The Faces Behind the IDs

[Lt-UnReaL]

Name: John-Michael Clay
-Age: 16
-Background: I was inspired by the guys I saw on YouTube doing it so fast! Took me about 3 days to solve the 3x3 when I first got it (maybe 8 hours). Then I started memorizing more algs, especially for the LL and about 5 weeks later I could average sub 60.
-Occupation: Junior in High School
-Goals: To learn F2L!
-Other Cool Info: I love mathematics and astronomy. I play Unreal Tournament 99 and DDR and I can type the alphabet in under 2 seconds.

 

[Inferno.Fighter.IV]

-Name: Taylor
-Age: 14 10.12.92
-Background of cubing, how long you have been cubing, personal records, personal goals, etc.: I've been speed cubing for about two weeks, or since 2.17.07. My current best is 1:22 and my average is 1:38. My goal is to get my average under a minute, actually 45.xx would be very nice.
-Other Cool Information About You: Not too much else to say besides, I love Coheed.

 

[mynamedoesntmatter]

-Name: ???
-Picture: None
-Age: 15
-Background: I have been cubing for about 3 months now. I usually get times around 1:30 for the 3x3x3. I want to get that down to under a minute. I also want to be able to solve the 5x5x5 in under 10 minutes.
-Other Cool Information About You: Just waiting for my Pyraminx to come in the mail...

 

[Erik]

It's time I post a little something here...

Name: Erik Akkersdijk
Picture: euhm.. there a picture of me somewhere on my site: http://erikku.er.funpic.org
Age: 17

Cubing Background: Started cubing in August 2005 when my sisters boyfriend tought me a realy lame solution. Saw the movies and stuff, got in touch with Joel and started to become faster. Best avg so far 13.54. I try to be good in all the puzzles, not specificly one.

Occupation: I studied Computer Science for half a year, didn't like it and dropped out. Now I'm working/cubing/seeing what I'll study next/other stuff...

Other Information: I do lots of things, I play the Guitar, I swim, I juggle, I play chess at 2 clubs. I realy like learning strange awkward things very good like cubing or juggling(the latter is not 'very good' yet)
My site: see above...
My youtube vids: http://youtube.com/profile?user=frk17

 

[Fireman32]

-Name David Spector
-Age 35 I feel old compared to everyone else!
-Background of cubing, how long you have been cubing, personal records, personal goals, etc. Got into cubing only a few weeks ago when my friend bought me one for my birthday. I can solve the cube in under 2 minutes using the beginner method and am learning more advanced methods now
-Occupation. Computer Tech for a large pharmacutical company
-Other Cool Information About You I am a volunteer fireman in my town and I am also a big audiophile.

 

[dChan]

-Name: Daniel Chan
-Picture: Go here http://www.flickr.com/photos/ziyichan My sis has a pic of me somewhere
-Age: June 10, 1992(14 yrs)
-Background of cubing: I've been cubing for a little over a month now. It started when I first saw a compeition in San Francisco on Tv and thought that it was cool that they could solve it one handed and blindfolded so I bugged my parents to buy me a cube and here I am. Now I average 46 seconds with a best of 36 seconds. I am currently learning McGaugh and the 3-Cycle blindfolded method and I average 2:25 on my OH. For OH I use a different method for F2L(build a 2x2x3 block + 2 c/e pair) which I am experimenting with.
-Occupation: Student
-Other Cool Information About You: I have my own graphics team(currently on standby- I'm trying to get my school in order), I can do many magic tricks involving cards, and I can draw as well.

 

[ExoCorsair]

Name: Jon
Picture (if you have one): Available at Facebook.
Age: 17
Cubing Background: Picked it up at nerd camp a couple years ago, but only started speed cubing this [school] year. Currently averaging in the 50 second range for the 3x3, and around 4:15 on the 5x5. I'd really like to get the 3x3 down to about a 30 sec. average, and the 5x5 to about a 2 or 3 minute average.
Occupation: High School Student
Other Cool Info: Hmm... I code, play a lot of Blizzard games & DDR... Absolutely terrible in school, but there's got to be more to life than education. :lol:

 

[dbeyer]

Name: Daniel Beyer
Pic: http://dbeyer.110mb.com/pepsi.jpg
Age: 18
Background: Been cubing most of my life, been able to solve it for like 6 years. Been sub 30 for about a year. Been able to solve the cube blindfolded since June.
Goals: (Official of Course) sub 3m 3x3 bld, sub 20 4x4 bld, successful 5x5 bld, all by the end of the month.

 

[AvGalen]

PJK just told me I wasn't on here yet:

Name: Arnaud van Galen
Picture: Just found this one. That's me on the right.
Age: 30
Background: I was very much into the cube in the 80's when I was between 8 and 12. I used a very bad layer-by-layer method (corner orientation last) and averaged around 1:05. I also enjoyed Magics, Clock, Pyraminx and Nintendo Barrel. I lost interest in the cube when I was around 14 years old, but I got back into it in december 2005 because I found a 4x4x4 and 5x5x5 in Germany. I tried to solve it for a couple of months, succeeded, but couldn't figure out how to do parities. I looked on the internet and was amazed by the amount/quality of information and discovered speedcubing. I went to my first competition and enjoyed it so much that I now plan to travel to world visiting tournaments. I average about 8/27/1:45/2:45 for the 2/3/4/5 cubes. I plan on improving, especially on the 5x5x5 which is my favorite puzzle.
Occupation: Software engineer (.NET)
Other: I have some tutorials on youtube and am very active on this forum. I also organize the weekly competitions. And I am probably the only sub 30 cuber that still uses keyhole+4look. If you go to any Open competition, there will be a chance to meet.

 

[tim]

-Name: Tim Habermaas
-Picture: sorry, none :/
-Age: 22
-Background of cubing:
About 5 years ago i found a cube beetween some old toys from my mother. I tried to solve it, but wasn't very succesful. It took me about two days to figure out, how to solve the first two layers. But i wasn't able (patient enough ) to solve the last layer on my own. So i searched for a solution(simple layer-by-layer) and learnt it by heart. After i knew how to solve it, i didnt' try to improve my time (about 2 min.) until December 2006. I learned to solve the cube blindfolded in July 2006 and in order to avoid many setup moves for permutation parity, i learned all PLL algs generated by Cube Explorer (very ugly algorithms. I'm still working on replacing them with finger optimized ones). In December i learned Fridrich method with 3-LLL and can now average 27s on the 3x3x3 cube.
-Goals of cubing:
I want to average 2:30 min blindfolded 3x3x3 (at the moment i'm around 3:30) and get sub-20 on normal speedcubing. But i focus more on bld cubing, cause it's more fun to me, opening my eyes and seeing a solved cube.
-Occupation: studying computer science in Karlsruhe, Germany
-Other Cool Information About You: Hm. I don't think it's "cool", but i like riding my bicycle and playing footbag . I also can juggle, but only with 3 balls, so that doesn't really count

 

[Guitaroooman]

Name:Franklin Dean
Picture:

Age: 16, almost 17.
Cubing Background: Starting cubing January this year (2007)and I just kinda fell into it, I always thought that it was cool and interesting and so I solved one to get extra credit for my math class and the rest is history.

3x3 single PR: 38.56
3x3 average PR: 50.43
3x3 BLD single: 5:00 (still not sure, haven't really timed myself)
5x5 average PR: 15:00
*A lot to improve on, haha!

Occupation: I work at an Ice Cream shop called "Carvel".
Other Cool Stuff: In addition to Rubik's Cubes, I play guitar and like to sing with my friends. I also am an audio purist/audioPHILE so I'm also on the hydrogenaudio Forums, a great resource for audio heads for me. There's nothing like a song ripped perfectly from a CD using EAC, and then encoded into a V2 preset VBR LAME.exe mp3. 3012037

 

[Rama]

-Name: Rama Temmink

-Picture: Coming soon... I think

-Age: 17

-Background of cubing: When I was a kid I allways found the Rubik's Cube interesting, but I did not own one, till 8 Months ago I have waited many years before I touched a Rubik's Cube... So now I let my ''hidden'' passion for the Rubik's Cube loose. :rolleyes:

-personal goals: SUB-20 on average One-Handed 3x3 Cube at the World Championships 2007.

-Occupation: School... not happy about it

-Other Information: I love Rock and Roll...

My Youtube Acount

 

[icke]

Name: Axel Thur
Picture:

Age: turned 21 april 15th
Background: i started cubing in the middle of january. my hostbrother started a few weeks earlier. i was amazed that he could do it so fast. so next day i went to the mall and bought one. it took me about two days to learn via internet(i know i should have tried it on my own). i had a really slow method and at the beginning it took me about three min. after three days of cubing i was down to two and now after switching to fridrich i avg around 46 sek. right now i m laerning all f2l and started with all oll's but that will take me a wile. hope to avg around 35 in the not so far future and be able to solve the cube blindfolded. i also would like to bring down my times on the 4x4x4 and the 5x5x5. so i have to practice a lot .
Occupation: right now i m an au pair in the usa but i will be back in germany in a month and start studying soon
other stuff: i also juggle but only three balls, did it for a wile so i know a few tricks. i started to do diablo and devilsticks but i m not that good in it. i also like to take pictures

 

[HelloiamChow]

-Name
Andrew Chow

-Picture (if you have one)
Sorry, uhhhh, well, you can see what I look like here: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JopoChow

-Age
16

-Background of cubing, how long you have been cubing, personal records, personal goals, etc.
I started in March of '06. Some of my friends were doing it, and I thought, why not? I became hooked instantly. I hope to go to a few competitions held in Florida this fall, maybe even host my own. Officially, I want a successful 3x3x3 BLD, a sub 20 avg for the 3x3x3, and, I dunno, get a lot faster at the 4x4x4 and 3x3x3 OH. It'll take time. Hopefully I'll meet some more cubers.

-Occupation
Student...bleh.

-Other Cool Information About You
I play the bassoon. I'm in band. I love playing Ultimate Frisbee. I dunno, doing crazy stuff.

 

[Jason Baum]

I guess it's about time I post in here.

-Name: Jason Baum

-Picture: Just look me up on facebook

-Age: 21

-Background of cubing, how long you have been cubing, personal records, personal goals, etc.: I got into cubing thanks to Joe Spadafora. He doesn't cube much anymore, but he can average sub 20 with Roux. Anyway, I saw him solve the cube at my school in 30 seconds around August of 2004. I had never even heard of anybody solving the Rubik's Cube, so I was completely amazed and fascinated. I knew right away that it was something I wanted to learn how to do. So he taught me a basic LBL method. We ended up going to our first competition in May of 2005 (Horace Mann), and I have been completely hooked on cubing ever since then. Right now my biggest goal is to finish learning ZBF2L, but I've been REALLY lazy all summer. I have like 60 cases left. >_>

-Occupation: Student at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia

-Other Cool Information About You: Hmm... I am in the 2007 Guinness Book of World Records. I am the world record holder for fastest completion of Super Mario World 100% (all 96 exits): 1 hour, 31 minutes, and 30 seconds. I used to be really into speedrunning games and used to hold quite a few records at www.speeddemosarchive.com, but cubing took over and I hardly even play video games anymore, let alone speed run. My Mario World record still stands though, and likely will for a long time. I worked on it for over 4 months. I am also an avid musician. Percussion and guitar are my main instruments. I am also completely obsessed with Pittsburgh sports, especially the Penguins.

 

[pou-pou]

Hi. So I'm Topi Peltonen from Finland alright and I'm turning 22 this September.

Got to cubing early this year, though I wanted earlier. It was just that I couldn't get a cube from Finland 'cause they we're all sold out at christmas for some reason. All the toy stores were like "yeah, we're just as amazed than you're, the rubik's cube was some kind of hit this year." I had to wait like three months and got all impatiend and tried to get my mom to send me one from the states. Luckily my finacé saved me and brought me this one from her grandmom.

As all of 'em, this one was particularly hard to solve, or practice. (All those grandchildren had swapped those stickers around.) You know, when you know nothing from a cube, that wasn't so easy to spot, I just were like what the **** is going on here

I've always been somewhat perfectionist at everything I do, as I soon noticed also with the cube.

It went something like this:
"Well, if I can solve the cube in less than two minutes I'll be happy."
Yeah right and a day later,
"well if I can do the cube in less than a minute I'll be happy, 'cause the next goal would be under 30 seconds and I'm never going to get there."

Who'd guess, that's where I am. So the latest goal I though was to get sub 20s with all the three mainstream methods (Fridich, Petrus, Roux).
I hope that's enough for me, 'cause I have lots of other things to do besides cubing

Ah. I've had couple of beers (and a bottle of wine) so don't mind my grammar.
That "other cool info 'bout me" would have so long stories (ie. how I met my mom after over 15 years) and I'm not in the mood to write all night long. I think it'll all come out sometime anyway.

Huh. I'm exhausted. I recently qiut smoking and I could kill to get one. Damn.

Oh. You can find pictures of me here and some old ones here. (As if anyones's intrested )

 

[AvGalen]

Welcome pou-pou / Topi! Are you going to the competition in Helsinki next month? I am thinking about going, travel through Scandinavia and then visit the Swedish Open the week after. Maybe you can convince me to go or persuade me not to go. What would someone from The Netherlands do in Scandinavia do for a week?

 

[pou-pou]

Welcome pou-pou / Topi! Are you going to the competition in Helsinki next month? I am thinking about going, travel through Scandinavia and then visit the Swedish Open the week after. Maybe you can convince me to go or persuade me not to go. What would someone from The Netherlands do in Scandinavia do for a week?

There's a comp in Helsinki next week?! No the beep I'm going .
You shoul'd see how I shake after I turn the cam on (and there is this guy) I don't wanna be there . Yeah I know, it's not about winning but still.


After a little more practice I promise to get somewhere you'll be and shake your hand. After all, I learned to solve 5x5 from your videos before ever having one . ^^

But if you need a place to stay, just like 200km from Helsinki, in Tampere D) I bet me and my fiancé would willingly trade apartments with you

 

[AvGalen]

Those competitions are next month, not next week.

Finnish Open 2007
Date Aug 18-19, 2007

Swedish Open 2007
Date Aug 25-26, 2007

I am glad you liked my 5x5x5 tutorial. If you own one now, start using it in the weekly competition and beat me at my own game

Maybe you will reconsider and I might just see you in a couple of weeks. If you have any tips for a visit to Finland+Sweden, please let me know.

 

[pou-pou]

Just talked to my fiancé, like right before she passed out, and yeah we're prolly going to check the Finnish opens.

You asked a reason to come here? Well the views (you've heard that right?, the land of the thousand lakes!) are the answer, nothing more. Nah, it's fall now and the weather it's on it's badest here now, nothing to see about, except for me of course

And for that 5x5, I love the way you do it, easy and simple, though I don't get the kicks from the puzzle as i get from the 3x3, and I'm waaay too slow to enter any kind of competition.

Hoping to get bigger part of the community anyway.