Like everyone else these days I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT:
Continue reading “What ChatGPT Knows About Exploring Binary (Spoiler: Not Much)”
Binary Numbers, Binary Code, and Binary Logic
Articles About exploringbinary.com
Like everyone else these days I’ve been playing around with ChatGPT:
Continue reading “What ChatGPT Knows About Exploring Binary (Spoiler: Not Much)”
I recently upgraded my ten year old site to support HTTPS. (I’d been waiting for my Web host to support Let’s Encrypt, the free certificate authority.)
I recently upgraded my eight year old site to use a responsive design, making it mobile-friendly. I’ve kept the basic look of the site, although I retired the header image. The site is more readable, both on desktop and mobile devices.
In my article “Floating-Point Questions Are Endless on stackoverflow.com” I showed examples of the many questions asked that demonstrate lack of knowledge of the most basic property of floating-point — that not all decimal values are representable in binary. In response to a reader’s comment on my article I wrote:
It would be interesting to know how it’s taught today (it’s been a very long time since I was taught it). I can’t imagine though that the person teaching it wouldn’t say — within a sentence or two of saying “floating-point” — that it “can’t represent all decimal numbers accurately”.
That prompted me to look through my box of thirty plus year old college (undergraduate) notebooks. I found notebooks for four classes in which I was taught floating-point. The notes from three of those classes confirm what I thought — that we were warned early of the decimal/binary mismatch. But in the first class of the four — the beginner’s class — it’s less clear what we were told. I’ll show you images of the relevant excerpts from my notes. (I notice I had some elements of cursive in my handwriting back then.)
Continue reading “College Notebook: When I Was Taught Floating-Point”
Google Reader is going away tomorrow, July 1, 2013. That means the majority of my RSS subscribers will have to find another RSS reader. I wish I could recommend one, but I am still trying to find a comparable replacement myself.
In the meantime, you could subscribe to my blog and get new articles by email.
I’m reading Steve Wozniak’s 2006 book “iWoz” and this line got me wondering about my own Apple II:
“In every speech I give, I talk to people who are still running Apple IIs, and they say those machines are still running after this many years.”
So I got it out of the attic and powered it up. The dozen or so dead keys notwithstanding, it still works — after 30 years!
Today (November 7, 2011), exploringbinary.com received its one millionth view, according to WordPress.com Stats:
I recently noticed that my article end sign
looks like Eggland’s Best egg stamp
The image on Google’s home page today, which commemorates the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, matches the imagery of this site:
Continue reading “Google Image Matches the Imagery of Exploring Binary”
Well, it’s been one year! I’m very happy about how things are going, even if I didn’t meet any of my goals! (See below for how I did in 2009.)
This post was motivated by the article “What Are Your Internet Goals for 2009?”, by Daniel Scocco.
Since I am new to blogging (I just started this blog a month ago), my internet goals for 2009 are my goals for Exploring Binary specifically. I’d like to get this blog off the ground before I try anything else!
I’ve been maintaining a long list of things I want to accomplish with this blog, but I whittled it down to the most important goals — all challenging but realistically attainable:
After months of toiling with this site off-line I’ve decided it’s time to go live!
If you want to get an idea of what this site is about, you can read the following articles: