A Blog.

I made a simple game timer to learn jQuery, and keep our house’s Settlers of Catan games moving. It runs great in a mobile browser, allows arbitrary numbers of players, and has a couple configurable timing settings. Both the source and a demo are online.

I’ve posted a new library at Github for controlling HL1606-based RGB LED strips, along with some details on where they can be purchased and how they can be set up. I’ll post examples later, once I get some cool patterns up and running.

I’m sure this information is available elsewhere, but I couldn’t find it with a quick google search — the two hardest 8-puzzle instances are:

 8 6 7
 2 5 4
 3 . 1
 
 6 4 7
 8 5 .
 3 2 1

Both require at least 31 moves to solve. All other instances can be solved in 30 moves or less. (Found using breadth-first graph search, starting at the goal state). Somewhat interestingly, they are not obviously symmetric, but differ only in the locations of the even pieces.