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This December I visited Michelle Khare!! (https://www.youtube.com/c/MichelleKhare)

She asked if I could teach her to solve the Rubik's Cube in 1 minute after only 1 week of training, and I told her it was going to be REALLY hard to achieve that goal.

Michelle has a series called "Challenge Accepted", where she attempts a sport or training regimen as a total beginner. I flew out to LA to teach her ...

The realm of cubing that sparked my interest this month.

It's a big struggle every month to make a post here for some reason, that I've just been forgetting to do it. I think it's more realistic if I just make these posts shorter, so here it is!

Making the top 10 facts video about the Rubik's Cube was extremely time consuming; surprisingly it took as long as one of the animations do. However, what was going to just be 1 video has opened up an entire rabbit hole of interesting stuff I never bothered to look at before! Having no comp...

Be willing to feel like an idiot

The first time in cubing I really learned something hard was when I learned F2L.

In 2012 (whoa that's a long time ago) my PB was 36, and I still used the beginner method. I knew some stupid form of F2L, as kids tend to learn their own (worse) versions of things either out of laziness or impatience. I finally buckled down and learned proper F2L, and pretty quickly my times started dropping. Within a few weeks I already had a sub-30 PB single. This was probably the last time I ...

My 2x2 Mistake

At my last competition I competed in 2x2 and did okay; not great, but better than my last 2 competitions with 2x2. To sum up what happened before last comp, I learned EG-1 and how to one look 2x2 solves. Then I got 1 good average, and followed it up by bombing every average after that and then I stopped competing in 2x2. Why?

I think the reason for this was because I put too much pressure on myself to be good at 2x2, while also not understanding that there was no place in this world for...

Aug 2019: How to improve competitions results!

How to improve your competition results

I feel like it took me over a year to actually have the discipline to do these things properly, but here it is:

Part 1: Simulate real competitions (3 useful levels)

Level 1: Use a stackmat timer. This makes such a huge difference, as the way you pick up the cube can really affect your mindset in the solve, and it can be really distracting to not be in the same flow as usual. Plus, thinking about how you're going t...

June Blog Post

What cubing has taught me about life:

When you learn to solve a cube, it may take you 5-10 minutes to complete it. Then magically, even without learning anything new, you're averaging 2 minutes in a matter of days or weeks.

So you learn 7 new OLL algorithms. It all makes sense, and you're able to do it. But somehow, you're slower now?? But then after a few more days of using it, you're back to normal. And a few days after that, you're much faster than before....

May 2019 Patron Post

This month we're changing it up! Again, someone emailed me asking to help with their school project and I gave a super lengthy response but I think it's pretty interesting.

The topic is about whether speedcubing is a sport, but (spoiler alert) I end up boiling it down to an argument about language instead of cubing and sports. 

Before reading this, I want to clarify that in my opinion, saying that cubing "is a sport" or "is not a sport" is really not important at all since it...

April 2019 Post

Someone emailed me with questions for their project about 4x4 and 3BLD, and I thought it was interesting enough to share this.

1. When you first started out these events, how did you plan to improve?

3bld: For speed-related skills you want to move from intuitive decision making to muscle memory, and you can do this by practicing things over and over without really doing anything any different; the important thing is repetition. The intuitive part of blind solving is the...

Memorizing Algorithms

I'll make a video on this someday but not yet (I have my reasons).

Obviously there are memory tricks you can use like grouping common triggers (R U R' etc.) but that should just come naturally with enough experience and enough algorithms memorized in the past.

What I'm talking about today is the feeling of "I know this alg, I practiced it a ton, but I have no clue how it starts and I can't recall it right now" which then ruins your solve.

I l...

Feb 2019: My Relationship With Time

The brain is an odd thing because it doesn't work as deterministically as a computer. There are different factors that have different amounts of importance, but we don't know how exactly they contribute to our goals.

I didn't start my channel until 2nd year of college, yet for a long time my goal was to upload every 3 days. A lot of people think I'm younger because this statement is already so unfeasible.

One reason kids can improve extremely fast at cubing i...

We killed Discord

I know you guys were all just logging on ready for the live stream thing. With great power comes great responsibility.

We might have to reschedule this unless Discord comes back

Blog - January 2019

Future blog entries will be for the $1+ tiers.

I don't know if anyone noticed, but the $1 tier had a certain reward that I created some months ago and then I just totally forgot about it.

There was going to be a casual video where I talk about whatever is on my mind, but as it turns out I am too lazy to make it happen, so here I am writing it instead. Hopefully I get the hang of this.

In the last few months, because of doing poorly in competi...

Livestream!

We have a new tier! The details will be available on Discord.

If you're currently pledging $15 or more, make sure you change your tier to this one to get your Discord role.

Moving some stuff to Discord

 •  Most things now will be happening on Discord! With Patreon's notification system, I often don't see community posts, comments, etc. and it's far more organized on Discord.

 •  I plan do solve critiques again in video form. As long as you are in the Student tier and post in the #classroom channel on Discord, you'll be in consideration. I can't do everybody's, and you need a decent video quality and angle etc. but I'll probably pick 1 person a month or something like ...

Discord

I just released Discord roles! Patreon should have a way to deliver it to you if you're a $3+ patron, which will be the new reward of this tier for now.

Discord is a place to hangout by text/voice, kind of like Skype except much better organized and doesn't use video calling. I'll start using this for the Student tier as well so I can respond to it faster, and so you can see advice without the trouble of filming your own video every month.

I literally just made the Discord, so come join ...

Patreon Updates

The $3 tier is not what I expected. The poll doesn't work out that well if I'm not making daily videos, since there will only be like 1 poll per month.

BUT I'm thinking of doing monthly livestreams or making a patron-only discord so we can chat because the interface is more suited for conversations compared to Patreon. Maybe I'll replace the $3 tier with one of those. What do you think?

Also I just realized I could be using the Lens feature on Patreon. If you don't know what it i...

Patreon messaging does not work

Edit: maybe you need to start a new message every month. I think replying to the old conversation stops working every month? Not 100% sure but you can try starting a new conversation with me.

It seems like people are unable to message me, and I could not find a solution to this. I checked all my settings and there were no useful google results, so:

1. For Students who need to send a solve video, you can email me at dylanqwang@gmail.com (include your patreon name). If you miss the August ...

The $250 goal

I've had the goal for a while now, and maybe you guys were wondering what it was all about.

I had the idea to make videos that took more work, but would be fun as a longer project. I've already been doing reviews and tutorials for a long time, so I was thinking that adding another style to the mix could keep things interesting.

I look up to a lot of Youtubers, but Vsauce and Veritasium stand out to me in particular for how much I've learned from them, and their particular style of video....

Video Preview Aug 22

Working on the video! This one is about last layer and we have some interesting topics. It starts off easy and gets more and more advanced so I'm sure everyone can learn something new once the video is completed.

And no, it's not all about algorithms. If you've seen my recent 4LLL video, you can see that having a fast LL is not all about algs! Hope you're as excited as I am :)

Aug 22 Video Poll

Feel free to discuss these ideas, anything else you would want, or specific ideas for a certain video topic.

I realized that sticking to the poll results felt like a bit more pressure, like forced creativity. Some of you pointed out on a previous poll that you trust me to make the right decisions for new videos, and I see the benefit in that. I've decided that I could definitely upload more often than I do now as long as a portion of the videos are whatever I feel like making at the moment. If...

With comps out of the way

These videos are planned: Last layer tips Huanglong/354 reviews Other than that I don't have anything for sure. No poll yet but any suggestions?

Springs

I did a bunch of research about springs and figured out exactly how the gan GES and gts3 systems work, and how springs affect cube feel and performance. Hope you guys enjoy this video (probably the most time I've spent on 1 video) and as always you can leave feedback or questions!

Video Preview Clip!

I'm having so much fun making this video, and it seems dumb but I promise it's educational LOL

Where I've been

(I made this post on Youtube but wanted to share it here as well)

Hey guys! Thanks for sticking with me the past couple of weeks, I've been inactive because I had 2 competitions (Snoco and US Nationals), and I had to travel a lot which I don't do often. I should have been home 12 hours ago but I messed up a flight booking and had to do nothing in the airport for the whole day :(

Nationals was an extraordinary experience. This competition's routine of wake up + cube + sleep, then do it al...

Update

Hey guys! Sorry I haven't been quite active lately, I was at the snoco competition (where I met a few patrons!) and then when I got home I came down with a bad fever. I'm better now, but I'm also heading to Nationals today. Say hi to me if you're going and see me there! Expect to see videos after Nats :) If you have a request, feel free to leave it in the comments here. I'll most likely be posting competition stuff and finishing the reviews from the last poll.

Review feedback #2

What do you think I could have done better? Did I miss anything? Was any part too fast, or did something drag on for too long? Or is there anything new in here that you particularly liked? Anything, leave a comment here! I tried to make a slightly longer and better paced review. I realized from the last feedback post that I was heading in the wrong direction with regards to pace, and needed a nudge back to a more natural pace, so I want to say thanks for all your help! As always I'll keep tryi...

I want your feedback on this!

Here are the things I tried out for this review:

- short (2 mins)

- emphasis on comparison to other cubes (charts and stuff)

- humor when possible

Let me know what you think worked well, what didn't work well, and what I could add to make it even better! Looking forward to your feedback, as I have more reviews coming :)

Which cube should I review first?

This week has been pretty busy so I'm not sure what the upload schedule is yet but reviews are coming soon.

ALSO for Students, if you sent me a video in June but I didn't respond yet, just message me again. Sometimes this happens.

Excited!

I've been busy for the past week, but for those of you with solves waiting, I'll get to it in the next few days!

First of all, I'll be trying a different style of reviews and we have 3 new cubes here: HuangLong, Gan 460, and MGC.

1 video a week would be disingenuous for videos like the last one. For example, the redux/yau5 video took about 2 days, but the videos before that each took the whole week. Reviews are relatively easy as well, so I'll be uploading more than weekly for these sort...

What rewards would you like to see?

So I've been meaning to ask this ever since I started patreon...

The existing patreon rewards are just things I came up with by myself, by making assumptions about what you guys would probably want. BUT I'm not you, and I really want to make sure everyone gets the most out of the reward system.

We can discuss ideas here, and if a new reward is popular then we can try it out.