"All the Hues
That Fit, We Tint"

Siberia, USA: Today, global warming. Tonight, dark, unless you count the stars. Tomorrow can be reached via time machine. Yesterday, who can remember that far back?

Websafe Studio, blogging since 2003, featuring art, comics, digital whiteboards, virtual characters, Web design, writing

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

 

Java World: Healing the Math Wound

The binary system has 2 symbols.
The decimal system has 10 symbols.
The hexadecimal system has 16 symbols.

I knew this already, since the 5th grade, but ...

Today my computer tutor taught the concept that the leftmost symbol in a number stands for how many times you've cycled through your group of symbols. I think I already "knew" this, but it felt new, and it made sense. Maybe I should just savor that for a while.

Any number to the power of 0 equals 1. This felt counter-intuitive. He said it had to do with logarithms, and we decided not to "go there" yet.

We are preparing the ground.

I received the Dori Smith Java book from the library. I can pick it up easily with one hand. Have not dared to open it yet.

Incantation: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024 ...