Not much to blog about today. It’s approaching the end of my day off and it was kind of wasted. I woke up at nine, which shot my efforts at getting a head start on anything. Went to make a quick trip at 10:30 to the bird store for some food for our flock and got stuck in a major traffic jam… both ways! Got home at 12:30, ate lunch and, soon after that, Christine’s home. Don’t get me wrong, I love her to death, but I relax too much around her instead of doing things.
Though I didn’t have much planned today, I would have liked to enjoy my day instead of sleeping in and dealing with craptastic traffic!
A bright side to all this: I finally ordered the puzzle that I’ve been wanting for so long. Too bad I had to go the eBay route, where the supplier is surely making up the low margin with an exorbitant shipping fee. I couldn’t order it from the original supplier’s site because their site doesn’t work with either Safari or Firefox, and their sister site won’t accept any of my info!! Grrrrrr! Sorry guys, but I’m not touching their preferred browser, Internet Explorer, with a sanitized mouse!
I’m not telling you yet, dear readers, what I ordered. However, here’s a hint: it’s related to the puzzle I’m holding in the picture.
About a month ago, I bought this little curiosity while we were at Target getting some fans for the house. It’s a Rubik’s 360 puzzle, as the title of this suggests. I managed to, more or less, master it and I thought it would be a good time to give all of you my impressions of it.
Design
First, I will touch on the overall construct. The Rubik’s 360 is comprised of three spheres, one inside of the other. The inner and middle spheres spin around on two different offset axes relative to one another. The inner sphere houses six colored balls, when the puzzle is reset, and has one hole for the balls to enter the middle sphere. The middle sphere has just enough space for the balls to roll around between inner and middle, with two holes – one for each track of the outer sphere. The outer sphere has six compartments, with colored rings corresponding to the colors of each ball. There are three of these compartments to each hemisphere, which has locking tracks that are controlled by two knobs on both sides of the puzzle.
Operation
The object is to maneuver the colored balls so that they pass through the hole in the inner sphere, then either of the two hole in the middle sphere, and finally into their corresponding compartment in the outer sphere. This would be an easy thing for anyone to do, but Mr. Rubik won’t let this be a minor task. Embedded in the inner and middle spheres are weights located opposite of the holes. This turns the 360 into a gravity manipulation puzzle, and it makes it a challenge to maneuver the spheres to get the balls where they need to go, especially when one has to work with two offset axes.
Difficulty
Even fighting between manipulating gravity and offset axes, the Rubik’s 360 is not terribly hard to solve. I won’t give away the solution here, since one can use either strategy, or pure dumb luck, to solve the puzzle. I will say this, however; fiddling around with the puzzle and observing how the spheres move on each axis is the vital key in successful completion.
Final Thoughts
My verdict on the Rubik’s 360? Despite the name, this puzzle is not to be confused with a combination puzzle like Rubik’s infamous Cube. It is a gravity manipulation puzzle that has more in common with tabletop marble maze games. It is challenging to be sure; however, with enough concentration on physical movement and simple observation of the gravity mechanics and axes of movement, I could see someone solving this in less than a day. It took me a couple of hours the first time I tried it. Even so, the beautiful construction and ergonomic design make it something that is pleasing, almost relaxing to play around with, even if one can solve it in a few minutes. I find myself coming back to it just to admire it, if not resetting it for another go-round.
As you may have noticed, I didn’t write very much at all for the last several weeks. This was mainly due to added stress at work (read: inventory time, again!) and being engrossed in some things to take my mind off the other things that have been either depressing or bugging the heck out of me.
Where do I start? I guess we’ll start with our jobs. Aside from the added craziness at my work, things have gone well. During the big push for inventory readiness, I received a good annual review and a raise for my efforts. Actually, it was great with all high marks and maximum raise, which I’m used to getting. Still, I can’t shake the feeling sometimes that I’m not always taken seriously. One of my co-workers made a good point, though; we’re all not taken seriously, even when some of us have tons of experience. It’s just management mentality. That’s probably why I’m only comfortable being a supervisor at most. I can be an effective manager for a project, just don’t ask me to be one for a long-term basis! Still, I always have room to grow. Otherwise, like I said, things are going pretty smooth. On my wife’s side of things, she’s gotten some big-time recognition for her efforts at her job. In fact, she recently got a level promotion with a sizable raise. All in all, things are looking up for us on that subject and also financially as well.
Home life is not so exciting. The only thing that’s really kept us going here are our individual interests… and the birds, of course. Lately, things went into a decline with the health, and subsequent death, of our budgerigar Kiwi (see last post). However, a couple of friends came over last evening for a Doctor Who marathon and pizza night, and that did very well in dulling the pain from our loss. My camera is STILL in the shop! I brought it back in to Best Buy a day after pickup because it was exhibiting the same problems. They did call me today to let me know that it’s ready; I’m bringing batteries and a memory card so I can test it out right there in front of them. If it still doesn’t work, I’m demanding a refund and/or replacement. I’m getting short on patience for ineptitude. Other than those things, at least our health overall is doing fine, so we really can’t complain.
On the hobby front, I’ve been waiting on two puzzles that I ordered from different companies. One is the V-Cube 7 from Verdes Innovations. That one actually came for me on July 3rd, and I made an unboxing and demonstration video of it that day. Here’s the video:
I’ve done about ten or so solves with it and I’m very impressed and satisfied. It’s a little more challenging that a Rubik’s Professor cube, but that’s mainly talking about time consumption. The real challenge for me is to bring my time down to 20 minutes, then 15 and then eventually to ten minutes. I’ll be happy with 15 minutes, really, since I’m not much of a “speedcuber”. I really should try, though! Oh, and the other puzzle that I’m waiting on is the Pyraminx Crystal from Mefferts.com. It should be arriving later this month. I can’t wait; it should present a bigger challenge than the V-Cube, due to the design and function. I’m already planning the next puzzles for my collection later this year. I’d like to get the V-Cube 6; even though it’s a lower order than the 7×7 cube, even-number cubes are inherently harder to solve due to mathematical parity issues. Also, I wouldn’t mind an Eastsheen 2×2 cube, to replace the Rubik’s Ice Cube that’s in a state of shaky repair.
Well, I’ve just expended a lot of thought into this entry. Thanks for reading and being patient with my absence. Cheers!
Notice: If the video hangs at :51, then simply drag the scrubber to around :59. I don’t know how to really fix the issue.
This is just me solving a Megaminx puzzle. Some of you may recall that I posted a vid somewhere of one guy solving this type of puzzle in less than two minutes. I’m not up to that skill yet, but I’m happy to do this in under ten minutes.
No, that’s not your sound cutting out! I edited the sound out because the birds in the room were going nuts with the click-clacking of the layers as I was turning them. Also, the video is fuzzy in some spots. I don’t know what to say about it except that it may be a YouTube issue. I encoded the video using H264 QuickTime compression, so the original is very high quality but, unfortunately, I can’t embed it here.
Not much to blog about today. It’s approaching the end of my day off and it was kind of wasted. I woke up at nine, which shot my efforts at getting a head start on anything. Went to make a quick trip at 10:30 to the bird store for some food for our flock and got stuck in a major traffic jam… both ways! Got home at 12:30, ate lunch and, soon after that, Christine’s home. Don’t get me wrong, I love her to death, but I relax too much around her instead of doing things. 
Otherwise, like I said, things are going pretty smooth. On my wife’s side of things, she’s gotten some big-time recognition for her efforts at her job. In fact, she recently got a level promotion with a sizable raise. All in all, things are looking up for us on that subject and also financially as well.
