So it’s been a while since my last post. Yes, after the initial, improbable
success in placing a CNN link into a website page, I fielded several follow-up
questions that had me worried:
“Are you going to design
a website?”
“I didn’t know you wanted
to make a website!”
etc…
It turns out, I do not want to design a website. But the minion language HTML is for
designing websites so I find myself in a bit of a pickle. My choices are to either continue
learning about HTML things even though I have no interest in actually using it
(I did complete my Code Academy course. Promise.) Or I could acknowledge an early wrong turn and seek a new
direction for my blogging code-cracking expedition.
 |
| Note: I Googled “Wrong Turn.” Apparently that’s a horror flick from 2003 about inbred monsters from West Virginia. I do not think my brief foray into HTML was this much of a “wrong turn” but perhaps some of you will enjoy the movie reference. I don’t like horror. It gives me nightmares. |
Anyway, I was discussing my blog with a minion expert I met
recently. After seeming confused (bemused?), then humoring me in the way of
being polite, he nonchalantly referred to something as “The Chief Minion.”
Wait a
minute. There’s a Chief
Minion?
Why yes,
he explained, and it’s called the CPU. I became so excited I literally ran away from the conversation to find
my iPhone and make a note to myself. “Chief Minion = CPU.” I
need to get to really know my minions and I’m going to start with their Chief:
CPU.
 |
| Anthony Michael Hall is my eternal representation of the King of the Nerds and is therefore my blog’s stunt double for the Chief Minion. One can only hope the CPU is as awesomely hilarious as Anthony Michael Hall. To be honest, I have doubts. |
CPU stands for Central Processing Unit (according to both the
minion expert and Wikipedia). I
tried to read the Wikipedia entry. Tried. The first paragraph
went pretty well: the central hardware of the computer that carries out all the
basic math and stuff…things I can logically infer from the name. The next paragraph begins to get a
little tricky: the CPU has two parts, an ALU which is where the math happens
and the CU which is where the memory of the CPU is (I think?). I suddenly feel like my brief foray
into HTML and the CNN tab is like learning Pig-Latin in order to tackle
Shakespeare. The third paragraph
talks about array or vector processing and distributed computing that doesn’t even
have a CPU. Minions without a
Chief. Sounds too trippy for a
beginner.
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| This is my visualization of minions without a Chief. Trippy. |
I have concluded after slogging through the remainder of the
entry, that the CPU is where my minions use the much-talked-about binary
code. Unlike the HTML language, in
which I use lots of symbols and letters and numbers to speak to my minions,
this CPU is where they get to do their 01001010101 thing. So why is that? I mean, if my CPU is
the Chief of all Minions, why doesn’t the Chief speak the most complex minion
speak, complete with all the symbols and numbers and letters, instead of the
most stripped down one with only 0s and 1s?
Here’s what I’ve surmised:
(Note: the following has been fact-checked for glaring
absurdity or inaccuracy. However,
no self-respecting minion expert would sign off on officially “approving” this
description of why the CPU uses binary code. Fair enough.)
The CPU is hardware. This means that it exists.
I mean, it exists physically in space. It’s that little “chip” you see in Intel commercials. I’m going to compare the electrical
signals of this physical chip to movements that are little easier for my tired
brain to visualize: light switches. In my simple brain, there are two types of
light switch, an up/down version and a dimmer switch that allows for awesome
seamless transitions from light to dark and vice versa.
The dimmer switch, while cool and with a myriad of possible
lighting levels, is hard to use if the goal is to 100% accurately replicate the
exact, particular lighting level that you want every single time. A little more up….no, down a
little…no up a little…etc. That dimmer is like using all the
symbols/letters/numbers. Cool, but
complex.
The up/down toggle switch is way less cool. Up. Down. 0. 1. But you can always tell where you are:
on or off. 0 or 1. So the little electric signals in the
CPU need that type of accuracy, precision and reliability. Up. Down. But here’s where it gets cool: if you are looking to
reliably and precisely replicate a certain level of lighting, you can set up a
series of up/down switches (imagine them all lined up against a wall) whose end
result is exactly the level of lighting you want. Up. Up. Down. Up. Down. 00101. The CPU is where your computer exists in a physical reality
of tiny electric up/down switches. And the more up/down switches you have and the smaller you can make them
to fit in one “room,” the more varied the lighting arrangements you can make.
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I feel like Marie Curie who’s just discovered radium. Actually, I’m like some other person
who just realized x-rays exist 50-75 years after Marie Curie. And after everyone else in the world. And
after my great aunt Betsy had her arm x-rayed. Better late than never.
