Message #1147

From: Nan Ma <mananself@gmail.com>
Subject: intro from a new member
Date: Thu, 09 Sep 2010 18:42:04 -0000

Hello everyone. My name is Nan Ma and I use the username "schuma" in
some places. Yesterday I solved the 3x3x3x3 and was invited to this
group by Melinda. Thank you, Melinda!

I am 30 yrs old. I am originally from China. Currently I am in Boston
MA, but will move to Berkeley CA at the end of Sept. I will be a
post-doc there, doing research in the area of information theory.

Although I’m new for 4D cubing, I have some experience in 3D cubing.
I’ve solved all 299 puzzles on Gelatinbrain’s applet page
<http://users.skynet.be/gelatinbrain/Applets/Magic%20Polyhedra/index.htm<br> > . I recommend that place to all of you. Hope you guys won’t say that
3D puzzles are trivial. I’ve recognized another Gelatinbrain solver
Brandon Enright in this group. Nice to see you here, Brandon.

My basic strategy is to categorize pieces into several groups, like,
edge pieces, corner pieces, etc. Then I construct 3-cycle algorithms
using commutators and save them as macros. Then I solve a group of
pieces first, and then solve another group. This method is kind of
systematic, but it leads to a large number of moves.

Nan