Message #1883

From: schuma <mananself@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Where are you all?
Date: Sun, 23 Oct 2011 00:00:29 -0000

Talking about the cubing event in the SF bay area, there’s an event in AT&T park on 11/06:

"The Bay Area Science Festival Discovery Days at AT&T Park - San Francisco takes place on Sunday 11/06. It will be open from 11:00AM to 4:00 PM. There will be a booth devoted to Rubik’s cube next to a booth of mathematical activities. The people at the Rubik’s cube booth will help members of the general public learn to solve or partially solve the cube. Over the course of the day people will configure a large number of cubes and make a large mural of the Golden Gate Bridge."

Some people from the Berkeley cube club will work at the booth. I don’t have to go there but I may do it, because that’s another chance that we can expose ourselves to the general public. Too bad we can’t use 4D cubes to build a replica of the golden gate bridge.

Maybe the next meet-up in the bay area should be on that day at AT&T park. Who’s in?

Nan

— In 4D_Cubing@yahoogroups.com, Melinda Green <melinda@…> wrote:
>
> Yes, this was a fun event. It is the second time that Brandon, Nan and
> myself have met in person since we discovered that we all live in the SF
> Bay Area. The first time we met we geeked out over twisty puzzles in a
> coffee shop for what seemed like 2 hours before we noticed that it had
> actually been 6, and it wasn’t until 8 1/2 hours elapsed before we broke
> up! This time we got to meet a bunch of other puzzle geeks, share
> information and make new friends.
>
> At the end of Nan’s wonderful lecture he says that there are 141 solvers
> of the 3^4 but I have been lazy updating the hall-of-fame and there are
> really 143. That means that there are about as many new solvers so far
> this year than there were at this time last year, so I don’t think that
> interest is waning. The mailing list growth rate seems to be increasing,
> so I think our little group is very healthy. Looking at the monthly
> message counts on the mailing list home page
> <http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/4D_Cubing/> you can see how
> activity happens in bursts that generally last a few month and then goes
> dormant for a few more months but it always picks up again when
> something new happens. The latest burst lasted over a year but that was
> due to a sort of perfect storm consisting of a bevy of new puzzles from
> Don Hatch being added to MC4D and other mind-blowing new puzzles done
> independently by Roice and Andrey. At this point I think we are
> experiencing a natural collective hangover after a year of binging which
> is nothing at all to worry about.
>
> After the lecture, 6 of us went out for dinner and drinks and a
> continuation of our discussions. We resolved to do more meet-ups in the
> not-too-distant future. If there are others in the area that would like
> to attend, just let us know. If anyone wants an excuse to travel here,
> we will try to work around your availability in setting a date.
>
> Thanks so much to Nan for giving a great lecture demystifying the custom
> creation of solutions to any twisty puzzles, and to Brandon for making
> and publishing the video to the rest of the world.
>
> Regarding the 24-Cell that Eduard mentioned, we all agreed that we would
> love to see more solutions to this special puzzle that many of us have
> dreamed about for a very long time. Andrey supports this gem in his
> Magic Puzzle Ultimate <http://astr73.narod.ru/MPUlt/MPUlt.html>
> software, and currently Nan is the only one posting solutions
> <http://wiki.superliminal.com/wiki/MPUlt_Records> to 24-Cell, 16-Cell,
> and other puzzles supported by this wonderful new piece of engineering.
>
> Happy puzzling!
> -Melinda
>
> On 10/22/2011 1:13 PM, Roice Nelson wrote:
> >
> >
> > Very nice presentation Nan! I enjoyed watching it, and appreciate the
> > exposure for our group :)
> >
> > It’s cool to get a chance to "meet" other members of our group in a
> > way, by seeing you in action. The comments on YouTube suggest that
> > Brandon maybe also gave a presentation. Is that recorded as well? If
> > so, I’d be interested to check it out as well.
> >
> > Take Care,
> > Roice
> >
> >
> > On Sat, Oct 22, 2011 at 1:44 PM, schuma <mananself@…
> > <mailto:mananself@…>> wrote:
> >
> > Last Thursday I gave a lecture in the Rubik’s cube class of UC
> > Berkeley, about solving twisty puzzles using commutators. In the
> > lecture I advertised MC4D and other high dimensional puzzles.
> > Melinda and Brandon were there in the audience. I hope we can have
> > more solvers in the future.
> >
> > The video of the lecture can be found here:
> >
> > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-oePE5gizs
> >
>