09:06:29
0100100001100001011100000111000001111001001000000100111001100101
0111011100100000010110010110010101100001011100100010000000110010
001100000011000000111001 – Or, in Human, “Happy New Year 2009”.
Seriously though, it's been a while, and while I was brushing up on my binary over the holidays I'm sure you all missed my delightfully informative articles wrapped up in a convenient and easily related sense of humor which can be enjoyed with a wine or port around an open fire.
What a year 2008 was, busy busy busy. That last month called December saw me spend more time in my cave than cro-magnon man, whilst I enjoy France and the cro-magnon cave, it is nice to see some sunshine now and then too, so I can say my tan wasn't generated by Three 22inch screens, I have to be careful or the firefox logo will burn into my face. Ok, enough humor(?), I'm back, you missed me, I care. Let's talk tech.
There is a phrase you'll be familiar with “Scientia potentia est” or “for knowledge itself is power”, or the more modern adaption, “Knowledge is Power”. Last year I was talking about free stuff, There is much free stuff available on the internet, the most important of whch I believe is knowledge.
Since we were cro-magnon man and before we have had a thirst for understanding, empowerment and knowledge. This has led us to evolve into the species we currently are. Unfortunately a minority of us and infatuated with War, violence, corruption and handling resource consents, but that is not the kind of power I'm talking about Regardless though, there is no better empowerment than knowing something.
The Internet gives us (less telecoms bills) this information for free! There has never been a better self help class than your Broadband connection, your web browser and Google. On the rare occasions that I find myself in a position of not understanding something I head to my friend and colleague Google for advice. Sometimes Google tells me to go see Wiki (wikipedia) or to one of a few thousand sites that wishes to share this knowledge with me.
For example, my opening line was “Happy New Year 2009” in Binary, How did I come to this knowledge? For I sure as heck can't convert ASCII to Binary in my head, not unless I'm in REM sleep anyways, so I did a search on Google, “Convert Text to Binary” and this led me to DiGG, where I found an article refering to http://Nickciske.com/tools/binary.php as a tool to exchange Binary, Hex and Octal information between formats. You don't have to be a geek to appreciate how cool that is.
Whilst you can't simply gain wisom by replacing learning and life experience with Google, you can sure as heck get some valuable pointers and advice from a multitude of locations online with little to no difficulty. These are the times we live in. Don't cheat at your next Pub Trivia.
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