This Web site is for anyone who wants to know more about the underlying technology of computers, which, in a word, is binary. It will cover three main topics: binary numbers, binary code, and binary logic. My hope is that it becomes a reference for beginners and professionals alike, a clearinghouse for binary if you will.
We will discuss binary as it exists both inside and outside of computers; for example, binary numbers. Binary numbers are what computers generally use to do arithmetic. There are all sorts of engineering issues related to their implementation in computers: how big to make them, how to represent negative numbers, how to approximate real numbers. etc. Binary numbers were invented long before computers were; they were just a mathematical construct. It’s enlightening to study them in this pure form, and that we’ll do.
You will see a good amount of math on this site, although nothing more complicated than elementary algebra. This math is required to understand binary, but is not limited to it. In fact, you should get a lot out of this site even if you don’t (want to) understand binary or its application to computers; you could read it just for the math.
So how much material is there related to binary? Plenty — I could post articles for years and still not cover it all. Here are just a few example topics: the powers of two, Russian peasant multiplication, Boolean algebra, binary arithmetic, digital logic, floating-point numbers, I Ching hexagrams, single-elimination tournaments, CMOS logic, Bernoulli trials, binary trees, Pascal’s triangle, the game of NIM, ASCII, logic gates, binary search, bookbinding signatures, IP addresses, etc. (The header image of this site shows some examples.)
I’m writing about these topics because they interest me. I hope they interest you too. I hope you visit often or subscribe to my RSS feed. I look forward to your feedback; if you like or don’t like what I’ve written, or if you think I could add to it or improve it in any way, please let me know!
I plan to run ads on this site, although I don’t expect to make much money. Can “two cents a click” even cover my web hosting? 🙁
