This is a bit of a weird one. This idea has been rattling around my head for a few weeks now and quite frankly, I’m sick of it! Permit me to purge myself of this cognitive nerd-demon so that I can get to something more interesting.
In a nutshell, I’ve been thinking of new ways in which to visualise binary numbers. For those requiring clarification at this point, introduce yourself to binary here. So we have 1’s and 0’s… how else can these be represented? Of course, we know about ‘on’ and ‘off’… what about ‘black’ and ‘white’ or, as I demonstrate in this instance… ‘left’ and ‘right’.
The tech-minded amongst us know all about bytes having eight bits…. and a bit is represented internally as a boolean value (0 or 1). An eight bit number may look something like 10110010 which, when you convert it to decimal, equals 178. When each bit is set to a value of 1, the decimal number we get is 255 which means that a byte can represent 256 values (including the value of zero).
So I started thinking about what would happen if we thought about the 0’s and 1’s as LEFT’s and RIGHT’s in a diagram. For example:
178 = RIGHT LEFT RIGHT RIGHT LEFT LEFT RIGHT LEFT … got it!?
I chose to visualise each bit as a line and in order to display this sequence without the lines just crossing back and forth over each other, I make each bit direction relative to the previous bit, starting with a vertical stroke (LEFT equals upwards and RIGHT equals downwards - this helps with spacing). So now 178 looks like this:
Another point is that I make each stroke length a percentage greater than the previous stroke length - this prevents lines overlapping and making some number patterns identical (for example, a pattern similar to the number ‘8′ could be interpreted as both 188 and 60).
So, what now?! I asked myself that same question. Well… the only thing I could come up with was a clock! Not a very useful clock, mind you (being that it’s impossible to read) but perhaps a valid form of nerd expression and lateral thinking.
Obviously, a clock only needs to display 60 values (which means the demo doesn’t really do the other 196 values justice at all!) but if you click the clock and hold down your mouse you’ll see where the possible destinations are for this analog binary pattern (some of the numbers overlap, but you get the idea). The resulting 16 x 16 grid of numbers poses the next puzzle… is there a meaningful pattern in the number sequences? Have I just discovered the meaning of life?
Why do I get the feeling that this wont be appreciated until after I’m dead?!
