Hello! I'm Justin; I hail from the great vague green swampland of unincorporated south Florida, in the United States. I'm a casual cuber only, not concerned with times as my eyes and hands are not what they used to be. (I am entirely content with sub-four-minute solves, and I cheerfully surrender more meaningful time records to those of you infinitely more suited for achieving them than I.)
When I worked, I worked with mathematics, and found myself regularly using the cube as a way to help others visualize certain mathematical processes with adjacent effects across a constrained matrix. It seemed silly to talk about cubes so often and not own one, so I picked up an inexpensive Amazon cheapie recently, fell in love with the solving process, and now own about a dozen cubes, and irritate my very patient wife by handing her one and asking her to scramble it for me, sitting down beside her, then handing the cube back to her again, a few minutes later. I have some nerve damage in my hands, and L'-U'-L-U has been fantastic motor therapy; I'm seeing changes in my hands already, little bits of ground regained, latency between brain and fingertips decreasing.
I will never be a "fast" cuber by a longshot, and suspect almost all of you here would find my average times sufficient for a dozen or more full solves. That's just fine. You be fast; I'll be slow.
Favorite cubes? Two. First, I absolutely love my stone-stock stickered GTS2M -- smooth but grippy, stable but easy to maneuver, it only needed a darker yellow sticker set so I could make out the color under dim amber evening lighting at home, and I was completely happy. However, the Cubicle Labs stickerless Little Magic M is providing strong competition to be my main; I loved the stock stickerless Little Magic to begin with, found it really different in feel and stability from the stickered version out of the box, and then, this one arrived, magnets installed, lubed and broked in, and...well, wow. I am somewhat embarrassed to note that the Angstrom GAN 356 Air SM purchased at the same time is still breaking in, and not yet a contender for my main cube...though I'm told that once the gumminess wears off, it makes a fine one, and I'm looking forward to finding out!
I have a strong fondness for budget cubes, and this will likely show in my posts. I expect a $40 cube to be awesome, but I'm delighted when a $5 cube turns out to be surprisingly solid and a good buy for its price bracket. As I'm not after speed at all, cubes that might not be attractive to most cubers often appeal to me, and I will no doubt add a "not into speed, your mileage may vary on cubes this guy endorses" signature to my account here, to proactively acknowledge this.
I've just begun branching out from 3x3x3s to 2x2x2s, and picked up a Skewb recently (Wingy, stickerless, magnetized, lovely thing!) that's a lot of fun. I loved the rings puzzle as a kid (Magic, I believe it was called?), and can still solve that in a handful of seconds, blind. (I think the motions are hardcoded into twitch memory over the intervening decades...I can still fire those off at speed.)
In any event, hello, and I look forward to learning a bit more about cubing from all of you!
When I worked, I worked with mathematics, and found myself regularly using the cube as a way to help others visualize certain mathematical processes with adjacent effects across a constrained matrix. It seemed silly to talk about cubes so often and not own one, so I picked up an inexpensive Amazon cheapie recently, fell in love with the solving process, and now own about a dozen cubes, and irritate my very patient wife by handing her one and asking her to scramble it for me, sitting down beside her, then handing the cube back to her again, a few minutes later. I have some nerve damage in my hands, and L'-U'-L-U has been fantastic motor therapy; I'm seeing changes in my hands already, little bits of ground regained, latency between brain and fingertips decreasing.
I will never be a "fast" cuber by a longshot, and suspect almost all of you here would find my average times sufficient for a dozen or more full solves. That's just fine. You be fast; I'll be slow.
Favorite cubes? Two. First, I absolutely love my stone-stock stickered GTS2M -- smooth but grippy, stable but easy to maneuver, it only needed a darker yellow sticker set so I could make out the color under dim amber evening lighting at home, and I was completely happy. However, the Cubicle Labs stickerless Little Magic M is providing strong competition to be my main; I loved the stock stickerless Little Magic to begin with, found it really different in feel and stability from the stickered version out of the box, and then, this one arrived, magnets installed, lubed and broked in, and...well, wow. I am somewhat embarrassed to note that the Angstrom GAN 356 Air SM purchased at the same time is still breaking in, and not yet a contender for my main cube...though I'm told that once the gumminess wears off, it makes a fine one, and I'm looking forward to finding out!
I have a strong fondness for budget cubes, and this will likely show in my posts. I expect a $40 cube to be awesome, but I'm delighted when a $5 cube turns out to be surprisingly solid and a good buy for its price bracket. As I'm not after speed at all, cubes that might not be attractive to most cubers often appeal to me, and I will no doubt add a "not into speed, your mileage may vary on cubes this guy endorses" signature to my account here, to proactively acknowledge this.
I've just begun branching out from 3x3x3s to 2x2x2s, and picked up a Skewb recently (Wingy, stickerless, magnetized, lovely thing!) that's a lot of fun. I loved the rings puzzle as a kid (Magic, I believe it was called?), and can still solve that in a handful of seconds, blind. (I think the motions are hardcoded into twitch memory over the intervening decades...I can still fire those off at speed.)
In any event, hello, and I look forward to learning a bit more about cubing from all of you!
