I usually dislike single-purpose tools. Single-purpose tools are either for tradesmen who do the same task repetitively, or they’re appliances that can’t be used in any other fashion.

One exception to this is the plastic hair-clog drain cleaner. It’s only useful on drains that have clogs of hair or other fibrous material, and you must have one in your abode, unless you and everyone who showers there is bald.

A Museum You Should Visit

If you’re in or near Hutchinson, KS, you really should spend half a day at Strataca, previously known as the Kansas Underground Salt Museum.

You could combine this with a visit to the nearby Cosmosphere for a really weird experience.

As I’ve written before, now that I’ve retired, I can devote time to my hobbies. I’ve set up a “home lab”, what we home computer enthusiasts call our computer and router setups. This is different than gamer’s “rigs”, in that a “server” is required, and it’s not allowed to have disturbingly-illuminated keyboards and cases. The aesthetic is completely different.

We often try to emulate corporate data centers by purchasing depreciated business-class machines from refurbishers.

Here’s my homelab:

A museum you should visit

If you’re in or near Hutchinson, KS, you should visit the Cosmosphere. Heck, if you’re in Wichita, you should visit the Cosmosphere. It’s that good.

In an attempt to gain some electronics knowledge, I bought $30 worth of components and breadboards from Amazon, and built a 2-transistor LED flasher.

United Launch Alliance, an aerospace industry roll-up of General Dynamics Atlas, Martin Marietta Titan and McDonnell Douglas Delta launch vehicle divisions, put out this incredibly awful set of 9 Sudoku puzzles on Twitter. The purpose was to whip up enthusiasm for the 2021-09-21 launch of Landsat 9.

Raymond Smullyan, my favorite mathematician, posed a large number of questions involving the Isle of Knights and Knaves. Inhabitants are either knights, who always tell the truth, or knaves, who always tell falsehoods.

One of the best Knight and Knave problems is Og and Bog from Smullyan’s book Logical Labyrinths

Og and Bog are brothers living on the Isle of Knights and Knaves, and one of them is the chief.

• Og says: Bog is the chief and he is a knave!
• Bog says: Og is not the chief, but he is a knight.

Which one is the chief?

There’s at least two things that one might conflate under the “Daily Coding Problem” rubric:

• An email list
• A book

They’re related, as the book is a byproduct of the success of the email list. Both are deficient, but for different reasons