September 2003 Archives

We're back from our trip to Europe. It was very nice, the trip had a lot of variety ranging from lazily enjoying the beach in Lido di Jesolo to visiting cultural sites in Venice, Verona and Munich to seeing birds of prey and free-ranging monkeys in France. Food was excellent too with nice dining in Italy to Doener Kebaps and Mum's food in Karlsruhe, Weisswurst and Schweinsbraten in Munich, Flammkuchen in Alsace, France, Neuer Wein and Pferdewurst in Speyer, Pfalz. We visited the beautiful old village of Meersburg where I did my last year of high school a decade ago and I ran into a teacher there who recognized me. What memory ! We saw the Rhine waterfalls in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, and we relaxed in my hometown, Karlsruhe, with family and friends.

Pictures of the trip are here.

We're off to Europe for three weeks (first Venice and then Germany) so there won't be any entries for a while.

In the meantime you can digest this notation-heavy solution to the
twelve coins problem.

Ciao, tutti.

Goal of this puzzle is to turn the color of every cell of a 5 x 5 matrix from the initial green into blue. The cells are buttons, if you press a button you toggle the color of the cell and of it's neighbors (every cell has 4 neighbors, i.e. the cells that share an edge with the cell). Initially all the cells are colored green. Solving the puzzle means finding a sequence of pressing buttons such that the resulting matrix has all cells colored blue.