Base 10

How many fingers do you have?

For those of you who know me personally, you know I cannot resist a joke. Many of my jokes are not “performance quality”. I admit to a great weakness for a good pun. This one certainly works well with a child in the 5-8 range.

• Me:: How many fingers do you have?

• Child:: ten

• Me:: Wow, I only have eight fingers. Let me see your hands. BTW I have two thumbs

After joining Substack on 31-AUGUST I wrote a single, meandering post. At the time I had great difficulty even thinking about what I might want to write about, why anyone would want to read it, etcetera. I was okay with that as I was just starting. The actual joining of the website was something to celebrate. Unfortunately, I did not write a SINGLE POST in August. Clearly, this might turn into one of those applications/websites that I eventually note in a password review and remove my membership.

For those that have been reading my posts, it was not until near the end of September that I finally posted again. I went on a trip to my hometown and spent time with my family for an extended period. I reconnected with family I had not seen in ages. I also met family members that I had never met before. This was a long-envisioned family reunion that was only a thought in the back of my head almost four years ago. I also spent time with close family and tightened the bond with family I really just wished to get to know better.

After returning from the trip another week passed by. I met with my creative writing group that day and I finally got the motivation, thanks to some encouragement from the group to “just do it”. It was finally the gentle “nudge” that I needed. My mind was still full of some nice memories from the trip. I never thought that I would have a shortage of things to write about. I have a lot of interests and when it has just been for a personal journal that has suited me just fine. I felt this was different. Putting the written word out there in the world to be discovered was exciting but different.

Finally, on 29-SEP-2021, I wrote something. It was easier than I thought and I was energized by how I felt great after I did it. It wasn’t even that time-consuming. I decided that, for now, I would limit the total edit time to 20 minutes and consider myself done for a given post. When I had time, I might even germinate some new ideas and store them as drafts. We all know that feeling that things are easier when you are in the mood. So the plan, for now, was to open up and write for 20 minutes or less and see where I land. I feel at this time that is about how much time I can commit to this.

Today, I celebrate that I am starting the “next ten days”. My title, Base 10 was a reference to ten completed post days in a row! A modest goal to start. I have always loved math. I remember reading about how arbitrary it is that we count by tens. Undoubtedly because we happen to have ten digits. Computing systems have evolved focused on first counting by eights (octal) and then sixteen (hexadecimal). It seems that only because the 3-toed sloth became an evolutionary dead-end and the 5-digit hand survived, do we count by tens. I suppose, if you read my most recent posts and the sloth had a frontal lobe, we might have developed a base 6 counting system. That would be hard to get used to for sure! Believe it or not, 10 in base 6 is “14”. This would be a much larger step than converting to the metric system and we’ve been failing at that for 45 years so far.

Thank you to all who are at least clicking my newsletter. I hope to get to that point that regardless of whether others are reading it I will keep at it. I am enjoying finding a representative image of the day and theme. I often first search for an image as I trace through in my mind a basic idea of the post ahead. Today’s photo is of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. He was a great mathematician credited with establishing base math that is so important in modern computing.

I expect this writing of mine might take different directions as time goes on. I have received some great advice from my writing group leader that I am fundamentally writing for myself. I try to carry that thought as I open my Chromebook and generate my daily missive.

That is all for today. I think tonight is a nice fall evening to watch some more baseball. In honor of the baseball playoffs, here is a song you are likely to hear on a wonderful night at a ballpark. If you love old baseball the video is a feast for the eyes! Also, here is an article from Rolling Stone that purports to list 15 songs better than the one I linked above. Let the arguments begin!