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Older cubers discussions

pglewis said:
Time to check in with my fellow new bld'ers... @Jason Green, I remember @One Wheel was picking up M2, and others I've temporarily forgotten. No news here, I'm risking letting things get a little rusty again and need to put aside some dedicated time this week to at least keep my progress. Soooo much sighted practice since I'm tinkering with multiple areas in my 3x3 solves. Gotta get my execution back up to snuff and do a few more 2 and 3 cube attempts soon.
Click to expand...
I'm slowly progressing. I'm working on better images and I have dedicated images through F now. I really enjoy drilling those for some reason. One thing I've noticed different with blind is I do not like to practice when I'm tired, which is a lot of my practice time. 3x3 practice and others are always slower when I'm tired also, but blind is a bit torturous. Haha. Maybe simply because I'm so slow, but I think also it makes each aspect more difficult (trace, memo, exec).

The vast majority of my images are people, I've wondered if it will be too many but so far I like it. I usually try to pick a better image as opposed to the easiest one for me to think of. For example when I see AJ my first thought is always Allen Jackson, but I chose Angelina Jolie because she's more distinctive to me. I guess there's nothing wrong with multiple options for some pairs.

I was at my kids school today and did a demonstration of a few solves for some of the classes. I think my best one was like 21. :) Multiple reasons... tired, standing and trying to hold the cube up high, kids making noise (some solves), and nerves. I always find that type thing more nervous than comp, and a different kind of nerves too.
 
My 3x3 tinkering update:

F2L: I'm confident I've improved how I handle a few cases that have hurt me the most in the past. I'm thinking more and slower again but once those become more automatic it should do a lot of good for my averages. Lower priority but still getting a little attention is some edge control, in particular coming up with alternate ways of dealing with the last pair based on the final U edge's orientation. I don't always spot it fast enough and I've yet to find anything reasonable to do about it in some cases like the 3-move insert, but in the majority of cases I feel like there's little excuse to end up with a dot case beyond "I just didn't look".

OLL: Whittled down to just the dot cases at last, for the most part (I will learn those too, I don't plan to rely on edge control 100%). Recognition still needs work to return to where my 2-look OLL was at but it is improving. I'm going ahead and learning OLLCP for a couple of the line cases that are symmetric (streetlights, highway); those are low frequency cases but there are only 4 for each and they're very easy to recognize. I'm also ready to find replacements for the algs I chose for the "awkward" cases, the ones I picked were fairly easy to remember but they're going to be difficult to finger-trick well. Those were only added in the past couple weeks and so far they're the only ones I've ended up scowling at.

PLL: I've already broken my solves with other tinkering so I might as well force myself to get 100% two-sided PLL recognition. I've gotten into an awful habit of an automatic U2 if I don't immediately recognize the case, that's gotta stop. I don't really like the Gc alg I've been using so I picked up a headlights-left, R/U/D version that feels like it has a much better flow for me: R2' U' R U' R U R' U R2 D' U R U' R' D. The old alg was headlights-right so it adds an angle if I don't let it go stale. Also added an angle for Ja that needs practice, I've been using an R/U/L alg for it and the Jb mirror provides an easy new one.

Now the race is on to see how much of that I can absorb before signing up for a comp and the moratorium on thinking goes back in place.
 
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I just realized that I'm right at the 5 month mark for learning how to speed cube. My "Twisty Timer" app on my phone shows this promising improvement:

Number of timed solves : 520
Worst: 4:08.59 (Yes, that's 4 MINUTES for a 3x3. :D That's where I started in June)
Best : 43.61

Avg of 100 : 1:03.14
Avg of 50 : 59.65
Avg of 12 : 58.58
Avg of 5 : 57.41

It's moving in the right direction for sure!
 
newtonbase said:
I've decided to relearn Ortega a week before the UK Championships rather than on the morning of the competition like usual.
Click to expand...

Good idea! The thing that made the biggest difference for me was predicting (during inspection) where there would be a bar (i.e., a t-perm, as opposed to a y-perm) on the bottom layer. So when I have my hands on the timer I'm thinking "Red cross, green bar on the right" or "white cross, no bar". That was the thing that made the biggest difference to my 2x2 times, and it's much easier than predicting OLL, IMO...
 
bubbagrub said:
Good idea! The thing that made the biggest difference for me was predicting (during inspection) where there would be a bar (i.e., a t-perm, as opposed to a y-perm) on the bottom layer. So when I have my hands on the timer I'm thinking "Red cross, green bar on the right" or "white cross, no bar". That was the thing that made the biggest difference to my 2x2 times, and it's much easier than predicting OLL, IMO...
Click to expand...
Yes, I'll need a few more solves to get back to that stage. Also need to practice 2 sided recognition again. The algs came back pretty quickly but I couldn't tell you what they are. All in the muscle memory. All solves were 11/12s which isn't awful considering practice levels.
 
A couple sub-1min 4x4 solves this week. Very close to Ao5 and Ao12 PB and improvement of around 1 sec on Ao50 and Ao100 (PB Ao50 now 1:11.06). Also slight 5x5 improvement with new PB Ao5 (2:24.xx) and Ao12, finally below 2:30 (2:29.49). So, even though I don't practise I seem to be improving, does that make any sense?
 
Sorry for the bad quality of the video but I just recorded the unboxing in a hurry and it's in Spanish, bad lighting, etc. but I just wanted to share my 1st impressions on my new hand-modded 5x5x3 from a very talented Spanish modder, GadiRubik. I will try to record a better video showing it later on. You can check the modder's YouTube channel and Facebook page in the details of the video.
 
Nice puzzle!

I've managed to reach to 1723 3x3 solves without a DNF (although I discard keyboard malfunctions and also when I somehow forget to start the timer), centers of the blocks in 1724th were wrong.

That was a 18.994 mean, I can almost say I'm sub-19, but goal for the year was sub-18 (from 21) and that won't happen.
 
We know you can do it, Mark @mark49152. Don't let a bad day knock you down.

By the way, solved my new toy a couple of times and I have to say I love the puzzle. In fact I think I'm buying more cuboids. Mass produced ones, whenever I can, of course but maybe I'll get some hand modded ones as well in the future. Exceptional work by GadiRubik and the convenience of having national shipment will make me repeat :)

By the way, @JohnnyReggae you are quite an accomplished modder yourself. Have you come up with any new creations recently? Something that could be on sale maybe? :)
 
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