Monthly Archives: August 2000

12 August 2000

I was looking at the coins problem. I can see a solution
if you know the bad coin is heavier (or lighter — just
s/heavier/lighter). Here is a solution for that:

  1. Split the coins into 3 groups of 4 coins.
  2. Put two of the groups on the balance.
  3. If they weigh the same, the third group contains the bad
    coin. Otherwise, the heavier group contains the bad coin.

  4. Add two coins from one of the good groups to the bad
    group, and split those coins into 3 groups of 2.

  5. perform the same weighing operation to find the group
    with the bad coin. This leaves 2 coins.

  6. Weigh the last two coins. The heavier of the 2 is the
    bad coin.

This doesn’t answer the original problem, but may give
some idea of what it would look like. If you know the bad
coin is heavier and can do 3 weighs, you should be able to
pick the bad coin out of a group of 27 coins.

8 August 2000

On IRC:

<raph> UTF8 really is simple enough to do in
your
head
<raph> assuming your brain has SHL and SHR
instructions
<jwz> you need help, raph

The book I am tech reviewing must be almost finished.

7 August 2000

I released a new version of dia on sunday. Didn’t get
everyone’s patches in, but I thought it was important to get
another release out because of how long ago the previous
release was. Of course, after doing the release someone
finds an XIM bug, I notice that the SVG CR has been put out
(so the recommended namespace URI’s have changed) and I
didn’t tell the translators about the release. So I will
probably put out another release of dia soon with these
fixed.

Tomorrow (9th August) is my parents 25th wedding
aniversary.