My First Father's Day

Today is my first Father's Day and Logan and Rachel got me 2 really cool gifts. The first is a book called Geek Dad. Here is the description from Amazon:

Today's generation of dads grew up more tech-savvy than ever. Rather than joining the Little League team, many grew up playing computer games, Dungeons and Dragons, and watching Star Wars. Now with kids of their own, these digital-age dads are looking for fresh ways to share their love of science and technology, and help their kids develop a passion for learning and discovery.

Enter supergeek, and father of two, Ken Denmead. An engineer and editor of the incredibly popular GeekDad blog on wired.com, Ken has created the ultimate, idea-packed guide guaranteed to help dads and kids alike enjoy the magic of playtime together and tap into the infinite possibility of their imagination. With illustrations throughout, this book offers projects for all ages to suit any timeframe or budget. With Denmead's expert guidance, you and your child can:

•Fly a night-time kite ablaze with lights or launch a video camera with balloons
•Construct the "Best Slip n' Slide Ever," a guaranteed thrill ride
•Build a working lamp with LEGO bricks and CDs
•Create a customized comic strip or your own board game
•Transform any room into a spaceship
•Make geeky crafts like cyborg jack-o'-lanterns or Ethernet cuff links

Brimming with endlessly fun and futuristic tidbits on everything from gaming to gadgets, GeekDad helps every tech-savvy father unleash his inner kid-and bond with the next generation of brainiacs.

I've only read the intro so far but he built a UAV out of an RC plane and Lego Mindstorms.

My other gift is a T-Shirt from ThinkGeek.com that spells out a word in binary.

This seems like the perfect time to teach anyone who reads this (our family) how to convert binary sequences to letters. Each line in the image above is 1 byte. A byte is made up of 8 bits which themselves are a 0 or a 1.

Ok, so to convert a byte to a normal number, you start from the right side. Each bit is worth 2^N, where N is how places you are from the right side. So the first slot is worth 2^0 which is 1. The next slot is 2^1 = 2, 2^2 = 4, 2^3 = 8, and so on. You only count the slot if it has a 1 in it. Then you add all the numbers together.

So for our first line, we have a 1 in the 2^2 slot and the 2^6. That's 4 + 64 = 68. The second line is 2^6 + 2^0 = 65 and the third line is just a repeat of the first. So we have 68, 65, and 68.

The way computers translate numbers into letters is through the ASCII chart. You take the numbers we got earlier and look them up to see what letter they match to. Hint: It's related to today!

Now you can tell people you speak another language and be the life of any party!