2016 Blog 2 - Lots of things!

Hi all, I thought I’d make a post and give a bit of an update, as over a third of 2016 has already passed us by, and plenty is going on.

On the speedcube.com.au side, the team has developed speedcube lube – a variety of different lubricants, which I’ve had the opportunity to test out. They’re absolutely great, and I’ll have either a video or text review of them out shortly. They’ve also opened up a retail store in Blackburn North – with opening hours from 10am-2pm on weekdays. This is a huge step for an online store which was only opened less than two years ago!

On my end, I’ve been fairly pressed for time, with both work and university, which means I haven’t been able to practice anywhere near as much as I would like to. I general find that the best way to improve is constant practice over a long period of time, as compared to ridiculous amounts in a short period of time. So with that being said, I’ll definitely be cramming in a bunch of practice in the weeks between my exams and the European Championships.

I’ve had a couple of personal bests recently, including a 44.29 5x5 solve, which means the WR is no longer also the UWR. A 2:11 7x7 single about a month ago was also quite nice.

On Friday I uploaded the second episode of Friday Fours on my Youtube channel – I’m looking forward to having fun with this each week. I should be able to mix things up here and there so it’s not the exact same sort of video every week.

Huge shoutouts to the Huanqui brothers for some awesome official results recently. I participated on a Chinese TV show with Gianfranco in March, and just watching him during that week it was very clear to me how truly dedicated he is to becoming the best in the world at BLD. I'm sure Juan Pablo practices megaminx just as hard, and he was very unlucky to miss the world record last weekend. He's inspired me to practice some megaminx, and I got a new pb single of 38.08 yesterday. My averages are still nowhere near WR pace, normally around 50 seconds.

Below is a link to the TV show I mentioned above. It was called "The Brain: China", and it was definitely a fun and unique experience being on a proper game show - with a speedcubing challenge! I could care less for the dramatisation, but was certainly happy to play along and do things like read the narration for an opening sequence of myself (albeit uncomfortably). 

I'm running a competition in two weeks called Connor's Cube Day - which is aimed at raising funds for the RCD foundation in support of brain tumour research, care, and development. I've planned a couple of fundraising initiatives including a raffle and shall post a video on YouTube with some more information at some time next week.

And lastly, I've made a profile on the new cubingtime.com website if anyone is interested in seeing my practice times. I'm not sure I'll switch over to it completely, but I'll definitely do some practice sessions on there occasionally. If you view the 'sessions' tab on my profile, you can see my solve times.

Happy cubing!