SMORGASBORD: NEW MUSIC SNIPPETS / RUBIKS ALGO / ONO OTW

MUSIC

My friends Eric and Ashley just released a vinyl record of their latest album. They are really warm hearted musicians that always take me to another place during their shows.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-promise-is-hope-s-sophomore-album-release#/

I have personally known Eric for a long time through a fellow friend. Eric is the type of person that makes all artists proud. He can do the hard work and present it with a smile. I really struggle with the smiling part.

So when they said they were doing this Indiegogo campaign, I signed up right away and chose the signed vinyl + digital download package. They delivered and I also went to see them at Club Passim in Cambridge, which is an old dive I used to visit for excellent folk music (Brooks Williams, Christopher Williams, Meg Hutchinson, Jake Armerding, Antje Duvekot, and more).

It was a fun time at an old place, and while I was chatting with a dude who was preaching about the power of psilocybin to help with depression, I got to hear really great music.

If you have been following me for a while, there is a little red piece of yarn in my inner caverns that always leads to music and song writing. Since I was in grade school, I was sitting in during different band practices. I have been involved with music most of my life, but I do have seasons when I get away from it.

While I was listening to The Promise Is Hope, I felt a rush of words and melodies pour through me. My sister, who is in Banded Starling, also had the same experience. When she looked at my notebook she asked me to write an album for her. An album?!? There is no way I would say yes, but it was my little sister. So I had to say yes.

Since then I have been daily sending her lyrics and chord progressions. What I realized is that by starting that process and lowering the creative damn, there was a momentum of ideas that came.

The album idea will remain secret for now, but I will definitely share what Banded Starling does with my ideas.

Here is a snippet.

And another snippet.

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RUBIKS ALGO

A couple of my students have been pwning me with their rubiks cube skills, and after poorly being able to solve one side, I asked them for the secret to their success. They told me, and I had no clue what they are talking about.

It was like talking to a genius about how they make their coffee, and 3 minutes later you have no idea what they said.

So I listened to one student who told me to print out the official rubiks algorithm, and wrote down some modifications from the 2 genius students. In the end I was able to solve the cube at will and figure out if some rude person has twisted corners on the cube.

RUBIKS CUBE ALGOS

R - Right Away
L - Left Towards
U - Upper To Left
D - Lower To Right
F - Front Clockwise

An i after one of the movements means it goes in the opposite direction. Fi is Front counter-clockwise.

I use this number chart to understand the cycling that happen when you do an algo.

1. Create a white cross. Make sure edges touching the top row match the color of that side.

There are lots of ways to do this. I like to get one square of the white cross solved and do two rotations to lock the color in.

1. The white cross is followed by solving the white corners with: Ri, Di, R, D when the correct piece is directly below its destination.

1. When the entire top row is solved along with the white side, flip the cube upside down so the white side faces the table. Use the following algos for solving the middle row.

Moving TOP ROW + MIDDLE COLUMN to MIDDLE ROW + LEFT COLUMN: Ui, Li, U, L, U, F, Ui, Fi

Moving TOP ROW + MIDDLE COLUMN to MIDDLE ROW + RIGHT COLUMN: U, R, Ui, Ri, Ui, Fi, U, F

Use the top row as a taxi, and move the piece towards the sides that match.

1. When the middle row is solved, it is time to create the yellow cross.

If you see a yellow dot, or backwards baby L use this algo: F, U, R, Ui, Ri, Fi

If you see a horizontal 3 square line use this algo: F, R, U, Ri, Ui, Fi

1. The yellow cross needs to have neighboring sides that match the centers.

Use this algo, and place your correct side on the 8: R, U, Ri, U, R, U, U, Ri ( 2, 4, 6 cycle)

1. When the yellow cross has neighboring edge squares the same color as the center, work on getting the yellow corners to their correct spots.

Solved corner on 9: Li, U, R, Ui, L, U, Ri, Ui ( 1, 3, 7 cycle)

these corners aren't perfect, but they are in the right place

1. Use Ri, Di, R, D from step 2 to arrange the corners, but rotate the top layer and cycle the yellow corner until you see the correct orientation. Make sure you complete the algo even if the corner is solved.

If you screw up, or have a weird state, you can either repeat the step, reverse the step, or flip the cube to fix the white side if it screws up. This cube is more about memory and resiliency than anything else.

For a quick online cube simulator, search for rubiks cube on bing.com. I personally prefer using the Qiyi cube.

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ONO is coming very soon. I recently made this bitcointalk page: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4550706.msg40985060#msg40985060

There seems to be a divide between ONO fans and they dislike how the ONO app is available to the Chinese and how the core team communicates in Chinese all the time. Some people are feeling left out since most blockchain apps are either available via alpha (eg. Metal), or beta.

Friends and ONO fans, let me assure you. The initial spirit and vision behind ONO is still very true and alive and well. I chat with Ke Xu and Bashir pretty much every week and the core team is working their assess off.

Consider this. ONO has been able to get 300,000+ users with only Chinese users and an invite only system. Three hundred thousand users in 2 months with controls in place.

Imagine how many users they would have if they just had it available to the world? This would be a bad scenario for any new software. It takes time to find bugs and roll in fixes.

If a new users' initial experience with the ONO software is buggy, then it is very unlikely they will return or ask their friends to join. The weekly reports show they have taken out a slew of bugs that will make the international version so sweet you'll get a cavity.

The ONO team is very much about getting the app to a professional level that will create a thriving ecosystem of millions of users by the end of the year.

Some of the tweaks were made after the design team reviewed other popular social media so different aspects of the gui and UI/UX felt as fluid as people are used to.

Yes, it sucks to not have the ONO dApp in hand , but in August when we are posting with blissful abandon, we won't even remember the time we had to wait.