Field Programmable Gate Array
So I’ve been playing with R(the software environment for statistical computing and graphics) this week as well as trying to learn C and I’ve been thinking about fun, real-world data/stuff to work with. Which of course leads to sets of data for R and programmable IC (Integrated Circuits) such as the ones found on development boards like the Raspberry Pi or Arduino or BeagleBoard etc.
I discovered Field Programmable Gate Array and now just need a reason to order a Breadboard. Wifi enabled motion detection system for the meeting rooms at work (they’re always booked and seldom used). Dunno.
While reading up on programming chips I found out that a common way for computers to deal with subtraction using addition!
This method is called the Method of Complements and it’s really easy.
5678
- 3493 <- You want to subtract 3493 from 5678.
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5678
+ 6506 <- Get each digit that you're trying to subtract up to 9: 3 needs 6, 4 needs 5, 9 is already there so 0, 3 needs 6. = 6506
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12184
-10000 <- Remove the trailing 1 (no actual subtraction required)
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2184
+1 <- Add 1 to complete the magic!
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2185
Links to interesting pages:
Building a Hacker News clone in Django - Part 1
Beth Scott is a pretty awesome engineer: Her UsersThis profile http://scanlime.usesthis.com/