I recently was invited to join your prestigious group after
solving the Magic Cube 4D, and may I say it's quite an honour. I
have attached a copy of my log file so you can watch my (not very
streamlined) solution if you care to do so.
I was asked to write a little blurb about myself to let you know
who I am, so here it is! Please do forgive me as brevity is not my
strong suit.
My name is Daniel Hayes and I presently live in Lawrence, KS USA
where I attend college at KU, The University of Kansas, where I am a
sophmore. I was born 3/1/83 making me 19 at the time of this writing
(and the time of the solving). During the school year I do not work,
but I am a double major in Astronomy and Physics. Which alludes very
much to my hobbies as well. Astronomy is a great pleasure for me and
I always love stargazing. Apart from that I tinker alot with
computer hardware (overclocking and cooling are my favorite in that
area). I still don't know exactly what I want to do, but I think I
would enjoy being a professor at a college, or a high level High
School teacher of some sort.
As for my thoughts and experience with the puzzle, that's a very
interesting story. I picked up a book last year (my Freshman year)
entitled _Surfing Through Hyperspace: Understanding Higher Universes
in Six Easy Lessons_ by Clifford A. Pickover. I have been interested
in higher dimensional theory ever since 4th grade when I read the
book _The Boy Who Reversed Himself_ by William Sleator, and have read
several other texts on the subject. This particular book though made
a reference to 4-dimensional rubik's cubes as a way of understanding
further just how a hypercube would be stacked up on itself. So I
thought to myself that I should learn to solve a Rubik's Cube because
I'm a reasonably intelligent young man who never has done that
before. So I did, and I proceeded to play with it for about 8 months
(my average time is around 45 seconds now). But I wanted a new
challenge, so I tried the 4x4x4 and the 5x5x5 with little problems,
the theory is after all the same, and on the whole not that difficult
to apply. So one night I was looking for cube theory on the internet
and found the Magic Cube 4D web site, and remembered why I wanted to
learn to solve a magic cube in the first place. So I downloaded it
and worked at it for a while, I think my total time was probably
close to 2-3 hours spread across a few days. An interesting thing
was, I learned the 3x3x3 cube using a layer by layer method, so I was
unfamiliar with exactly how to use Mr. Nelson's solution. But after
working at it, it not only increased my understanding of the regular
3x3x3 cube, but as promised greatly enhanced my understanding of 4D
interactions. And it's an excellent program in general. I am now
working on a layer by layer method to solve it though, to try to get
that least moves record!
And again I appologize for the length of that. At any rate, I'd love
to get to know you and share thoughts on this and other topics. I
thank you for the privilege of joining your company!
Regards,
Daniel Hayes
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