rf/posts/lube-stained-pants.md

title	published
Lube Stained Pants	2018-12-19

one of the first things i ever said to one of my best friends, @lunarised was about how annoying it was to always have lube stains in my pants.

now some of you might have an.... idea about what this could be referring to, and of course you're all wrong because nobody who would make a blog like this is chad enough to have that much use for sex lube.

i of course was talking about the lubricant i use for my rubiks cube, which i am now going to stan about and maybe try to apply to problems we face in real life like is standard for this hell pit of a site.

my favourite rubiks cube

has had a lot of work put in to it, but lets talk about the base for a bit.

now a lot of people don't realise, but official rubiks branded rubiks cubes are super expensive and so fuarking expensive holy crap, so you should never use them.

i myself have put together a cube that is miles and miles better than a rubiks brand cube for under ten dollarydoos (new zealand wise). but thats not my favourite cube, that ones my drinking cube because i dont care if scarfie dickheads break it.

in the price bracket of a rubiks brand there are three main competitors, of which i have owned at least one cube from each for comparison.

moyu

moyu have a line of cubes called the GTS's, my very first proper speed cube was the moyu gts one, and i still have it and enjoy it a lot. it was very very flexible which at the time i appreciated, and i had it as loose as possible. as i got better though my style outgrew this cube a little bit.

i still like it though.

i have not tried the second gts, but i have a special edition pink platic gts 3 that i adorned with vaporwave style stickers that i really like

valk

valk at one point were the pinnacle of speedcubes with their seminal valk 3. my valk 3 was unfortunately in stickerless, which i really hate, but the cube itself was decent. very light, very thin plastic (not really a bad thing) and it had some really.... unique corner piece designs which gave it a little bit of character.

my valk 3 is currently lunariseds valk 3 and i hope hes enjoying it

gans

the gans air was all the rage after the era of the valk three died down, so one day i slapped a nice gans air in my order, waited so long for it to arrive, and opened it up to instantly hate it

i tried and tried to love it, but it just wasnt happening, so i put it away and went back to my gts one.

however, with time, i got accustomed to the cube, as i learnt and got better, i realised it actually fit me pretty well, and now it is by far my favourite, which means its gotten a fair bit of love...

magnets

magnets are the chaddest soykaf in the speedcube world, and boy does this cube have its magnets. magnets were at one point pretty controversial but all the good cubes have magnets nowadays, and personally i love them and think they're the coolest thing ever.

magnets are put inside each of the plastic pieces on the cube so that when you turn theres a clicky feeling which helps with accuracy.

for this modification, my gans air has fourty eight magnets glued inside it, all hand placed (modding cubes is a bit like tech, its just not the same if someone else does it for you). this makes it feel soooooo nice already.

they're closer to the centre than most store-bought magnetised cubes, which means the clicky feeling isn't as pronounced (the thin plastic on a valk 3 means the clicky feeling is really really noticibale, by comparison).

but wait, theres more

oh yes thats right.

my gans doesnt just have the usual fourty eight magnets, it actually has sixty

maglev

maglev tensioning is the newest meme thing thats actually not a meme, sorta like where ipfs was before it became a legitimate technology that people used.

now most cubes, in the centre pieces of each face, will have a spring that pushes everything into the centre of the cube, this gives it the springiness it needs to move fast, and keeps the cube from falling apart.

mine does not, for maglev tensions, you replace the springs with two opposing ring magnets that do a similar thing, but with wayyyyy less friction.

it also makes the cube super heavy, and its weird and a bit of a meme, but god dammit

it actually feels very different

not just better, or worse, but sideways, a completely alien feel which others who arent used to maglev have noticed too.

its pretty neat, i rate it a lot.

in order to maglev my cube i actually had to swap the inside pieces out with the ones from a spare moyu i had, which i really like, gives my cube this feel of being different

stickers

stickers are something a lot of people wouldnt think about, but once you start its hard to go back.

i have a colour scheme i like that i try to get on most of my favourite cubes. theres not much different about it in terms of colours, but the shades are a little odd. much darker blue, way less reddish orange (i used to get these two mixed up a lot so its nice to have the contrast on them, maybe im colour blind)

they're also full fitted, which is something store bought cubes dont often do, but i really rate the aesthetic of. full fitted means theres less of the plastic showing in between the pieces, and it makes the cube look sorta like one youd find at a shitty dollar store. dont ask me why i think thats cool i dont know but i love it

roux

finally, the last weird bit of my cube is the way i like to solve it, which is a method called roux.

roux is basically the dvorak of cube solving, and makes heavy use of m slice turns, which is where you keep the left and right faces still, and move the middle bit only.

my times actually got worse when i switched, and im still not back to my best (havent been nearly as obsessed with practising as i used to be though) but i stick with it anyway because its way more fun, and because its weird.

and im weird.

lubricant

heres where the title comes in. youd think lubing a cube would be pretty easy, but its not.

there were the kids in primary school who would vaseline up their cube, but thats not something you really wanna do.

my cube has three types of lubricant in it:

• weight 2 on the core pieces
• weight 0.1 on the outside pieces
• fukken dnm goddamn 37

the weights refer to how thick it is, with lower being thinner. 0.1 is so so so low because i like my stuff loose and fast, and the weight 2 is to reduce the core noise a bit

dnm on the other hand is black magic, its a super super super thin lubricant that makes everything lightning fast and literally, and i mean literally, absorbs moisture from the air to keep from drying out for longer. i only need about two drops of this but it makes the biggest difference.

final thougts

cubes are really cool, and like any hobby, your choices can say a lot about who you are.

lunarised, im thankful you didnt turn around and walk out the door when those words came out my mouth.

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