Back from the US

I spent the last week in Phoenix, Arizona – my first trip to the US… more or less. A brief visit when I was 11 years old is too fuzzy in my memory to really count.

I had a nice week and got to enjoy a few foods that are scarce in Spain. In particular, getting a decent steak, cooked right.

I saw a documentary on number systems on the TV one night, hosted by Terry Jones. It went through different counting systems that have been used throughout history, from Ancient Egypt, to Roman and Arabic numerals. The last section was about counting in binary, with a fast-motion demo of how to write various numbers in binary using egg cups labelled 1, 2, 4, 8, 16… and boiled eggs to represent ones. At the end, Terry Jones said “After only a few short hours of tuition, I believed that it was possible to represent ALL numbers using only zeros and ones. What’s more, I began to suspect that you don’t actually have to do it with eggs!” 🙂

I installed a Word Press plugin called Live Press that should replicate my entries to LJ. Previously I’ve only used my LJ account to post comments on friends’ blogs so hopefully this will produce my first post there.