2026 on Jackson Taylor

September Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 09:58:09 -0400

Busy busy month guys. I told you guys I was going to my friends’ wedding, that was so so much fun. I’m so happy for Vaughn and Vivi, I’m so grateful they let me be a part of it. It was a great weekend.

I’ve been doing a little bit more with proxmox and truenas recently. I still need to make a video or something to show off my homelab. I’m finally understanding a good way to mesh the 2 together in a way that makes sense and solves some of the issues I’ve been having with them both.

In short I have 2x512Gb ssds mirrored for my boot drives for proxmox, I have 2x18Tb drives mirrored for storage mounted directly in proxmox, and then I have 2x12Tb drives mirrored and passed through a sata conroller into a vm of truenas for storage as well. I was sorta using the truenas drives as a backup for the 18Tb drives, but I didn’t really like that, and the 18Tb drives were sometimes being used for container storage which is not good from what I’ve read. I don’t know why I did that to begin with.

I think what I want to do is shrink everything to fit on the 12Tb drives, get everything off of the 18Tb drives and then move them into truenas and then use truenas for all the storage. Then I should probably get another 2 ssds for container storage in proxmox and get all the containers off of my boot drives. I also was mounting nfs shares into lxcs directly instead of having proxmox mount them and then passing them through to the lxc.

What made me start researching this is I wanted to host RomM, a really nice front end for my roms that I have. I ordered an AYN Thor, so I wanted an easy way to download roms straight to the device instead of dealing with sd cards and moving stuff back and forth. I hear that the Cocoon launcher is going to add native support for RomM, which sounds super badass. I’m very excited. I’m also excited to get my server to a really good point. I even want to build 1 or 2 more for an “offsite” (different room) backup so I have something real professional going on.

If you have a Letterboxd account and want to keep up with me, my friends and I are going to be watching a bunch of horror movies this upcoming month. We did it last year and I had a lot of fun. This gives me a way to watch stuff I usually wouldn’t watch, and we get to see some of the classics. Here is the list.

Hopefully this time next month I’ll have my Thor and I can give it a review and show you guys more. For now that’s gonna be it. Happy October!

PS: I forgot to include some tags on last month’s blog. I went and added them, so that might mess with your RSS reader if you use one, sorry! I’ve added default tags to the template now that hopefully will fix that issue moving forward.

August Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 29 Aug 2026 14:17:01 -0400

Not a whole lot to talk about this month, and not a lot of time to talk about it lol

I’ve been pretty busy, but mostly with friends and personal stuff going on. I took a trip to Amsterdam about 2 weeks ago now, and I’m going to Minnesota this weekend for my friend’s wedding.

Amsterdam was cool, not really my kind of city. But cities really aren’t my thing anyway. It’s not quite as “degenerate” or rough or anything as I thought it would be. There is some pot smell, but it’s more directly in front of the coffeeshops. The redlight district was pretty weird, but it’s blocked off well so you probably wouldn’t accidentally go down it. I didn’t participate in anything people “normally” go to Amsterdam for, but it was still a good trip. The boat tours and historical sites around it are super cool and interesting.

Next year If I take an international trip, I’m going to try to avoid Europe. It’s a very cool place, but 3 years in a row is a little wild. I’d really like to go to Hokkaido Japan, but my friends want to go to Tokyo/Kyoto more, so that would probably be where we went. Canada would also be another cool place to go again, maybe not Toronto though. I’d like to go to Montana or the Yukon at some point, so maybe I just do some hiking or something next year. One of my friends mentioned a Philadelphia trip for the Letter Kenny live show, which would be around my birthday. That’d be cool.

I’ll try to have something cool for next month’s post. See you guys!

July Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400

TLDR: Old man yells at kids about thinking they know more

I’ve been meaning to make a video or something about this for a while but I’ll write out some of my thoughts in a blog post first. I wish I had a cool title, but it’s basically just about overconfidence in younger/less experienced people in speedcubing.

I think that cubing is one of the most Dunning-Kruger effected hobbies out there. If you don’t know what the Dunning-Kruger effect is, I’m an expert at it and I know everything there is to know about it. Sike lol. That’s basically what it is though is a huge overconfidence of skill in comparison to knowledge. So people who start out something will sometimes think that they know more than what they actually do.

Cubing been this way for a long time. I’ve been competing for 14 years now, so I’ve seen a lot. I’ve even been the one who was overconfident a few times. I think with me being older, more advanced, and the fact that there’s so many more people doing it now I’m noticing silly interactions more and more. On any tiktok about a ZBLL case or an F2L algorithm you’ll have people going “just do this instead” or “i do this” (less egregious). Most of the time they get torn to shreds in replies because they don’t understand what’s actually being solved in the video. I think people have heard more about ZBLLs recently with more people learning and using ZB, so they understand what’s going on with those cases. But with lesser known cases like COLL and Winter Variations if someone posts a video with them, the comments are ridiculous. I saw something like this in the comment section of a video recently:

*video showing Niklas for a COLL case*

“R U R’ U R U2 R'”

“It’s a COLL case, not OLL”

“I don’t know what that is”

I’m not saying this or pointing it out to be mean, everyone has to learn one way or another. It’s just silly to me how you can so confidently say “do this” when you aren’t understanding the case of what they’re solving.

This leads me into elitists or people who maybe know slightly more. If you know more, teach them, don’t call them dumb or make fun of them, you were in their shoes at one point. Cubing is meant to be fun and something to learn and take joy in, and ruining that for someone is lame.

I also don’t like it when faster people say general things as definite truths, like writing off a whole method or subset of algorithms without justification (if they’re saying you shouldn’t learn it for this or that reason, I’m more open to understanding their argument). I saw someone say “don’t use COLL”, but that’s just a crazy statement. I don’t think they even explained their rationale behind it, so I can’t argue their point directly. I think COLL is a fine set of algorithms to learn. Some cases are better than others, sure, it’s probably not worth it to learn the sune algorithms. But, it helps you start to understand and recognize corner permutation better and you can get PLL skips more often. Saying “don’t use COLL” without any explanation is asinine. There’s very few things you can say that you definitely should not use, and even if they are completely sub-optimal, some people might have fun with it.

I’ve always been a speed cuber, I try to break my own records and get faster. So I am somewhat concerned in what’s more optimal/faster. But that’s how I have fun. I think that’s what people don’t understand sometimes about cubing. It’s SUPPOSED to be fun.

This kinda went a few more small directions than what I meant, but it’s getting close to the end of the month and I wanna get this out. I’ll leave it at this. Basically don’t be a dork, and think before you type.

North American Championships 2026 Recap

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 00:00:00 -0400

North American Championships is over and Kyle Santucci is your new North American Champion for 3x3! Congratulations to everyone who won, congratulations to everyone who got the results that they wanted, and congratulations to everyone who just qualified and came out! Thank you to the volunteers and staff members for hosting such a well run competition! This is only the 2nd major competition I’ve been to, but for it to run as well as US Nationals did, or better, with twice the amount of people is insane and such an accomplishment for the organizing team and the southeast region.

Overall I had a good time. I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, but that happens sometimes. I didn’t get a hotel or airbnb because I live right at an hour away from the convention center, so I drove back and forth every day. I’m not used to driving 2 hours a day in Raleigh traffic in 100 degree weather, but it got better/easier as the weekend went on, I would do it again if I had the choice. I saved hundreds of dollars by doing it. I knew exactly what room it was in, I’ve been there a few times for Galaxy con, but it didn’t really click how big the room was until I got there. The room was massive, but I think it was a perfect size for the competition. You took an escalator/stairs down and you could see the whole floor. They had 4 stages, spectator areas just in front of them, and then a huge section of tables for people to sit and talk at. My only complaint was that there wasn’t as much space between tables as I thought there should be so it was hard to get around sometimes.

My first event was 5x5 at about 10am. I did absolutely abysmal for what I was hoping for. I hate that it was the first event I competed in and it was so early in the day. I was dogsitting for my aunt the week leading up to it, and wasn’t really used to sleeping at her house. I went to sleep pretty late Wednesday night and then woke up at 4am. I didn’t have to leave the house until about 7am to be able to make it, so I missed out on some good snoozing. I did get a chance to stop and eat breakfast, and I got parked next door to the convention center just fine but I was tired and nervous. The runners on the red stage at that particular time were incredibly quiet, and everything was moving really fast. The stage was also super bouncy, and felt like I was on a trampoline at some points. I couldn’t focus that well. Then once I did a solve it felt like I would barely get sat down before I would get called up again (not a bad problem to have usually). Overall the 5x5 average wouldn’t have been bad, and it really wasn’t a terrible time for me anyway, except I got a DNF because I did a G perm from the wrong position and didn’t see it before I stopped the timer. That DNF was my 2nd solve, so it ruined my mentality for the rest of the average. Then also for like the next day I was pretty mad/upset. The average would’ve been around a 1:08 instead of a 1:10, so it wasn’t like I missed out on PB or even round 2 because of that solve. It was just really aggravating to practice all year and a stupid mistake cost you 1 of only 5 solves you get. I was hoping to be closer to sub-1 by this time, but oh well. Hopefully at my next competition I’ll be able to break the 1:05 barrier.

Next up was OH after lunch. I actually did crazy good in this compared to normally. I never practice OH at all. It’s something I wish I was better at, but I don’t have the drive to try lol. I ended up with a 17.12 average, and I’m glad I finally got sub-20. That was a big milestone for me for 2 handed solving, so now that I’ve broken that in competition for OH it’s really cool. It was decently lucky, I almost skipped all the way to a sub-17 average which would’ve been incredibly insane. It was a bunch of OH friendly cases, and the last solve was a PLL skip, so I don’t think I’ll be able to get something like that again easily, but sub-20 again probably wouldn’t be too hard. I was getting anywhere from mid-18 to low-20s in practice right before I went up. Not enough for round 2, but way better than what I was expecting. I might try to throw in some OH practice for the next competition I have. Once I was done with it I went home for the evening.

Friday was also kind of rough for competing. I thankfully didn’t have to be at the convention center until around 1:30 or 2 to for sure make my group time for 4x4, the only event I competed in that day, so I got to sleep in a little bit and do some stuff in the morning before I left. I showed up at around 11am to make sure I had a good parking spot, I could get some lunch and also get some practice in. I’ve talked before about how I do Yau in an uncommon way, so if you want you can go look for that post (I actually did meet someone who does the same thing I do with the 1 misaligned cross edge though, so I know I’m not crazy in coming up with it myself but neither of us can remember where we learned it). I’ve started trying to switch to the “normal” way so I can maybe improve. I’m generally slower after switching, but I also get mixed up on trying to undo 10 years of doing it my old way, so I’m about 10 seconds slower in some cases. This mostly comes down to my lack of practice and lack of commitment to one or the other. It’s just not as fun of an event anymore since trying to switch, so I don’t try as hard. I also played myself because I wanted to use some dnm-137 lube on the cube to make it slightly faster because it felt gross, but I ended up using some mystic lube on accident (the bottles look super similar, and both lubes are black/grey in the bottle). Instead of my cube feeling slightly cleaner and faster, it felt gunkier and nastier (no hate against mystic, it’s good it just wasn’t what I needed at that moment). I didn’t have time to clean it out or properly break it in. It was also about this time that my delegate friend came to chat, so I stopped practicing. They gave me the scoop on a lot of stuff going on in the WCA currently (feelings behind the clock removal decision, some long term stuff going on that I’m not going to disclose), but then also just catching up because we don’t get to talk as much anymore. It was a really nice conversation that was way more fun than 4x4 practice lol. I ended up with a 42 second average that was pretty consistent, more consistent than a lot of my 4x4 averages. I did have a 54 second solve where I totally forgot how to do edge pairing or something in the middle though lol. I went home after that. I was probably going to leave anyway, because even though I wanted to watch 5x5 finals, I wanted to avoid Friday traffic. Max Park ended up winning and getting NAR in it, which I kinda hate that I missed, but oh well.

Saturday was much better. My brother and mom came up to watch me, so I wasn’t as lonely which was nice. My brother drove so I didn’t have to think about that either. It was the 4th of July, so there was a parade going on that morning and they were supposed to have closed some of the roads we would need to go on to get into the garage I had been using, but thankfully we got in no problem and I was there well before I needed to do Skewb. This is another event I don’t practice at all and just decided to compete in because I could. I had state record in it at one time I think. A good average for me would’ve been sub-7, but I knew if I got lucky I could get sub-6. I was kinda worried right before I went up because one of the corner caps was not wanting to stay on, and I didn’t have any glue. I ended up using some FZ-superhoney lube (incredibly thick and sticky lube) in the holes where the cap slides in to get it to stick. I’m not sure how well it worked specifically, but the cap didn’t come off during my average, so if you have some it might work as glue in a pinch. I ended up with a high 8 second average, not great, but it’s whatever. I’ve thought about trying to get good at skewb, but I don’t think the skills in it transfer to anything that well, and I’m not a crazy high TPS person.

After that we kinda just hung out for a little bit until lunch. My brother and I decided to hit up this food court our sister said was really good for some tacos. Her and her husband go up there for galaxy con every year, and they usually stay the weekend so they look for good food spots while they’re there. The taco place was closed unfortunately. I guess maybe they closed for the 4th figuring that people would want burgers more? I’m not sure. My sister got an earful about that though because she’d been bugging me all weekend up to that point “you gotta get these tacos, you gotta get the tacos, hey did you get the tacos?”. It wasn’t her fault obviously, and I hate that I didn’t get any, but it was funny to make fun of her for it. Instead we got some Korean corndogs, which were alright. They were humongous and very filling, but they were expensive and I was tired of eating it before I was done. I think though if I had to do it again I’d have gotten something else. There was this katsu sandwich (Japanese cutlets basically, chicken katsu, tonkatsu which is pork) place that sounded good. Or I would’ve just went on a day that the taco place was open lol.

The next event I had was 3x3. After not having gotten the best results up until this point I was really worried about doing well. I did about 100-200 solves while I was waiting and was getting low-mid 8s, so I was feeling ok. I use a phone timer in my lap so I knew that my real times would end up being a little higher to account for pickup/drop times, but I was happy with how I was doing and lost some of the nervous-ness. Once I got called up I started to get a little nervous again, but I tried hard to not let my mind wander like I normally would let it while I wait in the competitors’ area. I tried being very mindful as to not get surprised when I got called up. It actually worked pretty well. Normally when I get called it’s like a jolt back to reality. Even though I’m expecting to get called up, I don’t know why that frightens me so bad (stupid brain). I got a 9.64 average which isn’t a bad time for me. A few of the solves had some lockups or larger than average pauses though. I’ve only recently started getting sub-10 averages in competition, so I was happy to get another. The best time was an 8.49, which is decent for me at home. After that we headed for home because I didn’t have anything else to compete it that day, and we wanted to avoid traffic. At this point in the weekend I was kinda ready to be done. The driving, the heat,the amount of people, etc. It was starting to get to me and I was tired lol. But I made it to round 2 by about 50 spots. To be honest though, I was excited I made it and would’ve been upset if I hadn’t. I wasn’t mad with the average I had gotten, but I knew I could do a little better.

Sunday morning I woke up and left the house pretty early. It was a really easy drive that morning because nobody was on the road, so I just cruised there and got there well before the time I was supposed to. I got to the spectator’s area and did about another 100 solves before it was my time to go up. This morning I was so much calmer. I was a little jittery from an energy drink, but mentally I was pretty solid. I knew for a fact I wasn’t getting to semi-finals, so I just had to bust out something cool. I ended up with a 9.61 average, which even though it was only 0.03 seconds faster than the one from the day before, it felt much better. I had only 1 big lockup and a few small pauses, but the solves felt much more fluid. I think the cases were just worse so that’s why the average wasn’t as fast. Either way I was much happier with this one. It also ended up being a pure sub-10 average which was another goal I had going into this weekend. All my sub-10 averages (even my sub-9 average) weren’t pure sub-10. So I think that’s a little bit of improvement I can be happy for. After that I waited to make sure I got knocked out and then once I hit 49th place in the live rankings I left. I was 244th in first round, so a lot of people would’ve had to DNF or do awful for me to have made it lol. Then I went home and watched the finals on Youtube.

Throughout the weekend I did get my picture with a few people. I met Dylan Miller early Thursday morning, this one wasn’t terribly cringey, but it probably could’ve been at a better time. I always trip over my words like crazy. He’s a really chill person, and I think he takes being popular pretty well. Rowe Hessler I caught during lunch one day (he wasn’t eating, I made sure lol), and he was still as cool as I remember him. I said something like “we competed together 13 years ago I don’t know if you’d remember” like he would in the slightest. I felt really dumb about that lol. I’ll always look up to Rowe though, that’s one of the GOATs. I got Kyle Santucci on Saturday morning I think. I knew him mostly from PSL and the almost one sided beef with Dylan Miller (the casters did Dylan Miller dirty during their 3rd head to head and it was really funny lol). I think maybe I got him at a bad time too, but it was cool to see him. I also can say I got his picture before he became North American Champion lol. I did get to see Max Park, and I was within a few feet of him, but I didn’t get a chance to get my picture with him. His mom kept a pretty good eye over him and made sure he was where he needed to be when he needed to be there, so I didn’t want to interrupt them or make them late for anything. Him and Matty Hiroto Inaba I think had a signing session upstairs at one point where I probably could’ve gotten my picture with him, but I wasn’t sure if they were just doing autographs or not. I didn’t bring my book so I decided not to go which I kinda regret. He follows me on Instagram and I think we’re friends on facebook, he even told me happy birthday one time, so that’s pretty dope. Apart from Feliks Zemdegs I think I’ve gotten a picture or autograph from everyone that I could want. Maybe Feliks will happen someday. Worlds?

Once again thank you to all of the staff and everyone there who made it such a great time, I hope you know your efforts were appreciated and it couldn’t have been done without you.

June Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 00:00:00 -0400

North American Championships 2026

This weekend is NAC in Raleigh and I’m pretty excited. I’m hoping I do alright, I’m obviously not going to come close to winning so I’m not stressing about placements too much. In fact, I’m going to be pleasantly surprised if I make it to round 2 in anything. I am still currently on a 21 PB streak, so I hope I do well enough with something to keep that going.

I’m a little nervous and anxious about how many people are going to be there, but not really about solving in front of them. I’m not crazy about cramped and loud places. But since this is something I’m crazy interested in, I think I’ll be able to focus on the competitors instead of how many people there are. I’m hoping I get to meet some people I’ve looked up to for a while. The main 2 people I’d like to meet and maybe get a picture with is Dylan Miller and Rowe Hessler.

I’ve looked up to Rowe forever. I actually already have his autograph from my 2nd competition ever, and that was so cool to meet him. I have this book that I have a bunch of people’s autographs in, and he’s the first one on the very front page. It’s pretty dirty and torn up now, so I don’t know if I’ll bring it, but I might. It’s really cool to see him get major recognition again with his multi-blind improvement. Definitely one of the GOATs.

Dylan is the guy I normally root for when I watch PSL matches, so all my buddies who watch them with me know who he is. I think it’d be cool to meet him. I’ve thought about getting his coaching services for months, but I just haven’t pulled the trigger yet. I probably should’ve done it sooner because I think his prices have gone up the past year or so. He’s incredibly fast at 3x3.

I’m sure he’ll have a ton of people around him already, but Max Park would be a good one to get a picture with. Another person I’d like to just watch because he’s insanely fast is Vishwa Sankar. Anytime I get to judge him at local comps I’m like “holy shit”. It’s so much different in person than online.

I’m also excited to see a bunch of my friends.

I’ll do an update probably next week sometime about how everything went. If you’re reading this and you happen to see me, come up and say hi. I’ll be incredibly surprised and awkward, but it’d be pretty cool!

May Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 -0400

More Reasons To Move Innawoods

Super close to the end of the month, so I’m just gonna bust this out before I go out today.

It’s been one heck of a week. It started on the Thursday before last. I have started using an Innioasis y1 mp3 player (basically a knockoff ipod) for listening to my music. It’s ok. I’ve had it for probably 6 months at this point, I’m not sure. It was kind of a pain in the ass to begin with because I tried installing rockbox on it, but that was this whole process because it wasn’t wanting to work on windows so I had to install windows on one of my think centers to be able to do it.

Anyway, that’s not the point. I got my sister one and was copying some music on to it for her. It’s got a crappy sd card in it, so it’s kinda slow and rsync would break halfway through it sometimes. I went to go delete some files from it and from my home directory I ran:

rm -rf * path/to/her/mp3

So I started nuking my home directory and lost all my documents and roms/saves. I’m not sure how or why I put that * there. I know I did it though because I almost did it again a few days ago. I even have the rm command aliased to include the --interactive flag, and I STILL nuked it. Very very very VERY stupid of me. Ever dumber was that I don’t have a backup system in place. I have a NAS with 60TB but no backups. Incredibly stupid. I even have btrfs, but no snapshots. Don’t be like me.

I shutdown pretty quickly afterwards and tried some stuff to get the files back for a few days, but nothing worked. I did take a total backup of the drive and stored it on my NAS, so I guess I can go back eventually if I figure out what I’m missing and try to get it back. That was the most annoying part, I can get all the roms back, but I’m not sure what was in the documents folder. So I don’t know if I’m missing anything terribly important. Sunday afternoon I finally said “whatever” and just started using my computer again.

Then this week at work has been crazy. Not to give anything super specific, we ran into this really stupid and hard to debug error where an internal sync was logging into the prod site but then making the calls to the sandbox one, getting unauthorized responses and re-logging in over and over until it ate up the sessions. This then caused other newer systems to start breaking so we figured it was them and went down rabbit holes for a day or 2 trying to figure out what was wrong.

Then midway through the week my mp3 player stopped working like halfway through the day because the space was full even though I should’ve had 20GB+ left. That wasn’t super hard to diagnose, I just didn’t have music at work for the rest of the day. It turned out to be this LOST.dir folder that just got super filled up with stuff, so once I deleted that it was working again. I’ll probably end up switching out the sd card in it soon because 128gb is a little tight, and having a faster card would be nice.

Bull City Big Cubes NC 2026

This competition name was actually kind of a mouthful looking at it now.

It was a pretty good competition though, it ran decently smooth. I think they did run behind a few times, but I enjoyed it.

I did not do well enough in either 6x6 or 7x7 to qualify for NAC unfortunately. It was lame because I focused so hard on 6x6 that my other events suffered a little bit, all to not qualify.

I did pretty well in 3x3 though, I ended up getting a sub-9 average and a 6.67 (hehe 67), which was super unexpected. I can get sub-9 averages at home pretty easily, but I don’t know if I’d consider myself sub-9 yet. This average was super lucky and included an OLL skip and a PLL skip. The 6.67 was actually from the OLL skip though, the PLL skip got me a 8.00. It was a lucky average and single that I don’t think I’ll beat for a while. It got me to finals too, which was cool. I got to finals at NxN Nonsense but that was because it was only 2 rounds, so this one means a little more to me I think. I haven’t been to a 3x3 finals in almost 8 years, which is INSANE to think about now that I’m calculating that.

Not practicing 5x5 definitely made it suffer a little bit. I got a 1:16 average and a 1:13 single. So not horrible, but a sub 1:10 average is what I would’ve hoped for.

Now that I know what all I’m going to compete in for NAC though, 3x3 and 5x5 are all I’m practicing. These are the ones I care about the most and the ones that I think I can do the best in. I don’t think I’ll make it very far in either at NAC, but I’m going to do my best.

Have a great June guys, see you next time!

April Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 30 Apr 2026 11:01:06 -0400

Bull City Big Cubes NC 2026

That’s kind of a long name for a comp now that I’m writing it out.

I’m going up to Durham this weekend to compete and I’m not prepared like at all for it. I’ve been meaning to grind 6x6 all month, but it’s really only been about the past week that I’ve done any meaningful practice. I want to be able to qualify for NAC in 6x6 and 7x7 and I figure with 7x7 there’s at least a larger chance that I’ll luck into a sub 3:20 mean because I have a sub 3:20 single, so I know I could do it if I got lucky. But with 6x6 I’ve never gotten close to a sub-2 single. I’ve practiced a little bit of 3x3, but everything else I’m kinda winging it. Hopefully 6x6 and 3x3 practice extends to other stuff.

I’m hoping for at least 1 PB to keep my streak going, but if I don’t get it then that’s my fault. Maybe I can squeeze out a slightly faster 3x3 single or average. I broke my main 3x3 about a month ago and haven’t gotten totally used to my new main. I was using a Dayan Guhong Pro, but now I’m using a Pro+ I think? It’s got some minor upgrades and more magnets, but I didn’t mean to buy it originally. I meant to get 2 of the same cube I had so that way I could immediately fix my old one and have a backup in case. I dropped and broke the core one night. Hopefully I do well.

New Animes

Last month I talked about finishing up Attack On Titan (amazing story).

This month I started 2 new animes with my friend Hunter. We started watching Daemons of the Shadow Realm and Akane-Banashi.

DOTSR is cool because it’s by the same author of Full Metal Alchemist which I loved. It’s a little tropey right now, but not too bad. I haven’t watched the latest 2 or 3 episodes, but the first 2 did have me interested enough to want to keep watching. Spoilers for the first episode: These twins are born and they’re super important to fulfill the prophecy or whatever, and they grow up in this small village in what seems like hundreds of years ago. But then they’re attacked one day and we come to find out that the girl twin isn’t actually in the village and she’s been off in the modern world (they’re actually in modern times, but the village has ways of hiding from the rest of the world). Then the boy twin is given these 2 demons who protect the village and he’s got to figure out what’s going on. That’s kind of a bad explanation, but it’s decent, go give it a watch.

Akane-Banashi is super interesting, and not something I would’ve thought they’d make an anime about. It’s about this girl whose father is a Rakugo artist (similar to a stand up comic in America). Spoilers for the first episode: She loves watching his shows, and he’s been working hard to become a master in it. He does really well at this one show which is basically his exam, and everyone loves it, but the head of the school/training program he’s attending expels him and the rest of his class for mostly no reason (he mentioned how bad he thought the show was, but everyone in the audience seemed to love it). His daughter (the main character) then decides to become a Rakugo artist and “avenge” her father. Apparently the manga for it is like 300 chapters long, which is kinda crazy. If it had ended with him becoming a master Rakugo artist, I think it could’ve been a standalone movie. We’ll see how it is as it keeps going.

One Piece

Spoilers For Up To Chapter 1181

Elbaf keeps getting crazier and crazier. The Imu reveal was so insane to read live. I know there have been other signs of the series coming to an end, but this is like for real a huge sign that we are absolutely in the final saga, and I don’t think it’s gonna slow down at all.

I’m not gonna say we won’t make a detour or anything, because we could go back to Impel Down or we go to Whitebeard’s hometown of Sphynx (fingers crossed). But realistically, the number of places we could go is dwindling. It all depends on how we leave Elbaf. People are saying this seems like a Sabaody 2.0, which I kind of agree with. We haven’t seen Luffy go fully against Imu yet, so maybe there’s something specific to his fruit that would work way better against him than, but if not then I think we do “lose” Elbaf. I just really hope Usopp doesn’t die. I don’t want anyone in the crew to die, but I worry for him the most and Sanji 2nd most.

I feel like a full Joy Boy reveal might not be too far off. Whether or not that’s in a Void Century flashback I’m not sure. Absolutely wonderful time to be reading this great story.

That’s it for this month, thanks for reading!

March Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 11:00:35 -0400

It’s pretty close to the end of the month so I’m going to keep this short and sweet and talk about “Attack On Titan” (AOT) really quickly.

SPOILERS FOR ATTACK ON TTIAN

I apologize for thinking for so long that anyone who watched Attack On Titan was a dork. I still think owning a jacket all the way back in 2013 based on a single season of the show was a little overkill, but I get it now.

AOT is such an amazing story and I enjoyed it very much. Learning the secrets about the walls did make me worry a little bit because it was such a major shift from the original premise of the show, but I think season 4 is actually a 9.5.

I watched it with my friend who hated the ending to the manga when he first read it, and he said for years that the ending was what kept it from it being the best anime of the 2010’s for him. I think he came around after watching the changes in the anime. I’m still sorta ingesting the ending and every sort of philosophy that was included in the show from the anti-natalism and nihilism. It’s an immensely deep show and it’s insane how much detail was put into it.

I don’t think Eren was justified at all. I don’t understand how people hate Gabi but love Eren either. I’m getting caught up on all these memes and stuff after all these years, it’s so much fun lol

There were a few misconceptions about spoilers that I had before I knew anything about the show.

I think I knew that Eren was not a good guy for the whole show, but I don’t think I knew he was the main character. I think I thought that maybe Levi was the main character at some point in my life, but I’m not sure.
I knew the “on your feet, dad” quote, and I figured it was Eren telling his dad and he was going to kill him while he was standing instead of laying down/on his knees. But then I found out that he was dead so I was confused on who it could be. Then it ended up being him and his dad, but in a very different way lol
I have seen memes of Reiner’s near-suicide scene, and his uniform reminded me of Nazis, so I thought that there were going to be Nazis at some point. I was sorta right? I also didn’t know who Reiner was or that it was him, so once Zeke was introduced I thought maybe it was him.

One funny thing that happened while we were watching was that I guessed that the walls were “made of titan” as a joke. My friend had to mute his mic to keep from me hearing him laugh. I guessed it like 2 or 3 episodes before they revealed it, so it’s not like I guessed anything crazy, but it was a total off the wall comment I made. I’m not even sure what made me say it.

My 3 favorite characters are probably Reiner, Levi and Erwin. They’re all pretty equal, but I think Reiner does edge it out slightly.

Reiner had death flags for like ever, I did not expect him at all to survive the series. I think if he died in this crazy redemption scene he would’ve been far and away my favorite character, but I don’t know if there’s really one thing he could’ve done to redeem him breaking the wall with Bertholdt, and he himself knew that. He was my favorite in season 1, I’m not even sure why, I just kinda latched to him.

Once Levi and Erwin started getting more and more screen time they passed Reiner for a bit, but by season 4 I still ended up liking Reiner more. Levi beats out Erwin a little because he’s around longer, but Erwin is fantastic. The speeches he gave were insanely good, and the part where he loses his arm is so insanely hype. Levi going to town on Zeke’s arm was another hype ass moment too, oh my gosh. I wish Erwin had gotten to see beyond the walls, but I’m glad that Levi chose to save Armin over Erwin. Armin was also an amazing character, he’s probably my favorite of the original 3.

I think my least favorite characters were Floch and Yelena. They’re important for the story, but damn were they annoying.

February Update 2026 - Fix

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0400

I’m not sure how many people actually read my blog if any, and how many of those people use rss readers, but I kinda made an oopsie on my last post and used the wrong date. I put 2025 instead of 2026, so if it messes with your rss reader I’m sorry. I didn’t check last night that it got published correctly.

February Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 00:00:00 -0400

NxN Nonsense NC 2026

I don’t think I’ve updated the blog on what’s happened with US Nationals 2026 since the last time I talked about it back in July. It’s now become North American Championships! I’ve only ever been to NC State Champs and US Nationals, so I’m super excited to add NAC to that list. I already registered and have a spot, so if anyone reading this is going then I’ll see you there!

The issue with larger comps now that they’re getting to be huge spectator events means that they have to limit the amount of people and they’re doing qualification times. It’s not a hard concept, but I just didn’t understand how the WCA handled it for World Championships last year in Seattle, otherwise I would’ve gone. I didn’t realize that the first sets of cutoffs were going to be eased up because they want the faster people to for sure have a spot. This time I did understand them and I got registered fine. Up until this past weekend I was only registered for 3x3, 4x4, skewb and OH because that’s all I qualified for (no qualifying times for any of those lol). To qualify to compete in NAC for 5x5 you’d have to have an average that was sub 1:08, for 6x6 a mean of sub 2, and 7x7 a mean of sub 3:20. I had none of these officially. However, 5x5 I can get sub 1:08 singles and averages at home pretty easily. It was just a matter of doing it in competition.

In comes NxN Nonsense. NxN Nonsense was a really fun competition that I went to this past weekend on Feb 22nd. It had 2 rounds of all the NxN puzzles except for 2x2 (a near perfect competition, needed 3 rounds of everything but then it’d have to be a 2 day). Leading up to the competition I planned to do a ton of big cube solves to hopefully get to where I could qualify for 5x5-7x7, or have a better chance of getting fluke times that got me the necessary averages (haha).

Unfortunately leading up to this competition I was particularly busy. My birthday was in the middle of February, we were finishing this large project at work, I started “Attack On Titan”, I had several instances I watched my nephews for my sisters. So I think the week of the competition I did a total of 0 combined solves for 6x6 and 7x7. I was super unprepared.

I actually kicked so much ass though! First event of the day was 3x3 and I got my first sub 10 average finally! Right off rip. I’ve been close a few times, and I’ve been able to get sub 10 averages for years now. I’m so glad to finally have gotten it. The WCA exports their database once a week and people have come up with a ton of statistics. I saw a page like a year ago that was “longest time between first competition and first sub 10 average”, and I went and found the sql for it again, and I am now the 25th longest time to get a sub 10 average at 13.5 years (haha). That’s a really funny stat I think. The number 1 spot was someone who got it after 19 years, which is really awesome to see, I bet he was super happy.

On top of that I got a sub 1:08 average (it was actually 1:06.23) for 5x5 AND a sub 1 single (59.84)! I was so excited for this. This was my biggest reaction out of any competition I’ve been to I think (it was still calm though cuz I don’t like drawing attention to myself lol). 5x5 has been my favorite event ever since I first competed in it, and this was a huge barrier to finally break in competition. Next is a sub 1 average, maybe possibly by/at NAC, who knows. I did alright in 6x6 and 7x7, not well enough to qualify though. I didn’t break any PBs for 6x6 this time. I did initially make it into 6x6 finals, but they were running behind so everyone after 16th place got cut and I was 19th. I broke my single and average for 7x7, and I made it to finals so I got 6 solves total which was a lot. I got a 3:17 single, so it proves that I can probably qualify if I work a little harder. I just have to practice more. I bought a 6x6 and 7x7 earlier last year when I was getting back into competing and they’re good, so I think it’s mostly just practice and reducing pauses.

It’s really silly, but I haven’t really watched any tips videos in probably 5 years or more, so I’m trying to watch more. Most of my practice for that time has been working on fluidity and the occasional stint of learning an alg set like ZBLL (still only know 3.5 of the 2GLL cases haha). Which isn’t the worst thing in the world. However, some of the cases I do aren’t the most optimal so I’m just reinforcing bad habits that I’m having to break now. I watched a video on Yau for 4x4 today and realized how inefficient my solves really are. So I’m gonna dive into a bunch of info in the coming weeks.

Talk to you guys next month!

January Update 2026

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 00:00:00 -0400

Happy New Year! I did really badly on my resolutions last year lol, let’s see how I did.

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.

I didn’t come anywhere near to 200lbs haha

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.

Manageable for some people, but I did not do that. I’m a little heavier in fact.

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.

I haven’t weighed myself yet, but I’m positive I’m still somewhere between 230 and 240.

I don’t think this year was a total waste as far as health is concerned though. I’ve started taking my sleep a little more seriously by taking supplements before bed and trying to get a little more sleep. I sleep talk pretty regularly and sometimes have night terrors, but they seem to have slowed a little bit. I try to limit my caffeine intake a little more. I did a bunch of walking, not as much as I should, but I got a smart watch and am more aware of the amount of steps I take in a day.

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.

Oh boy. I don’t even remember writing this so let’s see what all I wanted consume.

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

I didn’t read anywhere near as much as I thought I was going to. This probably would’ve taken some people like 6 months to do. I don’t make time for this like I should.

I did read the Lee Priest book, and I think I did finish it in late January. It was pretty good, I like him and I was bored at a cubing competition one day so I got it done pretty easy. I kind of got it on a whim, because I didn’t know THAT much about Lee, but I did get to learn a lot about what he’d been through. I hadn’t even heard about his racing career or his time in rehab (not that it’s something you really go around proud about). I liked hearing about the late 90’s and early 00’s bodybuilding stories.

I don’t think I ever finished the Tao Te Ching. I may have, but I don’t remember it if I did. If you haven’t seen, there’s a bunch of monks who are walking as a form of prayer up the east coast (they’re actually by me about a week ago) and I got to thinking about this book, but I cannot remember a single lesson from it. I did not do well with the PewDiePie book club lol, I failed on the first book.

I’ve tried reading Notes From Underground a hundred times and I just struggle so much with the first part. It’s not that it’s boring, it’s just so rambly and I can’t keep up with what he’s trying to say. I get that’s part of the point he’s rambling to us to try to justify his behavior, but I don’t think I’m keeping up with it like I should be able to. I may try this one again soon, I got a couple pages in on a hard cover and it was making a little more sense. I really want to get to the 2nd part where I think there’s more characters than just the underground man rambling. I even went so far as to try the audiobook to see if that would help, but I’ve almost Pavlov trained myself into falling asleep to it as soon as it starts because I would listen to it when I was going to sleep. I didn’t even attempt Demons, The Brothers Karamazov, or Poor Folk (I’ve started this one a few times though). I like Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and White Nights, and I think about them often, these others are just really tough for some reason.

The Joey Diaz book would probably be an easy one to knock out. I’ll listen to whatever Joey Diaz has to say so if I imagine he’s the one talking I might be able to get through it quicker.

I re-watched the “Knives Out” movies around the time that the new “Wake Up Dead Man” came out and that got interested in more mysteries, so I did get through the “Study in Scarlet” Sherlock Holmes story. It was pretty good. It wasn’t really what I expected though. It was less mystery than what I had wanted. The facts of the case were presented to me, but it wasn’t something that I think you could solve yourself. Especially not the motive. Slight spoilers, but when it swapped to talking about the Mormons in Utah halfway through I had to check to make sure I didn’t get a bad printing and started reading a different book. Very dramatic shift. I got through half of the next story. I don’t think I really stopped for any reason, I just stopped and haven’t picked it back up. This wasn’t really the kind of mystery I was hoping for. Knives-Out is more my style, you see exactly what happens it just gets re-contextualized later, so you have most things you need to solve the case. Sherlock feels like you’re doing 1 thing, but then in the back of your mind you know that he’s just going to go out and check something and come up with his own solution that you never would’ve been able to because of extra clues or something. I guess there’s a lot of shows and media that do this though. I’m not sure which is easier or harder to write. If you have all the clues at the beginning, it might be too obvious, but then if you wait to show the killer later then you’ll need to do something else to make it interesting.

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

The only thing out of this list that I finished was Wotakoi, and apparently I might’ve missed a big event in an OVA or something.

Sakamoto Days got a little boring, it’s less romance and slice of life and more shonen/fights. Which the fights are pretty good, especially when Sakamoto loses the weight. I don’t like secret societies/groups of people. I’m also not terribly into fighting stuff anymore.

DanDaDan I just kinda lost interest in the last 2 or 3 episodes, but I want to go back and finish the season. I like the romance between Ayase and Okarun a lot. There’s some more characters who I haven’t been introduced to either, so I know I’m missing out.

Ranma 1/2 I started the manga and already knew what was going to happen in season 2 so I lost some interest. I want to pick this back up, or maybe start the 1988 anime at some point.

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.)

I think I got through maybe 3 of the 2-in-1 books of Ranma, but it’s such a long story. It’s good, it’s just incredibly long for what it is. I’ll try to finish it eventually.

I got caught up to My Dress-Up Darling exactly 1 chapter before it ended. I read the latest chapter and then I saw a tweet the following day that the next chapter would be the last. I was so sad. It was a great story, I loved all of the characters and the situations they go into. The ending was incredibly cute too. I haven’t finished the 2nd season of the anime yet, but it looks amazing and it’s animated really really well.

I thought I could maybe find the physical editions of Heavenly Delusions easily, but I couldn’t at the time. I never tried to read it online either. I want to go rewatch the anime soon. Still one that I recommend to people because of how hooked I got on it.

Goodnight Punpun is still sitting on my shelf untouched. I haven’t been in the right mood for that much depressing stuff. It’s drawn incredibly well, but it’s a downer for sure. Also the physical copies kinda give me a headache with how much ink is on the pages. It gives off a very strong smell.

I didn’t read Wotakoi either. Overall my manga reading has been way down from what it was at one point, I have so many half finished series. I still read One Piece weekly, but that’s about it. I started a new one though called “Smoking Behind The Supermarket With You” that’s good. I’m about halfway through that, and I’ll hopefully finish that soon. I’m really enjoying it.

TV

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.)

Wow, I actually finished everything here. I didn’t finish Stranger Things in 2025 though, I was out at a friend’s house for New Years Eve when the final episode came out so I watched it on the 2nd.

Wayne was really good. It definitely had “End of the F*cking World” vibes. Unfortunately it hasn’t been finished yet, and I don’t think that it will. It’s at a point where it’s a fine sorta ambiguous ending, but there’s some other stuff I’d like to see wrapped up. I’ll be pleasantly surprised if it does get finished.

Squid Games was ok. The first season was very good. The 2nd season had some good moments and some interesting characters and dynamics. The 3rd season I remember not really liking the ending that much. It’s been a while since I watched it though to remember specific details. I liked Thanos in season 2 a good bit. I forget the actor’s name who played him but I went out and learned about him and I’m glad he’s making a comeback (long story short, he used to be in a boyband and he got caught with drugs and everyone kinda looked down on him from there I think, don’t quote me on that though I think that’s huge simplification).

Stranger Things was pretty rough. I really didn’t like the last season. Like at all. The acting, the story, the release schedule, the ending. I’ve heard people say “they had the entire story planned from the beginning” and that’s just incredibly false. There’s so many inconsistencies with that it just can’t be true. Up to season 3 it was a great show, maybe there were some inconsistencies that I can’t remember, but I think it really peaked at season 3. The dialogue has always been a little cringey, and the delivery isn’t the best, but it was incredibly bad in season 5. The more I think about characters, plot points, or details the more it’s like “wow that doesn’t make any sense” and I can almost bet that the Duffer Brothers don’t have a reason for it either.

As far as movies go, I watched over 100 this year. I really started exploring some stuff too. I watched some low hanging fruit like the Harry Potter series, I watched all of the marvel movies up until End Game except for 2 or 3. There were a number of old school Japanese movies I watched like High and Low, Ikiru and Harakiri that were fantastic to see. I watched a ton of horror movies with my friends during October too, I tried doing a 31 days of Halloween thing but it ended up only being 16 planned, and I watched a couple by myself and missed some others. I might try to mirror my letterboxd on here eventually. If you want to follow me, then my account is jtaylorxyz I think. I’m not sure if

2026 Resolutions

I don’t have any specific goals this year. I want to read more, I want to cube more, I want to lose weight. Setting specific goals hasn’t worked, so maybe having less specific goals will be better.

Gonna go ahead and wrap it up for this month. If I think of something new, I’ll post about it. Happy New Year, hope you guys reach all your goals!