Maybe next video will be the V-Cube 6… or the Mirror Blocks… or maybe I’ll just jump to the V-Cube 7. Meh. You’ll find out soon enough!

Ok, Ok, OK!! So I feel obligated to write posts on or around special occasions, while being lazy with other posts. Whaddya people want from me anyway??

Well, not to worry. I am, in stages, working on the vacation post I so have promised you all that I’d get to. It’s not easy, because there were so many good things that happened while we were in Germany. I swear, nothing really bad happened, which was amazing, considering all that could have gone wrong. Everywhere we went, society as a whole somewhat mirrored life in America, and the people we met were about as friendly as you would expect over here. So really, I’m having a hard time putting my perspective on the entire experience into words without sounding somewhat stupid or “touristy”. By the way, I haven’t talked to Christian Wüst much since the trip, but I want to assure him that he did much to help us out while we were there. He was a most gracious host as well as being a great friend to hang out with. I also want to tell his friends (Hans-Peter, Sascha, Harry, Suzanne, Dennis, Wongo and anyone else’s names I forgot!) that they left an awesome impression upon me and I’m honoured to have met and talked with them. That being said, just check out the pictures and video in the sections above to get an idea of our experience there. I’m writing more about it, so be patient.

Ok, I got that out of the way. Aside from the awesome trip to Germany last October, my thoughts about Year 2008 was that it was much like any other year, really. The major differences, at least for me, were kind of trivial. I connected with more old friends and classmates on Facebook, especially towards the end of the year. I went a bit crazy on puzzles, buying a Square 1, Pyraminx, Pyraminx Crystal, Eastsheen 4×4 and 5×5 cubes and a V-cube 7 (I got the V-cube 6 while in Germany). The house has been doing fine, except for dealing with pigeons on my roof! Tech-wise, the iPhone has become an indispensable part of my life, allowing me to be online, e-mail, send pictures easier, play cool games, write in my blog and other places, jam to music and much else more no matter where I am. (Did I mention it makes calls, too? Just thought I’d throw that in there…) In fact, a couple of blog entries here were written and published on my iPhone when I had to do without the computer for nearly a month while I was waiting for a replacement part for it. Anyways, the birds did very well this year, although we lost one of our flock to liver disease . We still miss our little Kiwi. My wife got handed the diet from hell, courtesy of her doctor and a high cholesterol count, which forces me to limit what I eat as well to make it fair. Last but not least, my work has gone much better this year, thanks to a deeper understanding of my role and duties in it. I do sense some big changes coming for me professionally for this year, though. We’ll see what happens; I don’t want to worry and it’s not worth worrying about when all I have to do is adapt.

Well, I think I’m done here. I won’t make promises, but I’ll try writing more here, and I’ll be writing more thoughts on the October vacation. Cheers!…

… Oh, before I go, one more thing. I started out 2009 by… you guessed it… buying more puzzles. On the first of this month, I ordered a Mirror Blocks puzzle (also known as a Bump Cube) and a V-Cube 5 to round out my V-Cube collection. You can only get these puzzles in Japan and Greece, respectively, so I made sure my finances could handle it. We are starting the year with no debt, besides the house, and we want to keep it that way! Also, yesterday I used a Barnes & Noble gift card to purchase a Rubik’s Icon cube. Below is the unboxing and review video I made for it. When I get the other puzzles, their videos will be on this blog as well.

See ya soon!

Hello to all!! I’m sorry I haven’t written here in a while. As the title suggests, I’ve had my time occupied with some new toys in my life. You know it’s true what some people say; when men get older, they still play with toys… but they’re either more expensive, imported or have tons of neat useless features!

Nintendo Wii

In one of my postings before last Christmas, I was pining for this system. I was also being realistic; I didn’t expect to get one as long as retailers kept jacking the price up because of near-unavailability. Well, since Nintendo boosted production on the Wii, the store I work at finally got them in at the regular price. I just had to buy one that day, especially since one guy earlier in the day was trying to buy all of them!

If you’ve read anything about this console, I don’t need to tell you how cool this thing is. However, for those who haven’t paid much attention to tech matters like this, I’ll fill in the gaps here. This is probably the very first console to have an emphasis on actual physical movement while playing some of its games. Wii Sports, the game disk that it comes with, has five games on it that make full use of this functionality. The bowling, golf and tennis games were rather low impact, but the boxing and baseball games actually made me break a small sweat! There’s virtually no lag time between swinging the wireless controllers and movement on screen, showing just how far this kind of technology has come for home use. Thus the reason why I haven’t been blogging lately… I’ve been on my feet playing video games and being somewhat active at the same time. (speaking of which, I started rollerblading again… but I digress!)

There’s more to the Wii than just its own games. There’s built-in online functionality, with access to Nintendo’s Wii Shop Channel… a place that, admittedly, had me asking my wife to chain down my credit/debit card! You can buy points there, which enable you to get applications and games for download into the Wii console. The games are part of Wii’s Virtual Console, and the shop has access to lots of older games from classic systems, with more being added every week. That leads to another feature; the Wii is backwards-compatible with my GameCube games! Add those things to the Wii’s main home screen, which has other channels such as news, weather and social interaction channels (all free use!), and you’ve got a great diversion from everyday life.

Games And (even more!) New Cubes

In addition to going a bit crazy on Wii’s Virtual Console, buying three classic games, I got two new games for it (ow… my aching wallet!). The first one is The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Yes, I know I already have it for the GameCube, but the Wii version is somewhat different. First, the entire game is right/left inverse and, second, the game makes full use of user movement with the wireless controllers. The first time I swung the sword around with Link, I broke into the biggest grin my face has ever endured! The second game is Super Smash Bros. Brawl. It’s a game where famous video game characters (mainly from Nintendo), duke it out in arena-style combat. It’s a very enjoyable game, with an immense challenge factor. Also, it makes use of the Wii’s online capability, enabling you to play against other players from around the world.

I also finally got the new cubes I had talked about in my last post! These are different than the 4×4x4 and 5×5x5 cubes I have with the Rubik’s name. They’re made by a Far East company called Eastsheen. I’ve worked with them for the past three days and I have to say that they are made better than their Rubik’s counterparts; they turn much smoother and tighter, due to different internal mechanisms. Because of this, my times have improved to around 5 minutes on the 4×4x4 and 11 minutes on the 5×5x5. So what’s going on with my shattered Rubik’s 5×5x5? Well, I’ll probably put that back together and just have it for display, with minimal use.

I won’t be getting any more puzzles or games for some time now; I want to save for better things. However, if I can find a Pyraminx at a good price, that will be the next puzzle. Rumor has it that, in September, a company in Greece is going to be mass-producing their new Rubik’s-style cubes. These will go by the name of V-Cubes, and they have had working prototypes of 6×6x6 and 7×7x7 configurations. Look them up on YouTube; I already featured the video of internationally-known cuber Frank Morris solving their 7×7x7 prototype in an earlier blog entry. If and when these become available, you know I’m going to be in line itching to get my hands on one!

Before I leave, I have one tidbit of useless trivia for you, garnered from Wikipedia and the original paper on the subject. Did you know that a 5×5x5 puzzle cube has approximately 283 trevigintillion combinations in it? Just to give you an idea of the size of the number we’re talking about, that’s 283 followed by 72 zeroes. A research paper stated that the number is also a very rough estimate of the number of hydrogen atoms in the known universe!!

With that thought, I bid you all a good day. Cheers!

First, I’d like to thank all my readers out there, no matter how frequent their visitations. This blog, as of the last post, passed the 400 post mark! I couldn’t have achieved that without the support of all of you. Thank you! So I guess you all will stick around for the 500th post, eh?

Second, I need to vent my frustration with one aspect of cubing. Ready? Here goes…

AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Things like this are really aggravating. This is the third time that my 5×5x5 Rubik’s Professor cube went completely discombobulated on me. None of the pieces themselves are broken, like with what happened to my first 4×4x4 Rubik’s Revenge, but it’s extremely time-consuming to put it back together. In the picture you can see everything grouped: outer edge, outer center, inner center, corner and inner edge pieces and the core in the middle. After the picture was taken for this entry, I boxed up the pieces and put it underneath the bed. Before I did that, though, I placed an order on this eBay page for a 4×4x4 and 5×5x5 Eastsheen cube set. Eastsheen is a “chinese knock-off” variant of the Rubik’s brand that is purported to be much more stable and durable than the Rubik’s brand. I wonder why the company that makes Rubik’s brand simply didn’t adopt the manufacturing specs for these; they seem better constructed, from what I’ve seen.

I only ordered the 4×4x4 cube because I know that what happened to my last Rubik’s 4×4 will certainly happen to my current one in due time.

Well, wish me luck with these when they come in. I’ll post pics and reviews when I get the chance!

One more thing: Christine and I are shopping around for a new cellular contract, because our Sprint contracts are up in May. In light of a recent windfall, and Apple’s SDK announcement, you might see an awesome cellphone review in a couple of months! Stay tuned, and cheers!!

This was challenging, but also fun to do. I had to remember what moves… do what… to which parts! I was also very fortunate that I didn’t run across the dreaded parity issue. If I had, this video would easily run another four minutes more, as I try to unkink it via complete morph!

Surprisingly, there really isn’t many videos of the Square 1 on YouTube. Hmmm….