A dictionary of words that are secretly numbers

Hexadecimal, the base-sixteen counting system computers use, borrows six letters, A to F, to count past nine. Programmers have long noticed that those letters spell things. Add a few digits that look like letters (0 for O, 1 for I, 2 for Z, 5 for S, 6 for G) and suddenly there are a lot of them.

How many? 1,775, not including the ones I didn't think of. So I wrote them all down, gave each one a definition, and made it into a dictionary.

My Favourite Hexadecimal Numbers treats this with complete seriousness. Every entry gets its value in hex, decimal and binary, a star rating, and a sober dictionary definition. The English words themselves are hidden, so each entry is a small puzzle. A few favourites:

F00D · ★★
Anything that can be eaten for nourishment. Also food for thought, which this book has little of.

6E01D · ★★★
The lumpy surface the oceans would form under gravity alone. The Earth is not round; it is geoid.

B00B5 · ★★★1 A foolish mistake; to make one. 2. A foolish person. 3. A breast, and the reason B00B5 is the most famous number in computing.

D00D00 · ★★★★
Excrement, in nursery language. Deep doodoo is the worst kind.

The star rating rewards long words with digits in disguise, so FACADE scores a modest one star, while DEAC1D1F1ED is a five-star specimen. There's also a Hall of Fame of hex words hidden inside real computers (DEADBEEF, CAFEBABE, 8BADF00D), a 100-question quiz, a hex word search and a colour puzzle.

The game

The dictionary doubles as the official referee for FACE0FF5, a word-tile game in base sixteen. Players draw eight hex tiles into their "register" (32 bits, naturally), spell words from the dictionary, and score each word's star rating. Dead digits (3, 4, 7, 8, 9) clog your hand, wild tiles cost you a star, any word can be challenged, and scores are kept in hex. The first player to reach sixteen shouts "0x10!" and wins. The rules and 112 printable tiles are in the book.

The name is eight hex digits, exactly 32 bits, which in computing is called a word. Sadly "faceoffs" isn't in the dictionary, so the name itself isn't a legal play. We checked.

👉 My Favourite Hexadecimal Numbers

If you play a round of FACE0FF5, I'd love to hear how it goes.

👉 My Favourite Hexadecimal Numbers

The book is written under my pen name, Ram, and lives alongside my other projects at ramapani.com.

Log of base 2 calculator

Simply because I found myself needing to work out the log of base 2 for a series of numbers whilst studying and comparing several 'divide and conquer' algorithms, I decided to write a simple log of base 2 calculator. You can try it by following the link below.

Calculate the log of base 2 now.

Log of base 2 calculator running on my Lumia 950

As you can see from the screenshot, the applet keeps a record of all of your calculations until you refresh the page and the results are returned with 15 decimal places accuracy.

It is hoped that the page will be of use to students of computer science, mathematics, or any of the natural sciences that require logs of base 2. It is also hoped that the app will be of use to anyone who simply loves their powers of 2 (and who doesn't?).

Ways to waste your time on the web today

Without further ado, here is a list of ways you can waste your time.  Got your browser plugged in? Good, let's go...

Wire Frame, by Vector Lounge

Ever needed to play with a skeleton puppet? Well me neither, but now you can.  Well, it is Halloween soon.  BYT - you will need Flash for this to work.

Pull the strings - make it walk.

12 by 12 Tic-Tac-Toe

Play Tic-Tac-Toe (it was called 'Naughts and Crosses' when I was young) against your browser.  Get five in a row to win.

It's like Tic-Tac-Toe, only 12 times bigger and you need 5 in a row to win.

Mind Cards

Mind cards is a game of quick-thinking.  Answer as many simple challenges as possible in two minutes.  Score points.  Then compare yourself to the high score board.  Then feel a little bit sad.

The whole game reminds me somewhat the adventure game Abyss that I used to play on the Acorn Electron.  Only the Abyss was much harder and made you feel much stupider.

One of many types of mental challenges. Can you match the pattern as quickly as you can?

The mathematics doesn't get much harder than this, but how quickly can you click and type in the answer?

Tonfall sequencer

I don't know what this is, but I like it!

You start with a load of colourful circles drifting slowly around your screen in something akin to Brownian motion.  As the circles drift closer to each other they form connections like neurons in your brain all the time playing a haunting melody.  Change the melody by dragging the little circles around the screen, making and breaking connections and so on.

Computer generated music never sounded so haunting.

And finally.....

The Age Calc

Calculate your age in years, months, weeks, days - and if you know the exact time of your birth - in minutes and seconds.  Loads of fun to keep you going until next week.

Circles

Circles is a program to aid independent learning in mathematics.

Circles was written for Mr Bakr Al Bazi, Mathematics teacher at the Grammar School at Leeds, who writes:

"3 circles, 6 values for each circle. Students started to investigate these values with no input from me."

"Independent Learning was taking place. Ratio, radius, diameter.... every notion that involved circles was discussed and then pi came in." 

"It was wonderful! I realised that adopting the use of new technology to support traditional instructions has not only it made me change the way I teach, but also the way students learn." 

Follow this link to continue to the Downloads page.