I came to think about various ways of finding a needle in a haystack - and I mean an actual needle in an actual haystack. I’m not speaking metaphorically or talking about searching arrays or anything like that. Just imagine a huge pile of hay and somewhere in there there’s a needle that you - for whatever reason - absolutely must find.

Well, I came up with a couple of ways…

1. Start digging through the pile with your hands and hope that the needle will prick you.
2. Wreck a couple of bass speakers and use the magnets to go through the pile.
3. Burn down the stack and use the speaker magnets mentioned in 2 to go over the ashes.
4. Ask someone to have sex in the haystack (don’t tell them about the needle) and count on Murphey’s Law doing a satisfactory job.

I’m sure there’s a lot of great analogies in these approaches and you’re very welcome to use them, they’re GPL’ed.