Hexadecimal Playing Cards
Learning hexadecimal has never been so fun! A game of cards has rarely been so educational!
My association with non decimal cards stems from a marked deck I created around 1990. It was marked in binary. I hadn't done anything else significant with playing cards until I used them as a teaching resource to explain sorting algorithms in 2005. However, only the cards 2-9 are useful, which is a very limited range. Having previously considered the range 0-15, I took the opportunity to design my ideal pack of cards.
I wanted to make playing cards more regular by removing anachronisms such as jacks, queens, kings and high aces. Next, I replaced arbitrary sets of 13 cards with sets of 16 cards. From laziness, I considered designing a metric deck, but this is not compatible with many card games. Finally, I was too lazy to design new symbols for suits, so I used punctuation famailiar to modern programmers. I subsequently found this decision adds to the geek humour.
I spent about seven hours designing this deck. I've given away 12 packs (beta testing?), I've had requests for another three packs and I expect to be making at least the same amount again. From this experience, your friends will either get the joke immedately or not at all.
Images
These images are intended to be printed on 160g/m^2 card. These images are also intended to be printed at approximately 150DPI, one suit per sheet of US Letter or A4 size card, and therefore resulting playing cards will be a travel size deck.
Licence
Feel free to distribute these images and print hexadecimal playing cards for yourself and friends. Feel free to change the message on the box. "Happy Birthday" is a good suggestion. Feel free to charge any fee for verbatim reproduction. However, please contact me for branding and all other changes. Images (C)2005 Dean "Gandalf" Swift and Xirium. Distributed as shareware with a voluntary, suggested donation of 80 cents per pack.
Cheating Tip
If you learn the bit patterns given on the cards then you can transfer this to an efficiently marked pack of cards.
History
Shareware is a typical distribution model for software. It is also used to distribute recipes, table top games and icons. Some board games and rôle playing games are available for download after payment. Furthermore, numerous versions of hexadecimal cards have been devised, with significant variation. However, shareware distribution of hexadecimal pack design is previously unknown.
One pack was airmailed to ThinkGeek and six packs have been distributed at the Mar 2005 London 2600 Meeting and received with great enthusiasm. I am investigating commercial printing and fortunately, this deck has exactly the same number of cards and jokers as a tarot deck (80).
Author
Dean Swift, +44 786 777 4360
