Indeed. The 555 is a great solution to a great many
things, and
It's amazing how many peole think it's useful for astable (oscillator)
and monostable (timer) circuits only. I've used it as a bistable and as a
schmitt trigger too.
The full 555 data sheet is something few people (not here, I hope!) seem
to have read, they just use the standard 'cookbook' circuits. If you read
and understnad the datasheet you can fidn any other ways to use it.
-tony