[ExI] Wizard Calculating Device

[Darren Greer]

Darren wrote:  >Rubik's cube contests were the first "sport" I was actually
any good at. <

Damn. I just remembered something. That was also the first book I ever
wrote. I wrote a manual on how to solve it. I can't believe that completely
slipped my mind for all these years. I got my buddy Donald to type it up for
me and sold it to my friends for fifty cents a copy. They said later it was
completely incomprehensible. :) But I had diagrams and everything, which I
drew in by hand on the typed master copy. Cool, to get that memory back.

Darren

On Mon, Feb 28, 2011 at 2:38 PM, Darren Greer <darren.greer3 at gmail.com>wrote:

> >We compared the original with the Chinese version, and found the
> manufacturing tolerances in the original were better, but that the Chinese
> version was in some ways easier to disassemble to modify for racing
> purposes. <
>
> Yes, I was thinking that this morning, how the original was much smoother
> to use and didn't break like the cheaper ones did. I won the local racing
> competition but lost out in the regional. The Rubik's cube contests were the
> first "sport" I was actually any good at. I loved my little collection. Like
> most that used them for racing I guess, I'd break them down and coat the
> working parts inside with vaseline in order to get it to slide better. Fond
> memories. I played with it a little last night, but I don't remember how to
> solve it. I'll work on it after my math test on Tuesday. They actually have
> blind-folded  3X3X3 cube contests now. The champion is (or was last year) a
> teenage girl in Asia somewhere. Maybe Taiwan. She can do it in under fifty
> seconds.
>
> Darren
>
> P.S. My pet peeve re cubes were the idiots in junior high school that used
> to peel off the stickers and solve it that way. A completely pointless
> exercise and a waste of a good cube. :)
>
> 2011/2/28 spike <spike66 at att.net>
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:
>> extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] *On Behalf Of *Darren Greer
>> *Sent:* Monday, February 28, 2011 8:21 AM
>> *To:* ExI chat list
>> *Subject:* Re: [ExI] Wizard Calculating Device
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> 2011/2/28 spike <spike66 at att.net>:
>>
>>
>>
>> >An original Rubik’s cube if in it’s unopened original package is a
>> valuable collector’s item.  spike<
>>
>>
>>
>> Yeah, it's not original. It's a "cube puzzle" knock off, and though the
>> box is in great shape it has been opened though the instructions are still
>> folded up inside it. …D
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Ja I have a couple of those.  The original Rubik’s cube was about 7 bucks,
>> but almost immediately the Chinese were making cheapy knock offs, which my
>> college roommate brought back from Singapore as an early lesson to all of us
>> engineering students in intellectual property and how difficult it is to
>> defend.  The Chinese version was about 2 bucks.  We compared the original
>> with the Chinese version, and found the manufacturing tolerances in the
>> original were better, but that the Chinese version was in some ways easier
>> to disassemble to modify for racing purposes.  A racing cube had ground and
>> polished catch tracks and corners.
>>
>>
>>
>> That was in 1981.  I wrote a routine for a TI59 programmable calculator.
>> It would make the same series of moves repeatedly on a simulated cube and
>> note the number of moves required to cycle back to a solved cube.  Then I
>> repeated the task on a counterfeit Apple II, which ran at a blazing 0.0028
>> GHz, which finished the task about 100 times faster than the calculator.
>>
>>
>>
>> spike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
> *There is no history, only biography.*
> *
> *
> *-Ralph Waldo Emerson
> *
>
>
>


-- 
*There is no history, only biography.*
*
*
*-Ralph Waldo Emerson
*
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