As I have been pretty much house bound for the past two weeks, working on my dissertation, I ordered a few cd's from 78s (one of the best music stores in Perth) over the internet. Very good service, and the much faster than other places I tried. Got a copy of the new Turnstyle record Geek Party. It is a good compilation. Looks like they sold Fatso for AU$80,450. Eric Moussambani's goggles sold for a fair amount as well. There is a nice quote from him on the auction page at ebay.
working on honours dissertation. due in on monday. roy and hg's coverage of the olympics was good. fatso was a much better mascot.
jamesh certified aaronl as Dimwit
GNOME: prostituting ourselves to big-money for the chance of being a media-recognized standard since 15th 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: Split the coins into 3 groups of 4 coins. Put two of the groups on the balance. If they weigh the same, the third group contains the bad coin. Otherwise, the heavier group contains the bad coin. Add two coins from one of the good groups to the bad group, and split those coins into 3 groups of 2. perform the same weighing operation to find the group with the bad coin. This leaves 2 coins. 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.