Updates and a New Utilities Puzzle (Patreon)

This week, after actually taking most of independence day off, I put some more work into exploring kinds of short easy-to-produce videos. It's easier to produce work that takes advantage of existing work, and who better to borrow from than myself?

One thing on my list is to remake the original doodling in math class videos, available with a maximum resolution of a stunning crisp 240p, in HD and also with some small changes (especially in the first one, where I did not know what I was doing at all). 

Many people have never seen the originals since they're so low quality, and when I was putting together what I might want to sell on a DVD, it was shocking to be reminded how low res the earliest videos are. So I've edited the first couple scripts and should be able to produce them pretty quickly with the originals as a guide, except they will be much better all around and the first one even has an alternate ending.

The second easy video, which I hope to have out early next week, is a response/late-collab that comes with a puzzle solution and referencing some other folk's work.

Have you heard of the utilities puzzle? It's a classic and very googleable, if you haven't. Basically the goal is to draw lines connecting each of three utilities to each of three houses, without any lines crossing.

I was invited to do a collab about a variation on it last fall with Grant Sanderson of 3blue1brown where it's on a mug, but their timeline was too short to work out for me. Here's his video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvCytJvd4H0

And what the mug looks like, copied from the mathsgear website:

But then I thought, hey, never too late to participate! Especially since no one in his video came up with my solution, or the more general solution!

So here's my variation on the puzzle, to give you a chance to work it out for yourself before I finish and post the video :)

The Vi Hart Infrastructure Special: In addition to making non-crossing lines from each utility to each house, every house should connect to every other house with internet lines, and every utility station to every utility station with a separate secure network, all with no crossings. So basically, make everything connect to everything, that’s 15 lines, three each for gas, water, electric, social network, and secure network, and no line crosses any other line. On a mug.

Have fun and see you next week!

Vi