Checking in for 2023-07-06:

• Been doing more work with learning Assembly Language on the Atari 8bit home computers. It's been a fun experience overall and I'm kicking younger me for not experiencing it sooner. Of course, this is also 51 year old me with way more computing experience than, say, 10 - 15 year old me, so I'm wondering how much of this is just me having way more knowledge about computers than younger me or if I might have glommed onto things sooner.
• One thing I will say about all of these older books is they make conversions between hexadecimal, binary, and decimal way too complicated. If someone had told me early on that hexadecimal numbers like 0xDECAFBAD can be broken down into 4-byte "nibbles" and then reassembled into the larger number I would have had a better time of it. Here's how 0xDECAFBAD works with this methodology:
  • D: 1101
  • E: 1110
  • C: 1100
  • A: 1010
  • F: 1111
  • B: 1011
  • A: 1010
  • D: 1101

Putting those numbers together you have 1101 1110 1100 1010 1111 1011 1010 1101, which can then be converted to decimal 3,737,844,653 with some (simple) addition. Of course, if you leave it as binary then you don't have to worry about that step.

• I won't say that I cheated with the above example and used the excellent dc calculator, but if you want to cheat as well the instructions 16i<ENTER>2o<ENTER>DECAFBAD p<ENTER> will give you the binary number. Just be sure to either restart dc or type Ao<ENTER> to get the decimal number because if you type 10o<ENTER> and try to reset the output to decimal you will be sad to realize that you have just set your output number to base 16. Ask me know I know this. :)
• I wasn't fantastic about doing something first before checking email / social media, but I think giving myself something fun to work on first thing in the morning is helping a bit.
• I've been doing some mild decluttering as of late. I have the energy for it and the will to get some of this stuff out of the house.
• July 4th were pretty brutal for Pixel. She's not been going into the basement as of late, but she screwed up enough courage to wait out the boom-booms for a spell when things were getting really bonkers out there.
• Speaking of which, does it seem like everyone post 2020 has been doubling their fireworks budget?
• I gave myself yesterday as a recharge day with no expectations of the day. Well, save for some decluttering, but other than that I didn't have any set plans.

That's all for now. More as I know it.