The only was I can remember which is port and starboard is by thinking about boarding an airplane. The steps/tunnel are always docked on the 'port' side, just as boats always dock on the port side. The cockpit/bow is always on your left when you board.
Not hidden in the knitting in the sense of the specific stitches (which is also very cool: https://www.popsci.com/story/diy/secret-code-messages-knitti...) but it seems she needed the knitting needle to insert the one-time codes (on a piece of silk) into a shoelace. Amazing story.
One route to understanding how CPUs work is to explore the computers that have been made in cellular automata. Golly (https://golly.sourceforge.net/) has several, including one by John von Neumann, one by Edgar Codd and another by John Devore. The advantage of course is that the physics is trivial and you can see everything that happens and step backwards and forwards.
1. Activity in geostationary orbits.
2. Orbits where the planet's year is exactly divisible by its day, eliminating leap years.