{"id":5404,"date":"2010-10-10T19:02:45","date_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=5404"},"modified":"2010-10-10T19:02:45","modified_gmt":"2010-10-11T00:02:45","slug":"on-the-simplicities-of-binary-day-10-10-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5404","title":{"rendered":"On the Simplicities of Binary Day 10-10-10"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>10-10-10.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been calling today &#8220;Binary Day.&#8221;  One-Zero-One-Zero-One-Zero.  All ones and zeroes.  A binary day.  Oh, there have been others this year &mdash; in January and in November &mdash; but this particular Binary Day is <i>unique<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the only Binary Day that is exactly the same on both sides of the Atlantic.  Our British cousins, for reasons that pass beyond my meagre understanding, write out their dates differently than we do here in the United States.<\/p>\n<p>They also add needless &#8220;u&#8221;s to words, and they&#8217;ve somehow made the letter &#8220;r&#8221; silent.  They&#8217;re a strange people, our British cousins. \ud83d\ude06<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"500\" width=\"297\" class=\"alignleft\" align=\"right\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3099\/2555740379_7740fa5bfb.jpg\" \/>The interesting thing about this Binary Day, besides the congruity of American and British renderings of the date, is what 101010 means, if translated from binary (base-2) to decimal (base-10).<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s 42.<\/p>\n<p>And, as any hoopy frood who&#8217;s read <i>The Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide to the Galaxy<\/i> knows, 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything.<\/p>\n<p>It also sounds profound in the dulcet tones of Dame Helen Mirren.<\/p>\n<p>Ergo, Douglas Adams would approve of today. :h2g2:<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know that anything I did today amounts to the profundity that Binary Day clearly demands.  I did not read any <i>Hitchhiker&#8217;s Guide<\/i>.  I have not listened to Big Finish&#8217;s adaptation of the unfinished <i>Shada<\/i>.  I have used the computer, and its language is that of ones and zeros, so all is well there.<\/p>\n<p>I did laundry, hung it out on the clothesline.  I suspect that today will be the last good outdoor laundry this year.<\/p>\n<p>I read much of Robert Harris&#8217; <i>The Ghost Writer<\/i>.  I&#8217;d picked the book up, cheap, at Borders a few weeks ago, intending to read it.  Seeing the movie on DVD at Wal-Mart last night pushed the book to the fore of my reading queue.  (I did not pick up the DVD, however.  I <i>will<\/i>, but I wanted to read the book first, before watching the film.)<\/p>\n<p>Not every day needs to be memorable.  Or profound.  Sometimes, it&#8217;s enough just to be content, to be in the moment, to sit in the sunshine, read a gripping book, and feel the autumnal breeze.<\/p>\n<p>That was Binary Day for me.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.plinky.com\/proxy\/badge?id=35201\" style=\"border: 0; padding-right: 4px; vertical-align: middle;\" alt=\"Powered by Plinky\" title=\"Powered by Plinky\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>10-10-10. I&#8217;ve been calling today &#8220;Binary Day.&#8221; One-Zero-One-Zero-One-Zero. All ones and zeroes. A binary day. Oh, there have been others this year &mdash; in January and in November &mdash; but this particular Binary Day is unique. It&#8217;s the only Binary Day that is exactly the same on both sides of the Atlantic. Our British cousins,<a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5404\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8220;On the Simplicities of Binary Day 10-10-10&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[109,4093,101],"class_list":["post-5404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-douglas-adams","tag-life","tag-plinky","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}