Peter J. Jackson: hevans: The answer to the question of the universe was 42.
The question was later found to be: what do you get when you multiply 6 by 9....
If you consider the multiplication in base 13, then you get 42 (= 54 in base 10, our conventional numbering base).
H.
Well Done Hugh, funnily enough I nearly mentioned that you would be along to correct the "Math's" in my post but didn't want to drag you in. You are quite right, it was 6 x 9 and not 6 x8, it took me most of the afternoon to track it down on youtube, the last time I saw this was when the series was originally transmitted on the BBC, back in the early eighties.
Base 13 eh! It all makes perfect sense now???
Cheers, Peter.
Possibly the saddest part of this whole episode is that I didn't have to look it up...I remembered the numerology from the wholy scriptures...
![Embarrassed [:$]](/emoticons/emotion-10.gif)
And yes, Craig, logs are how one converts between bases, and are fantastically useful. You just have to remember that they're the inverse function of an exponential/power function, i.e.
y = x ^ log_x(y), or y = 10 ^ (log(y)).
Anyway, back to the photos, one from today that I'm quite pleased with:
My Gallery.
flickr gallery