The next time you're throwing a birthday party for the office geek, here's an easy idea he or she will appreciate, that also helps if candles are in short supply. Instead of, say, lighting 35 candles for their 35rd birthday, put six candles in a line on the cake, but only light the first, fifth, and sixth ones. When they ask what's going on with that, tell them, "It's in binary."-- schnitzi, Sep 13 2002 Counting in Binary http://en.wikipedia...nary_numeral_systemCourtesy of our friends at the wikipedia [shapu, Feb 09 2005] BAKED! http://www.evilmads...icle.php/binarybdayLong after posting, but EMSL made one. [bleh, May 13 2009] Nice. Until you get your paycheck and you're like, 'What the...?' and they're like, 'It's in base 400.'-- General Washington, Sep 13 2002 Or you could use the E24 resistor code and then you'd just need 2 candles, plus one more for the tolerance.
Croissant.-- 8th of 7, Sep 13 2002 Tolerance... I'm 29 and holding.. (+/- 10%)-- Mr Burns, Sep 13 2002 You could decorate the cake with cookies, carefully laid out in binary.-- BinaryCookies, Sep 13 2002 I like this. At my last birthday we ran out of fire extinguishers.-- angel, Sep 14 2002 Very nice. In fact, seven candles should be enough for anyone (representing 2^0 to 2^6) as you can represent any age up to 127. Candles should therefore be sold in a block of seven, joined together, and the same block can be used for many years. It will represent a significant rite of passage when you first use the 2^4 candle.-- hippo, Sep 14 2002 I like this, a lot. (+).-- bristolz, Sep 14 2002 Me too.-- FarmerJohn, Sep 14 2002 I have no idea how to read binary, but you get a (+) for having such a wonderful idea to go with the title.-- kaz, Sep 14 2002 With some 16 bit (candle) flip-flops (cakes), one could do some elementary operations thus halfbaking the first birthday cake computer.-- FarmerJohn, Sep 14 2002 [UB] Yes but how would you represent five distinct states with one candle?-- hippo, Sep 15 2002 <