… And just take one guess as to which one won the battle…

My iPhone After Semi Ran Over It on Flickr - Photo Sharing

I posted this on my Tumblelog, but afterwards, I felt this was noteworthy enough to post here as well. Click the link and read the whole explanation (in the comments) and the person’s thoughts on the experience. This shows me yet ANOTHER reason to get an iPhone! I know my beloved LG PM-325 has taken a few tumbles, but I sure wouldn’t bet against a vehicle squishing it like a juicy techno-bug.

Cheers and happy reading!

Well, today wasn’t too eventful, but I had a couple of picture-worthy moments. As per usual, click the thumbnails to embiggen…

Usually, on a Saturday, Christine cleans the bird cages while I watch over the birds. Since that alone doesn’t really occupy me that much, I end up blog writing, surfing the ‘net… or playing with puzzles. Well, I wasn’t watching what I was doing with my 5×5x5 cube and you can see the result of my carelessness. Too bad there was no one to take a picture of my expression at the moment of discombobulation. They aren’t kidding when they say these cubes aren’t made for speedsolving! As you can see, I was already mixing it up when this happened, so I couldn’t exactly place the cubies where they were supposed to go; If you place them wrong, the puzzle is rendered unsolvable. I did manage to get it back together, after disassembling the rest of it and starting from scratch!

Later, I decided to make some brownies that Christine was oh-so-pining for. However, I was sitting on an idea for my next batch. Why not make them into… S’more brownies!? I think this experiment may be a success; it sure looks to be that way! Tomorrow, we’ll do a taste test just to be sure they’ve cooled and turned out OK. Anyone wanna come over and help?

Cheers!

P.S.: I did end up getting the Polysics’ album today… and it’s pretty good! Review to come after reviews for Lunatica and a few others that came before this one.

Hello to all of you and I hope you had a great New Year’s celebration!

For this first blog entry of 2008, I (surprisingly) do not have any new games. Well, aside from a Sonic the Hedgehog iPod game. It’s not worth really going in great detail about; I just got it for the nostalgia. However, I did get a new puzzle from the mail yesterday. I had to order it through eBay from PuzzlePros. Take a look at the pictures below:

It’s a Megaminx! This puzzle comes in a couple different color schemes and variations, along with different kinds of tiles depending on when it was manufactured. I must say that whoever manufactured this one did a decent job. It is lightweight, but it feels sturdy (and a little stiff) when turning the faces. The pieces come together almost seamlessly, with very little gapping in some areas. The tiles seem permanent enough, but only time and good use will tell just how good the quality is. It’s certainly different, and bigger (!), than the Mefferts version (I know the Mefferts version is smaller from watching YouTube’s vids on them).

This thing looks like a monster to solve, doesn’t it? My wife even said that it looks evil, due to it’s pentagram-ic stylings! It’s a 12-sided dodecahedron that is layered in such a way that any of the faces can turn freely. Due to the way it turns, the cuts form a star pattern, with which only the center piece is stationary (similar to the Rubik’s Cube’s centers). Because of this, it is possible to use the techniques learned in solving the Rubik’s Cube and adapt them for use in solving the Megaminx. Be ware of thinking that it’s really simple; compared to the Cube, the extra side on each face can really make things confusing. However, I did solve it this morning after mixing it up last night. The only help I had was advice, found on the web, on starting points and finishing points and nothing else…

… so I kinda ruined my fun in solving it so soon. However… that does not mean that the Megaminx is easy! This is a real brainbuster that any twisty-puzzle fan will get a kick out of, even solving it repeated times like I will.

I’ll update this entry If I find any really glaring flaws in the construction, but so far it twists and turns like a champ. I’ll need to see about lubing it to make it turn better. I also want to work with it more to come up with a good beginner’s solution, just to help out other people who may need advice. Everywhere I went on the internet, I only found sites that essentially said “work it like a regular 3×3 cube” and complicated algorithms for every single last-layer permutation case, none of which I’ve used in solving it! I want to, someday soon, help others by showing how to solve it without learning algs for every case. It can be done and I know I can find the optimal beginner’s solution.

All in all this is a gem in my puzzle collection. At least until I get the real Mefferts version! (supposedly the best one)

Ok. I know what most of you will think.

I. Have. No. Life.

Lately, I’ve been enduring some real pains in upgrading the web apps that this site uses the most. I use WordPress for the blog portion and Zenphoto for my photo gallery. The WP upgrade went relatively smooth yesterday, after I almost had a heart attack when I didn’t see any posts on my blog pages! However, the ZP gallery upgrade isn’t going very well. Some of the administration features are very buggy… even the ones that aren’t so new! Added to that, the upgrade broke the functioning of my random photo section of the sidebar, due to some new file structuring. Well, I have to count my blessings anyways; at least the photo albums are still visible, though just not presented the way I want it to be.

In related news, I did away with the New Pictures album, mainly because it was a PITA to re-arrange pictures every so often into the other albums, thus breaking the metadata info. If I need to show off the new pics, that’s what the blog is for!

Anyways, feel free to look at the photo gallery and look at some pics you may not have seen yet. The album thumbnails will NOT reflect what is new. Hopefully this will be fixed soon.

Cheers!

Update: After writing and saving this post multiple times (!!!), I’ve confirmed that Safari just doesn’t like WordPress’ new fangled visual editor very much. The headaches continue…