It's been a little while, but the work on the ship continues. I've added quite a few pictures. The keel is finished, and I'm now adding on to the deck. I believe the bending of pieces is nearly done, and we're about to get into the more intricate tiny-hole-drilling and mini-pieces-gluing steps.

     
     

So here's a puzzle I read a short time ago. I came up with a solution that kinda worked, but then read a far better answer for it. Let's see what you come up with.

There are 20 prisoners on death row, all set to be killed tomorrow. The executioner sets up this challenge:

"Tomorrow, all 20 prisoners will stand in a row. Each prisoner will be able to see only the prisoners standing in front of him/her. So the last prisoner will see all 19 in front, while the front prisoner will see no one. Each prisoner will then be given a hat, either WHITE or BLACK, placed on their head. You will not be able to see the color of your own hat, only those of the people in front of you. You will not be allowed to communicate in any way with anyone while standing in line, nor will you be able to turn or look at anyone but those in front of you. Violation of any of these rules will result in instant death for everyone."

"Once this is all set, starting with the last prisoner in line, I will ask 'What color is your hat?' You can answer only 'BLACK' or 'WHITE', anything else means instant death for everyone. If you guess right, you live. If you guess wrong, you die. We move to the next person in line (the 19th) and ask the same question. This continues through all the prisoners."

The prisoners are free to communicate through the night. Can you come up with a way to guarantee the life of some prisoners? How many?

Happy opening day!

I was daydreaming, and was reminded of a snippet from Ed that I liked. The basic idea was that Ed liked names that were also sentences... then he and Mike started listing names that were sentences... So here's some that I have so far... try to think of more.

• Tom Waits
• Tyra Banks
• Taye Diggs
• Mark Spitz

So it's been a month... I've spent much of my free time trying to accomplish other projects, but I've done a bit more work on the boat. I'm now slightly past the halfway mark of the first step. Yeah... Step 2 still scares me, but I've read through the book/instructions a bit farther, and I see there are other steps that are even more daunting (how do you drill a 1mm hole? much less 5 of them within a few mm of each other?). Anyway, here's where I'm at so far... this project continues to be awesome.

He's got a new hat!

I had last week off, and used that time to sleep a lot, watch a lot of Cheers and a few movies (I finished Step Brothers and then instantly wished I hadn't), and do a few projects around the house. The major project was to run Cable TV and Internet wire into my office from the basement... a project that had been derailed on a number of occasions, usually because the way things were set up in my house was stupid. Anyway, I decided to complete it once and for all, which meant cutting holes in the walls, drilling into the attic, doing the wiring, and then doing the job of trying to repair all that stuff I'd just done. I took pictures.