I wonder sometimes if the creators of these ads even look at the images they’re inserting. Maybe it’s an eye catching thing, well then shite they just got a free ad on my site’s front page.

I’m going to the Indiana Open 2010! So far some amazing and experienced cubers have registered including Mike Hughey, Dave Cambell, and Dan Cohen combine that with the event lineup it looks like it’ll be fun. I’ve never been to a so inland competition (or maybe not, it might actually be the 2nd most) before so I’m really looking forward to it, February 27th add it to your calendar (only if you’re in the area, don’t feel obliged to go to this competition if you reside in southern California you guys have a higher volume of amazing cubers there anyway I don’t know why you would want to compete anywhere else). Gotsta practice lots now.

School is keeping me busy here, and my free time is accidentally put towards Hulu, some video games, and Fireball Island (there is nothing else like that board game around).  I’m also in a video production class, so maybe you’ll see some stuff I’ve done with that in the future.  Finally: at this point I nor the others have any plans for the FiveAwesomeCubers.

If anything tells us that we’re in the future it’s the Rubik’s Touchcube. If anything tells us that the future is imperfect, it’s the Rubik’s Touchcube.  Most people will immediately say it’s multitouch, that’s not entirely true, it only supports one input at a time (monotouch?), rather than making a two finger swipe of R L’ the quicker way to do this is to swipe M. It’s not always responsive of course, I found you can make the same move R by tapping on the top right then the bottom right sticker/square, and a U by tapping the 3 o’clock edge sticker then the 6 o’clock one. OH GOD WHY DID THEY EVEN ADD THAT GESTURE?! Seriously now, I didn’t even realize I could do U without turning the cube to another side until I read the manual more closely. I would much rather see a gesture that swipes the first layer on one of the vertical sides. But meh.

That little diagonal line you see is a small ridge on the charger I actually never noticed before, huh. Anyway while charging it’s really mesmerizing, it just does random turns as far as I can tell. When its low on battery the whole cube flashes red accompanied with a series of tones. That red light on the charger also turns green when it’s at 100%. I don’t know exactly what the battery life is yet, it charges rather slowly though. The position from when you put it on the charger to when you take it off is saved though, so if you’re trying to invent some crazy algorithm and it runs out of batter the position will be saved.

I realized I never said anything about the size of the cube in my video review. The Touchcube is off is the above picture, it’s sandwiched between a V-Cube 5 and a Type A DIY. So it’s actually somewhat of a handful.

Once again THE VERDICT: if you have $50 and want a unique item in your collection that you’ll be sure to play around with every now and then it is fun. Then get it. Otherwise if you’re not really the collector type, or you’re very serious about cubes that actually turn then don’t get it, your call this is all just my opinion.

1. It costs more. Blu-ray is like the button on YouTube players that says either HQ or HD, the button that makes it higher quality basically, the difference between that and Blu-ray is that it costs to press that button. Let’s start with the basics to play this media, you need a Blu-ray (I’m already getting tired of typing that word). You need a TV and a Blu-ray player, but wait blu ray runs at 1920×1080 resolution, so there would be no point in having a standard definition TV, ok let’s buy an HD TV. Gee this sound is terrible on these stock speakers, because now they can put more audio information on the disk, let’s buy a better sound system. You see the train of thought here. Essentially I don’t want to buy all that stuff.

2. Most titles that are in Blu-ray aren’t worth it. Transformers  2 Revenge of the Fallen? c’mon. Terminator Salvation? ug. Until there are more and more movies that come out that I would actually consider buying I really don’t want a Blu-ray player. I’m going to hate the day they make holographic movies and the first commercially available title is something written by the Scary Movie people.

3. I don’t actually need the immense screen clarity it gives. Like hearing the white noise scratching on an MP3 file, seeing film grain in my opinion adds to the movie viewing experience. Seeing everything as if it was real-life would just be freaky and I don’t need to see more blood than there already is in District 9 (which I feel is the first actually good movie I’ve mentioned this entire post).

In short until HD TVs are a little cheaper, and Blu-ray burners are a lot cheaper like DVD burner cheaper, and then cheaper titles I might consider buying into one. Until then I am very happy with watching my standard def movies on a standard def television computer screen.

Still messing around with the logo, at least I know I want Helvitica though. I’m experimenting a lot with the cube still, colors shape etc, which by the way is harder if you don’t have Illustrator. Oh there’s no shadow in these, that should be changed.

In other news I filmed some stuff last week and hopefully will resume posting semi-regularly this or next week.

OH…!

I’m also ending SquareSearch, it was cool and fun while it lasted, but honestly I can’t maintain it at this point, maybe I’ll bring it back in the future when it works more effectively.

I don’t know if I will actually use it or not. I don’t even know if I will redesign or not, I’ve done at least a dozen sketches of what I would like it to be, time is precious though and I’ve recently discovered my school’s media lab where there are electronic keyboards plugged into Macs. The music you’ve been hearing in my FiveAwesomeCubers videos is from that.

Before I end this post big thanks to everyone who has been wishing me luck here in college, it’s been very pleasant so far, thank you.

I said this in the video, but I want to thank everyone again who liked it you made this possible through your views and ratings. Even those people who didn’t like it helped with this production, you provided criticisms that forced me to try new tutorial methods and teach different or new concepts with a twist. Making any tutorial or video experimentation is always important, the critics and haters make this experimentation possible to a point.

Well that’s it for now I felt like writing that out to everyone. I’ll probably compile a playlist like thing here on my site eventually under the cubing section. Also I’ve been wanting to put all the episodes on iTunes for download, I don’t know how much of a demand for it there is but it would be fun and probably good to know how to do. So if that happens I’ll tell you all.

Other Thoughts:  the Swedish band “Movits!” is really cool, I would say it’s like Vampire Weekend with a 1920’s ragtime jazz band, oh yeah except Swedish (not Norwegian).