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Binary Birthday Candles
Everyone is aware of the problem of deciding how many candles to use as a person gets older. Sometime, usually around 8-16 depending on your lung capacity, putting a candle on the cake for each year gets to be too many with respect to lighting and blowing out: Too much wax goes to waste, with an appalling amount ending up on birthday cakes. Some people use three candles, but that solution is not much fun and does not acknowledge the passing of another year. Others get candles from the grocery store that are in the shape of each digit needed; however, the candles are expensive, can only be used once to any effect, and are rather impersonal. The solution, of course, is to use Binary Birthday Candles.
That is, translate the age from decimal numbers into binary, light the "1" candles and leave the "0" candles unlit. Here's a handy converter to get you started:
This free script provided by
JavaScript
Kit
For example, 40, which is '101000' in binary, would look like this on your birthday cake:
Nicely innocuous and hardly anything to be scared of, right?
The advantages are plentiful:
- The unlit candles can be reused, creating large savings in your birthday candle budget.
- You can live to 127 and never have to blow out more than seven candles. (And on your 128th birthday, when you may be starting to get short of breath, you'll only have one lit candle.)
- Milestone years come much less frequently. Instead of worrying every ten years about turning 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 etc., you can reduce stress over aging by spreading out these milestones only when you add another candle. Thus, you need only fret when you turn 32, 64, 128, etc. Most people can only handle 6-7 of these milestone birthdays after age 29. With binary birthday candles spreading out the stress over longer periods, you can live up to 2,048 years old (give or take a few orders of magnitude).
- It's Fun!
The list goes on, but you've probably stopped reading by now. If not, enjoy, and happy birthday.