From cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Mon Jun 30 19:21:04 1997 Return-Path: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Received: from oolong.camellia.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by oolong.camellia.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id TAA18780; Mon, 30 Jun 1997 19:21:03 -0400 Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Message-ID: <19970630230531.25512.rocketmail@send1.rocketmail.com> Date: Mon, 30 Jun 1997 16:05:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Bill Webster Subject: Hi To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Hi, I first encountered the cube sometime in the early 80s when the fad hit Australia. Solving it absorbed all my spare time for two weeks along with several wads of A4 and $15 for a second cube which I used to develop what I called 'sequences'. My experiments on the second cube were conducted with great care, as I had not yet discovered that Satan's Algorithm could be had for the price of a small screwdriver. I never became a speed-freak, or even employed operators outside my own meagre discoveries, but could solve the cube comfortably inside three minutes. I solved corners, then edges because the first reasonable sequences I discovered were edge-disrupting corner operators. My operators were short and scant so my method incurred a lot of short term memory overhead, manipulating faces into susceptible positions, applying the sequence, then inverting the prior manipulation. A friend of mine aquired a cube at about the same time and much to my chagrin, solved it in less than a day, without paper, without explicitly developing any operators. In fact, he couldn't give a satisfactory account of exactly how he'd solved it. He may have just got *extremely* lucky and stumbled on something close to START, but I don't think so. I handed him a scrambled cube a couple of weeks later and he was quite taken aback - he wasn't going through all that again, he'd done it hadn't he?. I always felt that my own solution was somewhat contrived after witnessing this feat. Does anyone else have examples of GestaltCube? I have coded a C++ class which represents cube states and operators and which includes methods to manipulate the cube. I would like to implement overloaded C++ operators in a manner which is consistent with (and perhaps extends) the appropriate mathematical notation *if this is feasible*. Is there anyone out there familiar with both grammars and willing to make suggestions? I am aware and prepared to accept that the use of some (C++) operators may introduce inefficiencies in the form of temporary objects created during expression evaluation - such operators will not be used in time critical code. I have been using a freeware ray-tracer, POV-Ray to produce 'photo-realist' cube images. I intend to extend my software to export animation scripts, so that I can produce (externally rendered) animated solutions. These take forever to trace, so their value is aesthetic rather than practical. I have been experimenting with solid gold cubes inlaid with coloured marble etc., but still prefer the platonic form. I have the POV source for a static cube if anyone is interested. The POV team are true heroes - details... "The internet home of POV-Ray is reachable on the World Wide Web via the address http://www.povray.org and via ftp as ftp.povray.org." "POV-Ray can be used under MS-DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, Windows 95, Windows NT, Apple Macintosh 68k, Power PC, Commodore Amiga, Linux, UNIX and other platforms." Regards, Bill Webster _____________________________________________________________________ Sent by RocketMail. Get your free e-mail at http://www.rocketmail.com