Erwaman's Personal Journal - August 2009

But this summer, during my research at Stevens, I found myself with a ton of free time on my hands and got back into cubing. I checked out speedcubing.com for upcoming competitions in the Northeast and made plans to go to two of them: Big Cubes Summer 2009 and Connecticut Summer 2009.

After learning that the Big Cubes competition would not have any 3x3 events, I started practicing 4x4 and 5x5 for like the first time in my life! I have two full sets of 4x4 pieces and four 4x4 cores, so I tried out all 8 combinations of sets of pieces with cores to make the best 4x4 I could. I also have two full sets of 5x5 pieces and three 5x5 cores, but I have gotten around to making the best 5x5 I can. But I just ordered a V-Cube 5x5 (along with a 6x6 and 7x7), so it might not be necessary. Speedcuber Tim Reynolds says his 5x5 times dropped 20 seconds just by switching to a V-Cube. I'm pretty excited for these new big cubes :).

My cubing's been pretty stagnant for a while. I haven't really learned many new algorithms or really worked on improving my times. But this summer, in Hoboken, I decided to look back into 4x4 blindfolded and see if I could finish learning it. It took me a few days to learn, but I finally got my first successful blindfolded solve on July 10, 2009. Anyways, you can read more about that in an earlier post.

And as I mentioned in the earlier post, I now wanted to solve a 4x4 blindfolded officially, that is, in competition. So I practiced some more and had 10 successful solves under my belt going into the Big Cubes competition on July 26 in Allentown. I attempted the 4x4 blindfolded early in the competition (before noon), when my mind was the freshest. The solve took twenty-five minutes, and when I removed the blindfold, the cube was solved! Then I turned the cube around and saw two dedges swapped. It was not an execution error; it was a memorization error! I completely did not memorize that 2-cycle! When I did my checks, I thought I had accounted for those two dedges in the other dedge cycles I had memorized. Disappointed, I asked to try again, but the organizer, Dan Cohen, said I couldn't because I had taken too long. Definitely a downer, but the rest of the competition went pretty well and I was extremely happy about my 4x4 speedsolve performance, in which I completely shattered my 4x4 PRs. My 4x4 average (1:12.57) was faster than my previous 4x4 single solve PR (1:18.02)!

Fast forward six days and I'm at the Connecticut Summer 2009 competition. There's no 4x4 on the schedule, but I emailed the organizer, Gavin Nelson, and he very generously squeezed the event in for me the day of. I memorized very carefully, triple checked, and executed very slowly. Finally, 27:49 later, I succeeded in officially solving a 4x4 blindfolded! Being a big milestone in my cubing journey, I wrote down what I had memorized:

1. Centers
   • Cycles: (A Q U I N K F) (B V R P S L) (C G T W)
   • Mnemonic: (A QUINtessential Killer Fish) (By Virtue of Respect, Please SLeep)
2. Dedges
   • Cycles: (A L J V R W K E M T C D F Q P) (B X S U G) (H O)
   • Mnemonic: (A Little Juicy Vector Runs Wish Killer Element. Monster Truck Can Drive to Fun and Quiet Places.) (BoX SUcks Goats.) (HO!)
3. Corner Orientation
   • In the top layer, I had a Sune-Sune on the right, and on the bottom layer, I had a Sune-Sune in the back.
4. Corner Permutation
   • Cycles: (2 6 3 8 5) (4 7)

My dad also caught the last two minutes of the solve on video. Ironically, after doing a 4x4 successfully, I DNF'd all three 3x3 blindfolded attempts later on that day. And my 3x3 blindfolded times have not improved. If anything, they're slower now due to lack of practice. Regardless, I've improved in many other events and participated in several new events, and so I've updated my cubing records page.

Of course I've been a regular teeth brusher before, but I'd never really been a regular flosser. Every once in a while, I might floss just for fun. But since I started my internship, except for the first day, I've been flossing at least once every day. And about 1.5 weeks later, I've definitely noticed some improvements. The first couple days, when I flossed, my gums would bleed and would be very sore after I flossed (maybe my technique was wrong or I was being too vigorous). But now, they don't bleed at all and it doesn't really hurt. Also, I've noticed my gum health has improved - my gums are less swollen, I have more teeth showing, and my teeth look neater and more uniform.

My conclusion is flossing does make a big difference in addition to just brushing your teeth. Before, I might floss after brushing if I felt the sudden urge. But now, I floss first, then brush my teeth. My logic was: first rinse to get the large food particles out, then floss to get tinier particles out, including those stuck in your teeth. Then rinse again to flush the particles you've dislodged out of your mouth. Finally, brush with toothpaste as a polishing touch. Reading up on flossing, apparently it helps scrape plaque and food particles out between your teeth and at the gumline that your toothbrush can't. And you should floss before brushing because by dislodging particles and plaque first, it allows the fluoride from your toothpaste to seep in the holes and do a more thorough cleaning.

Though flossing takes a bit more time than brushing your teeth, I find it more fun! At first I found it awkward to floss the last few teeth at the back of the mouth, but now as I've gotten used to it, it's pretty easy. Also, I sometimes used to lose track of which slot I had just flossed and which was next, but now I know there are exactly 7 slots from the front center slot to the last slot (8 if you count the slot after the last tooth, which I guess you should also floss), so I count to make sure I get every slot.

The only inconvenience (besides extra time and money) that I've noticed about flossing is when you pull the floss out, you sometimes spray the mirror in front of you with particles and saliva. My solution to this problem is as follows: when you floss, you have one hand guiding the floss from inside your mouth and the other hand guiding it from the outside. So, when you're ready to pull the floss out from a slot, always pull out from the outside, so you'll be aiming down (or up) rather than forwards, which is what I find tends to happen when you bring the hand on the inside back out and pull the floss out.

My roommate Gustavo left behind a huge 1.5-liter bottle of Listerine that still had about a liter left, so I brought it home with me. Today, I tried using some for the first time, and dang, rinsing for 30 seconds is really painful - that stuff is strong! I think next time I use it I'm going to have to dilute it with some water. Reading up on it, it seems mouthwash definitely supplements brushing and flossing, but according to the American Dental Association, in most cases, brushing and flossing are enough. I also wonder whether something that hurts so much when you rinse with it for 30 seconds could be harmful used long term. Wikipedia mentions someone published this January in the Dental Journal of Australia that "alcohol-containing mouthwashes contribute to the increased risk of development of oral cancer" though this claim was disputed by someone at Cancer Research UK, who said "there is still not enough evidence to suggest that using mouthwash that contains alcohol will increase the risk of mouth cancer."

Anyways, I think I will stick to brushing and flossing for now. The addition of flossing has already made noticeable differences and I don't want to lengthen my dental cleaning time by adding mouthwash.

Andy suggested I upload pictures of my workspace, so I am.
Same headphones as from high school.

24" monitor!!! $1,000 ergonomic Aeron chair!

My bro's workspace. I want dual monitors. No fair.

Our aisle.

My home office, for computer stuff and practicing clarinet.

Also for watching TV.

My main desk.

My V-Cubes arrived yesterday from Greece!

5x5 V-Cube compared to a Rubik's V-Cube. The V-Cube 5x5 weighs about as much as a Rubik's 4x4. Right now, my Rubik's 5x5 is still smoother, but I think once I break in my V-Cube 5x5 and lube it, it will be better. Also, the V-Cube 5x5 currently has locking problems, so I may need to sand it.

6x6! This and the 7x7 pop if you're not careful. I'm gonna fully disassemble them and then reassemble them when I have time, like on the weekend. The 6x6 popped once and I forgot to put a piece back in (or rather, I didn't know where it went), but it still worked.

The cube family is complete! Except for those pieces on the table. It's a work in progress :).

Okay, first, check out the following video.

Now, I frequently eat Honey Bunches of Oats cereal, which is not the cereal depicted in the movie (you can tell because you can see the General Mills G poking out above the tape when the video zooms in on the person opening the box and Honey Bunches of Oats is made by Post). Looking at the nutritional facts, it says it has 60% of the daily recommended iron intake per 3/4 cup serving. Now, I didn't do the experiment they show in the video, but I have frequently noticed over many years of eating this cereal that at the bottom of my bowl, when drinking the last bit of milk, there's frequently some black filings swimming around. This morning, I ate Honey Bunches of Oats again, and I took a picture of the emptied bowl:

Sorry the picture isn't too clear (my cheap digital camera doesn't quite cut it), but the black streak you see in the middle is a bunch of iron filings, and there are some more swimming around in the small patch of milk to the left of the streak. I never realized this was the iron from my enriched cereal - I wasn't sure where this came from but I thought maybe these were filings from the metal spoon I was using. I didn't think too much more about this, though I didn't eat these filings (seeing black stuff in your food is always weird) I saw or lick the bowl clean as I might when eating some other foods.

The person in the video justs says at the end "Do you want to be eating iron filings in your cereal and other enriched foods...I don't think so" but is there anything to be seriously worried about? I read a couple Wikipedia articles about iron and human iron metabolism and found it interesting that iron was an essential mineral for pretty much all lifeforms, from bacteria to plants to humans. It also mentioned that too little iron and you can get iron deficiency anemia but too much iron and it can be toxic (like when babies ingest too many adult vitamin and mineral tablets).

So, I'm not planning to stop eating enriched foods and/or those high in iron content, and I'm not really worried about the risks, but this was just something interesting to me because I had noticed those filings in my cereal bowl and never knew where they came from. Anybody else notice them before?

The black splotches are ants. I spy seven. I saw one crawling on my right hand, so I flicked it off. Then I checked my cereal bowl to see if I had accidentally flicked the ant off into my cereal. That's when I noticed lots of other ants in my cereal, though most were already drowned by the milk I think. I checked the box of cereal in the pantry and found more ants crawling around inside there. Since there was only about 1 serving of cereal left, I just threw it away and flattened the box.

As for the cereal that I had already poured out, I ate it, ants and all. The ants were probably garden ants that were attracted to the sugar in the cereal, and I don't think eating a few will hurt me. Also, I've heard while you are sleeping, you sometimes swallow bugs that crawl into your mouth.

I even found a recipe online for Chocolate covered Ants. It's written with a bit of humor, too :)!

I also read the Wikipedia article on entomophagy, or insect eating, and apparently insects are a good source of protein and essential amino acids. Whereas livestock have an energy input to protein output ratio of about 54:1, insects have a ratio of about 4:1! Then, factor in how much faster insects reproduce than livestock, and their food conversion efficiency is 20 times higher than for livestock. Also, raising insects requires much less space, food, and water than raising livestock. So entomophagy is both more nutritious and cost-effective than animal husbandry! Apparently, many cultures around the world have a practice of entomophagy and raising insects for consumption. Check out the picture of a bunch of deep fried insects sold at a market in Bangkok on the entomophagy Wikipedia page.

I guess the biggest risks of eating insects are eating insects exposed to pesticides or that have consumed vegetation exposed to pesticides. Also, there is the risk of consuming poisonous insects. But considering that we sometimes consume insects in our sleep and that there are traces of insects and larvae in many foods we eat, there's probably nothing to worry about consuming a few household insects you find in your food once in a while. It's probably nutritious for you.

Okay, now let me ask you, do you pee in the shower? I do. And it's always the first thing I do when starting my shower (if I need to go). Besides saving a toilet flush, I feel like it's good utilization of the water that you let flow as you wait for the water to warm up. I also use this cold water and my corded shower head to rinse the whole shower and the glass panel doors to the shower.

I personally feel like there's nothing wrong with peeing in the shower, especially if it's the first thing you do, so you have the whole length of the shower to wash everything out. Also, nobody complains of a smelly shower in my house, so apparently, there's no lingering odor either. Mostly, I think it's good utilization of the water you just waste anyways waiting for the shower to warm up, you save a toilet flush, and you can really clean yourself afterward.

Ok, now for some other shower habits. Do you shampoo first or put on soap first or do you do both together? Do you use a bar of soap or bodywash? Do you use conditioner? Do you always shampoo your hair or use soap?

Personally, after wetting my entire body, I shut off the water completely to apply lather. My house does have water-conserving shower heads which you can shut off by twisting the head, but this is more tedious and even after shutting off the shower head, water still drips from the shower head and the faucet. Shutting the water off completely is a strategy you can use even when you don't have water-conserving shower heads, like in school.

After shutting off the water, first I shampoo my hair (I don't usually use conditioner; I might use it before going to the barbershop, and that's about it.), then I use a bar of soap to lather my head, neck, armpits, and groinal regions. I replace the soap in the soap dish and then I use my hands to spread the lather. I'll usually only soap up my whole body after exercising or sweating a lot. I feel like it's unnecessary to do it every time. Hitting the foul, damp regions of your body and your face and neck is sufficient in most cases, I think, as the rest of your body still gets exposure to a water wash and some runoff lather.

After shampooing and soaping up, I'll turn on the water again and wash everything off. Then I turn off the water and step out. Such is my shower life.