New stickers.

Ever since I learned how to solve a Rubik's cube, I've been scrambling and unscrambling our cube that we have. All that twisting and turning puts wear and tear on the cube. Although probably not the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about cubes wearing out, the stickers are usually the first things to go. (At least for Rubik's brand Rubik's cubes, other cubes may break apart before the stickers fall off.) And my cube was no exception. My stickers had been slowly wearing out. Slowly but surely, the stickers were losing their "stickiness", and their corners were starting to peel, slowly but surely they were falling off, one by one.

Here is what my cube looked like with the stickers coming off. (As you can see, I used it a lot. :) )

I could solve it, but I had to stop and think what color "this" black square is suppose to be, and what color "that" one is suppose to be. So I could do it, but not very quietly.

Every week I attend a Rubik's cube "club" you might call it. Back in November or so the teacher guy said that he could get some new stickers for me. Unfortunately where he gets them was out of stock and he didn't know when it would have them again. Surprisingly enough, they aren't a high demand item. With no other option, I had to keep using the cube that I had.

Another month or so passed and with it came Christmas, and with Christmas came a new Rubik's cube for me. :D It was just a cheap cube though, it was very stiff, meaning that it didn't turn very easily, and it would pop quite a lot if I wasn't very careful with it. A pop, is when one or more of the little pieces pop out. I was able to relive a some of the stiffness with a quick shot of WD40 to the cube's inner workings. It was better, but still must stiffer than my other cube.

I couldn't go as fast I wanted to go; if I didn't line the rows up perfectly when making a turn, or if I went too fast then it would do this:


Not pretty. The cube didn't always pop to that extreme, most of time only 2 or 3 pieces would come flying out. The bad part was that this would happen about every other time I would solve the cube. Even when I was careful. It was pretty frustrating to have to find the pieces that came out, and to have to put the back in, so eventually I took the cube apart and tightened up the springs that hold it all together, making the cube noticeably stiffer, but at least it didn't fly apart as often anymore. After a couple of hundred turns and a couple dozen sprays of WD40, it was turning more smoothly again, not as smoothly as it was, but better none the less.

As time passed the store finally got the stickers back in stock and I received my stickers. :D
I put them on my old cube as soon as I got home, and they looked nice.



And after all of the stickers were on:



It looks and feels very nice, it's so much nicer to go back to using this cube, it turns so smoothly and the only pops that I've had, have only involved one piece, and it didn't fly out, it just came out of position, and all I had to do was pop it back in. So much better.

A couple of days later I videoed this:



My average seems to be at, or right below 1 minute, so my usual times are around 50-70 seconds. So, low 40's is quite good for me. I'm quite happy with how far I've gotten since I started "speed cubing" about 6 months ago. :)

Cheers