Comments on: Rafts, Ping-Pong Balls, and Radio Waves

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:20:54 +0000

No need to feel old, Stoney – I’m sure that rafts predated you, and ping-pong balls probably do also. :)

But telling that story (in my comment on your blog) about calling all over town trying to track down a bit of information, and realizing that I needed to explain why I didn’t just Google it – that one made me feel pretty damned *old.*

By: Stonehead

Stonehead — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:06:52 +0000

Your analogy makes me feel old. I first learned about radio waves by building a crystal radio and later a spark gap transmitter. Now, kids just go and buy a mobile phone.

By: Yella Ojrak

Yella Ojrak — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 11:23:49 +0000

Oh, please write whenever you want to. Next month, next year, would be fine with me. Just make sure you keep writing your blog, and I’ll keep reading you.

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 05:22:00 +0000

Aw, thanks, Ojrak :)

I was just going to refer you to the Wikipedia page; but fortunately I Googled it up too and took a look first. Oops – those are the guys who understand all those “complexities in practice” explaining things to each other: which particular kind of code was used when, and why, and who used a different type of code at what time…
Not a word anywhere about just plain “How does it work?”

(And it was boring, and hard to follow even for someone who already knows the basics behind it.)

I may not be able to get my own take on binary posted right away, so I hope you’re not holding your breath. :)

- Evelyn

By: Yella Ojrak

Yella Ojrak — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 04:04:08 +0000

Oh, great! That would be sooooo great!

You know, right after I sent you my last comment, I googled ‘binary codes’ and found a Wikipedia page on it. But you know Wikipedia… It gives you links to almost every word, its info’s are not always valid, and most importantly, it’s boring. It would be great to learn it from you!

Gosh, I love this blog a lot already!

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:46:02 +0000

Well, for cel phone transmissions you might imagine a bunch of 8-year-old boys in treehouses throwing ping-pong balls at the radio recievers in each of our phones, and a bunch of storks (like the kind that are said to be thr bringers of babies) flying back and forth between the treehouses with their pink or blue bundles full of carefully-kept-separate ping-pong-ball packets of voice transmission signals -

- but analogies can only be taken so far, and this one really is starting to creak under the strain. :)

As for binary coding of English, the theory’s fairly simple (it gets extremely complex in practice), but not quite simple enough to do as a comment.
I’ll put something together on that (and then try to figure out whether it should be as a post or a page :) ).

- Evelyn

By: Yella Ojrak

Yella Ojrak — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:12:10 +0000

Wow! Must be a very busy ping-pong world up there…

Another question, how do you translate something into binary codes, or binary codes into something like, English?

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:25:44 +0000

Well, sort of – for mobile phones you have to imagine a *lot* more rafts and *one great big heck of a lot* more ping-pong balls. :)

I’m very glad you found it interesting.

By: Yella Ojrak

Yella Ojrak — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 23:13:41 +0000

Does everything you explained apply to mobile phones as well?

Anyway, this kind of stuff is interesting.

By: Evelyn

Evelyn — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 10:08:08 +0000

Thanks, Katia! :)
You have the (dubiously indubitable) honor of being my very first commenter.