Real World Connections
The inspiration for Hex, which evolves through seemingly unexplainable upgrades like extra cheese, the FTB protocol, a CWL (Clothes Wringer from the Laundry, for crunching numbers and other things), and "small religious pictures" (icons), came from Pratchett's own early experiments with upgrades on his ZX-81.
The name is a play on two meanings of the word "hex": a hex can be a magical spell, and "hex" is slang for hexadecimal, the base 16 system used to simplify the representation of binary numbers and is widely used in the IT world. "hex" ("6" in Greek) also denotes the number of legs ants have.
In 2001, a new Silicon Graphics Origin 2800 supercomputer was installed as part of the University of Leicester's Centre for Mathematical Modelling and, with Pratchett's blessing, named HEX.
Read more about this topic: Hex (Discworld)
Famous quotes containing the words real, world and/or connections:
“The real security of Christianity is to be found in its benevolent morality, in its exquisite adaptation to the human heart, in the facility with which its scheme accommodates itself to the capacity of every human intellect, in the consolation which it bears to the house of mourning, in the light with which it brightens the great mystery of the grave.”
—Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800–1859)
“The world has held great Heroes,
As history books have showed;
But never a name to go down to fame
Compared with that of Toad!”
—Kenneth Grahame (1859–1932)
“I have no connections here; only gusty collisions,
rootless seedlings forced into bloom, that collapse.
...
I am the Visiting Poet: a real unicorn,
a wind-up plush dodo, a wax museum of the Movement.
People want to push the buttons and see me glow.”
—Marge Piercy (b. 1936)