110001001011001000000001000000000 Kinds Of People

When I went up to the school library today to use one of the computers (from which you can probably get hold of far more books than you can from the shelves), the person using the machine next to me was using an Excel spreadsheet. There were only two columns to this spreadsheet. In the one on the left were good old-fashioned decimal integers, beloved of so many counting people. And to its right were the same numbers, only in binary. This is the column he was filling in, one by one, and at quite a rate. I don't know how high the numbers went, but by the time I got there, he was rapidly aproaching 500, and from the look of things he was nowhere near finished.

It seems to me that there's very likely an entirely sensible reason for this, but I cannot for the life of me think what it might be. It just goes to show how very odd our activities can seem out of context.

Or that he's a rather odd bloke.

The Card Game Of The Century

It is not often that a new card game rises from utter obscurity to a place in the card-game canon. And, indeed, this is not yet one of those times. But if there is any justice in this world, one is not far away.

I give you What's In Mr Johnson's Wheelie Bin?.