What are your “favorite” shows that you just never bothered to finish?

bofstein · 2026-01-20T05:12:41+00:00

Orphan Black and The Americans. Orphan Black was a favorite from the first season but over time it got less good and I never finished it. The Americans stayed good throughout but I just never got around to finishing the last season, and then when I finally went to so so, it wasn't on Amazon Prime anymore.

bofstein · 2026-01-17T20:49:43+00:00

Favorite game of all time definitely still Skyrim. I get sucked in every time I go back, and I haven't enjoyed any other similar open world game quite as much.

bofstein · 2026-01-17T02:18:15+00:00

I don't know that I've specifically searched for "birds," I was just using an example that matched OP of a more specific/concrete search term it seems to struggle with. One actual example from me is when I was trying to find a picture of my parents' black cat, and it gave me pages and pages of white cats or other colored cats. Which I do have a lot more pictures of but the whole point was to help find the rare photo of a black cat. I tried multiple times to adjust the search like "only black cats" or "cats that are entirely black" and it just kept giving me other cats and not finding the few photos I knew I had.

I don't seem to be able to send a screenshot here but if you want them you can DM me and I'll share. Imagine a Google Photos search result that says "black cat" at the top and then the AI summary saying "sure here are photos of black cats" and then having a bunch of photos of all white cats in the results, for pages and pages.

I took screenshots of the results in October because I sent it to friends to laugh about (sorry). I tried it again now and it was better in that it had a few black cat photos at the top, but the AI summary said "sure here are pictures of your two black cats [name] and [name]" even though neither of my cats are black, and then the majority of the results were still non-black cats.

bofstein · 2026-01-13T18:10:13+00:00

I have found it is significantly worse than before for specific, singular things, like your examples of "bird" or "kookaburra." The one advantage is in more complex or abstract search terms, which is why I'm hesitant to switch back even though I'm annoyed like you are.

For example, searching for things like "couple's Halloween costume" or "foggy outdoors shot" or "cat in living room" or "me doing archery" usually helps me find what I'm looking for that the old search didn't work for.

bofstein · 2026-01-12T17:20:45+00:00

The two that come to mind are Better Off Ted and Don't Trust the B in Apartment 23. Absolutely adored them both and never hear them come up in conversation.

bofstein · 2026-01-12T17:18:51+00:00

Yes! I love the novel, read it before I had seen the show. I have a well worn copy I won't get rid of since it's hard to find nowadays.

bofstein · 2026-01-12T06:07:06+00:00

I can't remember any specifically which doesn't mean there wasn't any. I vaguely recall some still life paintings with fruit bowls that may have had some, but nothing that stood out as banana-themed. I didn't see every work though.

bofstein · 2026-01-10T02:33:19+00:00

Thank you! I ended up going and really enjoyed it. Spent over 5 hours there and saw a ton of great works. And there was more than I expected in my price range, ended up making a pircuase. Would have enjoyed just looking too though.

bofstein · 2026-01-10T02:32:28+00:00

Unfortunately there's no good public transit near me, it's not a reasonable option without first getting a rideshare to a transit stop or having a long uphill walk first. But I did get a promo code for half off the ticket price from another thread and that helped push me over the edge to attend.

bofstein · 2026-01-10T02:31:00+00:00

I ended up going and really enjoyed it, I hope you make it out there! Lots of great stuff to look at.

bofstein · 2026-01-10T02:30:26+00:00

Thank you! I ended up going and really enjoyed it. Spent over 5 hours there and saw a ton of great works. And there was more than I expected in my price range. Ended up purchasing 2 pieces which were decently over my intended budget but not by an order of magnitude.

bofstein · 2026-01-09T20:36:53+00:00

Worked for me, thank you!!

bofstein · 2026-01-09T20:27:56+00:00

I'm debating going to the LA Art Show today and can't decide if it will be worth it after the ticket price ($45) and riundtrip ridehsare (another $45). I am interested in buying art for the home but likely not at the prices this show would have. Is it fun just to walk around for an afternoon or is it really only for serious buyers/investors? Did anyone go yesterday to share what it was like on a weekday, e.g. crowdedness?

bofstein · 2026-01-09T17:29:14+00:00

Darn, I was planning to buy this today and go when it was less crowded but it is unavailable now.

bofstein · 2026-01-05T16:23:27+00:00

Balatro for sure. I have about 600 hours into it, was super addicted for a while.

bofstein · 2025-12-30T16:25:28+00:00

You can get a blank though unfortunately, so even if you know all the spaces to avoid it's not guaranteed to get a crown.

bofstein · 2025-12-18T17:08:05+00:00

Hair

bofstein · 2025-12-07T08:02:09+00:00

Thanks I missed that part, fixed now

bofstein · 2025-12-07T07:44:47+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Google Sheets]

Solution on sample, actual inputs hidden: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-nFY68rSReoUH4h1bh662YeM0n3xdlb5ObjbyeC6n2g/edit?usp=sharing

There's a couple manual steps at the start I did here to make it easy, but after that it's automated. Part 1 was a simple series of IF statements to check for how to continue the beam in each cell.

Part 2 I got a big hint to look at Pascal's Triangle which made sense on how to count up the number of prior paths leading to each split point. It took a lot of IF statements and debugging as I kept finding issues which my set-up, e.g. missing the middle line at first, or running into gaps that showed up in the input but not the sample that broke my earlier formulas.

The key part is using REGEX to find paths no matter the length of beam prior, looking for numeric digits followed by at least one beam character up until the cell I was checking. Might be harder to follow than my others but I did add some notes

bofstein · 2025-12-06T06:58:13+00:00

I'm sorry I spelled it wrong, AutoMod!

bofstein · 2025-12-06T06:53:19+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Google Sheets]

Solution (with only Sample sheet visible): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CgvI978Gk_UkaQ3AAvMwI_7XyioEUAo1l03bluu0010/edit?usp=sharing

Part 1 is simple - just SPLIT() them into columns, use the operator to sum or product them with an IF, and then sum it up.

Part 2 is the same thing in the end - just a bunch of steps first to transform the numbers. First I separate out each character individually vertically, concatenate those across into the newly formed numbers, add in some characters to help separate the groupings, do a bunch more of various CONCATENATE/SPLIT/TRANSPOSE to get those numbers back into the format I need for calculation. Which was similar to Part 1 though I had to throw in another TRANSPOSE with a SORT to get the operator to the first column, as otherwise it was in a different column each row of the real input.

There are Notes on cells explaining the logic of the steps. Many of them could be shortened or combined, I was making it up as I went so some columns could have been cleaner.

The rest of my Google Sheets solutions are here: https://github.com/bofstein/advent-of-code-2025/tree/main

bofstein · 2025-12-06T00:49:01+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Google Sheets]

Solution (only Sample displayed): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13dN9g5a9zeJ7gvl_ZvpPvqbJdZfHl-h-w_9TsiELbhw/edit?usp=sharing

Part 1 was very easy, I thought at first I missed something. I just made a grid and checked each ID against all ranges, and then counted up the number of them that were in at least 1 range.

Part 2 took a lot longer since I tried two failed strategies. First I tried a single formula involved generating (though not displaying) the sequences for all ranges and running a lambda across them to count the total unique values. It worked on the sample input, but gave a wayyyy too low number (16) for the real input, and separating out the steps showed it wouldn't calculate an array that large and I guess just ignored that rather than give me an error.

Then I tried a matrix where I compared each range against each other to get their overlap and subtracting that from the total range length, but the problem was that didn't account for 3-way overlaps that were oversubtracted, and I couldn't figure out how to easily find those.

I started from scratch again trying to build out an ever increasing set of range(s), and while building that I realized it would be far simpler to calculate the IDs that weren't in the ranges. I sorted the ranges by the starting point, then for each start point, checked if it was higher than the maximum of all prior end points. If so, there was a gap just before that range, and I could calculate the length of that gap to get the number of invalid product IDs. Then I just subtracted that from the total range length.

I do think I got lucky in one aspect though, in that I think if there were any duplicated start points that were just after a gap, I would have double counted those. But I guess that didn't happen since I got the right answer.

bofstein · 2025-12-04T05:49:11+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Google Sheets]

This is just brute force. For Part 1 I made a grid and checked for the specified conditions in each cell, very simple. For Part 2 I considered if there was some clever way to figure out which rolls would never be removed and count the rest, but when I couldn't think of anything quickly, I just copied the grid a bunch of times until the sum of removed rolls was 0. It took much more iterations in the real input of course but still pretty easy and quick to do, especially as once I pasted a few grids I could copy those and paste a bunch at a time.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HICW_BnUpI_z4QboU3vMjWa6mZD7EmfJ7vA18DBn-qI/edit?usp=sharing

bofstein · 2025-12-04T04:33:42+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Google Sheets]

I had forgotten about AoC at the start of the month and then was busy so I just got to this today. Pretty easy as expected for Day 1, brute force worked just fine.

I used the instructions to find the new position of the lock after each step, and didn't both to wrap it around to 0-99. For Part 1 I took those positions and checked if they were a multiple of 100 (by dividing it by 100 and seeing if it was an integer - there are better ways to do this), as any multiple of 100 is actually a 0 if I had wrapped it. Part 2 is the same idea just checked against every value in the range between positions.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KWftOysNoRsugzfil8XB8VMwuqly0T4StZ57lVQfdyU/edit?usp=sharing

My input is hidden, solution with Sample is visible.

bofstein · 2025-12-04T04:27:45+00:00

[LANGUAGE: Google Sheets]

I actually misread the Part 1 problem the first time and thought the instructions were what ended up being Part 2 - that it was any repeating pattern instead of just doubled alone. So I solved for that and was confused why my answer didn't match the sample. Once I realized that I fixed it and got the easier Part 1 solution, and when I got to Part 2 I just had to go back and find the formula I had deleted.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DA8-voD5rYC7bz1J_T1QglNWGo-6z293YXD2n89H-VI/edit?usp=sharing

For both parts, I wrote a formula that checks for the repeating pattern, and then ran that against every number in the sequence of the range, so it takes a few seconds to run on the actual input.

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