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:
“Society is a masked ball, where every one hides his real character, and reveals it by hiding.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The world goes by my cage and never sees me.”
—Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)
“The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)