11.11.2011 Nerd New Year Heres How to Turn it Up to

Friday is 11/11/11 — a highly significant date if you believe in the power of numbers. No doubt thousands of us will see the preponderance of ones as a good time to turn over a new leaf — start that new diet or exercise routine, perhaps. There is some logic to this: as a memorable date, it makes it easy to celebrate your profound change of direction in years to come.

Significance of 11/11/11

Based on past calendar dates such as 10/10/10, or October 10, 2010, no significant or unusual phenomenon occurs simply because of a date that has the same numbers in a sequence.

The numerical sequence of November 11 holds a special significance in the binary numeral system, which is the base-2 number system that represents numeric values using two symbols, 0 and 1. The date of November 11 has a binary number of 111110 where it has a decimal equivalent of 62 in the year 2010, and a binary number of 111111 with a decimal equivalent of 63 in the year 2011.

The number eleven has a special characteristic in mathematics where it is the sixth prime number. It contains some interesting peculiarities where the number eleven times itself equals a palindrome:

Friday is also Veteran’s Day, of course, and thus imbued with solemn significance. The First World War ground to a halt at 11 a.m. local time on the 11th of November 1918. This, then, will be the first time the world has ever gathered to remember the fallen at a time when every last number on the clock — including the two-digit year — is 11.

But it’s also a date to celebrate, at least for programmers who think in binary code. One group of hackers has dubbed it “Nerd New Year.” They’ll be lining the streets of Redwood City, in the heart of Silicon Valley, for an outdoor hackathon and party, including the countdown to Nerd New Year itself at 11:11 p.m. “It is ON,” organizer Adam Rifkin told Patch. (That’s a binary joke, by the way.)

Meanwhile, the makers of ChannelCaster — a media-sharing app for Android — will be marking the occasion by launching a channel dedicated to the movie This Is Spinal Tap, and screening the film more than 11 times during the day. The startup got its name, OneLouder, from the movie’s classic scene where the fake rock band reveals its amps are able to “turn up to 11.”

Android fans have another reason to celebrate: 11/11/11 marks the release of the highly-anticipated Droid RAZR. Verizon Wireless shops will open at 11:11 a.m. to start selling the device. If you feel like taking a stroll from the phone store to the multiplex, you may be able to catch a screening of Saw director Darren Lynn Bousman’s new horror flick: 11/11/11.