"All the Hues
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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?

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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 ...

posted at 3:18 PM
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