I recommend the book Code by Charles Petzold, but i really don't know how we could get Eiffel your flatmate (yep, i fell for it perrin) to read it. It's full of silly things like learning Braille and Morse Code, exploring number systems and logic, building half and full adders, a nice essay on the 8080 and 6800 microprocessors, ASCII, how RAM works, etc., etc., etc.

This is one of those books you read away from the computer in a casual manner.

jeffa

you know i'll be coding silly stuff ;)