Things - Counting in Binary on your Fingers
Feb 16, 2009
Be the alpha-geek at the next nerdfest! Show you can count on your fingers in binary! With a little practice you'll be able to impress everyone! Eric Skiff breaks it on down and Kellbot has a cameo providing a public service announcement.
This is a new season of my show, Things!
Make sure to leave a comment on this post with your response to the Things Challenge at the end of the video! Here's the MP4 for you to download or you can get it automatically by subscribing to this podcast in iTunes!
I'm excited to have Squarespace as a sponsor. Having a sponsor means that I can spend more time on my videos and I can stay independent as a video maker. Using the code "bre" when you sign up will get you 10% off your website for life. Besides sponsoring me, Squarespace is awesome. I'm having a good time playing with their tool for making websites and will have a new blog design finished soon!
Reader Comments (27)
I believe that the number is 819.
It's true about the old people. I tried to teach someone I work with how to do this a few months ago so she could show her son, and she immediately said, "Oh no, you have to add? Nevermind." So I blew her mind with a Möbius strip trick instead.
Great video, Bre. I felt like there was something to sink my teeth into on this one. Also, I like the hand-flipping technique Mr. Skiff uses.
Nicely done, Bre and Eric! Last week at betahouse the dads were discussing "is it too early to teach my kid hexadecimal?". I think it's far more important to teach kids that powers of 2 are MAGIC NUMBERS, and counting in binary on your fingers is a great tool for teaching this!
819 Thanks Bre and Eric you rock!
Also: here's a modification: try counting in hex using the technique described here, only with 4 fingers on each hand (8 bits total). Your fingers now represent 1h, 2h, 4h, 8h, on one hand, and 10h, 20h, 40h, 80h on the other; each hand is a nibble, and together you have a full 8-bit byte (0 thru FF, or 0 thru 255).
Old Timers Represent!
Oh, and the Heavy Metal Horns code to 0x333, which is much more interesting than the decimal version.
Rock On! The answer is 819. This is a great video guys. Thanks for the lesson in binary. Hope to use it soon :]
[...] Super big props to Eric Skiff and Kellbot who were guests in this Things video! More info on my blog. [...]
Actually, I think it would make more sense to count on your fingers with the Gray Code http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_code . This way you would only ever have to change one finger, making it less awkward to move. It also has benefits in high speed systems and communications due to having a hamming number of 1.
Where do you find these people? You all rock. Have you got anything to make me understad hex?
I think it's 719. If I'm right do I win an all-expenses-paid trip to NYCResistor?
Shoot, I forgot to carry the one.
I have been seriously out-geeked and bow before David P!
If you treat a knuckle as one and a whole finger as 2 you can count in base 3 up to to 59048, but it's painful.
Very cool video. I'm glad to hear that you're being sponsored and that there will be more Things videos!
binary calendar:
http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article.php/perpetualcalendar
Or is it 818 because the hand is turned over on the 16 8 4 2 1 hand.... or does that apply to both turned over hands and its 306?..... Oh well I'm almost 110000 yrs old binary I have no future.... too much dope when I was 11001
819
there are only 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those that don't
Dude, this came out so amazingly! I'm seriously giddy right now. Great stuff, as always, you're an editing genius!
For anyone who's interestd, the 8-bit music used in this video is available for free under a Creative Commons license here:
http://glitchnyc.com/music
[...] Source: Bre Pettis Blog [...]
Technically speaking, a word is not fixed at two bytes. Word length is dependent on the processor. The PowerPC architecture has a word size of 4 bytes, while the Intel IA32 (x86) processors use 2-byte words.
This is awesome, now I can teach people to read the time of my binary clock without using the white board.
819
Such a fun video, and yes, four is such a naughty number.
[...] | BrePettis Post [...]
[...] device translates the wonderful world of binary into sound. Inspired by THINGS - COUNTING IN BINARY ON YOUR FINGERS by [...]
Four is naughty, but 132 is even naughtier.
Strangely, whenever I tried to look at the binary-fingers-clock - my laptop baulked & rebooted the Gnome desktop (Ubuntu 8.04). Wierd!