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I’ve got an idea for Starship Troopers fan fiction. I’m giving it away, for free! You can have it!

I solved 955 without any computerized help, but I think my second-to-last guess can generate an interesting regular expression.

Programming interview question from the Daily Coding Problem email list. I have it as #1602, but other folks have it as #331 from 2020. I guess I missed it back then.

Daily Coding Problem: Problem #1602 [Medium]

This problem was asked by LinkedIn.

You are given a string consisting of the letters x and y, such as xyxxxyxyy. In addition, you have an operation called flip, which changes a single x to y or vice versa.

Determine how many times you would need to apply this operation to ensure that all x’s come before all y’s. In the preceding example, it suffices to flip the second and sixth characters, so you should return 2.

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Repo for code.

How Steam Locomotives Work Paperback, March 1, 2022 by Brian Solomon, ISBN 9781627008808

Not to be confused with How Steam Locomotives Really Work

Do yourself a favor: get a 6-in-1 screwdriver. It will cover 90% of what you need screwdrivers for.

I got my pet Roomba, Dobby, almost a year ago!

Dobby’s maker, iRobot, was considerate enough to remind me to treat him to new parts!

Red Alert…
Red Alert, Red Alert!

I recommend listening to a few episodes of the Knowledge Fight Podcast.

You will learn more than you ever wanted to know about infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, and maybe have a little fun.

A paper worth reading:

Tihelka, E.; Howard, R.J.; Cai, C.; Lozano-Fernandez, J.

Was There a Cambrian Explosion on Land? The Case of Arthropod Terrestrialization.

Biology 2022, 11, 1516.

https://doi.org/10.3390/biology11101516

I read an interesting paper:

A Smurf-based Approach to Placeholder Expressions, July 2021, by Manfred Sailer and Annika Dörner

which apparently appeared in:

Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Online (Berlin/Seattle), 2020.