I’ve been playing with the thought of starting a blog about cubing for quite some time now. I never went through with the idea because blogging about your hobby seemed such an obvious and unoriginal thing to do. It’s been said many times that there are too many ways of sharing your message with the rest of world these days and too few people who actually have something interesting to say. I agree and I’m still very wary of this, but I’ve decided to just give it a go and see where it ends up.
A few posts on my website www.cubezone.be also had a blog-like quality. I enjoyed writing them and some people have given me good feedback on it. Going back a bit further, on my old student website I used to publish short reports on the cube meetings and competitions I had been to. They’re fun to read years later and I now really regret that I haven’t kept up the habit of writing about what I’ve been up to.
Speedcubing is still regarded as a rather unusual hobby and it may stay that way forever. Hopefully through sharing my experiences, people will start seeing that cubing is just another way of meeting people, making friends and having fun together while doing something you really like.
Of course I won’t be avoiding the topics savoured by the die-hard cuber. I want to do some elaborate articles on solution strategies, puzzle theory, computer studies and what not. I think there’s still a lot of ground to be covered in this area especially when it comes to making comprehensive, well-written guides.
I know, I know! There are discussion forums for sharing ideas with fellow cube enthusiasts. However, forums are limiting in many ways. First of all, you don’t have a lot of control over the formatting and lay out which doesn’t help expressing your ideas clearly. Writing long posts isn’t always very well received on a forum and posts with real substance tend to get lost between the day-to-day chitchat to goes on over there. Forums have their own way of organizing topics which you have to adhere to. On my blog, only my rules apply and I’m in charge.
Next to the “serious” stuff, I’ll also try to throw in some quirkiness and humor from time to time. In the end, cubing is all about playing!
As I said, I don’t know how this blog is going to evolve and I may look back on this project in a few months time thinking it was a mistake. But this uncertainty also makes it rather exciting and, how odd it sounds, I’m very curious to find out what I’ll have in store for you.
Stay tuned! 