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I’ve picked up a new hobby recently. Yet another one with minimal muscles involvement. (sigh, I kept telling myself to go pick up a real sport (as in muscle activity) as a routine, but, oh well)

Rubik’s-friggin’-cube

Solving Rubik’s cube, or simply, cubing. And it got at least 5 popular categories, from the mostly known speedcubing, blind-folded solve (or BLD), one-handed solve (or OH), least-move solve, and feet-solving (basically solving a cube with your toes, aiming for speed).

I chose to speedcube, since it’s the easiest and I don’t really think that learning feet-solving is a great idea. (might be great to keep your friends at a distance, though)

For those who don’t know yet, the Rubik’s cube has about 43 quintillion combinations (that’s 43 with 18-zomg-zeroes), with only one correct combination (now that you’ve known how many combinations it has, feel free to correct those saying only billions, or even millions). Despite the number, every combinations is actually solvable with a maximum of 22 moves. (correct me ?)

I first learned to cube-solve from an article in wikiBooks. The beginner method, they called it, took me about 4 days (in between works ftw) to learn the notations and to memorize the steps. Back then my time was about 5 - 10 minutes iirc.

If you are a beginner and is looking forward for a fast and effective way to master this, don’t follow the previous link. Go to Erik’s site instead (Erik Akkersdijk is one of the world’s best when it comes to speedcube). Erik, if you are reading this, I thank you for your lessons.

Long story short, I bought one of the original 3×3 Rubik’s from a local distributor (it comes pre-lubed with a measy one dollar additonal fee!). I’m now at 60 seconds, give or take 5, and is constantly (cough) practicing fingertricks to get into 30-40s range. Wish me luck.

(By the way, I heard that practicing speedcube would supposedly increase my guitar picking speed. I hope it’s true)