birthdays

[preacher]

My birthday is December 6, 1953, which will make me about 6 years older than Marc.

[SMO]

Since I've worked in data processing all my life, I can say that I'm 33, but that's hexidecimal (base 16), not decimal (base 10). To convert it, multiply 3 X 16, then add 3. It sounds much better in hex.

[Marc Mathieu]

That's real cool Mike O. Guess that makes you in Binary code: 1 1 0 0 1 1 That's starting to look an awful lot like TABlature. Keep on Strummin' & Happy Tunes !

[LarryHicks]

Good thing that Michael didn't give his age in binary! My age in binary is 110111. I guess I am older than Michael. My birthday is July 2nd, and I consider myself a Roswell baby. I was born the same day (and year) the space-men supposedly crashed in Roswell. When I figured this out, a lot of things started to make sense! Larry Edit: While I was composing this reply, Marc beat me to the punch with his much more clever comment about binary code.

[Del]

On 2-25-03, I'll be 10 years older then Michael O, in hexadecimal years. Del

[SMO]

That might make an interesting project. Convert everyone's age to octal (base 8, numbers 0-7) and tab it all out. Oh, my, what have I started?

[Gwyn]

October 10. My next one is one of those milestone ones,

[marcy]

Actually converting your age to octal to use the digits as the basis of a composition is a pretty fun idea. But you don't get much, just two or three notes -- 28 becomes 34 and 64 becomes 100. Maybe you'd get better results by using the whole birthdate, month, day, and year. Any special date would work, too -- interesting idea for an anniversary present... By the way, here's how to convert to octal, using an example: 12345 Make a list of the powers of 8: 8 to the first power is 8, 8 squared is 64, 8 to the third is 512, 8 to the fourth is 4096, 8 to the fifth is 32768. What's the largest power of 8 that goes into 12345? The fourth power. Divide. 12345 divided by 4096 is 3 with a remainder of 57. What's the largest power of 8 that goes into 57? The first. 57 divided by 8 is 7 with a remainder of 1. So 12345 in octal is 371. Now you can play with these notes -- in D it would be F#, C#, D. Or try using F and / or C natural, or D#. Try different rhythms -- like half note followed by two quarters in 4/4 time, or two eighth notes followed by a half note in 3/4 time, or three eighth notes repeated for a jig... Try different variations of the pattern -- repeat the pattern but a third higher, or play it backwards, or major one time and minor the next time...

[Steve Smith]

We went to a concert once where a pianist took anyone's phone number and played it as a seven note melody, and then proceeded to improvise an entire composition around it. There's another thing to try on dulcimer!

[Marc Mathieu]

You guys are coming up with pretty good ideas Maybe I'm kind of getting away from the "birthday thread" main topic, but there is a very easy way of converting any number base into another. WINDOWS has a built in calculator that'll do this for us. Go to "Start" -> Programs -> Accessories -> Calculator. Once in "Calculator" mode, go to "View" & chose "SCIENTIFIC". There they are: HEX - DEC - OCT & BIN A quick way of converting your birth date into a tune !! Thanks for the idea Marcy ! I think I'll try that on my own birth date right now !

[Bobbi]

September 1 (Born during WWII)....

[SteveD]

I just had mine on Jan 15th. Two more years and I hit the half century mark. I like the saying, "Age doesn't matter unless you are a cheese."LOL!