Convert a date into binary?

[Nashiwa]

Hey guys!

So I have a little bit of an odd request. First let me explain. In 2012 I was diagnosed with leukemia, and thanks to a bone marrow transplant I was able to survive and now I'm pretty much safe and healthy. As a reminder of this part of my life I'd like to tattoo myself the date of my transplant (which is Feb 14th 2013), but being a geek I wanted to use the binary format instead of regular DD/MM/YY.

 

Now from what I've seen there are 2 main ways to do that, either consider the date as char and therefore use an ascii to binary conversion, or use the date as a full numer and do a number to binary conversion. From what I could find on the internet the char-binary conversion would give something quite long so I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but the number-binary conversion would give something a little more manageable (140413 converts to 100010010001111101).

 

Do you guys have any other idea or suggestion?

[dany_boy]

You could also try with hexadecimals

14/02/13 --> 31342f30322f3133

3 minutes ago, Nashiwa said:

140413 converts to 100010010001111101

Shouldn't it be 140213?

[Nashiwa]

4 minutes ago, dany_boy said:

You could also try with hexadecimals

14/02/13 --> 31342f30322f3133

Shouldn't it be 140213?

Of course it is, I am VERY dumb hahaha Thanks for noticing! I meant April not February.

 

I was considering hex too but I don't know if it's as good esthetically for a tattoo. It looks a little too cluttered to me.

[Jade]

3 minutes ago, Nashiwa said:

Of course it is, I am VERY dumb hahaha Thanks for noticing!

 

I was considering hex too but I don't know if it's as good esthetically for a tattoo. It looks a little too cluttered to me.

This sounds rather strange, but you could do a barcode (wow, edgy, I know!) that, when scanned/read, translates to the date. a-la hitman (but not on the back of your head )

[Windows7ge]

Instead of Binary you could use Hexadecimal. Hexadecimal can be converted directly to binary so you could fit more text into a smaller area compared to Binary.

 

Ex: A = 65 in Hexadecimal = 01000001 in Binary

So with Hex you could narrow it down to maybe one or two lines of code on your body

[Nashiwa]

1 minute ago, Jade said:

This sounds rather strange, but you could do a barcode (wow, edgy, I know!) that, when scanned/read, translates to the date.

That's actually a very clever idea! However, the problem with a barcode is that if my body type changes too much over the years it might become unreadable.

[dany_boy]

2 minutes ago, Jade said:

This sounds rather strange, but you could do a barcode (wow, edgy, I know!) that, when scanned/read, translates to the date. a-la hitman (but not on the back of your head )

That would be very cool!

[Hallo_Tschuess]

Maybe Convert to Unix time first then work with that?

 

14th April 2013 12AM is 1365933600

 

 

Edit: Oops thats not UTC

 

[Organized]

I would convert the date to a unix timestamp and then switch that to binary.

 

FOR EXAMPLE the timestamp in GMT would be 1365897600 (0 o'clock), which is 1010001011010011111000110000000 in binary.

 

I used these online tools: http://www.timestampgenerator.com/
http://www.binaryhexconverter.com/decimal-to-binary-converter

 

EDIT: Oops, a little bit too late. But please note, that you should always specify a time zone!

[Unimportant]

If length is your concern, all 3 of those numbers fit in 4 bit nibbles. So you could just use 3 nibbles:

 14   04   13
1110 0100 1101 

 

[Organized]

39 minutes ago, Unimportant said:

If length is your concern, all 3 of those numbers fit in 4 bit nibbles. So you could just use 3 nibbles:

 14   04   13
1110 0100 1101 

 

I really think this is the best way. Even non-geniusses can translate this into decimal numbers and it's short.

 

Btw, I wish you the best for your health. My brother recently fought cancer (hopefully forever) and it's just a terrifying disease

[bcguru9384]

12 hours ago, Nashiwa said:

Hey guys!

So I have a little bit of an odd request. First let me explain. In 2012 I was diagnosed with leukemia, and thanks to a bone marrow transplant I was able to survive and now I'm pretty much safe and healthy. As a reminder of this part of my life I'd like to tattoo myself the date of my transplant (which is Feb 14th 2013), but being a geek I wanted to use the binary format instead of regular DD/MM/YY.

 

Now from what I've seen there are 2 main ways to do that, either consider the date as char and therefore use an ascii to binary conversion, or use the date as a full numer and do a number to binary conversion. From what I could find on the internet the char-binary conversion would give something quite long so I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but the number-binary conversion would give something a little more manageable (140413 converts to 100010010001111101).

 

Do you guys have any other idea or suggestion?

get ascii table. has numbers and / symbol. then get binary easy

[Nashiwa]

13 hours ago, Unimportant said:

If length is your concern, all 3 of those numbers fit in 4 bit nibbles. So you could just use 3 nibbles:

 14   04   13
1110 0100 1101 

 

This looks quite short and elegant. Thanks for the idea!

12 hours ago, Organized said:

I really think this is the best way. Even non-geniusses can translate this into decimal numbers and it's short.

 

Btw, I wish you the best for your health. My brother recently fought cancer (hopefully forever) and it's just a terrifying disease

Thank you very much. I've been in remission for almost 4 years so I should be safe from now on, unless something unexpected happens. I hope your brother is doing well, and send him all my best wishes!