Tamir Khason – Just code

Binary kid

Yesterday, I took two of my children to the Bloomfield Science Museum in Jerusalem. This was the second time, my small son, Tony, was there. First time he was 5 years old. Today he’s 7. Following the dialog was there, when we saw machine code emulator (binary calculator)

Tony: Daddy, now I know why you and mommy call me “binary kid”

Me: Why?

Tony (with enthusiasm): ‘cos I was born on January 1st – there are only 1 and 0 in my birthday date

Me: You also born on 2001, thus in short format it’s 01-01-01

Tony: Wait a minute (doing something in binary machine). It’s 21! But it’s broken…

Me: Why?

Tony: You so silly. It’s because it cannot understand first 0!

Me: You can try another direction

Tony (doing some complicated calculations with binary machine): Now much better – 41! This number it bigger, then 21. But it’ still bad!

Me: Why?

Tony: Because it is not an even binary!

Me: WHAT? (he saw ASCII chart for binaries)

Tony: I cannot make even one character from my birthday

Me: Try to put two zeros at the end

Tony: Wow, it’s ת (hebrew letter “tav” – equivalent of T in ascii code), so funny!

Me: Why?

Tony: Because this machine does not know, that my name starts with ט (hebrew “tet” – equivalent of Y in ascii code)

Me: Try to see this chart (I show him IPA chart)

Tony: Wow I just used wrong crib. Now it’s ok. This machine is really smart

April 26th, 2008 · Comments (1)