Chris Vannoy

Good morning from the last day of the CubingUSA Great Lakes Championship!

Benjamin is already done with his first event with two more personal records:

3x3 Single: 13.21s 3x3 Average: 15.64s

Those are both huge improvements.

Suspect we’ll be around for the second round

Finished our first day of competition with another pair of personal records, making Benjamin 6 for 6 - a new personal record single and average in each event.

4x4 Single: 1:03.09 4x4 Average: 1:08.23

Tomorrow: 3x3, 3x3 One Handed, and Pyraminx

Two events in and we’re 4 for 4 in competition personal records

New 2x2 single: 4.83s 2x2 average: 6.25s Skewb single: 7.11s Skewb average: 11.25s

By the way, for those not in the cool kids cubing club, this is “Skewb” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skew…

Greetings from the CubingUSA Great Lakes Championship in Port Huron, MI.

We (well, Benjamin) are competing in six events.

As always, the goal is #NotLast. And maybe a few personal bests.

www.worldcubeassociation.org/competiti…

Coming back from Hawai`i with good coffee - and tasting it there - has forced me to tweak my brewing technique a fair bit.

Lower temperature, more coffee, better water.

Still not quite there, but much better.

And should work on my locally-roasted stuff as well.

Noodling on the idea of a course or courses (kind of booster packs) intended to help crosstrain JS bootcamp grads on Ruby and Rails. Not much past the outline stage yet, but curious if there’s anything that feels missing for that purpose and audience.

Next question for folks:

In ye olde days, coding bootcamps were cranking out junior Rubyists like crazy.

At this point, it feels like they’ve all shifted to JavaScript.

Pity.

But, for those still working in Ruby, do you hire and crosstrain JS juniors?

Or would like to?

That said, our absolute favorite meal was the Family Pack from Kona Grill House.

So great - and a great value! - that we made the effort to have it twice, including for our last meal on-island.

konagrillhouse.com

If you’re ever on the Big Island with ~4, go there.

I did my research before going to Hawaii and knew about poké … but came away longing for more loco moco.

Such a simple - rice, hamburger patty, brown gravy, egg - dish, but so tasty.

Oh! And mac salad. So much mac salad.

For reference, these are some of the ideas I’m considering right now for fun-size screencasts of Ruby/Rails things.

Working on a thing and could use your help:

What smallish thing about Ruby or Ruby on Rails would you value an explanation or walkthrough of?

Carving out time tomorrow morning to explain such things in (very) short screencasts.

Taking a jet lag day after returning home late yesterday from a two weeks+ vacation that hit Disneyland and Hawaii’s Big Island.

Still processing many of the experiences.

And missing the ocean and jungle already.

Went for a hike today. Grabbing dinner above an active volcano. No biggie.

Final tally for the day! Benjamin:

• Set six new personal bests (out of six possible)
• Made the second round of 3x3 for the first time and had his first few sub-20s solves
• Made the cutoff for 4x4 with a solve in less than 1:20 for the first time

Fun day!

First cubing competition since the pandemic started.

Benjamin has already racked up personal bests in Pyraminx single solve (10.25s) and average (13.10s).

3x3 and 4x4 still to come, but he’s already in his element and with his people.

Really enjoying Glass.

Giving me an excuse to scrub through my photo library and pick out the good ones to highlight.

glass.photo/chris-van…

Today’s of St. Paul’s.

Great morning to get out for a quick hike at Fort Harrison to break in some new hiking shoes.

Aside: Have yet to find a bad trail at Fort Ben. Well worth the annual state park pass if you’re Indy-adjacent.

Find myself wondering if the NONULLS vanity license plate in front of me belongs to a database administrator or not.

Tempted to wait for them to come back to their car and ask …

Hi. I’m trying my level best not to read Twitter anymore these days.

Luckily, I already have had a home over at micro.blog/v for a while now. And posts start there.

I miss yinz, though. If you’re also on Micro (or Mastadon or something), let me know.

Did an overnight backpacking trip on the Bloodroot Trail at Salamonie Lake State Park here in Indiana.

Close to 13 miles over two days. Some corn fields and such in the front half, but worth it for the morning views on the way out.

Now to wait for these blisters to heal …

Spend a day in Paris and now I can make baguettes. Weird.

Westminster Abbey, on the other hand, feels old. Ancient, even.

The thing that strikes me in retrospect about London’s St Pauls Cathedral is that it feels relatively modern - and not like a relic.

I have to remind myself that it’s from the 1600s instead of the 1960s.

Whenever I get around to writing that novel, or some future speaking gig, I think I’ve got the photo for it now …