 

[Keroma12]

Kevin, I absolutely love this tool! Mark Rivers suggested I look into it and it's been very helpful in my 3BLD journey. I've used it a lot to check my memos. Being new at this activity, it was cumbersome in the beginning for me to keep reconstructing scrambles, memos, and solves to see if I erred in tracing, memorizing, recall, or execution, and your tool is making review easier.

However, I can't get the 2x2x2 page to work fully, even when I leave your settings at the defaults. If I click "Test my memo!", I get the next page with only the "2x2x2" header and the rest blank. But if I click "Generate memo!", it works as expected and I get a random scramble, the colorful depiction of it, a textbox for Reorientation, a button to generate memo, etc. Any idea why the first option isn't working? (The query string that it's trying is: https://csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~krmatthe/2x2x2.cgi?UBL=A&URB=B&UFR=C&ULF=D&LUB=E&LFU=F&LDF=G&LBD=H&FUL=I&FRU=J&FDR=K&FLD=L&RUF=M&RBU=N&RDB=O&RFD=P&BUR=Q&BLU=R&BDL=S&BRD=T&DFL=U&DRF=V&DBR=W&DLB=X&Cb=A&U=white&L=orange&F=green&R=red&B=blue&D=yellow&WCA?=true&rot=&twists?=true&Cm=1&twistm=4&Ce=1&twiste=4&Cc=CFQKUWXA .)

I'm glad to hear people are getting good use out of it.

Sorry about the bug. Looks like when I added the ability to continue scrambling on top of the previous scramble in the memo-checking section (which was suggested by Mark actually) I only updated the 3x3x3-7x7x7 pages and somehow missed out the 2x2x2 page. Weird that nobody has mentioned this blank page to me until now, as it comes up with any settings, including the default ones. I think I've fixed it; I played around briefly and it seems to be working now. Let me know if it's not.

Edit: Also added a general update to the original post.

 

[DLeiber]

I'm glad to hear people are getting good use out of it.

Sorry about the bug. Looks like when I added the ability to continue scrambling on top of the previous scramble in the memo-checking section (which was suggested by Mark actually) I only updated the 3x3x3-7x7x7 pages and somehow missed out the 2x2x2 page. Weird that nobody has mentioned this blank page to me until now, as it comes up with any settings, including the default ones. I think I've fixed it; I played around briefly and it seems to be working now. Let me know if it's not.

Edit: Also added a general update to the original post.

Thanks! It looks like it's working now. And BTW, I love being able to scramble on top of the previous scramble, so thanks to Mark, too, for the brilliant suggestion.

Do you have a PayPal donate button anywhere or another way I could send you a few bucks for your helpful contributions? (Don't get excited as it won't be a lot, but I'd like to send something, and maybe others would, too.)

 

[Keroma12]

Do you have a PayPal donate button anywhere or another way I could send you a few bucks for your helpful contributions? (Don't get excited as it won't be a lot, but I'd like to send something, and maybe others would, too.)

I don't have anything like that, but I appreciate the thought. Maybe you could consider donating those few bucks to the WCA (they are a non-profit)?

 

[DLeiber]

I don't have anything like that, but I appreciate the thought. Maybe you could consider donating those few bucks to the WCA (they are a non-profit)?

Well, thank you again for such a useful tool! I'll look into donating to the WCA.

 

[Llalundo]

I only use the 3x3 part. Great tool, nicely customizable. Thanks for this. One question: There isn't a downloadable offline version working without internet connection, right?

 

[Keroma12]

I only use the 3x3 part. Great tool, nicely customizable. Thanks for this. One question: There isn't a downloadable offline version working without internet connection, right?

Glad you like you.
Unfortunately, that is correct; you must be connected to the internet. My web-based programming knowledge was (and still mostly is) quite poor when I made this. The (racket) code on my website generates some static html each time the you load the page or click a button.

 

[Llalundo]

Ok, thanks. Still a great tool.