Friday, June 12, 2009

The Rubiks Cube

I would go so far as to say that most people find the Rubik's Cube a complete mystery and anyone who can solve is a magician and capable of things no human should be. Well, maybe not that last part, but my point is that people tend to freak when you show them you can do it, even more so when you can do so in a relatively short period of time, like say, a minute or two. After being invented in 1974 (patented in 1975) by Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian university professor and architect, as a tool to teach his students about 3D objects/structures, a solution to it wasn't widely published until 1981.
A booklet entitled ‘You Can Do the Cube’ was produced by Patrick Bossert, a 12-year-old schoolboy from England.

Anyway, for those of you who've seen me solve a Rubik's Cube with any period of time that could be considered recent, ie the last 2 years or so, you've probably seen me solve it in less than two minutes. I average about 1:15, but my personal record is 60 seconds. This is only after months of relentlessly practicing, refining the solution algorithm, or series of patterns, increasing my manual dexterity to bring my Rubik solving prowess to this level. This is more personally impressive. it's far less impressive taking the world record of 7.09 seconds into account. and then I found twenty dollars. just kidding, but it wouldn't be a bad closing point to this blog. It's definitely better than ending on how much I suck compared to the best cubers.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Quotes for Today Edition 1

Here's a list of quotes I've found that I like. That's all for that sentence.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
- James Thurber
One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory.
- Rita Mae Brown
I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally.
- W. C. Fields
You can tell a lot about a fellow's character by his way of eating jellybeans.
- Ronald Reagan
Those who welcome death have only tried it from the ears up.
- Wilson Mizner

and done

Call the Press

I'm a huge nerd. No, like mega nerd. Seriously, it's big, no bigger than that. I know you're surprised, but it really is true. I really don't remember the inspiration to write about how big a nerd I am, but here goes.

Photobucket

Until recently I've been working for DirecTV, but during my sojourn there, I had a huge stalker-fanboy-trekkie moment. I've been a fan of Star Trek since I was a young child, looking forward to watching Star Trek: The Next Generation each day after elementary school. I having stayed pretty loyal to and enjoyed pretty much all the movies and the different series, with the exception of the steaming dungpile that was Enterprise.(I won't link anywhere, because it sucks) After years and years of watching this enjoyable Sci-Fi world, I consider myself a rather dedicated fan of William Shatner. For those of the uninitiated, he's the actor that has played Captain James Tiberius Kirk of the starship Enterprise for roughly 30 years. He's very famous for his cadence, and his most famous line may be "Khaaaaannnnnnnn!!!" from the movie Start Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan, arguably the best Star Trek Movie ever made, although in my opinion the new Star Trek movie made by JJ Abrams trumps it, but just barely. Anyway, this is all just build up to what I did which I shouldn't be proud of, but am kinda. Back to my stalker/fanboy moment. Working for DirecTV, I used the customer information database system to look up William Shatner's home address. Okay, yes that's weird, but I took it one step further. I took that address and looked it up on Google Maps. I got a grainy overhead of his property and a close up of the front gate. Yes I know this is still really weird. I think of myself as just short of the crazy trekkies. You know the ones I'm talking about, the guys that attacked the actor Ricardo Montelbaun because he played Khan, a fictional character, who was bent on destroying James T. Kirk, another fictional character they were apparently waaaaaay too fixated on. I'll check out his house, but I'm not gonna post his address on the internet. For those of you morbidly curious that clicked on the Google Maps link thinking it would jump straight to William Shatner's address, you're sick and shame on you for thinking I would do that to a Sci-fi icon. So yeah, I'm a bit of a creeper. No real purpose to this story, just a crazy random thing I did.

Search This Blog, For Crap You Thought You Saw, But Couldn't Find