Average of 10: new personal best time (29.08s)

I broke my average of 10 record last night at the Camden Lock puzzle meeting.

Here are the details of the average:

Average: 29.08s
Fastest: 25.80s
Slowest: 34.07s
Individual times: (25.80), 30.08, 32.41, 29.13, 26.21, 28.65, 28.08, 27.96, (34.07), 28.94, 30.68, 28.67.

For scrambles and timing I used Doug Reed's iCube iPAQ cube timer on my iPAQ hx4705.

Camden Lock puzzle meeting

Tonight I went to the monthly puzzle meeting at Lockside Lounge bar at Camden Lock. I'd been meaning to get along to one of these puzzle gatherings all year, but hadn't yet made it to one. When I heard that the theme for this month's meeting was Rubik's Cubes I knew that I just had to go!

The monthly puzzle meetings are organised by the nice people at Villages Games. Villages Games is lovely little puzzle store in Camden Lock. They sell lots of different types of puzzles, and also board games, books about puzzles, cards and card games, etc. If you're into puzzles and in London then you should definitely visit this shop.

Most of the speedcubers from the UK speedcubing weekend came to Camden tonight too. The only one we were missing was Duncan! We had a little friendly competition during the evening. Obviously Dan won (18.xx average). I was pretty happy coming second with a 30.xx average. Paul came third with a 34.xx average. Paul did some really fast solves during the competition, but he also did some very not-so-fast solves which really killed his average.

It was definitely a fun night and I plan to go to more of the Camden Lock puzzle meetings, even when they are not cube themed! :)

Crazy Cat Lady action figure

How awesome is this? It's the Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure! Peter is a big fan of Accoutrements' Action Figure series and has made several purchases from this range, including the Jesus action figure, the Shakespeare action figure and the Librarian action figure (with push-button shushing action!).

When I saw the Crazy Cat Lady Action Figure I knew I just had to buy her. Have a look at Stupid.com for some more excellent pictures of the Crazy Cat Lady and her kitties.

Crazy Cat Lady action figure

Blue Cat's Graphics

I switched to Firefox as my primary browser earlier this year when IE corrupted on my machine.

Firefox is skinnable, which is very cool. I was particularly excited when I found this kitty theme. I knew that Firefox was obviously the browser for me!

The Firefox kitty theme was created by Blue Cat's Graphics. There's other cool stuff at Blue Cat's Graphics, including desktop themes and Windows icons. My favourites are the Firefox kitty themes.

Puzzling World

I came across Puzzling World a while ago when Googling puzzle sites. It was not quite what I expected, but looks kinda cool anyway.

Puzzling World is in Wanaka, New Zealand. It has a variety of puzzles and mazes, including a maze which is two storeys high and has 1.5 kilometres of passages (for my American friends, 1.5 kms is a little under 1 mile).

I've never been to New Zealand*, but if I do I shall try to make it to Wanaka so I can visit Puzzling World. If there were ever a New Zealand Rubik's Championship, this would be a great venue for it.

(* This is not entirely true, I have actually been to Auckland International Airport several times on the way to other locations. This doesn't really count though. All I saw was the inside of the airport while changing planes.)

FedEx kittens

Five little kitties were accidentally FedExed from South Carolina to Vermont. The poor little kitties spent two days in a hot stuffy box! Amazingly, they arrived in Vermont alive and are actually doing fine.

According to the news article, the person who FedExed the kitties was just careless. Apparently he had sealed up the package without properly checking what was inside.

Everyone who knows kitties knows that they like to hide in boxes. Hopefully these kitties will protest loudly next time they are packaged in a box!