Lab #2: Encoding information in bits and bytes: numbers, text, and images (6 Points)

Record in the weekly progress report all the answers or results you have after accomplishing the following tasks.

Task 1: Binary numbers to Decimal numbers

• Convert each of the following five binary numbers (each as an 8-bit binary string) into corresponding decimal numbers: 01000010, 01101001, 01101111, 01101100, and 01100001.   (See how to convert between binary and decimal numbers.) Determine and record in your report what the corresponding decimal numbers are.

Task 2: Decimal numbers to Binary numbers

Consider 106 and 233 as two decimal numbers. Determine and record in your report what the corresponding 8-bit binary numbers are. (See how to convert between binary and decimal numbers).

Task 3: Numbers to Characters

• Suppose the 5 bytes of information in Task 1 above are stored as a part of a text file to encode 5 characters (i.e. one byte for each character) using the ASCII character set encoding.  Determine and record in your report what the five characters are.

Task 4:  Measuring the size of text files

• Use WordPad or NotePad to create four text files of about 100 characters, 200 characters, 400 characters, and 800 characters respectively and save them as text files ( i.e. .txt files). Record and report the sizes of these files (in terms of bytes). Note that it takes one byte to record a character. Is the number of characters in each file close to the corresponding file size you see? (Yes, or No).

Task 5:  Measuring the sizes of pictures in the BMP file format.

• (i) Press the print screen key on the keyboard to capture the screen as a picture. Open up Microsoft Paint, paste the image into the canvass, and save it as a 24-bit bitmap file ( .BMP file). Check the file size and record it in your report. (ii) On Windows 7 right click on your windows desktop ==> Personalize ==> Screen Resolution (If it is on Windows XP, instead right click on your windows desktop ==> property ==> settings) to get the information regarding the resolution of your screen. What is your screen resolution X x Y? Record it in your report. For example, the resolution is 1400 x 1024 for the instructor’s computer in Lib 141. (iii) Note that if you have a screen resolution of X by Y you have X*Y pixels on the screen in total, the BMP file uses 24 bits (i.e. 3 bytes) to record the color of each pixel, and it will take X*Y*3 bytes in the BMP file to store the information of your screenshot. Also note that 1 MB means 1 million bytes. Record in your progress report whether X*Y*3 is close to the actual BMP file size.

Task 6:  Measuring the speed of the CPU

• Download and unzip this zipped file to get a Windows executable file (Speed.exe) and a C++ program project folder (Speed).  Double click Speed.exe to run the program to get a feeling about how fast the computer can do number crunching. (Optional: If you like, you can also open the Visual C++ project in Speed folder to see the C++ code.) Report in your report how much time does it take for your computer to finish 1,000,000,000 additions.