2025 on Jackson Taylor

December Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Merry (early) Christmas and Happy New Years everyone! I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday season.

Homelab

I’m going to save the truenas and proxmox showcase mostly for next year I think. I don’t have it setup how I really want yet, and I’m still trying to understand linux permissions when it comes to NFS (Did you know that the ids for a group and a user on a linux system actually matter? I didn’t really know about their existence until recently.), some of that stuff is really tricky.

What I have now is a proxmox install with like 10-12 containers running most of the services I use (jellyfin, radicale, minecraft servers). I have a VM running truenas with an HBA controller with 2 12TB drives passed through to the truenas VM, but it’s not storing anything at the moment. I have 2 18TB drives mounted within proxmox that I pass through to some containers that contain all of my media for jellyfin as well as the container storage. I use cockpit made by 45drives to manage nfs shares to those drives. It’s a fine setup, but I don’t have snapshots and any sort of backups setup (not sure if that’s possible with cockpit or if I’d have to do that in proxmox itself).

The idea I think would be to move all the media into truenas onto the 12TB drives, reconfigure all the containers to use those 12TB drives over NFS for the storage and everything, then once everything is off the 18TB drives I’d put those drives onto that HBA I mentioned and set them up in truenas, then move everything from the 12TB back to the 18TB drives. I think that’s what I’d want to do. I’d move everything from the 12TB to the 18TB drives because I’m not sure if one of the 12TB drives is actually totally working as it should. I used to have just the 1 12TB drive back in the day when I ran Plex on a bare Ubuntu server install, and it started acting funky like where it wouldn’t mount sometimes. All of these drives were shucked from WD external drives, and you have to put electrical tape on some of the pins to get them to work properly so it might’ve just been that the tape shifted or something. Either way, I don’t want like critical stuff on those. I think I might try setting up the 12TB drives in like a raid0 and use them for storage that doesn’t matter or something. Raid0 is used for the speed benefits, but with spinning disks that aren’t 7200rpm I’m not sure how much benefit I’d really get from them.

With all of this going over the network and everything I’ve thought about trying to fully upgrade my network. I only have a modem, a router/access point, and 1 unmanaged switch (pretty sure it’s unmanaged, I use it like a splitter for cables I run under the house). I really don’t know that much about networking so it’s bit me a few times in the past, it would be cool to understand everything going on. That’s probably down the road though.

Cubing

Nothing much in the way of practicing or learning algs, but I’ve started thinking about trying to stream my solves a little bit. I follow a couple of people who go live on tiktok pretty frequently, and my friends go live on twitch sometimes so I have a lot of resources to be able to ask questions. There’s a few issues with each platform, but they’re both solid for cubing I think.

I like the ease of tiktok because I can just open my phone and start it (although I’d want a little more production in it). It’s also easier for some of my friends to watch if they wanted because they’re already on the app. I don’t really like the whole gifts, battling, caring about ranks stuff being the norm though. I’d just be talking about stuff instead of asking for all that, although I think that’s how you get pushed to more people. It just feels like it rewards e-begging.

Twitch might be cool because you’re not limited to a vertical phone screen, and since you’re on a computer (you can stream on your phone on Twitch I think, and you can stream your computer on tiktok if you’re on windows) you can show off your timer and stuff easier. But, I think it’s a little harder to find an audience (not necessarily the worst thing for just starting out and getting in front of a camera though).

I’m not sure if I will or not, this is all just ideas of stuff I might do. I get a little anxious when talking. I heard a good quote recently though that sorta made me start thinking about it a little harder. Not exact, but it basically said “You don’t have social anxiety, you’re afraid of being perceived, you’re afraid of putting something out into the world that could be negatively perceived, you’re afraid that it’s gonna confirm a narrative you have about yourself… Someone made you feel bad for showing up authentically or being yourself, and that’s a wound you have to dig into. Kinda like cleaning a wound with peroxide, it hurts, you dig into it and it stings but then it scabs and scars over.” - Michael Smoak. Which, he’s right, I’m sure everyone has been told to calm down or that they were too much at one point or another but it’s not something that should dictate the rest of your life. Cubing is something I’m pretty proficient in, but it’s kind of a niche hobby that I don’t get to talk about often (except on here really). I think that’d help a lot being able to talk about something I’m very interested in to people who are also interested in it.

I’ll go ahead and wait until next month to write up the results of my resolutions and what they are for next year. I don’t think I hit too many of them unfortunately, but I’ll try to put a positive spin on it. See you guys next year!

November Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 -0400

I don’t actually have that much that to talk about this month. I don’t know if it’s the weather or what, but I’ve just been down the past few weeks. Sleep has been kinda hit or miss, I’m not enjoying things I used to. I have done some cool things that I might blog about once they’re totally done though (virtualized TrueNAS in proxmox). Thanksgiving was pretty good, my family came over and we deep fried a turkey, and we all had a good time. I hope you guys had a great Thanksgiving day too!

One Piece

I guess I’ll talk a little about what’s going on with One Piece because it’s been crazy.

SPOILERS FOR UP TO 1166

We’re actually going to have 4 chapters this month which is cool. I know Oda usually takes it easy in December (totally understandable) so we gotta enjoy it while we can.

Apart from when I first read Marineford, this has been the best month I’ve ever had as a major Whitebeard fanboy. It was a little sketch there when Whitebeard ran away from Garp, but it was just strategy, not out of fear lol. I love the guy, so anytime he’s in a chapter I’m locked in.

Quick rundown of all the major things that have happened:

1164

Rocks reveals Davy D. Jones was the former king of the world, and mentions Joy Boy to Imu
Rocks gets Domi Reversi’d
Imu reveals that he’s after Elbaf for soldiers
Imu forces Rocks to kill the other Davy family members on the island
Whitebeard tanks a shot from Domi Reversi’d rocks with his bare arm and causes God Valley’s mountain to start falling*
Everyone starts trying to flee the island
Dragon lost track of baby Shanks
Kuma (one of the GOATs) is trying to save as many people as he can
Kuma jumps just in front of Rocks to save Eris and baby Teech, and also presumably teleports away himself
Rocks, facing Roger and Garp presumably uses the Voice of All Things to ask them to kill him

*Only moderately important, mostly included because of the Whitebeard fanboy thing and this is another feat I will be using in my own power-scaling/agenda-piece

1165

One of the coolest panels of all of One Piece is where Rocks is in his Domi Reversi’d form and about to attack at Roger and Garp while he’s asking them to “Please kill me”
Roger and Garp realize Rocks isn’t himself
Garp and Roger decide to temporarily team up, but their attacks aren’t working
They want to try to figure out a way to undo the curse, but they can’t seem to think of anything
Big Mom claims she’s gonna come back for Kaido to get what he owes from him stealing the azure dragon fruit
Polo Graham is introduced
Dragon threatens a navy ship to be able to save more people on the island and bring them along
Saturn (or maybe Imu in Saturn’s body) declares that God Valley never existed, and that it will be erased
The narrator interrupts and declares that all the records of God Valley were purged and the number of people killed is still unknown
Roger invites Garp to his crew, but Garp declines because he wants to protect the Marines
Garp and Roger talk about creating a “mass” of Haki to be able to beat Rocks, basically pouring everything they have into the attack
Roger cries for Rocks as they give the final blow

1166

The attack seemed to work, and even broke the Domi Reversi curse
Roger and Garp are sapped of energy
Rocks is unable to move and thanks Roger and Garp before Garling stabs him, finally killing him
Rayleigh and Gaban take Roger and Garp off of God Valley
God Valley crumbles and seems to sink to the bottom of the sea
The narrator interrupts to highlight the importance of this event on the world and the pirates and players in the following generation
Roger and his crew find Shanks among the treasure they stole from God Valley
Garp is upset over what they’re saying about him in the papers (Hero of the Marines)
Sengoku and Garp have an argument over differing brands of Justice and what they should do in the marines
Garp declares he wants to help the people at the “bottom of the cliff”
Loki learns of Rocks’ death and has a flashback where he told Rocks he thought he was Nika
Rocks didn’t know who Nika was, but said that if anyone had that kind of power it would be Harald
Rocks mentions the Galera (maybe Galley-La depending on translation I think)
Harald has a breakdown and beats a giant who was being mean and cruel to humans
Harald’s desire to join the World Government was the only reason he didn’t help Rocks out
Dragon has been imprisoned for what happened on God Valley, but Garp seemingly breaks him out by giving him a key
Harald declares that Loki and Hajruddin are both his sons and that he wants them to get along
Harald breaks off his horns as a symbol of loyalty and as a pledge to the World Government

Technically I could wait until 1167 comes out since it should be in the next day or so, but I’m gonna go ahead and get this done and out. This God Valley flashback is without a doubt in my mind the most important and probably the best flashback in all of One Piece. So many big names together all in one place, everything in the world of One Piece can be traced back to this single event. Amazing, peak fiction, absolute cinema, Oda is the GOAT. There’s a chance that the void century flashback is more important and introduces some cool characters, but I really don’t know if it’ll top this. (That’s a challenge Oda, please prove me wrong).

Davy D. Jones being the former king of the world was crazy. I need to go back and look at the Harley texts and the mural again to understand how that could fit into it. If he’s the one that started the Davy Back fights, I wonder how that plays into Joy Boy? Could Joy Boy have lost a crew member to a Davy Back fight? Could Joy Boy have been related somehow? Could Joy Boy have been trying to take down Davy D. Jones as king of the world and somehow Imu overcame both of them to get the throne? Lots of questions to be answered still. One Piece is all about misdirection and misinformation so I wonder who the good guys really are. Does Imu serve some higher power beyond themself even? I highly doubt that one though, I hope that isn’t the case.

All of the attacks this flashback have been crazy too, I hope they do well in the anime. I’m super excited for these episodes. I need to watch from Egghead onward to get Kuma’s backstory and this when it comes out. Everyone’s stocks rose these few chapters.

The only disappointment I have is with Harald. For him to go directly to the people who killed basically his best friend and mutilate himself, he really killed my opinion of him. I loved his introduction, but he’s playing right into the government’s hands. I understand his reasoning for wanting to have Giants be seen as less aggressive and nicer. I understand too that public opinion favors the world government associated countries, especially more docile ones compared to Elbaf. But it’s still just disappointing. Garp and Harald have ideals I don’t totally understand or agree with.

Garp I understand a lot better after 1166, I think I finally am starting to understand why he’s so focused on young marines like Koby. I think he’s basically thinking that if he can be an example for great marines who will go to high places someday that they’ll be able to fix the world instead of him fixing it himself now. Some readers think that he’s wrong for not fixing it himself, which is fair and valid, but I think Garp himself knows that’s not a good idea because of how hot-blooded he is. Which is the same reason he doesn’t become an admiral or fleet admiral, he COULDN’T work under celestial dragons. He’d be executed or have to leave the marines at the first sign of them doing anything he doesn’t agree with, which is counter productive to his ideals. He still believes in the system he’s in, so he figures it’s better to try to aid those in the system than to leave it. Which I guess also means he believes that having celestial dragons is better? That’s where it starts getting weird. I guess a small amount of pure evil is the price to pay for world peace? I suppose that’s basically got to be true if people in One Piece are anything like humans in real life, there will always be some evil.

Rocks has climbed my favorite characters list super fast. He has had some of the sickest panels in the whole manga. I hate he wasn’t around for long, he’s like everyone in flashbacks though, they’re incredibly badass and then they die lol. He was Teech’s father, and Teech has done some crazy things so… Rocks’ full introduction and main backstory (potentially/probably his only backstory) has made me question Teech’s motives even more now. Originally Rocks was shown to be kind of an asshole, to go as far as stabbing Loki as a child (although he didn’t seem to mind I guess), but overall he ended up being a guy who just wanted to save what was left of his lineage. Teech I guess just has nothing left to hold on to and wants to watch the world burn. Killing Whitebeard and Ace though, one of your father’s incredibly loyal crew members that stayed and fought against a literal demon (Imu) and your father’s rival’s son (a rival who Rocks related to and respected). I have to wonder how much Teech knows about his lineage and the void century.

October Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 -0400

NCSU Wolfpack 2025 Results

I went to NCSU Wolfpack 2025 on Oct 19th I totally bombed. In comparison to how I thought I was going to do, this was probably the worst I’ve ever competed. I know what it was for the most part, I let my first 3x3 average of the day ruin my mood and it just kept getting worse as the day went on, combined with some headaches that I tried to push through.

I slept decently the night previous, I didn’t have to wake up super duper early, I wasn’t in the car for very long. I had 1 energy drink that was only around 112mg of caffeine. All the physical conditions seemed fine. I did leave my water bottle at home, so I wasn’t paying attention to how hydrated I was, so some of my headaches probably were because of that. The venue being as warm as it was also threw me off. A lot of the competitions I’ve been to have been super cold, so with the weather changing I dressed kind of warm and brought some hand warmers, but it all mostly ended up being useless lol. I thought about using the hand warmers before my solves because I see a lot of people doing that, but with how warm I already was I don’t know if it would’ve helped.

In round 1 I ended up with a 10.36 average of 5, which was super close to official PB (or PR, I still don’t know the difference). It would’ve actually been a Sub-10 if my last solve had been right at 10 seconds or below, but I got in my head too much and ended up with a 12.08 which caused the average to be 0.02 seconds from being PB. I was getting sub 9s like crazy before I went up, so when my first solve was an 11 it shook me a little bit. I eventually ended up getting some better solves, but I was so worried about the last solve (it wasn’t a great solution anyway) that I ruined the average.

The same thing pretty much happened for 4x4, except I wasn’t really expecting anything out of the event. I’d practiced a little bit the week prior, but getting sub 40 times was hard for some reason. I ended up doing pretty decent in the first round. It would’ve been a better average if I hadn’t gotten nervous on the last solve, but I don’t think it would’ve been a PB, I would’ve had to have been a PB single for that to happen. Which, wasn’t totally out of the question because I’ve gotten 3 - 33 second solves in competition. I’m just now realizing how much I popped off and choked at NC champs earlier this year.

For 5x5, I was just not feeling great. This was the event I wanted to do well in the most, and after the first 2 solves I was already over it. I was hoping for a 1:05-1:08 average, and possibly a sub 1 single, but it just wasn’t happening. During the 2nd solve I had like 3 or 4 edges that were already mostly paired, but as I was looking for something to match it felt like a flashbang went off in my brain and I took 20 seconds to recover. It’s not as bad in the video I took, but I can tell when it happened. It was really only a 1 second pause. Unlike 3x3 and 4x4 I actually clutched the last solve and got a PB of 1:04.52. So, for the rest of the competition I didn’t have to worry about trying to break a PB to keep my PB stream going (it’s up to 18 now, which is all of my competitions).

I meant to pack a lunch, but forgot so I ended up eating at this burger place downstairs from the room the competition was in. I ate with a few of the delegates I’m friends with, and it was pretty nice. I was really annoyed with how I was doing, and I didn’t feel great so I didn’t eat all of my food, but it was a decent burger. I’m not sure I like potato buns for burgers though.

The next few averages were mid at best. I wasn’t looking to do well in Skewb, so much so that I forgot I signed up for it until that morning. 3x3 was partly me being in my head, feeling rough still, and just wanting to go home and 4x4 was more of the same.

What I Learned

I think this was a good learning experience and shows more of what I need to do to become a better competitor and what I need to work on in relation to my preparation and mentality. I’ll be sure to bring a water bottle and stay more hydrated to help with headaches and feeling yucky. I struggle with that at home anyway. As far as mentality, I’ve gotten better at not worrying about my placings. When I was younger and faster in relation to the overall competition I did worry about placing top 3 or top 5, but now that I’m pretty far behind I worry more about how my results are in comparison to the last competition I attended. Which is a good thing, I’m comparing myself now to myself back then which is more in my control. That’s the main goal with stoicism, controlling what we can and not worrying/stressing about what we can’t. Now, I struggle with not getting solves as fast as I hoped I would get. I put in all this time practicing and doing thousands of solves to get sub-par solves, and it’s really frustrating. It feels like that practice was a waste. But was it really?

The more you learn with cubing, the more you learn to control about your solve, but really, a lot of the solve is outside of your control. You might not get a good starting cross, you might get an F2L/OLL/PLL/ZBLL case you don’t know, etc. These things you can try to influence, but sometimes you can’t. So you might end up with a time that you’re not happy with. But because that 1 solve was bad, that doesn’t mean the rest will be. There’s nothing stopping you from getting a better time the next solve and finishing out strong. It’s really hard to forget the last solve, but I think you’re much better of if you can figure out how to do it.

One example I have of this is in my Gobbler Cube Day 2017 video. I was already nervous because I was 2nd seed and Keaton was incredibly fast and probably able to bust out a 5 second solve if the scramble was good. I wasn’t doing great for the first 3 solves, and on Keaton’s 3rd solve he got a 6.79. At that point I knew for sure I wasn’t coming close to his time, so all my nerves went away and I was able to pull off a low 9 and a high 8. I stopped ruminating on those 3 not so great solves and did better than what I thought I could.

It’s been 8 years since that competition, good lord I’m getting old lol

It’s really close to the end of the month, so I’m going to cut this one short. I hope you guys have a good Halloween, be safe and have fun! I’m probably going to go over to a friend’s house to watch The Batman to finish up our Halloween movie list we’ve been going through.

September Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Happy September guys! It’s been a heavy few weeks this month. I’m not gonna talk about the stuff that’s been going on in the news, or the supposed rapture that didn’t happen, I know all of your feeds have been filled with that stuff.

Quick Cubing Update

ZBLL

Well, I haven’t learned anymore zblls since last month. I know, I know, “Jackson you said you were gonna do it this time”. I still want to, but I’ve been a little busy, and also the site I was using for my trainer was out of commission for a little while. I think it’s moved domains. Instead of bestsiteever.ru, it’s now bestsiteever.net. I just found it last night and got all my subsets put back in. I’ve been doing a few hundred solves per week, so I didn’t think I lost that many algs, and I didn’t really, but I did lose some of the more basic cases I had absolutely nailed down. This week I’ll probably end up doing major refresh sessions and move on to the rest of the H set.

New PB

I don’t really keep up with PBs anymore, because I hardly break them. I do know my best 5x5 solve is about 57 seconds, and I’ve gotten about 5 sub 1 minute solves now which is awesome. I hope I can do that in competition soon.

For 3x3, my best time was 5.80 for like 3 or 4 years. I think maybe I had 2 or 3 sub 6 times in total. A few months ago I broke through and got a 5.51 solve, which was stupid easy. I think it had an OLL or PLL skip along with at least an x-cross. This month I ended up breaking it again by a huge amount. My new PB is all the way down to 5.04. Again, this one was a pretty easy solve. It was something like R D2 for an x-cross with the slot in the back left filled, R U R’ for the first pair, L’ U’ L for the 2nd pair, inverse sexy from the back right for the last pair, then sune into a G Perm. Not the best PLL, but it’s one of my better algs. I’m a little annoyed I didn’t get sub-5, because it was so close and after trying it another time I got 4.13 no problem. Oh well, it’s a home PB anyway and I’m still happy to have gotten it.

One Piece Happenings

I’ve been severely lacking on writing up my thoughts on what’s going on in One Piece. There’s been some insane reveals in Elbaf that I want to talk about.

WARNING: SPOILERS UP UNTIL CHAPTER 1161

The big thing going on at the moment is the flashback/story that Loki is telling us. Here’s a rapid-fire list of events that have happened so far:

Harald goes to sea to explore and pillage, ends up falling in love with a normal giant (he was an ancient giant) and calms down a lot.
Harald works to make peace with other nations to be able to join the World Government.
Hajruddin is born from Harald and this normal giant, but the elder giants and royal council don’t like it so they set him up with another ancient giant woman.
Ancient giant woman births Loki, but his eyes are disfigured/ugly/demonic so she casts him out to the bottom layer of Elbaf. THEN DAY 1 LOKI CLIMBS HIS WAY OUT OF THAT (one of the absolute coolest feats so far, I love Loki).
Rocks comes to Elbaf to try to recruit Harald for his crew, it’s revealed he’s the father of Marshall D. Teach
Rocks’ crew is full of members who were obtained via Davyback fights.
Before Rocks came to Elbaf, Harald went to a reverie to discuss Elbaf’s standings. Rocks D. Goat (Xebec) is there.
Rocks kills an Admiral and enters Imu’s flower room, tells Imu he’s a Davy Jonesian pirate and that he’ll be back soon.
Rocks and Harald end up having to escape together, this is the event that makes Rocks want to recruit Harald.
We get introduced to the young members of Rocks’ crew, and we also get to see the young Roger and Kuja pirates.
Shakky is beautiful and basically the whole world simps for her. Roger and Whitebeard included.
Rocks takes over pirate island (Hachinosu, beehive island), and Shakky decides to open her bar there.
Shakky is in love with Rayleigh and tells him she’s his whenever he wants, he’s apprehensive because he knows Roger likes her too.
Shakky is kidnapped by the World Government for use in the bi-annual hunting games (the games that basically cause what will be known as the God Valley Incident).
The Rocks and Roger pirates are informed that Shakky is going to be there and they head to God Valley, Garp hears that Roger and the Rocks Pirates are going to be there so he heads there as well.
Garling has a “family” consisting of a woman with 2 twin boys (Shanks and Shamrock) who live on God Valley.
It turns out Rocks is going for a very different reason, God Valley is his homeland and his wife and son are there. He knows they’re going to be in danger because they carry his real name. Davy D. Xebec.
The Davy family is seemingly hated more than those that only carry the initial of D.
Garling wounds the mother of his sons, and claims that he will win the tournament to take Shakky as his wife.
Dragon is on God Valley as a young marine and tries to save Shanks and Shamrock at their mother’s request. Shooting a Celestial Dragon with a tranquilizer dart.
One of the children is taken from Dragon (presumably Shamrock) by the God Knight Maffey. But it seems that Maffey is under the impression there is only the 1 child.
Prime Garp shows off his insane abilities by taking a full blown sun attack from Prime Big Mom and then making a joke about it. Garp’s actions in this event are something I’m incredibly excited to see.
Whitebeard technically runs away from Garp (I say technically because I’m kind of annoyed at the hate he’s been getting, it was a strategic escape, not because he was afraid it would’ve taken too long to fight Garp. He would’ve stayed and fought if he absolutely had to.).
Rayleigh saves Shakky from the God Knight Summers, and they have a super cute embrace at the end of 1161. Gabin and Roger cry in reluctant acceptance.

This flashback has been one of the greatest, and we’re assuming we’re only about halfway through it. I guess this is THE God Valley flashback though, and anything else we get about God Valley will either come from a movie in the future (speaking that into the universe), or maybe small mentions later on in the story. I’m super hyped for the continuance of it, and what happens once we’re out. We’ve still got to figure out what happened to Harald and what Loki’s fruit is. I am so grateful every day that I got caught up to the story when I did. I think the 1st best time to have caught up was before Water 7/Enies Lobby, then Marine Ford, then 1043 with Luffy’s real fruit reveal, and then before the end of Egghead where I got caught up. I’m going to get to experience the absolute peaks of the story in real time. This is potentially the greatest story of my lifetime, and I’m so glad I’m going to be able to witness the end of it.

Whitecastle Challenge

I’ve been watching a lot of movies recently, mostly the Marvel moves, but some comedies scattered here and there. I ended up watching Harold and Kumar go to Whitecastle for the first time, so my friends and I decided to see how many Whitecastle sliders we could eat out of 30. My buddy Vaughn and I were the only ones to actually try. I ended up eating 10, and he ended up eating 21. Mine were frozen and I had had a big lunch, but I don’t think I could’ve eaten anymore than 15-17. I love doing these kind of stupid challenges and stuff with friends just for fun.

This blog is the closest one I think I’ve been to the end of the month, so I’m hauling ass this afternoon to get it out. Hope you guys have a great October!

August Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Cubing Progress

Last month I said I was starting to learn ZBLL algs and was also going to experiment with yau5. I’m still slowly learning more 2GLL, but I haven’t done a single 5x5 yau solve since that last post.

ZBLL and 2GLL

I lost a lot of wind after learning the T and U 2GLL sets. I know them all still (ok actually the ones with the H Perm in them still trip me up at the start, for both cases I use the inverse of the other one and it’s sorta tricky to remember how each one starts), and I can recognize and execute them all in about 2.5 seconds which is about half of what my OLL/PLL time would probably be. I consider these sets absolutely worth it to learn.

I started learning the L set next because I figured that’d be the closest to the T and U sets since it has 2 corners oriented. For whatever reason, it was nearly impossible for me to learn. Recognition was such a pain, I couldn’t remember where the twisted corner had to be when I did the algorithm and I’d end up doing the wrong algorithm about 1/3 times. The algorithms I was trying to learn weren’t totally sticking either. I could do the algs at probably 3 TPS but any faster and I’d end up messing it up, it was rough. I took about a week or 2 of a break and came back and just decided to learn the algs that were sune/sexy derivations. These algs aren’t horrible, so I don’t think it’s an issue that I learned them but I’m afraid all of the L sets are going to be like this. Now that I’m writing this blog post though I’m coming across this page which has a decent way of helping with recognition, and they use the sune algs for the L set, so maybe I’ll peruse this and it’ll help with the recognition.

The H set hasn’t been as bad so far. The recognition is a little tricky since you have to look at a little more than the other sets. This set is sorta similar to the diagonal cases where it’s all opposite colors on top instead of a solved corner permutation. In normal solves this one probably takes the longest for recognition because I have to go “ok, this one is the right set, now where’s the block” and then sometimes I go into “ok there is no block, is this the case that I know?”, and even rarer (but still common) I go “ok, no this isn’t actually the set I know, dang it”.

After I finish up H, which only has 8 algorithms in comparison to the 12 all the other sets have I think I’ll move onto the Pi cases. I’ve heard these are also known to be difficult and probably not worth it. The corner recognition is easy though because this is the permutation I use for my normal OLL alg for this case.

I haven’t decided if I want to learn the sune/antisune cases yet. I keep going back and forth on them. I’ll probably be faster using sune + PLL, but then I haven’t learned full ZBLL. Not really the best reasoning for using it, but if the algs turn out to be decently fast I may end up being faster with it anyway. I’ve never been super fast at executing algorithms, I’ve never been able to sub 1 anything. Even sune is like 1.1-1.5 seconds of execution for me. I’ll probably give the sune/antisune cases a try at least because their recognition shouldn’t be terrible, and then I’ll have at least all of 2GLL learned.

I think once I’m done with 2GLL I’m going to commit to learning all of either T or U next. This way I won’t have to be wondering if I’ve learned an alg or not, I’ll just be able to say “oh a T case, I for sure know this one”.

NCSU Wolfpack 2025

Happy to announce I signed up for a competition this morning. This one should be fun because it’s gonna be in Raleigh which is closer to me and it has 5x5. I haven’t done much 5x5 as of late because I’ve been focusing on 3x3, but for the next month or so I think I’m going to work on 5x5 hard in attempt to get a sub 1:10-1:07 average, and maybe get an official sub-1 single. I got another sub-1 single the other day, so I’m up to 2 singles now which is awesome.

It’s the end of the month already, I’ll try to make another post soon. I just get busy and neglect this writing lol, but I’ll try to block off an hour per week to do updates leading to the competition this time around.

July Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 00:00:00 -0400

I started this post back in June actually, and was planning for it to be specifically about the differences in how I do yau compared to others, but it started getting really close to the end of the month so it’s all going together.

Cubing Stuff

Since I’ve gotten back into going to speedcubing competitions, I’ve started messing around with learning some more algs and methods. Specifically the idea of switching from reduction to yau5 for 5x5+ and learning a bunch of ZBLLs. I’m never going to be the fastest in the world, I missed that boat a long time ago lol, but I would like to get faster still. I’m a competitive person, so I’d like to maybe get back to where I can get to finals and do well at competitions again. 3x3 and 5x5 are my favorite events and these seem like decent steps to getting fast that I can experiment with. I have a long term goal now to shoot for because there’s a big competition I’m probably going to next year!

World Championships 2025 and US Nationals 2026

I wasn’t glued to the screen for world championships like I thought I was going to be. I was hanging out with friends for most of the weekend, so I only caught a few solves here and there for worlds. I was actually planning on going to worlds because my friends and I were looking for a boys trip and Seattle seemed really cool. We didn’t end up going because I was super dumb and didn’t understand the way the qualification times worked, so we ditched Seattle. I thought everyone had to have a sub-7 3x3 average to compete, but I didn’t realize that they were going to have more groups where they relax the qualification times each time. I thought maybe they were limiting the competition to only the very best. It wasn’t until the spots had already filled up and we had planned our Toronto trip that I finally realized how it worked. Oh well, Toronto was still really cool and watching it was super neat, I was glued to the final round of 3x3 and 5x5. Tymon getting a world record in the final round to win 5x5 was insane, and Yiheng having to clutch the final solve to become world championship was so incredibly hype. Congrats to them both!

Even though I didn’t get to go to worlds, I was happy to watch it. But what really excited me, and I didn’t believe at the beginning, was the US Nationals 2026 announcement. It’s going to be in Raleigh, North Carolina! It’s been forever since I’ve even seen a competition in Raleigh, and I’m so much closer to Raleigh than Charlotte where most of the NC competitions are held these days. Out of the 17 competitions I’ve been to I’ve only been to 3 competitions in the Raleigh-Durham area. I’ll be able to wake up late and drive to the competition without rushing! I’m so excited. Since this was announced exactly a year before it’s going to take place, so I have a long time to decide how and what I want to practice. My goals are to get a sub-10 average and maybe a sub-8 single for 3x3 with ease at Nationals or before, and to maybe be able to get a sub-1 minute 5x5 solve or average at Nationals too. I feel like these are realistic goals because I can get sub-10 averages at home easy, and I usually get at least 1 sub-8 single in an average of 100 for 3x3. I don’t do as well at competitions (like most people), so it’s hard to get good averages sometimes. 5x5 is a little harder, as of right now I’ve only gotten 1 sub-1 5x5 single, and my best average of 5 at home is around 1:03. But these will be fun challenges to see how I can improve!

Switching to yau5?

It’s obviously possible for me to get faster with reduction, but I’ve used yau on 4x4 for at least a decade now so I’m comfortable with the method, and it seems like a lot of people prefer it for bigger cubes as well as 4x4. I’ve tried about 50-60 solves total for yau5, but something seems awkward. First 3 cross edge pairing is probably the most awkward, but centers don’t feel great either. People make the distinction between yau and yau5, so I decided to go look up a few videos about yau5 to see if people had some tips. After a few videos I realized I do yau pretty differently than how a lot of people do yau.

I’ve known that I do yau differently compared to some people for a long time. During the 2nd step where you solve the cross edges, most people will solve 3 correctly in relation to each other so when they place the last one into the empty slot the cross is fully solved. I don’t know exactly where I learned yau to teach me this, but I solve the first 2 cross edges correctly, and then I solve the 3rd one into the incorrect spot. It doesn’t matter which edge it is and it doesn’t matter what order I put them in, I only need 2 in correct relation to each other. The reason I do this comes after center pairing. After 3 cross edges are solved I put them on the left with the U layer having the free space. Then I solve the last 4 centers. Some people will solve the last cross edge and put it on the bottom right side of the cube, because you don’t technically have to use R moves. I find this doesn’t work as well for me because I use Rw moves to do centers instead of only using inner slices, and I don’t want to have to do R/R’ or M/M’ moves to keep the edge on the bottom. I see the benefit in doing it, but it doesn’t work as well for me.

Once all of the centers are done this is another place I’ve seen the method differ. I’ve heard of people going ahead and pairing up the rest of the edges before solving the cross. I don’t think this is quite as popular though, but it does keep your F face free to do some unique stuff with edge pairing. Instead, I (and a lot of other people) will move on to solving the last cross edge. I’ll usually keep my already solved cross edges on the left hand side like I had them when I solved my centers. I’ll match up the edge using Rw and U moves, but I won’t undo the moves to fix the centers back yet. I’ll first switch out the incorrectly placed edge with the newly created edge using a U or a U’ move, this will correctly place the newest created edge in relation to the 2 cross edges that were placed in correct relation to each other from earlier. This takes the edge that was incorrectly placed earlier and puts it into the M layer, and temporarily messes up the centers on the U layer because they are still askew from pairing up the 4th cross edge. Then I’ll do either an L or L’ move to swap the empty slot to the U layer, I can then do a U or U’ move to move the previously incorrectly placed edge into the right spot where it’s in correct relation with the rest of the cross edges now. It sounds sort of complicated, I promise it isn’t. I’ve always done it this way. It makes placing the last cross edge easier in my mind, and it saves me moves.

Other people will pair up the edge, solve the mismatched centers, and then put the edge directly into the right spot. This way I guess has better look ahead because you typically probably flip the cross to bottom and then pair up the last edge, so you have a better view of the cube when you go to start doing edges. Mine seems like maybe it saves some moves, but I do lose out on that view of the rest of the cube so I’m probably slightly slower to start edge pairing in comparison.

After I’ve placed the last edge I will then put my cross on bottom. Because I haven’t fixed the centers yet from pairing up the last cross edge, I can go ahead and begin edge pairing. Way back in the day, I would intentionally have the centers be 2 turns off (Uw2) so I could do 6-2 edge pairing. I would place my edges where I could do either a Uw or Uw’ and have 3 edges solved, then I would move all the solved edges to the U layer while setting up for the next slice. Then I would simply have to do a slice-flip-slice to fix the last 2 edges (once they were mirrored to each other, I could do (Uw) (R U R’) (F R’ F’ R) (Uw’)). That lead to some weird cases where it’s basically too many things going on, and I’m losing out on the benefits of doing it that way. Nowadays I do 3-2-3 edge pairing, which is kind of the standard, I don’t see too many people differing from that. Then I do normal 3x3 except for parity.

In either case if I decide to use yau for 5x5 or not, I should learn my last 2 edge algorithms finally. I know a few of the good ones, but I’ve never committed to learning them. I know I’m losing at least a couple of seconds on some solves to those stupid algorithms. That should be my main focus, but here I am contemplating if I should switch methods entirely.

ZBLL

“Jackson”, you say, “you just said you haven’t learned 5x5 L2E, you say you’re gonna learn 493 algorithms instead? What’s wrong with you?”.

How about you leave me alone.

On a serious note, yes I’m learning some ZBLLs, and yes it is silly but I’m having fun. It is a ginormous amount of algorithms, but there’s ways to significantly reduce the number. For a start, if you don’t plan on learning the sune and antisune cases because it’s almost faster to do sune + PLL, the number drops to 328. Then if you know COLL you already know another chunk for when those cases happen to solve edge permutation as well as corner permutation, so it gets closer to 300. It’s still a lot of algorithms, but there’s a few tricks like that to get the number smaller and smaller. Mirrors can also knock you down by a lot, but that’s not the best approach sometimes and you should probably learn the better algorithms.

I’ve decided to begin with 2GLL U and T. 2GLL is a popular subset of ZBLL where the corners are already permuted, so you’re doing edge permutation and corner orientation. They can all be solved with 2 gen algs that only contain R and U moves. 2GLL is only 84 cases, so it’s a good intro for people who want to start.

I’ve started learning 2GLL in the past a few times, but the algorithms never stuck. It was always too daunting, and the algorithms didn’t make sense or weren’t easy to memorize. This time around I’m learning them pretty fast for what I have in the past, and it’s been really fun. I’ve been using (this trainer)[https://bestsiteever.ru/zbll] and it’s great. I can select which algs I want to practice, I can save them in sets, and it has really good algs on the site in my opinion. Right now I’ve learned about 20 algorithms in about 2 weeks. I’ve been learning them in pairs. Take the 2GLL U set for example, I’ll learn the case that has the Ua Perm edge swap on the side without the headlights along with the one that has the Ub perm. This way has been working for me really well so far. I’m planning on learning the last 3 2GLL U algs in the next few days. I’ve already learned the 2GLL T set and I periodically practice both to make sure I still retain them since I’m learning them pretty quick.

It’s been nice getting some of the cases in actual solves. My recognition in real solves is a lot slower than in the specific practice. I’m normally like “Hey this looks familiar. Do I know this case? Yes, let’s try it.” then I slowly do the algorithm and end up with a worst time than if I had just done (C)OLL+PLL. That will have to come with more time and practice. Practicing ZBLL in real solves kind of stinks because the cases you don’t learn don’t come up that often. I use CFOP and will try to force a cross on top anyway, but the chances of getting one of the 24 cases I know out of the 493 possible ones that there are is kind of annoying. When I know a full set then they’ll show up way more often. I thought about trying to learn ZBLS first, but a bunch of people on forums kind of agree that it isn’t a great idea. It seems like learning ZBLL is putting the cart in front of the horse, but I’m gonna trust the experts on this one.

I don’t know if learning ZBLL will save me any time in the long run, recognition is looking like it might be tougher than I was expecting, but it’s a cool thing to say you know ZBLL. Plus I’m having fun, so that’s what matters.

June Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sun, 29 Jun 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Hey guys, happy June! It’s getting really hot where I live, I miss when it was early June and I was waking up chilly. This blog post is getting really really close to the end of the month, I’m finishing it up Sunday night June 29th to make sure it goes out before the month ends.

Toronto Trip

Last week I got to go on a trip to Toronto, Canada for about 5 days and I had a pretty good time. I was much less stressed this time compared to Italy. I was flying by myself, but I knew what to expect when going international.

I got in Tuesday afternoon, and public transportation was pretty easy to get where we were staying. Although, about 30 seconds onto the train I ripped my pants pretty bad. They were my favorite pair too. I ended up having to change right there, but thankfully nobody else was on the train. I had met up with one of my buddies at the airport and we took the train from YYZ to Dundas West and then from Dundas West we went all the way to Victoria Park. That afternoon I got a HUGE shawarma plate from “Two Brother’s Shawarma” that was really good. Later that evening our other friends got in so we went to this place that served butter chicken pizza. I didn’t have any, but it looked pretty good. I was still full from the shawarma. The entire area was full of people who I assume were Muslim, because most places clearly announced that they were Halal. This wasn’t an issue for the most part except we wanted to go to a sports bar to watch a hockey game at some point, but the area was pretty much dry.

Wednesday morning me and my buddy got up early and got some Tim Horton’s and checked out a grocery store nearby for any interesting Canadian goodies. I’m not a big coffee drinker, but the jelly filled Tim Bits were really good. When the rest of us were awake we went to go explore downtown and the CN Tower. We didn’t go up it because it was going to be pretty expensive for all of us. I was hoping one of us would get pictures, but none of us ended going up. Still a really cool sight though. We stopped in at the St. Lawrence Market and all got some different food for lunch. I had some chicken katsu from this Asian place downstairs that was really good. Then we also got a pemeal sandwich to split, but that was a little disappointing. It was basically just ham. It was a good sandwich, but just pretty normal.

That afternoon we took a bus to Niagara falls, and that was my favorite place of the whole trip, maybe even my favorite place I’ve ever been. It was a 3 hour bus ride with the weather and traffic and everything, we were expecting at most a 2 hour ride. I was kinda bummed/annoyed cuz it took so long, I thought it was gonna be all this trouble to go see some stupid waterfall, but I was so happy to be proven wrong. I’ve never been super excited about places. I went inside the White House when I was a kid, I went to Italy, I’ve been to Las Vegas, but none of it really ever like grabbed me and made me excited to be there. Sure, there’s been places I’ve been like “wow, this is beautiful”, but nothing like Niagara falls. If you ever have the chance to go, please do, it’s so cool. I’ve never been to the New York side of it, but the Canadian side was mind blowing. I even got to see an Amish family for the first time, which was super cool and something my grandma would’ve loved. I didn’t take a picture of them out of respect, I did want to go up and talk to them, but I was kinda shy and I don’t know THAT much about the Amish lifestyle, so I keep that in the memory bank. We got to see the falls “lit up” when it hit sunset, but since it was the longest day of the year sunset was at almost 9pm. We had to rush back to catch the last bus back to Toronto, so we didn’t get to see them too lit up. The bus back was much more pleasant. They shut off all the lights and everyone pretty much slept. It only took about an hour and a half going back.

Thursday morning, into the afternoon, was the Hockey Hall of Fame. Pretty neat, but I don’t watch much Hockey or know about the history, so a lot of it was lost on me. Our friend Josh who is a huge Hockey fan didn’t get to go, but he probably would’ve enjoyed it more than I did. We got him a small Stanley Cup from the gift shop. Later on that afternoon, 2 of our friends were going to go see a live showing of a podcast for a game they play called Valorant. It was in the Shopify building in Toronto, and I thought that kind of funny. I have used some of Shopify’s back end interfaces, and they’re pretty alright, they get what they need done. But there’s been a few times where I’ve wanted to strangle the people who write them lol. Anyway, my friends were only able to get the 2 tickets, so the 3 of us without tickets just kind of walked around Toronto. We stopped at this art gallery, I forget the name. It had some neat exhibits. There was this empty lot where a school once stood, and during the pandemic people started hanging out there and it was eventually called “Bloor-Dale Beach”, even though it wasn’t near any water. Eventually it got sold and turned into apartments or something, so a bunch of people made tributes to it that were displayed for the art gallery.

Once it got closer to time that our friends were going to meet back up with us, we stopped in at this arcade bar called “Greta”. It was neat, not really my idea of the best time, but they had some cool games and some really good food. Our very pretty waitress, bless her heart, I don’t even remember her name, was the only waitress working after a little while. She actually had a group walk out on her, which was really lousy. So we tipped her well. I had this birria grilled cheese that was pretty good, but it had some parchment paper stuck to some of the cheese still. It was easy enough to peel off though, and I was pretty hungry, so I’d still say I’d order it again. We ended up leaving really late and were at risk of missing the last train home (this week the trains were closing much earlier than normal due to maintenance or something). We had to BOOK it to the station. My legs and feet were killing me, I was about to just call up an Uber and eat the 30-40 minute ride. I was hurting. No sciatica pain though, so definitely a win.

Friday into Saturday was sort of a blur because we were doing a lot and by this point everyone was kind of exhausted. 2 of us went out for breakfast at this places called Mildred Temple’s Kitchen, and I go this absolutely MASSIVE stack of blueberry pancakes that were delicious. They weren’t too sweet, or syrupy, but just perfect. The food in Toronto was actually surprisingly cheap. At the time we went we were pretty much able to use 75% of whatever we were paying in CAD to convert to USD, so the math was easy, and honestly all the prices we saw in CAD would’ve still been good in USD in my opinion. Anyway, we then went to a Valorant tournament, which was the main reason for us being in Toronto to begin with. I’m not a fan of Valorant, so I wasn’t as hyped as anyone else, but it was a decent experience. I fell asleep 3 times in the venue over the span of about 5 hours though, so take that for what you will lol, I was really tired.

Saturday was probably our most chill day, we didn’t have to rush anywhere to do anything, so we just went out to Toronto Islands. For lunch though before we got on the ferry we stopped off and got some poutine (french fries, cheese curds, and brown gravy). I’ve had it once or twice before at this place local to me, but it wasn’t real poutine because they were using shredded cheese instead of full curds. This place was pretty good. My friends got theirs topped with pulled pork, and another got bacon. I wanted it pretty plain, but I was pretty hungry so I got triple cheese. Which in hindsight was just a lot of dairy and could’ve gone very wrong lol. The Toronto Islands were pretty, there’s not much to say about them. There’s a small amusement park on one of the islands, but it’s mainly geared towards children. We were going to stop and get a beaver tail, but it was cash only and we didn’t have any cash on us and I don’t think there was an ATM anywhere. We also got to see some of the houses of the people who live on the islands which was kind of cool. There’s no cars except for the people who work on the island and the fire department there. The ferry to and from the island ran pretty often, it was like once every 40 minutes so we timed our walks pretty well with the departures. After we got back to the mainland we found this Korean BBQ place where you order the meat and cook it yourself. I’d wanted to try this for a while, but there aren’t many places like that around me I don’t think and I don’t have many friends who would want to go. Overall it was a good experience, I’m glad I went, but honestly it was kinda chaotic and overwhelming for me. It’s really loud, there’s this super hot grill in the center of the table, and you’re trying to make sure you cooked your meat where you won’t get food poisoning. I’m fine with some red in my beef, and I’ll eat sushi like nobody’s business, but I don’t play around with chicken or pork. I’ve heard from a few people that pink pork is safe, but I got food poisoning a few years ago and I’m pretty sure I almost died. Chicken also is just something I don’t wanna mess around with. Again, it was fun, and it was actually pretty cheap, I think it only came out to about $25 USD per person, but I’m not sure if I’ll be going back to any one soon. Later on that night still after everything kind of calmed down we went out and got Church’s chicken for late night snack. I’d heard of the place before, but never saw one anywhere near me, so I was sort of excited to try it. I wasn’t the most hungry so I didn’t really know what to get, but because I misunderstood the portion sizes of the biscuits I ended up with a 5 piece tender mean, 7 of their honey butter biscuits, an order of fries and a drink. I’m not mad I got that many biscuits though, I got to share them with my friends. But even if I didn’t get them to share, I would’ve eaten every single one, they were DELICIOUS. They were honey buttered, but it wasn’t like just biscuits with honey over top. The honey butter had started to caramelize over top of them, which may be because they were old or something I’m not sure how they normally come, but these were absolutely the best biscuits I’ve ever had. And I eat a lot of biscuits and have had a lot of biscuits in my day. Absolutely amazing, please go get some if you’re ever near one.

Saturday was my last full day because I was leaving Sunday afternoon. I’m not one for cities in the slightest, but I could’ve probably spent another couple of days there and I wouldn’t have been mad about it. Toronto is a nice place. I left our airbnb at about 10am and got the airport with plenty of time to spare. When I got into the US from my trip to Italy, we were all corralled into the area where the customs officers were so there was no way to leave without going through them. Canada kinda flipped it on me and confused me for a little bit, because there’s actually US customs officers at the airport in Canada so I only had to go through that process in Canada. It made it super quick because there were hardly any people in front of me, and I was only asked 3 questions. I thought I was still going to have to go through the process coming back form Canada, so when I got off my flight and was in this normal gate like I’d take on a domestic flight I was worried I’d not gone the right direction or something. But I’m still a free man, so I guess I did everything right lol.

That’s all I have time for this month, I’m going to go ahead and post this one. I really need to sit down and do a slight overview of everything that’s happened in One Piece recently. I’ve been reading whenever the chapters come out and it’s been insane. Loki right now is very quickly working up to becoming a top 10 favorite character of mine. I’m loving his backstory right now.

Anyways, see you guys!

May Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 28 May 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Getting really close to the end of the month with this one. I’m sick right now, I caught something over the weekend, so I’m not feeling amazing. But, I wanna go ahead and knock this out while I’m thinking about it. There’s really only 1 thing I want to talk about right now anyway.

North Carolina Championships 2025

This past weekend I competed at North Carolina Championships 2025, and I did pretty ok. I got a PB in every event that I competed in, and almost 1 in every round, which is awesome. I was kinda bummed about not doing as well in 5x5 as I had hoped. I choked the last solve and cost myself a sub 1:10 average. But there’s always next time. I was also hoping for something closer to a sub 10 average for 3x3, but I just couldn’t get in the swing during those rounds. The venue was very hot in some places, but very cold where you waited to compete.

Here’s my results:

Event	Round	Place	Best	Average
3x3	2	25	8.87	10.35
3x3	1	34	8.99	10.99
4x4	2	16	33.71	38.90
4x4	1	12	33.60	36.96
5x5	Combined Final	14	1:05.74	1:10.93
6x6	Combined Final	14	2:09.38	2:17.16
7x7	Combined Final	16	3:54.12	3:58.45

I had a good time. I did have to wake up early again, but I was in my truck this time and I knew exactly where I was going, so I was much more comfortable driving there and back. I drove there and back both days, which was kind of a pain, but I prefer sleeping in my bed. Plus I was by myself, so I would’ve just been bored in a hotel room.

I’m not a super big stickler for my pre-inspection rituals, but I did learn some more things about how to set myself up that I think worked out better for me and calmed me down more. I normally would rub my pants to get my hands warm, but if I put them on my neck it works better if my hands aren’t super cold. I also cross my legs and put them behind the chair legs, so I’m basically making a truss-like situation. That keeps my feet from moving and feels good on my back.

I’m not sure if I’ll be going to another competition this year or not. I think I’d like to, but it’ll probably have to include at least 5x5 for me to instantly commit. I won’t be going to South East Champs because that is a very long drive, and it’s too short to be worth flying. Hopefully there’ll be something closer to me like Raleigh, but we’ll see. I don’t mind the drive to Charlotte that much anymore. I go through Albermarle and it’s pretty easy the whole way.

April Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Cutting it pretty close this month. Sitting down this Saturday afternoon and just trying to get this out real quick.

Site changes and New Homelab

I think I’ve mentioned in other posts before that I do a little bit of server stuff at my house. Obviously I have this server here hosting this site, but I had an old computer that I got gifted and turned into a Plex server for my movie collection. I liked Plex, it worked well enough and it was easy to have my movies outside of my house when I was on the road or something. My grandmother could also use it for her Gunsmoke and other westerns, and my sisters could watch movies at their house. Recently they had some changes to their payment plans and decided to stop supporting remote access, which was going to be an issue. The lifetime license also jumped from around $120 to $250, and that gave me the push to just switch everything entirely. Plex is nice, and $250 really isn’t that bad for all the features you get with it (remote access, transcoding, their media collection, etc), but I’ve been eyeballing Jellyfin for a long time.

I had already bought some new parts to rebuild my server (minus the hard drives and the case) from scratch, so it was time to do it. I had been dreading it for a couple months because I knew it was going to be very physically demanding for my back and generally annoying (I hate hardware and I hate building it). The week after Plex announced their changes I started the build, and I was right it was annoying and hurt my back super bad (nothing lasting though). I picked the worst weekend to do it because we were going to be keeping 2 of my nephews who are 3 and 4 years old and don’t listen to directions the best lol. They actually were both really good though, they let me do my thing and watched tv.

I generally struggled at every step. It’s hard to see, it’s hard to bend over and do stuff, my hands don’t fit in the small spots. The cpu cooler attaching to the motherboard was such a pain in the ass especially. Cable management was terrible. But I got it all together after about 3 or 4 hours. And… it didn’t turn on. Took me a few times of checking every connection, testing different parts, different monitors, everything. Long story short, I had to get a new motherboard. The ram light kept coming on with the old one, so I guess some connection from there to the board was jank. Which was a shame because it was an almost $200 board, but because I had waited so long to do anything with it the return window was up.

The new motherboard I bought was pretty similar, I think the same model was sold out so that’s why i went with a different one. I bought it off of amazon and this new one came inside a brown paper envelope with literally 0 packing material. AND IT WAS A RENEWED ONE, which that fact wasn’t on the listing. It’s not like I got scammed too bad, it was cheaper than the other one which should’ve been my first clue By this point I’m 4 days into this project that takes most people like 3 hours max, and I’m so over it and pissed beyond belief, I’m like “there’s no way this thing works, I’m gonna have to return it.”, but it actually worked. The boot cycle is a little strange, but I don’t have to deal with that too often. It’s been about a month or 2 now and I haven’t had any issues with it yet. I imagine that’ll be the first part to go bad if one does go bad.

I installed proxmox on it, and I have a total of 5 hard drivess that total to 64TB of raw storage. I have 2x18TB drives in a mirror, and then 2x12TB drives in another mirror, and 1x4TB drive. I don’t really have any use for that amount of space since my media and files take up about 4TB, but it’s nice to have.

In proxmox right now I have 10 different containers running apps like Jellyfin, Cockpit, Ngninx proxy manager, Gitea, and an admin panel called Crafty Controller for minecraft servers. I’ve also got tailscale running in a container so that way I can access the services when I’m outside my house without having to port forward. I had to buy my sisters some chromecasts to install jellyfin and tailscale on for them to be able to access my server, and that was a cool learning experience. I followed a tutorial from from Wolfgang on youtube on how to get letsencrypt certs for a domain I have that I use for all my services, so I can go to this domain name inside of my network or on tailscale via a domain name and I have SSL! Very cool!

That sorta leads me into the site changes I’m wanting to implement here. I used to run some services on this server that required some extra cpu and extra hard drive space. But these were mostly for me, so I’m able to host these on my new server and access them whenever without them having to be on a beefy and expensive vps. So I’m going to significantly downsize and start paying like 1/5th of the price. This site however may not live on that new VPS. “What?? Where will it live then? Are you getting rid of it?”, no I’m not getting rid of it. I’m not sure how I want to handle it. This site is written in static hugo, so the html can live anywhere. I’m toying with the idea of having it be served by github, but that’s a little lame. I’m also thinking about amazon S3 buckets, but that’s also lame. For the time being when I do switch, it probably will live on the new VPS until I can figure something else out.

That’s all to say there may be some downtime for when you can access my sites in the next few weeks. Anyway, have a good weekend everyone! I hope you all had a good Easter last weekend. He is risen!

March Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 25 Mar 2025 00:00:00 -0400

I got startled this morning when I realized how far into March I was and I haven’t started on this post. I also thought I forgot the post for February, but I hadn’t. Anyway, onto the post!

Italy Trip

I was very lucky to have been invited on a week long trip to Italy by my friends family. It was so much fun and such a good time, and an experience I’ll always remember and gush over. I was super nervous going into it (that’s the kind of person I am anyway, I worry about anything and everything I can) because this was my first time going out of the country. It was going to be a long flight, a lot of walking, having to deal with getting a passport and going through customs. But, like most times, everything ended up turning out great.

Since it was the first time I was going out of the US, I had to get my passport. Anytime I have to deal with some identification process or doing anything with the government I get nervous. Not because I’ve done anything wrong really, it’s just bad anxiety for whatever reason. Although, one of my friends misspelled his name on his passport. I was a little nervous about that so I checked mine 100 times and had other people read it too. It was a super simple process though. I setup an appointment online, went to a local post office, paid the man, had my picture taken, signed a form and waited a few weeks. That was a huge weight off my shoulders when I got it.

I was really worried about the long flight and all the walking and how my back was going to handle it. I did alright. It was about 7 hours from RDU (Raleigh, NC) to CDG (Paris), and my back only started bothering me about 6 hours into the flight, but it was manageable. Then we went from CDG to FCO (Rome) which was about 2 hours and that was easy, I was really tired by that point so I slept for a little while.

Actually getting into the EU was way easier than what I was expecting. We got off the plane walked where we were told by these really clear signs, got my passport scanned and my picture taken and I was good. I was expecting paperwork I had to fill out, some questions and just a hassle, but it was incredibly chill. That happened in France. Unfortunately with our layovers being so short we didn’t get to step out in France, and where we flew we didn’t get to see the Eiffel Tower or anything cool. The airport was super beautiful though.

The actual walking wasn’t too bad. I got some Topo hiking boots/shoes that I wear and they helped out a ton. I did have some issues with my calves about halfway through the trip that wouldn’t shake even in the morning. But I went into the ocean at one point for a full body dip and that pretty much fixed them. The water was incredibly cold, but it felt so nice and fixed all the soreness on my body. I guess cold plunges do work lol.

The food we had was all so damn good. The food was insanely delicious, the portions were pretty big, and I didn’t have a single meal that I didn’t like. It was all so cheap too, the most expensive thing I think we bought was a pizza for like 20 euros, but it was from the 2nd best pizza place in the world. We spent 5 euros on a pizza that put Little Caesars to shame. The pasta was delicious too, I had gnocchi for the first time at this really small restaurant in Tropea and I’ve been meaning to buy some to fix at home. The desserts were sweet, but they didn’t taste artificial like you might find here. We had like 7 or 8 different tiramisu dishes.

The sights and history there was insane too, I have so many good pictures. We stayed in Rome for a day or 2, then we were in Naples for 2 days, and then we stayed the rest of the time in Tropea. Overall I just had an amazing time and I would love to go back again some day.

New Server

I’ve had a homelab for a while to run things like Plex on for my sisters, but I’m in the process of rebuilding it. The computer is almost literally 10 years old and it was already a little under-powered when it was first built, so it’s been overdue for a few years. I bought the parts for it back around black friday, but only recently had the time to be able to do anything with them. It sucks though cuz I’m 90% sure I got a broken motherboard, so I’ve got another one coming in the mail in the next day or 2.

I’m writing this because the vps this server is running on might change. I host a few sites on here, but I pay a little bit too much out of pocket for it and plan to move some of the services to my homelab in proxmox containers. This web server and my email server (which has been down for months and months now) will still probably be better suited on server that isn’t in my house, so I’ll be looking for alternative hosting. I’m tinkering with the idea of hosting this site (since it’s written with hugo) on github, and then maybe paying someone like protonmail to use my domain with their clients and services. Still thinking though. But, that’s to say that this site might have some downtime in the future.

That’s all I’m going to write about for this month, it’s getting close to the end and I’m not sure if I’ll have time to come back later and finish anything I start. I still need to come back and write up some stuff about what’s been going on with One Piece, cuz it’s been crazy. Thanks for reading!

Charlotte Winter 2025 Recap

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 19 Feb 2025 00:00:00 -0400

I wanted to come back and talk about my experience during Charlotte Winter 2025 a little bit more. I had a really good time, I forgot how much fun it is to compete. Hopefully I’ll be able to compete again later this year. I’m sorta looking into the logistics of South East Championships, but travel is gonna be a pain, so I probably won’t be going to that one. If another one in Charlotte (or closer) with 5x5 comes up I’ll probably attend.

Recap

I live about 2 hours from Charlotte, so I knew I was going to have to get up early if I wanted to make the 7:30am check-in. I planned on getting up at about 4 or 4:30am so I could leave by about 5am. I packed all my stuff up the night before and laid my clothes out so I’d be ready to go, and I took some melatonin to go ahead and get to sleep at about 9 or 9:30. I woke up a few times during the night, and finally settled on waking fully up at 3:19am. I decided to leave earlier than planned (about 4:45am) since I was so excited and anxious and just wanted to get on the road.

I am not a big fan of driving. I’ll do it if I have to, but I’ll never be the first person to offer to drive anywhere. It was dark for most of my drive there, which was fine. Since it was so early there weren’t many cars on the road. I got there at about 6:15 or 6:30, so I for sure made the check-in time (haha). It took me a minute to find the student union building it was being held in. I was going based off of Google Maps which took a second to get my bearings and which way I was going. On the way in I saw my friend Cady Shields and ran over to talk and follow her in. I got to see my buddy Silas Starling, and I saw Zach Ochs who totally changed since the last time I saw him (neither of us recognized eachother). I got put on a different stage than most of the people I knew, which kinda stunk, but I got to talk to Cady a good bit which was nice.

Fun fact about Cady that I’ll always bring up: the first competition she ever went to was one that she hosted in Charlotte. Crazy undertaking, but it was a really fun one. That was the first time I ever got a podium placement.

Competing was alright, I was really nervous and the nerves never fully shook off. However, I did exactly how I thought I would for everything though, so I wasn’t totally disappointed. I figured I wouldn’t make any finals except for 5x5 (which was a combined final), and that I’d get to 3x3 round 2. I was only there to compete in 3x3 and 5x5 mainly and I had high hopes for them. Skewb and OH are fun but I never practice them so I wasn’t worried too much about my placings for those.

First round of 3x3 started out good with a mid 10 and 2 high 9s. Still possible to get a PB or even sub 10 average. After the first 3 I just got more nervous and finished out with 2 12s. I was really worried about getting a PB for an event so my competition PB streak would keep going, so to miss it for 3x3 off the bat was a little disheartening. But 5x5 was later in the day, so I figured I’d hopefully be warmed up by that time and able to get a PB average or single there.

Skewb and OH were next, and neither of them were anything to write home about. OH was kinda neat because I got 2 sub 20 solves, but it wasn’t enough for a sub 20 average or anything. I haven’t gotten one of those yet in competition. Skewb was pretty bad, I got 2 9s. I had just gotten a new skewb for the competiton since I didn’t think my stickered one was gonna be legal with how bad the stickers were. Instead of waiting on shipping for stickers for a cube I didn’t really practice anyway, I decided to just get a stickerless one and get it set up by the cubicle. It’s nice, but I’m just not good at it lol

During lunch I had a terrible headache, it was pretty gnarly. I brought some tylenol with me, so that sort of helped, but I was kind of miserable, tired and ready to go home by this point. In hindsight, I probably should’ve gotten something to eat since I only had a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, and there was a Wendy’s downstairs. But I went the rest of the comp without eating and had 400mg of Caffeine like a genius :)

Finally it was time for 5x5. I don’t know if it was intentional or not, but for all of my solves I got put at station 1 which was where the camera for the Clicky Studios livestream was. I had told my friends and family about the livestream and was texting them when I would be going up so they could try to spot me. While I was competing, I wasn’t allowed to look at the stream, so I couldn’t tell them for sure whether I was on camera or not. Even though I was potentially on camera, I don’t think that really had an effect on my nerves. I didn’t get a horrible result, it just wasn’t what I was hoping for. I was really hoping for it to be a PB single and average, but I was about 2 seconds off of both. I had practiced for 5x5 the most, so this was really annoying. Nothing crazy about any of the solves from what I remember. I think I screwed up my last 2 edges on 1 of them and had to redo some centers.

Then it was on to 3x3 round 2. I was super nervous by this point because I still hadn’t gotten a PB. I had to lock in and get either a sub 10.72 average of 5 or a sub 8.86 single. First solve: 10.99, I’m thinking “ok, not bad, I still got this”. Second Solve: 8.09, “phew, PB single, thank goodness the streak continues”. After that a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and I could just solve without worrying about anything. Now, I was just going for a PB average, but if I didn’t get it then it’s no biggie. Third solve I pick up the cube to inspect and realize it was the same scramble as number 2. I told my judge but he kept judging like it was a normal solve and called “8 seconds”. Which, at the time I thought was strange, but actually this was the best outcome. If it was a misscramble and he kept juding like normal then I’d get another attempt, but if it was scrambled correctly and I was mistaken I’d probably get a DNF for not starting on time. So quickly I gathered myself back into inspection, did it and then went and talked to Katie Hull who was one of the delegates there besides Cady. She was able to confirm based on the video that I had taken that I did get the same scramble, so they gave me and extra attempt which was really just the real third scramble. I was both nervous and ready to be done now, so I just got the rest of the solves out of the way, nothing really special to finish it out. I wish that hadn’t happened because then I probably would’ve done better, but oh well. I ended up with a PB average of 10.48.

The 8.09 I got is actually a little interesting because I could not remember my solution from the competition. I knew I got a PLL skip and I knew which OLL it was for, but I couldn’t get the right start to the cross. I finally figured it out by slowing the video down, but I really don’t know why I did the cross that way. It worked out cuz it was an easy solve, and the cross I maybe should’ve done turned out to have a not as of a good solution. I can’t execute it as quickly that is. I definitely didn’t do the same solution when I got that scramble for the 2nd time.

After they started inputting my group for 3x3 round 2 I kept checking and saw that I was in 7th place, which was cool but I was so bummed I was going to be in finals. I was so ready to go home, but I was gonna stay if I was going to be in finals. Then I realized there was 1 more group and that there was a chance I’d get knocked out. So I kept looking at people’s solves like “ok, Kerry Creech is in this group, that’s one spot down. Oh he’s getting a sub 10 average, that’s another.” I saw I was 1 spot ahead of Silas, so I said to myself “if I’m in 20th place, I’ll give up my spot for Silas” (I’m not even sure if they bump people to finals if someone leaves). But I ended up placing 24th and headed out.

I was really excited to go home, even though I was having a blast, I was tired and hungry and my back was killing me. So I was ecstatic when I saw that I had been knocked out of finals. I went and said my goodbyes, said I’d see them later and went home. I left at around 5pm, so it was light out for just long enough for me to get back to a point on the road where I wouldn’t be in crazy traffic and wouldn’t have to make a bunch of turns. I did get stuck behind a semi-truck for about 30 minutes which was annoying. It was on this really long stretch of 2 lane road that curved every couple hundred feet. I got home at about 8pm and told my friends about the day and checked the live stream and everything.

It was so much fun, I had such a good time. Thank you to the delegates and the organizers. I hope to compete again soon!

Livestream

Clicky Studios was the one to host the livestream for this competition, and although it seemed like a cool idea, I was a little disappointed with it. I hadn’t looked at any of their other live streams, so I wasn’t really sure how they were structured, which, is my fault since I didn’t do my research to set my expectations right. I thought that it was going to be a nice way for family or friends who couldn’t come to the competition to be able to watch their sons/daughters/friends compete. I thought it was going to be a very wide angle type of view so you could see all the stations and be able to point out which station so-and-so was at. Then at the end during finals they’d change setups so they could do more commentary on those competing, and wrap it up with the awards. Instead it was a pretty narrow view of the same few sections along with some commentary. Although they did film a good bit of finals and the awards ceremony.

I was seeing it more from a family/friendly competition perspective instead of a competitive/professional view. Since getting back into the Youtube side of cubing I’m seeing now how people are working towards trying to make speedcubing into a legitimate sport and trying to give people avenues to watch competitions from home, and get more people watching it. So, in reality they did what they thought was best.

I have to wonder though if combining the 2 models could be better. I think having a few camera angles and switching them during the competition would be much better and you’d at least get more perspectives from everyone instead of just the people that the commentators know. I understand this is a pretty new thing and they don’t necessarily have the funds for multiple cameras or personalities to have behind the camera, and maybe they’re already planning on this for the future. I figured I’d give my 2 cents on it anyway.

There were also a lot of issues getting the stream started and there were a lot of ads. These were probably unavoidable because I’m not sure how early they can reasonably get into the venue to setup, and I don’t really know what sort of issues they were having, but it made it seem a little unprofessional. The ad breaks are also probably unavoidable because they’re trying to make their money and continue doing this. It just seemed excessive. I’m looking forward to seeing how this venture turns out though, and I will be on the lookout for competitions like Nationals and Worlds to be livestreamed.

Happy Birthday Nanny

Today is also my late grandmother’s birthday. It’s the first one since she’s passed so it’s hard to think about. Our birthdays are only a week apart, mine on the 12th and hers on the 19th, so we’ve always celebrated really closely. When I first came home from the hospital my mom surprised her with me. Nanny thought it was something for an early birthday/Valentine’s gift. What a lame present. Love you and miss you lots Nanny.

January Update 2025

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 00:00:00 -0400

Happy New Year! I hope everyone is having a good year so far, and I hope you all get to do what you set out to do. I’m gonna go over some of my resolutions and plans for the year, the first quarter is already turning out to be crazy.

Resolutions

The big one that I’m hoping to achieve is to lose a bunch of weight. Ideally, if I could snap my fingers and make sure that by the end of the year I was a specific weight, I’d be around 160 or 170. But, to start small and manageable, I want to get below 210. The last time I weighed, which was a few days ago, I was 227.5, so it’s around 20lbs to lose. By the end of the year, this should be manageable. If I only lost a pound a week I could get to around my dream goal weight, but that’s incredibly consistent progress. I’m not saying it couldn’t or won’t happen, but I doubt I’ll make that happen. Under 220 should be fine though. The holidays killed my diet and motivation for the gym, I was over at my friends house all the time and his mom makes amazing food and they’ve always got candy and sodas stocked. I came home and was weighing 230 one day. I knew it was bloat, but I was like “alright, somethings gotta change”.

The other big resolution I have is that I want to read a lot more. With TikTok probably getting banned at some point this year, I will have a lot more time to do outside of it. I don’t think I’ll go to Instagram Reels or Youtube Shorts, though I might spend more time on both of the platforms.

Media I Want To Watch/Read

I think maybe if I plan out things I want to read or watch, in the order I want to watch them, I am more able/likely to do that. So here’s a few things I want to consume this year, in the approximate order I plan to watch/read them.

Books

Believe In Yourself: The Lee Priest Story - Lee Priest (I’m pretty far into this one already since it was a Christmas present. Hoping to finish it in January.)
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu (This is for PewDiePie’s book club that he’s doing. I’m closing into halfway done with it, but I’m not understanding a lot.)
Notes From Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tremendous: The Life of a Comedy Savage - Joey Diaz
Demons - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sherlock Holmes Collection - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Greatest Beer Run Ever - John “Chick” Donohue
Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Poor Folk - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom

Anime

Sakamoto Days- Season 1 Part 1 (Fun so far. Not as enjoyable as DanDaDan or Ranma 1/2 yet but I like it.)
Wotakoi - Season 1 (The romance animes finally got me. Already started season 1, just have to find time to finish it. It’s fine so far, but not as grabbing as MDD or Horimiya.)
DanDaDan - Season 2 (I’m so excited for DanDaDan Thursdays again.)
Ranma 1/2 - Season 2

Manga

Ranma 1/2 - Rumiko Takahashi (I loved the remade anime so I decided to pick up all the 2-in-1s. I’m about 4 volumes in (2 physical books out of 19), but it’s been a bit since I’ve read any.)
My Dress-Up Darling - Shinichi Fukuda (This is a cute story, and the first season of the anime was really fun. I watched it in a few days and I’m excited for the next season that I think is coming out this year.)
Heavenly Delusions - Masakazu Ishiguro (The anime got me HOOKED on this story. I need to rewatch the first season, cuz there was a lot that I missed and now I’d be so tuned into what I should pay attention to. Go watch it if you haven’t seen it, it’s dark and interesting as all get out.)
Goodnight Punpun - Inio Asano (I have this physically, but it was kind of boring and depressing so I haven’t finished it. I’ll need to re-read most of it.)
Wotakoi - Fujita (Probably will read this, but it’s kinda low on my list.)

Television

Wayne - Season 1 (I’m 6/10 episodes in. Pretty good so far. It reminds me of “End of the Fcking World” on Netflix.)
Squid Games - Season 3 (I just finished Season 2 yesterday, and supposedly season 3 is gonna be the last and it’s coming out later this year. Fun little thriller.)
Stranger Things - Season 5 (If we don’t get it this year, I’ll be super pissed. I understand it’s a graphically intense show, but damn. Surely it’s not 1 editor for all the episodes.)

Charlotte Winter 2025

Getting pretty close to the end of the month as I’m writing this, so I might push more about this competition into a different blog post just so I can get this one out, but I went to Charlotte Winter 2025 and did way better than I expected.

If you want to see my solves, I recorded them all and posted them here. I didn’t do as well as I was hoping for 5x5, and it took all day for me to get any PBs but I finally got some for 3x3 and kept my pb streak going.

That’s gonna be it for this month, I don’t trust myself to come back and fill out anymore before January is over. See you guys next month!