Week Two: Muddy Unicode

Like many students in the class, my copy of the textbook has yet to arrive on my front door. So between the history of computing and coding and numbering schemes, coding and numbering takes the prize for being the most confusing topic of the week.

I have always heard horror stories from my father regarding computer languages and mind you he is absolutely brilliant with a computer. While he was here at UF, he began his studies as a Computer Science major. Except he could never quite grasp computer programming languages they way his professors taught them. He switched majors to business and said it was one of the best decisions he ever made.

With genetics clearly not being on my side here (no computer genius rubbed off on me), I have to thank fellow ISM 3004 student, Randy Tackling, for posting the link to his blog on the discussion boards and also writing about coding this week. He found the like to a tremendous video Binary Numbers in 60 Seconds that made Unicode shrink from a mountain to a mole hill in less than a minute. What the video did not explain was if I want to go from decimal to binary, how do I know what power to raise 2 to. The video Decimal to Binary showed two ways to calculate a binary number.

1. Divide your number by two until you no longer can. The remainder each time you divide (either one or zero) makes up your binary code.
2. Write out all of the powers of 2 and find the largest power that still goes into your decimal number.

I find that both ways are terribly time consuming and that there must be an easier way to do it. So if the cosmic forces align and someone out there in cyberland who a)reads this blog and b) knows the answer, please show me some good netiquitte and help me out!