Older cubers discussions

[Shaky Hands]

Distraction are not a problem if they take the form of noise. However, some guy BUMPED into me while I was solving and I kind of expected the rep to cancel the solve but he didn't say ****.

They probably assumed it didn't cause you a distraction, as the WCA regulations say it's up to the competitor to request an extra attempt:

11e) If an incident occurs during an attempt, the WCA Delegate may grant a competitor an extra attempt, replacing the attempt during which the incident occurred. The competitor must appeal verbally or in writing to the judge and WCA Delegate at the time of the incident, before finishing the original attempt, to be eligible for an extra attempt. An appeal does not guarantee the competitor an extra attempt.

 

[h2f]

Holy crap guys thanks for watching and sharing my videos!
This means so much to me cause i just started not long ago and I'm so happy it's actually helpful.

I haven't been to this forum before but I feel a sense of community and kindness here.

Your videos are really helpfull. I havent seen so good stuff about cross making and lookahead practicing.

 

[newtonbase]

Holy crap guys thanks for watching and sharing my videos!
This means so much to me cause i just started not long ago and I'm so happy it's actually helpful.

I haven't been to this forum before but I feel a sense of community and kindness here.

I've watched a couple of them since @Jason Green mentioned your 3BLD one and I'm impressed. They are clearly well thought out and are easy to follow. I have subscribed.

 

[pglewis]

As a ZZ solver, I can tell you that's true. Look-ahead, and recognition, when you know edges are oriented is much easier.

Some day, when I'm ready to tackle EOLine, I'll actually spend some quality time learning ZZ. Just paying attention to edge orientation on the fly helps me a lot, life would be really sweet if edges were already oriented up front.

I would say that I am in my zone around midnight. That's the time I acheived each and every one of my PBs (including tonight's 24.73 Ao10). I'm always very slow in the morning and that's when the comp took place. At on top that I had the stupid idea to drink a huge coffee just before and that makes for very shaky hands.

I'm the same way, my brain tends to hit its stride for quick thinking after 9PM. I also seem to have a window during early afternoon... but whatever the case, I'm certainly not firing on all cylinders for cube solving at 9 or 10 AM. For my last comp I intentionally got up ridiculously early so that 10AM would feel more like early afternoon to my brain. Who knows for sure, but I do think it helped some.

I also found out at my first comp that I'm very easily distracted by motion. I've subsequently read about some people even wearing blinders or some contraption to help block out things from your peripheral vision. I just practiced at my local coffee shop for about an hour a day leading up to my last comp; servers and customers walking around, lots of sound and motion vying for my attention. I strongly believe this helped me a lot. I don't recall anything from my official solves but me and the cube, I tunnel-visioned everything out without a conscious effort. I even remember being surprised by the size of the spectating crowd around the tables after a couple of my solves, but little memory of them at all before or during.

Now, if I can just put all that together PLUS lookahead lol.

Good continued 3x3 progress. I've been happy generally seeing a few sub :30s per Ao12 lately, so still trying to follow your lead down into the 20s.

 

[pglewis]

I'm also pleased to report that my black Valk is back in action after slowing to the point of being put on the shelf a couple months back. I cleaned out all the lube that was gumming it up before my last comp, while tuning all my cubes, but didn't bother setting it up afterwards because I was going with my stickerless Valk and a Thunderclap backup for the comp (and I was so done disassembling/reassembling and turning screws on cubes). Still didn't bother with it the past few weeks with a couple new stickerless cubes to break-in and try out but over the past couple days I've brought it back out and dialed-in the tensions to near superhero level once again. The stickerless is still a go-to but definitely slowed quite a bit vs new; now that the black one is rockin' again I can risk messing with the stickerless. I enjoy switching out all the time but the Valks definitely have that predictable reliability I want at comp time.

 

[newtonbase]

Reassembled and lubed. I'm disappointed with this one. I thought it would enhance the lovely clicky feeling of the Thunderclap but it has deadened it. I've stabilised my most stable cube so maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. I'll have a play with the setup and might try another with weaker magnets. I used N52 this time as I have loads of them.

Every time I magnetise a cube I start off disliking it but then warm up. While the Thunderclap loses some of the audible clickiness, that is made up for in the feel which really helps in a blind cube. With a slightly weaker set of magnets like N35 5mm x 2mm or 4mm x 3mm and the right setup it could be Awesome!!!ish.

 

[Jason Green]

Holy crap guys thanks for watching and sharing my videos!
This means so much to me cause i just started not long ago and I'm so happy it's actually helpful.

I haven't been to this forum before but I feel a sense of community and kindness here.

Yes we're very kind, you'll never get so many likes anywhere else. Haha

You definitely do a great job of explaining stuff. I had heard the blind analogy with playing cards before and it kind of made sense but not 100%. But after your video it was so obvious I could explain it to someone else. In fact I was swapping edges into place showing my wife last night, of course just by looking at them one at a time.

 

[newtonbase]

Yes we're very kind, you'll never get so many likes anywhere else. Haha

You definitely do a great job of explaining stuff. I had heard the blind analogy with playing cards before and it kind of made sense but not 100%. But after your video it was so obvious I could explain it to someone else. In fact I was swapping edges into place showing my wife last night, of course just by looking at them one at a time.

Yes, Noah does a similar explanation but he doesn't make the cycles anywhere near as clear.

 

[pipkiksass]

@Smiles, I've mentioned elsewhere how great your videos are. A lot of YouCubers rush things, or assume things, or talk down to you, or go on too much. You seem to strike a good balance. I subscribed after your lookahead video last week, but I'll be sure to take a look at your BLD stuff. COLL is still a step ahead of me, as I have a few more OLLs to learn, but interesting what you said in your Q&A about COLL being easier to recognise and more of a reward (on average) than WV, because I was probably going to go for WV next.

Anyway, this just happened - I almost NEVER film solves, but my DIY Valk M has just started giving me "my average", so I thought I'd lean my phone against a coffee cup on top of the fish tank (just as the pro's do???) and film a few solves out of an Ao100...

PB single (PLL skip) AND on camera!!! And it's not even a lucky cross, in fact there's a cross edge misinserted at the start! But it's an easy OLL and PLL skip, and pretty efficient (47 QTM, unless I've miscounted?).

Reconstruction:

11.05 - U' R2 U2 F2 R F2 L U2 F2 D2 B2 D' B' D2 B' U B2 L R2

Inspection - X2 Y2

Cross - D' R D2 R' F'
F2L 1 - Y L U L' Y U' L U L'
F2L 2 - L' U L U2 L' U L
F2L 3 - R' U2 R U2 R' U' R (missed the made pair on top, which means I was ACTUALLY looking ahead at the R/G pair!!!)
F2L 4 - U Y' R' U' R
OLL - U R' U' R' F R F' U R
PLL - skipped
AUF - U

47 QTM = 4.25 TPS.

 

[h2f]

Inspection - X2 Y2

Cross - D' R D2 R' F'
F2L 1 - Y L U L' Y U' L U L'
F2L 2 - L' U L U2 L' U L
F2L 3 - R' U2 R U2 R' U' R (missed the made pair on top, which means I was ACTUALLY looking ahead at the R/G pair!!!)
F2L 4 - U Y' R' U' R
OLL - U R' U' R' F R F' U R
PLL - skipped
AUF - U

Same OLL as in Mat's WR solve though he did it as VLS: in fact it was OLL with cancelation of last slot insert.

 

[pipkiksass]

OK, session over. Ao100 17.84 (PB is 17.79), best Ao12 16.40 (PB is 16.09), best Ao5 15.23 (PB WAS 15.25).

Somewhat better than the 18.9X Ao100 that I logged the day after I made my Valk M. Beat Ao5 and single PB, and incredibly (considering less than 100 of all the solves I've ever done have been on camera) managed to capture my single PB on camera.
Standard deviation for the session is only 1.73. That's pretty good for me, it's normally over 2. Worst time was 22.40, only 17 sup-20s and only 2 sup-22s. At the other end of the spectrum, 52 of the solves were sub-18, of which 20 were sub-16, and 3 were sub-14s.

I've said before that where I think the magnetic cube is helping most is with consistency. I think my M-heavy PLLs have adjusted to the magnets now, and my other algs are catching up.

Still can't believe I caught the 11.05 on camera. I only recorded about the first 30 solves!!

 

[Logiqx]

OK, session over. Ao100 17.84 (PB is 17.79), best Ao12 16.40 (PB is 16.09), best Ao5 15.23 (PB WAS 15.25).

Somewhat better than the 18.9X Ao100 that I logged the day after I made my Valk M. Beat Ao5 and single PB, and incredibly (considering less than 100 of all the solves I've ever done have been on camera) managed to capture my single PB on camera.
Standard deviation for the session is only 1.73. That's pretty good for me, it's normally over 2. Worst time was 22.40, only 17 sup-20s and only 2 sup-22s. At the other end of the spectrum, 52 of the solves were sub-18, of which 20 were sub-16, and 3 were sub-14s.

I've said before that where I think the magnetic cube is helping most is with consistency. I think my M-heavy PLLs have adjusted to the magnets now, and my other algs are catching up.

Still can't believe I caught the 11.05 on camera. I only recorded about the first 30 solves!!

Nice times. You're improving fast.

HTM + QTM don't count rotations so it was 40 HTM / 44 QTM. HTM is the usual metric so your 40 HTM PB was very close to my 39 HTM OH PB.

I had my second sub-15 Ao5 on the train today. My times fluctuate a lot from session to session, depending on whether I'm in the zone or being distracted, listening to other peoples conversations, etc.

 

[pipkiksass]

Nice times. You're improving fast. ...

I had my second sub-15 Ao5 on the train today.

Thanks, and thanks for clearing up the rotation thing. Progress is faster when you're 90% focussed on one event, I suppose.

Also, you should do all of your cubing on trains, it seems to work for you... I read a paper a few years ago about white noise, binaural tones, and concentration/focus, perhaps the lull of the train engines helps you??

Perhaps not BLD, I'd imagine ANY noise is a significant distraction.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Logiqx]

Thanks, and thanks for clearing up the rotation thing. Progress is faster when you're 90% focussed on one event, I suppose.

Also, you should do all of your cubing on trains, it seems to work for you... I read a paper a few years ago about white noise, binaural tones, and concentration/focus, perhaps the lull of the train engines helps you??

Perhaps not BLD, I'd imagine ANY noise is a significant distraction.

Most of my cubing is on trains. I don't think it's an ideal environment but it does provide a decent amount of time to practice.

 

[Smiles]

@Smiles, I've mentioned elsewhere how great your videos are. A lot of YouCubers rush things, or assume things, or talk down to you, or go on too much. You seem to strike a good balance. I subscribed after your lookahead video last week, but I'll be sure to take a look at your BLD stuff. COLL is still a step ahead of me, as I have a few more OLLs to learn, but interesting what you said in your Q&A about COLL being easier to recognise and more of a reward (on average) than WV, because I was probably going to go for WV next.

Congrats on your new PBs! Even on cam. Last time I got a PB single was a few minutes after putting my camera away to charge. feelsbad
I forgot to mention this in the video but COLL is only more worth it if you really practice your U/H/Z perms and you are generally able to recognize them from only looking at 2 sides. I have a video on a few reasons why COLL is good, but the main reason is because U/H/Z perms are super fast to do and to recognize from any angle, so you need to be good at them to take advantage of COLL.

Also, starting by learning some easy WV cases (like the 2 corners oriented cases) is not a bad idea, since the algs are pretty short.

 

[newtonbase]

Perhaps not BLD, I'd imagine ANY noise is a significant distraction.

It's certainly easier to to in silence but when fo we ever get that? The room I'd full of 10 year old boys and bored parents at Como's so seven then it's rarely silent. Practicing somewhere noisy can get you used to distractions. I do mist of my MBLD attempts in the work kitchen and often have to hold conversations during memo. You get used to it.

 

[mark49152]

@newtonbase, @pipkiksass - personally I don't find comp background noise too distracting as long as it's at a low level. If it becomes loud, it's a problem. Also certain noises jump out and grab the attention, like a slamming door or an individual loud voice. IMHO a good set of ear muffs is essential for competition BLD. I've only had one experience where the noise level became distracting even through the muffs.

 

[newtonbase]

@newtonbase, @pipkiksass - personally I don't find comp background noise too distracting as long as it's at a low level. If it becomes loud, it's a problem. Also certain noises jump out and grab the attention, like a slamming door or an individual loud voice. IMHO a good set of ear muffs is essential for competition BLD. I've only had one experience where the noise level became distracting even through the muffs.

At my first comp my ear plugs drowned out everything but one noisy mum. She was far more distracting than general room noise. I haven't used ear protection since.

 

[mark49152]

At my first comp my ear plugs drowned out everything but one noisy mum. She was far more distracting than general room noise. I haven't used ear protection since.

Yeah I considered dropping the muffs, but decided the distracting noises would be no less distracting if I made them louder. So I upgraded the muffs for an extra 3db attenuation. Loud noises can still distract though. Generally people are pretty well behaved during BLD events in the UK and I've had no issues since. Although muffs can't eliminate every distracting noise, I like the feeling of isolation they give, and I think that helps my concentration generally.

 

[newtonbase]

Yeah I considered dropping the muffs, but decided the distracting noises would be no less distracting if I made them louder. So I upgraded the muffs for an extra 3db attenuation. Loud noises can still distract though. Generally people are pretty well behaved during BLD events in the UK and I've had no issues since. Although muffs can't eliminate every distracting noise, I like the feeling of isolation they give, and I think that helps my concentration generally.

I'd consider using a very good set but I don't like the idea of blocking just some of the noise.