All is well in Cubeville.

Yes, it's true.  I gave up on fixing my old 6x6x6 V-Cube.  I tried bonding the broken piece together, but after attempting to reassemble it, I realized it would never be as good as new (especially since I saw that the pieces were starting to separate)! It's OK, though, especially since I just got a BRAND NEW ONE in the mail!  I got it at a discount too, via eBay!  The new one is all tight and has some lubricant that made my hands oily after solving it... my old one was dry and loose in comparison :)  It feels good to have my 6x6x6 back.  I lazily woke up this morning, looked over at my nightstand, and used it to wake my brain up after a long night of coding, CD ripping, book organizing, and cartoon watching.  The pieces of the old cube are going into storage, for possible resurrection as some kind of bizarre art piece, or maybe as spare parts for my new cube.

My attempt at bondage:

My meager attempt at reassemblage:

 

My new toy:

iWhat?

OK, so I think the iPad has an unfortunate name. Honestly I couldn’t really believe that Apple chose to call it the iPad. I mean, WTF? Isn’t it obvious that iSlate is by far a better name? How about iTouch? Or iProd (as in productivity) or iFun (since it’s really only a PSP or DS Lite on steroids)? My god. Even iSlab would be better. Maybe they’ll get it right the next time. But for the next several years, at least, Apple will be suffering from this period in its history (pun intended). I’m just glad that Steve Jobs wasn’t wearing a white turtleneck when he introduced the device…

Oh, and by the way, Fujitsu has been selling their iPad since 2002!

How to waste your life, or, entertain yourself...

So I’m ripping my CD collection. I’m about a third of the way through, and I have over 6000 songs ripped already. I’m using Winamp to do the ripping… seems easy enough, and the searching and tagging features are pretty good. I’ve seen that there’s a similar-looking program for Linux called Rhythm Box… maybe I’ll try it someday, if I ever decide to change my desktop computer’s operating system from Windows Vista. I’m ripping the music to .flac files (that’s Free Lossless Audio Codec) because the .mp3 format steals the music’s soul, never to be heard from again. Of course, the resulting .flac files are a lot bigger than .mp3 files would be… but that’s ok. I just bought two 1TB hard drives! I think I’ll call them Terra One and Terra Two… I estimate that when I’m done the music will take up about 600GB. My music will be preserved for all time, and I can put it all on shuffle whenever I want! Not in my car, of course (yet)! Hmmm. Requirement: To be able to listen to any song in my car on demand. Solution: ? I wonder if one of my old laptops (say, my Dell Inspiron 1150) could be outfitted with a 750GB USB-powered hard drive (do those exist?), along with a mini-plug to cassette adapter, for some mobile music action… I believe more research is necessary in this area…

I Broke My Rubik's Cube!

Oh my god! I broke my Rubik’s cube! And it shattered into a hundred pieces! I was getting ready to go to work on Friday, but I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget my cube because I was flying out that evening to visit my friend Peggy in San Francisco for the weekend! So I was carrying the cube half-asleep and it slipped and wham! It hit the floor and the pieces splashed everywhere! What’s even worse is that I probably won’t be able to put it back together because the center axes actually broke in half! (Experts among you may notice that it’s actually not even a Rubik’s cube, but a 6x6x6 V-Cube.) I’m going to try to glue the broken pieces together anyway, and see if it can be rescued. I’m bidding on a new one on eBay regardless. To those among you who are wondering whether I can solve it without cheating… the answer is yes! But I’ve never timed myself. I think I’ll start doing so. After all, it’s always good to challenge one’s self. The 6x6x6 is my favorite so far, because in order to solve it you need to know how to solve the 3x3x3, the 4x4x4, and the 5x5x5! Solving it every day keeps my cube chops honed…

Before:

After:

 

The two pieces which should be one: