How I Got into Cubing and other Hobbies (by jlspma)

My name is José Luis Adrião also known in Youtube as jlspma. I'm 14 years old. Since I was 8, I was drawn to unique strange hobbies that combined would create an overall different personality that the majority don't have. I got into Origami while I was 8. I was building strange modular highly complex 3D geometrical shapes. That was my pastime until a faithful Thursday 13th January 2005 I was drawn to another particular hobby: juggling. It was due to an extra curricular activity that was offered by my school. Not to come to the first lesson as a complete ignorant, I decided to start practicing the basic skills a week before I even started the Extra Curricular Activity. I was Juggling 2 balls with the basic circle trick also known as the 'Shower'. Then I got into juggling with one hand and 2 balls. After that, I had my first lesson. He didn't really teach any juggling during that, only how to make home-made juggling balls using two balloons and some rice. As time went on, before the 2nd lesson I was juggling 3 balls! That was the whole objective of the activity was to teach how to juggle three balls. To my disappointment, the teacher didn't know how to juggle more than 3 balls (In the end I was teaching him!...). Luckily I found another teacher that happened to know more advanced stuff. Every break or lunchtime he would train me to master 3 balls at many different tricks and even go on to 4, 5 & 6 balls.....After I have been juggling for three years, one day I went by a shopping centre and a strange-looking shop caught my eye. Yes you've guessed it right, it was selling Rubik's Cubes. Loads of them. That was pretty much when the hype actually started again for the Rubik's Cubes worldwide. When Pogobat released his video becoming the most popular tutorial for a Rubik's Cube ever. I Got out a 3x3x3 that I had at home that a friend of mine had given me for my birthday back in 2003. It was all scrambled of course so I decided in all fairness, to go to YouTube and get a crack at trying to solve it. After many pauses during the video and re-runs just to check and memorize all the algorithms, I finally got through the first 2 layers of the cube. After I watched it until the end, I finally got the wonderful sensation of solving a Rubik's Cube for the First time! I solved it Sub-20 minutes if I'm not mistaken when I tried it for the Second time. My times were going Sub-10, 8 minutes, 5 minutes, 3 minutes, 1 minute & half. After I saw Pogobat's video about how to get faster, I decided to put some sort of lubricant on it just so it turned better. I used silicon spray. I finally got the solve to under a minute but it stayed there for a long month that was when I decided to quit the 3x3x3 and aim for a higher level.....the 4x4x4. I got a storebought Rubik's Revenge and started to learn how to solve it. It was pretty easy at first but it started when I knew that I had to memorize those awfully long algorithms for correcting the parity. It took about 3 weeks to memorize them all. After some months of solving both the 3x3x3 & 4x4x4 I summed up the courage to order online. While I was cubing in September I was also developing another hobby. That being cardstacking. The average person knows that a traditional cardstacking construction is the pyramid... I decided to use that concept to build even a colisseum of 4 floors and diameter of 1 metre! I used 17 decks of cards to do that! I was also collecting cards, so I got up to 140 decks of cards. Which in total is a whopping 7560 cards. My first cube bought from the internet was the Speed Megaminx in Puzl.co.uk From then on I started buying many puzzles from puzl.co.uk. I had one order from Cube4You but I decided not to order from that site as the shipping price is too high and when the package gets stuck in the Customs Department in Lisbon, I pay a third of the whole package in taxes to them. It's a waste of money! I still manage to order from Cubesmith as the prices for the stickers are low and shipping is 2$ or nothing so I can get a lot of stickers for a low price. Now I own a collection of 25 puzzles. Thank you for reading this mini autobiography....

Videos As of 13th July 2009
Tutorials:
#1: How to Connect your StackMat Timer to Your Computer (made by leandrobaltazar2407)
#2: How to 'Pimp' your Crappy Dollarstore Cube (made by jlspma)
#3: How to Solve the Centers on the V-Cube 7 (made by entertement)
#4: How to Build a Cube Tower (made by leandrobaltazar2407)

Reviews:
#1: Void Cube (made by jlspma)
#2: Pyraminx (made by jlspma)
#3: Megaminx (made by jlspma)
#4: DIY Type C 3x3x3 (made by jlspma)

Speedsolves:
#1: 19.22 Seconds (made by entertement)

Interesting Challenges:
#1: Solving a Cube Upside Down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVzmj1GKsI4 For our Initial Intro Video!

Lil' Intro Just to Check In!

A German Guy, A Portuguese Guy & A Slovenian Guy decide to create a channel that would become one of the greatest collaborated Cube-Related channels on Youtube today! They provide you with Cunning, Interesting & Helpful Tutorials! They also provide you with Reviews, Challenges & Speedsolves! If you want to check that out go to www.youtube.com/europeancubers & Subscribe! This Blog will mostly have updates on Videos, Extra tips, Video requests that you can send & other interesting stuff about Twisty Puzzles!

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http://www.youtube.com/jlspma

http://www.youtube.com/entertement

http://www.youtube.com/leandrobaltazar2407

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