Entries this day: fromFred wastedWork

fromFred

In this email, 5x5 and 4x4 refer to "Rubik's" cubes of size 5x5x5 and 4x4x4 respectively.

   From:  Fred Nugen                          04:00 
Subject:  5x5 reduced to 4x4 (hopefully)
     To:  thunderrabbitATcheerfulDOTcom

G -

My initial assertion about solving the 5x5 is now valid.  I have
solved it down to the point of needing to switch two side edge pieces
(as opposed to a center edge piece), as in:

c  se ce se  c      c: corner or center
se cc cs cc se     se: side edge
ce cs  c cs ce     ce: center edge
se cc cs cc se     cc: center corner 
c  se ce se  c     cs: center side

This was the same place I was stuck at on the 4x4, only now I have to
find a solution that preserves the center stripes as well as the rest
of the cube.  That additional constraint shouldn't be so hard to get
around, though.

So I really am only one trick away from solving the 5x5, though that
trick is a hard trick which I'm not likely to figure out any time
soon. (Uh, well, it may be more like two tricks: I may have to
position them, and then orient them.)  Obviously, once I've gotten it,
I'll've also solved the 4x4.  At that point, it's off to the 6x6 and
7x7.  Though I don't expect to find physical versions, there's a nice
java app at http://www.tdb.uu.se/~karl I could expand to simulate
them.

Let me know when you've figured out how to get the 3x3 center squares
solved, and I'll tell you how to put the edges together.  Or, if you
like, I'll let you figure it out for yourself.

All right, time for lunch.  

-g

wastedWork

5:07pm Monday 21 February 2000

Today was not entirely wasted at work. This morning, I showed my boss a cool little technique to determine the client's screen width and height. I had a little problem when I was testing it, though. I set my adapter to 1600 x 1200 pixels and 65536 colors. Clicked OK and blink my screen went black.

damn.

I hadn't tested it first.

I was able to boot into plain VGA mode, but changing the settings in that mode did not affect the non VGA mode. I couldn't figure out how to delete the drivers. I tried to install incorrect drivers. I tried lots of stuff.

Went to lunch with Wende to ewww James Coney Island (she likes it; I got a baked potato). I enjoyed the break from my computer troubles.

I dawdled (fun word!) on the way back to work, and talked to a guy who was working on Shepherd feeder in front of our building. A man was using a big hammer thing to smash holes into the pavement, making our building shake a bit each time. I asked him how much the hammer thing weighed. "A bunch!"

His job was to take seismic readings to make sure they wouldn't shake apart any of the buildings nearby.

After a bit I went back inside to do blind battle with my computer again.

I went back to the original approach of trying to reset the screen though I couldn't see it. Finally, after many trial and errors, I did it! Here's the trick:

I booted into normal mode, let the drives settle, repeatedly hit ESC and Alt-F4 and CTRL-w until I guessed all the windows were closed, moved the mouse way toward the lower right corner, then moved it up a bit and right clicked. I pressed 'r' then shift-tab then right arrow several times, then tab, then down arrow twice, then tab then left arrow twice, then alt-e, then left arrow, then return. Magically, beatifully, the screen tested the 640x480 pixel mode then went back to black. I pressed left arrow, then return. The screen came back to 640x480! Yay!!!!

To be sure, it took my several tries to get all those keystrokes correct! I used a different NT machine to see what I should press to do it.

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