Vacation work, Rubik’s speedcubing and some politics

Hi all

I’m in Johannesburg (yes, the SA capital of crime) at the moment doing vacation work, which is a requirement for my degree. I’ve been doing cable sizing and so on for a refinery up in Africa, and I find it quite interesting. Setting up new cost estimate spreadsheets now.

In other news, I seem to have been cought up in speedcubing. That is, solving a Rubik’s cube as fast as possible. I’m not very fast, but I can live with it considering I’ve only been cubing for a few weeks. My best time as yet is 1:16, looking to hit 40sec then I’ll stop attempting to improve. Beyond 40sec it is most likely that I will need the Fridrich method last layer algorithms, which means that where I now use 2 algorithms to solve the last layer, I will need 54 more of them. I use a layer-by-layer approach, and certain Fridrich F2L algorithms to solve the first two layers (where the name F2L comes from).

I have ordered a 5×5x5 “Professor’s cube”, which should arrive this week. I’m quite keen to start playing around with that.

Although I hardly ever delve into politics, since I’m no expert, what do my South African readers think of the possibility (probability?) of Jacob Zuma as our next president? I am worried about the future of SA with him as the next president. This is the man who thought he would not be contaminated with aids after sleeping with an HIV positive woman, as long as he took a shower afterwards. What kind of message does that send? The only good thing I can see him bring to the table is the possibility of bringing back the death penalty. That may do something about the crime situation. As it is, I don’t feel safe walking in the streets.

Let me know of your opinions
Eric