Cubing on Jackson Taylor

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!

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

Cubing Section

jackson@jacksontaylor.xyz (Jackson Taylor) — Sat, 30 Oct 2021 00:00:00 -0400

For those who only know me through this website, you may not know that I love Rubik’s cubes and speedcubing. I have added a new section to my site covering some stories and stuff. My friends have started getting more interested in the hobby, so I’ve started remembering stories, and started getting back into some of the community aspects of it. I’m not sure how much of this site I’ll dedicate to cubing stuff, but I may spend some time and write down all the algorithms and stuff I use for OLL/PLL in case anyone wants to know.

You can find the new section here