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211 | January 17, 2007 | Hamster Ball Heist | null | First person to bring me Wayne Coyne in a hamster ball gets a free t-shirt! He gets one too. | :[Cueball's Cueball-like friend tells him something.]
:Friend: You know that giant hamster ball you've always wanted? I just found out that Wayne Coyne from the Flaming Lips crowd-surfs in one.
:Cueball: Let's go.
:[Wayne Coyne, with curly hair and full beard, is crowd-surfing inside a giant hamster ball shown rolling... | Wayne Coyne, the lead singer of the band The Flaming Lips, is indeed known to [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v | |
213 | January 22, 2007 | Ghostbusters Marathon | null | If you walk out that door you'll be crossing the Rubicon with me, and that's one stream I'm not ready to cross. | :[Cueball and a friend are in a room. Cueball is standing up. There is litter around them.]
:Cueball: Okay, that's all the Ghostbusters marathon I can handle. Later!
:Friend: You can't leave! We just started the animated series!
:Cueball: I've had my fill. I'm going home.
:Friend: I can't let you do that.
:[Cueball w... | ''Ghostbusters'' is a 1984 supernatural comedy film that spawned a sequel, two The Real Ghostbusters|animated television series (the Extreme Ghostbusters|latter of which lasted less than a season, didn't feature the same cast of titular Ghostbusters, and therefore is probably being pointedly ignored...or maybe left as ... | |
214 | January 24, 2007 | The Problem with Wikipedia | null | 'Taft in a wet t-shirt contest' is the key image here. | :[Heading above the chart:]
:The PROBLEM with WIKIPEDIA:
:[Text in a frame below the heading:]
:Tacoma Narrows Bridge
:[Lines lead down both left and right to two new frames with the following entries:]
:Suspension bridge
:Structural collapse
:[Two more lines lead down from the left frame and one from the right fr... | This | |
215 | January 26, 2007 | Letting Go | null | At least I never gave her the root password. | :[Cueball is holding a picture of himself and Megan in a heart; it has been ripped down the middle, separating the two people.]
:[Cueball sits at computer, looking at the picture.]
:[The panel has been inverted. Cueball still sits at the computer with the picture in front of him and his head drooped.]
:[Cueball type... | In fiction, a character who has had a romantic relationship end will be shown taking some act to remove a sign of their partner's presence in their life, e.g. removing/selling a wedding or engagement ring, removing the partner's toiletries from the bathroom, or deleting the partner's phone number from a cell phone. Thi... | |
216 | January 29, 2007 | Romantic Drama Equation | null | Real-life prospective-pairing curves over things like age can get depressing. | :TV Romantic Drama Equation (Derived during a series of 'Queer as Folk' episodes)
:[A table shows equations for possible romantic pairings in a TV show. The equation under "gay" is n(n-1) 2+x(x-n); the equation under "straight" is x(n-x).]
:x: Number of male (or female) cast members.
:n: total number of cast members.
... | In a group of n people, such as the cast of a TV romantic drama like Queer as Folk (U.S. TV series)|Queer as Folk, the number of possible different pairs of people is n(n-1)/2. A romantic drama will often consider, over time, many possible romantic pairs of its cast members, even seeming to test the limit of how many p... | |
217 | January 31, 2007 | e to the pi Minus pi | null | Also, I hear the 4th root of (9^2 + 19^2/22) is pi. | :Cueball: Hey, check it out: e<sup>π</sup> − π is 19.999099979. That's weird.
:Black Hat: Yeah. That's how I got kicked out of the ACM in college.
:Cueball: ...what?
:Black Hat: During a competition, I told the programmers on our team that e<sup>π</sup> − π was a standard test of floating-point handlers -- it would com... | e (number)|e is a mathematical constant roughly equal to 2.71828182846. pi|π is another, roughly equal to 3.14159265359.
The first panel discusses Gelfond's constant|e<sup>π</sup> − π, which is around 19.999099979 — very close to 20. Black Hat explains how he tricked a programming team into believing that e<sup>π</su... | |
219 | February 5, 2007 | Blanket Fort | null | Also, we have a fort out in the woods where we stashed that hooker's body. | :[Megan and Ponytail are talking with each other. There is a fort made of cushions and blankets on the left.]
:Megan: Like my fort? It uses every blanket and cushion in the apartment.
:Ponytail: Okay, no offense, but this is like that ball pit you made -- Cute, but don't you worry you're clinging to childhood games be... | In an apparent continuation of comic 150: Grownups, Megan is showing off a blanket fort to her friend Ponytail. Ponytail answers that Megan's childishness stems from a fear of growing up.
Megan responds that she's fine with growing up. She sees her behavior as a mature realization that some of the things she enjoyed ... | |
220 | February 7, 2007 | Philosophy | null | It's like the squirt bottle we use with the cat. | :[Megan sits on a chair for two panels without moving.]
:[In the third panel, Megan has still not moved but makes the following comment to no one in particular.]
:Megan: If the question of what it all means doesn't mean anything, why do I keep coming back to it?
:[Two Cueball-like friends of Megan are talking to eac... | In all of philosophy, perhaps the most important questions consider the meaning of life and can be expressed as "Why are we here?" or "What does it all mean?" Many philosophers and Theology|theologians have attempted to answer the question over the course of human history, and every religion claims to have some sort of... | |
221 | February 9, 2007 | Random Number | null | <nowiki>RFC 1149.5</nowiki> specifies 4 as the standard IEEE-vetted random number. | [A computer program.]
int getRandomNumber()
{
return 4; // chosen by fair dice roll.
// guaranteed to be random.
} | The comic specifies a function (in a C (programming language)|C similar syntax), which judging by its name should be designed to return a random number. Most functions of this form are random number ''generators'', meaning that on subsequent calls they return ''different'' random numbers. But the programmer has instead... | |
222 | February 12, 2007 | Small Talk | null | But surely I owe you an accurate answer! | :[Two Cueballs standing next to each other]:
:[Header box on top of the panel:]
:Sometimes I forget how to do small talk.
:Friend: Hey!
:Cueball: Hey, man!
:Friend: What's up? How've you been?
:Cueball: Well...
:[Three overlapping identical frames of the two Cueballs standing next to each other indicate the passage o... | Cueball is approached by his friend who offers one of the standard greetings of, "What's Up? How've you been?" In standard "small talk," an appropriate answer would be only one or two words (e.g. "Fine" or "Pretty good"). These are generally positive responses, with negative ones only offered in extreme circumstances. ... | |
224 | February 16, 2007 | Lisp | null | We lost the documentation on quantum mechanics. You'll have to decode the regexes yourself. | :[Floating in space.]
:Speaker: Last night I drifted off while reading a Lisp book.
:Cueball: Huh?
:Speaker: Suddenly, I was bathed in a suffusion of blue.
:[Floating in space before a vast concept tree.]
:Speaker: At once, just like they said, I felt a great enlightenment. I saw the naked structure of Lisp code unfol... | Lisp (programming language)|Lisp is a computer programming language with simple, highly regular syntax. The language's most notable feature is that programs take the same form as the language's primary data structure (the linked list). This blurs the line between code and data and permits programs to inspect and even a... | |
225 | February 19, 2007 | Open Source | null | Later we'll dress up like Big Oil thugs and jump Ralph Nader. | :[The first panel has the second panel inside it. It also has a slightly light gray background color. Just above the inlaid second panel is Richard Stallman lying in his bed sleeping, the bottom part at the foot of the bed hidden behind the second panel below. Below his bed under his head lies a katana sword in its she... | Richard Stallman, or ''rms'' after his handle, is an old-school hacker known for establishing the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and initiating the GNU Project in the early 1980s, which produced major portions of what would later be the Linux|GNU/Linux<ref>https://itsfoss.com/gnu-linux-copypasta/</ref> operating system... | |
226 | February 21, 2007 | Swingset | null | Someone bring me a pocket fan so I can drift around the yard. | :[Woman talking to Cueball on swing-set.]
:Woman: You know, at the peak of a big swing, you become weightless.
:[Thought bubble from Cueball.]
:[Cueball swings higher and higher. At the peak of a big swing, he shoves himself off the swing. Cueball remains hovering in the air.]
:Cueball: Hey guys. Come check this out. | In the opening panel of this comic, Blondie, possibly as Miss Lenhart, sees Cueball sitting on a swing set. She tells him that during his swing, he becomes weightless. Cueball then imagines that at the peak of his swing he is able to become permanently weightless, floating above the ground without any support.
When on... | |
227 | February 23, 2007 | Color Codes | null | It's the TMBG Dial-a-Song line, to save you some time. | :[Cueball sits hunched over his desk, which is littered with objects. His Cueball-like friend holding his cell phone talks to him.]
:Friend: Hey, what's your cell number?
:Cueball: (Violet Brown Gray)— Uh, I mean, (718)-387-6962.
:Friend: Okay, you are putting down those resistors and going outside for a while.
:Cuebal... | Resistor|Resistors are electronic components carrying color-coded bands indicating their value (measured in Ohm|ohms) and tolerance (e.g. 5%). Cueball has been hunched over his work for so long that, when asked for his phone number (by his Cueball-like friend), he absentmindedly reads out his phone's area code as a seq... | |
228 | February 26, 2007 | Resonance | null | It's really hard to control the frequency, actually. | :[Cueball is sitting at a desk, which is vibrating.]
:''clatter clatter''
:[He leans back and turns to face someone sitting at another desk behind him.]
:Cueball: Excuse me--you're jiggling your leg up and down. It's traveling through the floor and making my desk resonate.
:Friend: Oh, I didn't even realize! I'll stop.... | Resonance is the tendency for an object to oscillate when energy is transferred to it at a specific set of frequencies known as harmonics of the natural frequency of the object. A simple example of this is pushing a child on a swing: by pushing the child at the right moment, more and more energy is transferred to the s... | |
229 | February 28, 2007 | Graffiti | null | FOR AN INTRIGUING TIME CALL | :[Cueball sits on a toilet in a bathroom. The stall sidewall next to him is covered in graffiti: "you suck," "Mike sucks cock," "CUNT," "fuck," "BITCHAS," "dane was here" struck through and "dane is a fag" written under it, a crude pictogram of a penis, and various other unreadable scribbles.]
:[One block of graffiti i... | The humor in this comic comes from the irony of a deep philosophical musing on the nature of individuals sharing a private space in a public place, unknown to one another and separated by time. The graffiti text is juxtaposed with more common bathroom stall scrawlings - insults, slurs, and "[Name] was here."
This comi... | |
230 | March 2, 2007 | Hamiltonian | null | The problem with perspective is that it's bidirectional. | :Lecturer: And therefore, based on the existence of a Hamiltonian path, we can prove that the routing algorithm gives the optimal result in all cases.
:Cueball: Oh my God.
:[Close-up of Cueball.]
:Offscreen: What? What is it?
:Cueball: A sudden rush of perspective. What am I doing here? Life is so much bigger than thi... | Cueball, presumably in class, decides that the subject of Mathematical_optimization|optimizing Routing|routing algorithms is not important in the larger context of life and love. However, he later realizes while in bed with Megan that there is a flaw in the proof presented, and suddenly wants to focus on the mathematic... | |
232 | March 7, 2007 | Chess Enlightenment | null | You know that 'sweep the pieces off the board and see it in your mind' thing? Doesn't work. | :[Cueball and Megan are playing chess; Cueball is leaning forward over the chessboard.]
:Cueball (thinking): Why is chess so hard? Maybe the answers lie within me. Maybe I just need to let go, relax, and let my instincts and subconscious speak.
:[Cueball leans back and places his hands to his head.]
:''Meditate''
:Cu... | In this comic, Cueball finds his game of chess against Megan to be too difficult, and he attempts to tap his subconscious to find his next move. This is a common technique used in more physical competitions like baseball or golf, where overthinking can interfere with one's motion and thus "clearing one's mind" and rely... | |
233 | March 9, 2007 | A New CAPTCHA Approach | null | They'd use that Futurama episode with Fry's dog, but even spambots cry at that. | :To complete your web registration, please prove that you're human:
:When Littlefoot's mother died in the original 'Land Before Time', did you feel sad?
:[radio button.] Yes
:[radio button.] No
:(Bots: no lying) | A CAPTCHA is a verification system to stop automatic submissions to web forms by asking the user to do something a computer program could not do, such as type a distorted word into a box.
But here, the author has a new CAPTCHA, in which it references a sad event in the children's movie, ''The Land Before Time''. It as... | |
234 | March 12, 2007 | Escape Artist | null | Easier to escape: n-layered nested quotes or an iron maiden? | :[Cueball sits before a computer on a desk while another man stands behind him.]
:Man: I was fascinated by locks as a kid. I loved how they turned information and patterns into physical strength.
:Cueball: Why does my script keep dying?
:[Closeup on Cueball sitting at the computer.]
:Man: And a lock invites you to try... | Harry Houdini (born Erik Weisz/Ehrich Weiss) was a famous escape artist, whose more famous routines included escaping straitjackets and switching places with an assistant while locked inside a box.
The word "escape" also has a meaning Escape character|in computer science. To "escape" something in programming means to ... | |
235 | March 14, 2007 | Kite | null | It's easy to regret your awkward conversations but hard to regret the ones you didn't have. | :[Cueball readies a kite.]
:[Cueball starts to fly the kite.]
:[Cueball continues to fly the kite.]
:[Cueball ties the kite string to a tree.]
:[Cueball grabs the string.]
:[Cueball starts to climb the string.]
:[A scene showing Cueball holding onto the string at a high altitude, against a color backdrop of the ground,... | This comic presents, through a surreal scenario, one of Randall's recurring themes: that it is better to 458:_Regrets|take a chance and make an 308:_Interesting_Life|interesting 267: Choices: Part 4|choice.
Cueball flies a kite, then fixes it to a tree and climbs its string. In real life, of course, the string would n... | |
237 | March 19, 2007 | Keyboards are Disgusting | null | Alternate method: convince them to pretend it's an Etch-a-Sketch and try to erase it. | :[Hairy sits at his computer, chatting with another person.]
:Chat: Wanna see an optical illusion?
:Chat: Hold your keyboard up in front of you and look at the home row.
:[Hairy holds the keyboard in front of him.]
:Chat: Now cross your eyes a little so the 'g' and 'h' overlap.
:Chat: Keeping focus, lift the keyboard... | 1031: s/keyboard/leopard/|''Ever cleaned a leopard? They're ''filthy.
This comic refers to the fact that many keyboards, especially desktop keyboards, gather large amounts of crumbs and are rarely cleaned. In the comic, a person (probably Black Hat) tricks an unsuspecting character into lifting his keyboard up so that... | |
239 | March 23, 2007 | Blagofaire | null | Things were better before the Structuring and the Levels. | :Man in Red Cape and Goggles: Hey, it worked!
:Cueball: What? Who are you?
:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: I'm from the distant future.
:Cueball: Wow. Hi!
:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: Are you a blogger? I play one of you at our festivals!
:Cueball: Huh?
:Man in Red Cape and Goggles: Like the Ren faires of your time — I... | Facts become distorted as time moves forward. What do we know about the Elizabethan times? They spoke strange English. What will 400 years from now think of the first twenty years of the Internet? Crazy people said crazy things online. Will we even say "online" 400 years from now? Won't the internet be everywhere, and ... | |
240 | March 26, 2007 | Dream Girl | null | No matter how elaborately you fool yourself. | :[Cueball and a friend are talking.]
:Cueball: I had a dream that I met a girl in a dying world.
:[In the next frame, Cueball's words fill the entire frame.]
:Cueball: It was all coming apart. Hairline cracks in reality widened to yawning chasms. Everything was going dark and light all at once, and there was a sound... | This comic is a commentary on people who dream, daydream, and wish for things to happen, commonly in a romantic context. Cueball dreams of a girl who gives him a time and a place, and the last panel implies that he went to that place at the given time, but did not find the girl. The strip builds up hope and anticipatio... | |
241 | March 28, 2007 | Battle Room | null | Bean actually sabotaged it just to give Dink the excuse to make that joke. | :[A scene is depicted from the Battle Room of the novel Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. The boys are floating in a room with random cubes.]
:Dink: Sorry, Ender — seems like there were some system crashes. The battle's gotta be cut short.
:Ender: The lasers still work.
:Dink: Yeah, but the enemy's gate is down. | The book ''Ender's Game'' by Orson Scott Card is about Ender Wiggin, a boy of extraordinary intelligence, who is recruited to be trained to be one of the commanders of Earth's "Defense" Fleet. The Fleet serves to protect Earth should the aliens known as "Formics|Buggers" invade again. (Future books renamed the Buggers ... | |
242 | March 30, 2007 | The Difference | null | How could you choose avoiding a little pain over understanding a magic lightning machine? | :[All the panels are circular.]
:[Cueball pulls a lever.]
:''Pull''
:[Lightning hits Cueball.]
:''ZAP''
:[Cueball still stands, obviously battered.]
:[An arrow labelled "normal person" points to a panel of Cueball thinking.]
:Cueball (thinking): I guess I shouldn't do that.
:[An arrow labelled "scientist" points t... | Cueball pulls a lever. A bolt of lightning comes down and strikes him.
After being dazed for a moment, the comic then takes one of two routes; the first is that of a normal person, the second that of a scientist.
In Randall's example, the normal person would decide not to pull the lever anymore, because it seems to c... | |
243 | April 2, 2007 | Appropriate Term | null | I know a lot of people hate these, but I prefer them to touchpads. | :[A diagram of a TrackPoint pointer on a keyboard, under which is a continuous line labeled "Tone of Conversation-Formal to Informal." There are four boxes under this line.]
:How to refer to the pointer thing on laptop keyboards:
:Very formal: TrackPoint™-style pointer
:Formal: Nub
:Informal: Nipple mouse
:Very informa... | This is a simple comic offering increasingly NSFW|not-safe-for-work names for a laptop's pointing device. Pointing stick|This stick was an alternative to a mouse, but has largely been supplanted by the touchpad.
"TrackPoint" is the trademarked term used by IBM (and later Lenovo) for the pointing stick implemented on T... | |
244 | April 4, 2007 | Tabletop Roleplaying | null | I may have also tossed one of a pair of teleportation rings into the ocean, with interesting results. | :[Four people sit around a table. Megan has an open gamebook in front of her.]
:Megan: Your party enters the tavern.
:Cueball: I gather everyone around a table. I have the elves start whittling dice and get out some parchment for character sheets.
:Megan: Hey, no recursing. | Four people are playing a role-playing game. Megan is the game master (GM), describing the events of the adventure and what happens. The other people control imaginary characters in the game. Cueball attempts to have his character lead other characters in the imaginary construction of dice and gaming sheets. This would... | |
245 | April 6, 2007 | Floor Tiles | null | The worst part is when sidewalk cracks are out-of-sync with your natural stride. | :[Two characters walk on a floor tiled in black and white.]
:Friend: Why are you walking funny?
:[Second panel consists of Cueball's thought cloud in which he points to an easel mounted diagram of the floor tile pattern.]
:Cueball, thinking: Well, my instinct is to step only on black tiles, but they're too far apart. S... | Cueball is walking according to a certain pattern of floor tiles, which makes sense to him in his head (the same pattern was first introduced in 207: What xkcd Means). But as his friend asks him why he is walking funny, he realizes that the algorithm he is using for walking on floor tiles would be so tedious and time-c... | |
246 | April 9, 2007 | Labyrinth Puzzle | null | And the whole setup is just a trap to capture escaping logicians. None of the doors actually lead out. | :[Three guards with spears stand in front of three doors. Black Hat and Cueball stand in front of the guards.]
:Black Hat: And over here we have the labyrinth guards. One always lies, one always tells the truth, and one stabs people who ask tricky questions. | This comic alludes to a famous Knights and Knaves logic puzzle, and specifically to the version featured in the Jim Henson movie ''Labyrinth (1986 film)|Labyrinth'', with ''two'' doors and ''two'' guards. One guard always lies, and the other always tells the truth. One of the doors leads to freedom, and you can only as... | |
247 | April 11, 2007 | Factoring the Time | null | I occasionally do this with mile markers on the highway. | :[One man is sitting at a computer. Cueball sits at a separate desk. There is a clock that reads 2:53.]
:Cueball: 253 is 11x23
:Man at computer: What?
:Cueball: I'm factoring the time.
:[Zoomed in on Cueball, who explains himself.]
:Cueball: I have nothing to do, so I'm trying to calculate the prime factors of the tim... | In this comic, Cueball is bored, so he is calculating the Prime factor|prime factors of the time shown on the clock. Cueball has been doing this for almost two hours (from 1:00 pm to 2:53 pm). The number 2 is the smallest prime but is not a factor of 253, which is an odd number. The smallest prime factor of 253 is 11, ... | |
248 | April 13, 2007 | Hypotheticals | null | What if someone broke out of a hypothetical situation in your room right now? | :[Cueball is holding up his hand towards Beret Guy, who talks to him. From Beret Guy's head go three bubbles to a big thought bubble, where the next part of the comic takes place.]
:Beret Guy: What if I had some ice cream? Wouldn't that be awesome?
:Cueball: No, stop-
::[The comic continues inside Beret Guy's thought ... | The comic is, in short, a new take on the common comedy trope (literature)|trope in which characters in a thought bubble will sometimes look out of the bubble and talk directly to the person thinking it, another person nearby, or even the viewer. In this comic, however, it features Cueball and Beret Guy in a conversati... | |
249 | April 16, 2007 | Chess Photo | null | We once tried playing blindfold chess on the Aerosmith ride at Disney World. | :[Cueball sits at a desk with glue, chess pieces, and a chessboard, while his Cueball-like friend looks over his shoulder.]
:Friend: What are you doing?
:Cueball: Gluing down chess pieces.
:Friend: Why?
:Cueball: Because there's a picture I've always wanted... I'll need your coat to sneak this onto the ride.
:[A photog... | A roller coaster is a kind of thrill ride where a small train carries people through a number of twists, turns, and hills at a high speed to the occupants' great delight. Such rides are popular at amusement parks, where people have to wait in long lines to get on a ride that can last less than two minutes.
Many amusem... | |
250 | April 18, 2007 | Snopes | null | The MythBusters are even more sinister. | :[Two Cueballs sit at a table across from each other, typing on their laptops.]
:Cueball: Another urban legend? You should check out Snopes before sending me this stuff.
:Friend: Oops; yeah.
:Cueball: Man, Snopes is really great--independent fact-checkers trawling our collective discourse, filtering out misinformation.... | Snopes is a popular website for checking the validity of Urban legend|urban legends. Here, one Cueball asks the other to check before sending him urban legends. Cueball replies with another urban legend saying that Snopes, the website the first Cueball asks him to check, uses spam to keep their audience.
Naturally, i... | |
251 | April 20, 2007 | CD Tray Fight | null | This is silly, of course. The enemy will be born in the network. | :[Cueball is standing, holding a CD tray that is half-in his computer. There are other CDs on the floor.]
:Cueball: Hey. Hey! Stop retracting my CD!
:I feel uncomfortable when my computer physically struggles with me. Sure, I can overpower it <u>now</u>, but it feels like a few short steps from here to the robot war. | This comic refers to the behavior of a Optical disc drive#Loading mechanisms|tray loading optical disc drive of a desktop computer. When the tray is opened and the user is reaching for the disc, a process or task on the computer can, at that exact inopportune time, request that the disc drive close its tray. Alternativ... | |
252 | April 23, 2007 | Escalators | null | The one time I tried, I got hit by a slinky going down at double speed. | :[A graph with y-axis titled "Urge to try running up the down escalator," with "weak" by the bottom and "strong" by the top. The x-axis has every two years labeled and every year signified by a smaller mark, which stops at 24. A red line with "What I was supposed to feel" with points at every line rises, peaks at 7 yea... | This comic shows two simple line graphs on the same chart. One shows society's expectations, the other what Randall actually felt. The visual joke is that the societal expectation graph is treated like an actual down-moving escalator, with people on it.
An escalator is a continuously moving mechanized stairway that tr... | |
253 | April 25, 2007 | Highway Engineer Pranks | null | Prank #11: Boston | :[Each panel depicts a highway intersection.]
:The Inescapable Cloverleaf:
:[Roads lead onto the rings for each leaf, but then are trapped in the circles. Minor roads also allow travel between the rings.]
:The Zero-Choice Interchange:
:[On- and off-ramps exist, but they lead back to the same lane they disconnected fro... | Some classical but inaccurate Interchange (road)|interchanges are shown. In general, these interchanges are designed to allow the traffic to flow without directly crossing any other traffic stream. But here we can see some different approaches:
*The first design resembles a cloverleaf interchange, but has no way to me... | |
254 | April 27, 2007 | Comic Fragment | null | No one wants an explanation more than us. Except Ms. Garofalo. | :Editor's note: Mr. Munroe has been missing for several days. We have recieved no submissions from him for some time, but we found this single panel on his desk in a folder labeled 'MY BEST IDEA EVER'. It is clearly part of a work in progress, but we have decided to post it in lieu of a complete comic.
:[Single panel i... | In this comic, Randall Munroe|Randall has gone missing from the office, and his 'editors' have found only this panel from an unfinished project (of which he has labeled 'best idea ever'). The panel depicts an amalgam of science fiction disasters.
* A crippled space station falling from orbit.
* An exploding volcano.
*... | |
255 | April 30, 2007 | Subjectivity | null | Or maybe the slide is like Aslan, and gets taller as I do (except without the feeling of discomfort when I reach my teens and suddenly get the Christ stuff) | :[A tall slide, seen from the ground.]
:When I was a kid, my school playground had a really tall slide that always made me nervous.
:[A tall slide, seen from the side.]
:We moved away, but the slide stuck in my memory, becoming a skyscraping monster.
:[A car and a sign pointing to school zone.]
:Years later, I was pa... | It is a common trope that as a child, objects that an adult would consider small seem large and imposing. Cueball initially seems to have undergone something similar, as he describes a slide from his playground in a manner typical of such an experience. Instead, however, he finds that his initial perception was correct... | |
256 | May 2, 2007 | Online Communities | null | I'm waiting for the day when, if you tell someone 'I'm from the internet', instead of laughing they just ask 'oh, what part?' | :[Hand-drawn fantasy style map with land and sea areas representing populations of online communities. Each area or item is labeled.]
:Map of Online Communities and related points of interest
:Geographic area represents estimated size of membership
:[Land Area Labels:]
:The Icy North (Yahoo, Windows Live),
:AOL,
::Cha... | This is Randall's first map of online communities, with a successor (showing some zoomed-in highlights of the map) at 802: Online Communities 2. As Randall says on the map, the area of each "country" is roughly proportional to its membership, at least in 2007. Geographic location means a bit more, however, as the '''Co... | |
257 | May 4, 2007 | Code Talkers | null | As far as I can tell, Navajo doesn't have a common word for 'zero'. do-neh-lini means 'neutral'. | :[A man is looking at a computer monitor and speaking into a microphone.]
:Code talker: A'la'ih, do'neh'lini,
:do'neh'lini, a'la'ih,
:a'la'ih, do'neh'lini,
:do'neh'lini, do'neh'lini,
:a'la'ih, a'la'ih,
:do'neh'lini, a'la'ih,
:do'neh'lini,do'neh'lini,
:do'neh'lini...
:[Two men are talking nearby.]
:Cueball: For added se... | Code talkers are people who communicate using their native language not known by the enemies. The most well-known code talkers were the Navajo language|Navajo-speaking Marines serving during World War II.
This comic shows a Navajo people|Navajo code talker transmitting an encrypted binary file by speaking "one" and "z... | |
258 | May 7, 2007 | Conspiracy Theories | null | There are a lot of graduate-educated young-earth creationists. | :Hairy: The official story of 9-11 is full of holes. Take the—
:Cueball: Please, stop, because seeing this happen to you breaks my heart.
:Cueball: Conspiracy theories represent a known glitch in human reasoning. The theories are of course occasionally true, but their truth is completely uncorrelated with the believer... | ||
259 | May 9, 2007 | Clichéd Exchanges | null | It's like they say, you gotta fight fire with clichés. | :My Hobby:
:Derailing clichéd exchanges by using the wrong replies
:Friend: O RLY?
:Cueball: O RLY? I 'ardly know 'er! | This is another comic in the :Category:My Hobby|My Hobby series. "O RLY?" used to be a popular Internet meme typically used to express sarcastic agreement with or feigned surprise at a statement. The typical response to "O RLY" is usually "YA RLY," "NO WAI," or "SRSLY?" These exchanges are memetic variations of "Oh rea... | |
260 | May 11, 2007 | The Glass Necklace | null | Well, for some value of 'actually work'. | :[There is only one large panel in this comic, but it is still divided up into 19 individual scenes, one following the other, but of very different size and details. In every scene, there is at least one word noted, mainly just stating what Cueball does. The first row has four scenes (1-4), the second row only two (5-6... | The heat from a lightning strike can fuse sand into glass. When this occurs in nature, hollow tubes called fulgurites are formed. Cueball uses this knowledge and a spark of handiness and ingenuity to create an entirely homemade glass necklace for Megan. Here is [http://chemistry.about.com/od/advancedscienceprojects/a/H... | |
261 | May 14, 2007 | Regarding Mussolini | null | Constantly stopping these briefings halfway through is becoming a pain. | :[Three people are standing around a map. One of them is pushing something with a stick.]
:[A messenger arrives.]
:Messenger: General, Italian forces have entered Egypt.
:General: As I expected. This is a foolish move by Mussolini, but like Hitler he will no doubt force his commanders to—
:Messenger: Hey. Godwin's Law.... | Godwin's Law states that all debates on the Internet, given enough time, will devolve into ad hominem attacks in the form of comparisons of one's opponents to Hitler or the Nazis. A common expansion on this law dictates that, when such a comparison is brought up, the debate immediately ends and the person who made the ... | |
262 | May 16, 2007 | IN UR REALITY | null | Hey, at least I ran out of staples. | :[Black Hat is holding a cat and a piece of paper. Cueball has raised his arms. There are three cats with captions stuck to them. One cat may be trying to remove the caption from itself, or toying with it playfully, as it rolls around on its back and makes noises.]
:Black Hat: Oh hi; I'm here from the Internet.
:Cuebal... | The LOLcat meme genre involves pictures of cats in various poses and facial contortions accompanied by deliberately misspelled captions. Black Hat claims to be from the Internet and is thus creating LOLcat memes by literally gluing captions to Cueball's cats.
The title text suggests that Black Hat is using glue only b... | |
263 | May 18, 2007 | Certainty | null | a(b+c)=(ab)+(ac). Politicize that, bitches. | :[A door seen from a hallway, with "Teachers' Lounge" on the glass. Next to the door, a framed "Award" certificate is displayed. Silhouetted through the glass, two teachers can be seen talking.]
:Megan: My students drew me into another political argument.
:Cueball: Eh; it happens.
:Megan: Lately, political debates both... | Megan and Cueball are teachers in this comic, talking about their students and the political discussions with them. Megan expresses concern that political discussions shake her beliefs in what's true, then worries that if she cannot trust herself to determine the truth, she can't trust herself to teach it. Cueball reas... | |
264 | May 21, 2007 | Choices: Part 1 | null | Wait, damn, I think I spotted a new email on the last refresh. | :[Megan sits at a desk, using a computer, refreshing the page.]
:''*Refresh*''
:''Click''
:[She sits back and looks at the monitor.]
:[She refreshes the page on the computer.]
:''*Refresh*''
:''Click''
:[She sits back and looks at the monitor.]
:[Megan leans forward and clicks the mouse.]
:''Click''
:[A hole opens up i... | Megan is sitting at her computer, not waiting for a particular mail, but still refreshing every few seconds. This is an illustration of boredom and pointlessness in life. But suddenly the wall in front of her is opening. She considers running for the door, but curiosity overtakes her. She enters the hole, closes it beh... | |
265 | May 22, 2007 | Choices: Part 2 | null | Maybe someday I'll get to write the Wikipedia article about this place! Wait, damn, original research. | :[Cueball is doing some exercises in a book. The clock on the wall says 12:50.]
:Chapter 15: Special Relativity
:Problem 1:
:Two spacecraft transmit messages to each other while passing at constant velocities of...
:Cueball: ''sigh''
:Meanwhile:
:[Megan in a bubble and a spacecraft are moving towards each other. Each ... | The "Choices" series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday). It explores and marvels at human freedom. This is, however, a little sidetrack from the "Choices" narrative. Cueball is studying special relativity. The speed of light in a vacuum (299,792,458 m/s) is denoted as ''c''. Megan and the spaceship are ... | |
266 | May 23, 2007 | Choices: Part 3 | null | Wait, this is space -- how are you talking to me? And, as an afterthought, what's up with the hole in reality? | :[A white Megan floats in a bubble against a dark blue space backdrop. She is at the top of the bubble. Her thoughts (not connected to her by a speak line) are shown above her in white.]
:Megan (thinking): I should feel scared.
:[She falls from the top of the bubble, the bubble rises, or both.]
:Megan (thinking): But ... | Megan is very unsure about what to think of her situation. Is it a dream? Is she in danger? She should be scared but isn't, and it does not feel like a dream, i.e. it feels real even though she suspects it is a dream. This would usually never be the case. If your dream feels realistic, you do not usually consider that ... | |
267 | May 24, 2007 | Choices: Part 4 | null | Making out with yourself: now an official xkcd theme? Troubling. | :[Megan in a bubble is floating in outer space (on a dark blue background) next to her clone outside the bubble. Megan is simulating sitting down in the middle of the bubble. The clone reaches one arm out toward the bubble. There is no line from the first part of the clone's text to the rest of the text. It is given fr... | This is the existentialistic climax (narrative)|climax of the Choices series. It takes up the recurring xkcd-theme how people tend to be blind towards the staggering amount of possibilities that each day holds, with routine and boredom as a result. (See e.g. 137: Dreams and 706: Freedom.)
The Megan-clone implies that ... | |
268 | May 25, 2007 | Choices: Part 5 | null | I wonder what percentage of not-obviously-busy people on the street would say yes to kite-flying with a stranger. This looks like a job for Science! | :[Megan is walking towards the right of the panel.]
:[Cueball wearing a backpack is walking towards the left of the panel.]
:[They walk past each other.]
:[Megan has a sudden thought, in a drawing without a frame between two panels.]
:[Megan turns, lifts her arm, and calls out to Cueball, who then turn towards her.... | In the final part of :Category:Choices|Choices, Megan is back to real life, and has forgotten about her trip, as afterlife-Megan said. However, she has an Epiphany_(feeling)|epiphany, and in the spirit of what she told her, she talks to the stranger on the street. The stranger is likely Cueball who studied the physics ... | |
269 | May 28, 2007 | TCMP | null | A big obstacle in experimenting with the mind's dream-simulation-engine is holding onto the details as you wake up. With TCMP you can bring back any information you want. | :[Cueball stands with a keyboard next to a bed. The keyboard is connected with a wire to a computer on a desk to the right. He talks to Megan and a Cueball-like friend.]
:Cueball: Hey, help me test the Trans-Consciousness Messaging Protocol.
:Friend: What's that?
:Cueball: I've been training myself to keep my fingers m... | Cueball trained himself to type while asleep, so he could communicate from inside his dreams. He calls this ''Trans-Consciousness Messaging Protocol'', or '''TCMP'''. He succeeds in using this system to send a message from inside his dream, but his friends, Megan and another Cueball, are disappointed when that first me... | |
270 | May 30, 2007 | Merlin | null | I mean, the black-and-white stuff was running backward, but it hardly mattered to the story. | :[Cueball and Megan standing by a train on a platform.]
:Megan: I'm bad at goodbyes. At some level I never think they're for real.
:Cueball: They make me think of T. H. White's Merlin.
:[They are still standing at the edge of the platform, but the train is no longer in the frame.]
:Megan: Oh?
:Cueball: He lived backwa... | Merlin is a wizard who features prominently in various retelling of the legend of King Arthur. ''The Once and Future King'' by author T. H. White is one of the most popular versions of the legend, and in it, Merlin is described as living backwards through time, as Cueball and Megan discuss in this comic (this is also b... | |
271 | June 1, 2007 | Powers of One | null | It's kinda Zen when you think about it, if you don't think too hard. | :Powers of One
:A mind-expanding look at our world
:[A sequence, presumably continuing endlessly in both directions, of identical images of a couple lying on a chequered blanket, with a picnic basket, on grass. Each image has a rule at the bottom giving measurements in meters, with the scale in terms of 1 to a particul... | This is a parody of the short documentary Powers of Ten (film)|"Powers of 10," which can be found [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v | |
272 | June 4, 2007 | Linux User at Best Buy | null | We actually stand around the antivirus displays with the Mac users just waiting for someone to ask. | :Salesman: Interested in updating your antivirus software?
:Cueball: Oh, I wouldn't need any of that.
:[In a spiky speech bubble.]
:Cueball: I run Linux.
:[Cueball does a backflip onto a motorcycle.]
:''Flip''
:[Cueball performs a wheelie on the motorcycle.]
:[Cueball does a hard, donut turn on the motorcycle, kick... | Best Buy is an American chain of electronics and media stores. As with many such big box shops, they only sell pre-bundled software and boxed pre-built hardware, where the computers on offer are either iMac|Macs or Personal computer|other PCs, usually pre-installed with some variant of the Mac OS X or Windows NT operat... | |
273 | June 6, 2007 | Electromagnetic Spectrum | null | Sometimes I try to picture what everything would look like if the whole spectrum were compressed into the visible spectrum. Also sometimes I try to picture your sister naked. | :[Everything is one big panel.]
:The Electromagnetic Spectrum
:These waves travel through the electromagnetic field. They were formerly carried by the aether, which was decommissioned in 1897 due to budget cuts.
:Other waves:
:*Slinky waves [Cueball and Megan hold the ends of a tangled slinky.]
:*Sound waves [There ... | This panel is a play on the Electromagnetic spectrum, showing a large piece of the spectrum and examples of phenomena that absorb or emit light along the spectra. Such spectra are commonly used in physics or astronomy education contexts when discussing the nature of light. This comic extends it to absurd lengths by inc... | |
274 | June 8, 2007 | With Apologies to The Who | null | Trivia: Roger Daltry originally wrote "Don't try an' Digg what we all say" but erased the second "g" when he moved to reddit. | :[Cueball is sitting at a desk with a computer, typing.]
:Monitor: People try to shut us d-d-down
:just 'cause our music gets around
:[Cueball is standing on his chair and typing with his keyboard across his hip.]
:Monitor: Old folks act like total noobs
:get off our net; <u>you</u> block the tubes
:[Cueball is really... | This comic refers to the song "My Generation" by the British rock band The Who, which was released in 1965. The song is about intergenerational conflict and has been regarded as a very decided proclamation of youthful rebellion. Cueball adapts the lyrics to describe his own generation, the Millennials. As people born f... | |
275 | June 11, 2007 | Thoughts | null | And now I might never get to again. | :[Cueball talking with his girlfriend's parents represented by Blondie, holding a hand up in greeting and a larger version of Cueball. Above them there is a caption:]
:When meeting a girlfriend's family, I have to suppress the weirdest thoughts.
:Cueball: Hi!
:Blondie: Hi! It's so nice to finally meet you!
:Cueball: I ... | This comic relates to the situation of getting introduced to the parents of one's girlfriend, which is often felt to be rather awkward. The parents tend to scrutinize and question the aspirant in order to find out if he is a good catch. A particularly delicate issue is the fact that the suitor may have had sexual inter... | |
276 | June 13, 2007 | Fixed Width | null | I wish I knew how to quit this so I wouldn't have to quit you. | :[A man, Rob, is sitting at a computer. The text is an IRC-style transcript of a conversation, in a fixed-width font. He is text-messaging a girl he slept with named Emily; their messages read as follows:]
<pre>
<rob> hi
<emily> hey you
<rob> last night was nice
<emily> the best i've had
<rob> yeah it was AMAZING
<emil... | Fixed width or monospaced font refers to the font used in old teletype terminals and some instant messaging clients (often Courier (typeface)|Courier).
For two text lines to have the same length, it's easier if they are in a monospaced font. For example, the following sentences are the same length in a monospaced font... | |
277 | June 15, 2007 | Long Light | null | You can look at practically any part of anything manmade around you and think "some engineer was frustrated while designing this." It's a little human connection. | :[Cueball in a car, sitting at a red light.]
:Cueball: This light always takes forever. I'd like to smack the idiot who designed this intersection.
:[An engineer steps up onto the hood of Cueball's car.]
:Engineer: Hi.
:Cueball: Who the hell are you?
:Engineer: I designed this intersection.
:Engineer [arms spread outwa... | This strip depicts a common experience to most people - becoming frustrated with a device, system, or rule that appears to be badly made or have no purpose other than to frustrate the user (in this case, a traffic light that seems unreasonably, inexplicably long). One temptation we might have in these cases is to blame... | |
278 | June 18, 2007 | Black Hat Support | null | So as not to leave you hanging -- it was a problem with select() calls. | :[Black Hat is sitting at his computer, wearing a phone headset.]
:Black Hat: Thank you for calling the Black Hat Support Line, your first source for Linux support. How may I assist?
:Phone: Hi. I'm running an Apache server, and the load keeps climbing out of control.
:Black Hat: Okay. First, click on the Start Menu.
:... | This strip portrays Black Hat providing support for Linux, but in fact he provides only annoying and unhelpful advice just for his own personal amusement.
The support line is clearly for Linux, as stated in the introduction, and the client on the phone clearly has a Linux problem. However, Black Hat is intentionally g... | |
279 | June 20, 2007 | Pickup Lines | null | That shirt looks good on you, but it would look even better stuffed onto the neck of a vodka bottle and flung burning through our office building's window. Let's fucking do it and never look back. | :[A bar. Beret Guy is the bartender, holding a can or mug. On the counter are a bottle and two mugs. In front of the counter are four barstools. Megan is to the left of the second barstool and Cueball is to the right, talking to her.]
:Cueball: If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put your sister and I together.
:[A... | This comic adds strange twists to some classic abysmally cheesy pickup lines. Warning, terrible puns ahead:
*"If I could rearrange the alphabet, I'd put U and I together."
:Cueball is making a "your sister" joke. A different variation of this line is featured in 1069: Alphabet, and another "your sister" joke is made i... | |
280 | June 22, 2007 | Librarians | null | Don't expect any leniencies on late fees, though. | :[Caption at the top:]
:Advantages to dating librarians.
:[Megan and Cueball are standing together; Cueball is reaching inside a paper bag:]
:Megan: We're stopping in Baltimore to visit my family, and that's final.
:Cueball: Oh yeah?
:[Cueball is upright and is holding a book.]
:Cueball: Hey, look, it's a new hardbac... | Cueball is pressing on Megan for stopping her idea to visit her family. While Megan is fully convinced that this visit will happen, Cueball takes advantage of her love of books. He starts to open up a brand-new hardcover book much farther than it was made to open, ruining the spine, and then mistreats it some more. Meg... | |
281 | June 25, 2007 | Online Package Tracking | null | I don't even *want* this package! Why did I join the stinging insect of the month club, anyway? | :Online Package Tracking:
:<u>Pros:</u> Convenient, Useful
:<u>Cons:</u> Makes you crazy
:[Megan is sitting at a computer.]
:<nowiki>*refresh*</nowiki>
:Megan: Aww, still in Memphis.
:<nowiki>*refresh*</nowiki>
:Megan: Aww, still in Memphis.
:<nowiki>*refresh*</nowiki>
:Megan: Aww, still in Memphis. | Randall notes that package tracking, as provided by many shipping companies like United Parcel Service|UPS and FedEx Express, is helpful, as customers can see the status of their package delivery, and most people are very excited in the expectation of a package as shown in 576: Packages. However, Megan refreshes the pa... | |
282 | June 27, 2007 | Organic Fuel | null | I have nothing to apologize for. | :[Cueball at a computer and a friend standing nearby.]
:Cueball: Wow – Engines can burn vegetable oil.
:Friend: Well, sure. You can burn most any organic matter. Corns, leaves, spices...
:Cueball: Spices? Really?
:Friend: Sure – Mussolini made the trains run on thyme.
:Cueball: ...
:Cueball: We are no longer friends. | Cueball is fascinated about engines that can burn organic matter. But in fact, biofuel is a big industry today. It is criticized now and then, because it can affect food prices and is believed to exacerbate world hunger. Next comes a reference to the famous quote, "Mussolini made the trains run on time," an oft-quoted ... | |
283 | June 29, 2007 | Projection | null | Out in a field, not another car for miles, silence but for the rain drumming on the sunroof, warm thick folds of the blanket hiding wordless fingertip games... | :[Cueball and Megan are seated on a couch, watching TV.]
:Megan: Argh, movie pet peeve- Someone sitting at a computer in the dark with the screen projected on their face. Monitors don't work like that!
:[Cueball and Megan face each other on the couch.]
:Cueball: Right - that only happens if you're in the way of a proj... | Cueball and Megan are watching a movie on a couch. During the movie, a scene features a character's face with legible text projected by the monitor. Though commonly depicted for dramatic effect, this phenomenon does not actually occur with conventional monitor technology. Megan is annoyed and agitated by the inaccuracy... | |
284 | July 2, 2007 | Tape Measure | null | This sequence was later reproduced in the International Tape-Extending Federation archives, retitled 'The Founding of the Sport'. | :[Cueball finds a tape measure.]
:Cueball: Hey, a tape measure.
:[Cueball extends the tape measure.]
:''extend extend''
:[The tape measure falls.]
:''clatter''
:[Cueball tries again.]
:''click''
:''schwoop''
:''extend extend''
:''extend''
:Cueball (thinking): Ooh, eight feet. I wonder if that's a record.
:[Cueba... | Cueball acts childishly, finding a tape measure and then playing with it. He then extends it to 8 feet (approx. 2.5 meters), wondering whether or not that was a record, which makes him imagine a sport where extending the tape measure as far as possible was the goal.
Tape measure strips, of the 'spring metal' kind are... | |
285 | July 4, 2007 | Wikipedian Protester | null | SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION | :[A man with dark flat hair is standing at a podium. He is speaking to a crowd while standing behind a lectern. The lectern has a microphone on the top and sports an American flag in color on the side. He holds an arm on the lectern and the other arm is held up in front of him with a finger pointing upwards. There are ... | Cueball holds up a sign reading "[<font color | |
286 | July 6, 2007 | All Your Base | null | The AYB retro-return-date (Zero Wing Zero Hour) should be around AD 2021. | :[A section of a Linux terminal window is shown. Text from window:]
~ /$ ls /
ayb boot etc lib ...
bin dev home mnt ...
~/ $ ls /ayb/
allyourbase_original.swf al...
allyourbase_remix.swf ...
allyourbase_remix2.swf b ...
ayb_acapella.mp3 ze...
ayb_images ze...
a... | The comic refers to a popular internet phenomenon (internet meme|meme) called "all your base are belong to us." This catchphrase originated from the arcade shooter game "Zero Wing" and is a popular example of a Engrish|poor translation into the English language. The phrase was popularized throughout the Internet and re... | |
287 | July 9, 2007 | NP-Complete | null | General solutions get you a 50% tip. | :My Hobby:
:Embedding NP-Complete problems in restaurant orders
:[A menu is shown.]
:'''Chotchkies Restaurant'''
:Appetizers
::Mixed Fruit 2.15
::French Fries 2.75
::Side Salad 3.35
::Hot Wings 3.55
::Mozzarella Sticks 4.20
::Sampler Plate 5.80
:Sandwiches
::Barbecue 6.55
:[Megan, another person, and Cueball are sittin... | Another entry in the :Category:My Hobby|My Hobby series. Cueball is embedding NP-complete|NP-complete problems in restaurant orders. Specifically, he is ordering appetizers not by explicitly stating the names, but by the total price of them all. This is a simplified example of the Knapsack problem|knapsack problem. Thi... | |
288 | July 11, 2007 | Elevator | null | Quick, try it with 'LOVE'. | :[Elevator panel, with a Certificate of Inspection and five floor buttons, numbered 1–4. The fifth button is unlabeled.]
:[Cueball thinks.]
:[Cueball writes something on a small piece of paper.]
:''Write Write''
:[Cueball tapes it onto the panel.]
:[Elevator panel, with the same Certificate and buttons, and with the pi... | Cueball is in an elevator, and notices that, beneath the certificate of Elevator Inspection, mandatory in all U.S. elevators at least, there are buttons for Floor 1, 2, 3, and 4, and then a mysterious unlabeled button. Possible logical conclusions he might have made include (1) there is a fifth floor reachable by pushi... | |
289 | July 13, 2007 | Alone | null | Worries assuaged, the numbers become less important than your touches. | :[Megan crawling on bed toward Cueball.]
:Cueball: It's not something you can turn off.
:[Cueball pulling Megan, bedspread, and pillow off of bed onto floor.]
:Cueball: A part of me is always detached. Abstracting, looking at numbers and patterns.
:[Megan on top of Cueball, both under bedspread, on floor. Megan looks t... | Cueball is making love with Megan but, like many highly introverted people, his attention is split between his inner and outer worlds. Part of his mind is counting her touches, and another part is wondering why his brain does these things, automatically and without his wanting it to. This worries him, and he feels guil... | |
290 | July 16, 2007 | Fucking Blue Shells | null | You can evade blue shells in Double Dash, but it is deep magic. | :My Profanity Usage By Cause:
:[A pie chart is shown.]
:[Injury is about 2.5% of pie chart.]
:[Irony is about 2.5% of pie chart.]
:[Misc is about 2.5% of pie chart.]
:[Segfaults is about 10% of pie chart.]
:[Mario Kart is about 82.5% of pie chart.] | Sometimes, something suddenly goes wrong, and you can only shout obscenities at it. For instance, when the dog bites, when the bee stings, something unexpected happens, or a program crashes (e.g. a Segmentation fault|segfault), the victim often reacts by swearing.
For Randall, however, profanities are caused mostly by... | |
291 | July 18, 2007 | Dignified | null | 'I don't know, why is your beret staying on your head?' 'Staples.' | :[Beret Guy swinging upside-down from a tree branch talking to White Hat walking by.]
:Beret Guy: You were once shoved headfirst through someone's vagina. Why are you acting so dignified? | Beret Guy is hanging upside down in a tree, usually something you might have done in your childhood. As an adult, it is not considered very dignified. Most likely, White Hat made a comment on this and the fact that Beret Guy has his head down. But then, Beret Guy gives him an answer, regarding where White Hat's head on... | |
292 | July 20, 2007 | goto | null | Neal Stephenson thinks it's cute to name his labels 'dengo' | :[Sideways view of Cueball sitting at computer, thinking.]
:Cueball: I could restructure the program's flow
:Cueball: or use one little 'GOTO' instead.
:[Cueball starts typing.]
:Cueball: Eh, screw good practice. How bad can it be?
:Text on computer: <tt>goto main_sub3;</tt>
:<nowiki>*Compile*</nowiki>
:[We now have... | ''Goto'' is a construct found in many computer languages that causes control flow to go from one place in a program to another, without returning. Once common in computer programming, its popularity diminished in the 1960s and 1970s as focus on structured programming became the norm. Edsger W. Dijkstra's article [https... | |
293 | July 23, 2007 | RTFM | null | Life is too short for man pages, and occasionally much too short without them. | :[Cueball with a knife sticking out of his heavily bleeding face stands in front of a toaster on a counter, which has an arm extending from the top of it. He is holding a telephone to his ear.]
:Cueball: Hello, 911? I just tried to toast some bread, and the toaster grew an arm and stabbed me in the face!
:911: Did you ... | The title RTFM is an acronym for "RTFM|read the fucking manual," which frustrated software manufacturers tell users when confronted with a simple question (most likely answered in the manual).
However, Cueball encounters a similar situation with a 911 call (the emergency number in the US), in which the first question ... | |
296 | July 30, 2007 | Tony Hawk | null | Bad idea #271: Dropping into the half-pipe on a Segway. | :My Hobby:
:Doing skateboard tricks in ''Tony Hawk'' while also doing them in real life.
:[Cueball moves towards a quarter pipe on his skateboard while manipulating his PSP.]
:''Beep''
:''Click''
:''Beep''
:[Cueball is in mid air having performed a Frontside 360°, both literally and on the PSP.]
:''♪ Frontside 360°! ♫... | Cueball is seen using a hand-held game system, while on a skateboard. He is playing one of the many ''Tony Hawk's (series)|Tony Hawk'' titles in which you control a skater and perform tricks to gain points and achievements. While playing the game, he wants to simultaneously perform the trick in real life, both because ... | |
297 | August 1, 2007 | Lisp Cycles | null | I've just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the MIT computer science program permanently. | :[Cueball is sitting at a computer, and Megan is standing behind the desk.]
:Cueball: Lisp is over half a century old and it still has this perfect, timeless air about it.
:Cueball: I wonder if the cycles will continue forever. A few coders from each new generation rediscovering the Lisp arts.
:[Man in Jedi robes carr... | {{W|Lisp (programming language)|Lisp}} is one of the oldest {{W|High-level programming language|high level programming languages}}. Despite being significantly ahead of its time, it never got enough traction outside of academia, and has never been widely used. However, it is considered to be a very powerful language ev... | |
298 | August 3, 2007 | Tesla Coil | null | For scientists, this can be the hardest thing about dreams. | :[Cueball and Black Hat stand near a tesla coil mounted on a table.]
:Cueball: I finally finished my Tesla Coil!
:[The room is dark; the characters appear as faint blue outlines on black background. Cueball turns on the Tesla Coil and it sparks white static electricity.]
:''click''
:Black Hat: Cool, but—
:[Lightning ... | Cueball diligently creates a Tesla coil, a device that produces high voltage alternating currents.
After that show by Cueball, Black Hat magically shoots electricity from his fingertips. When Cueball asks how he did that, he says that science doesn't really work, then hovers in mid-air, further proving his point. The... | |
299 | August 6, 2007 | Aeris Dies | null | It's bad enough that all the families in your Sims are just you and Maggie recreated over and over. | :[Two men are talking. The second man is sitting on the ground, hugging his knees to his chest.]
:Cueball: Maggie's gone. You can't bring her back.
:Friend: But I have to, she's a part of my life.
:Cueball: *sigh*
:Cueball: Okay, let me put this in your terms.
:Cueball: Remember when Aeris died in FFVII? It was sad, bu... | From the looks of this comic, there is a friend here who had a loved one (named 'Maggie') who died. Maggie is likely a spouse or girlfriend, but could also be a mother or another significant relation. Cueball tries to help him by comparing his plight to a significant plot point in the popular game ''Final Fantasy VII''... | |
300 | August 8, 2007 | Facebook | null | 'Here, I'll put my number in your cell pho -- wait, why is it already here?' | :Mildly sleazy uses of Facebook, part 14:
:Looking up someone's profile before introducing yourself so you know which of your favorite bands to mention
:Cueball: Favorite bands? Hmm...
:Cueball: Maybe Regina Spektor or the Polyphonic Spree.
:Megan: Whoa, those are two of my favorites, too!
:Megan: Clearly, we should ha... | This comic approaches how Social networks have changed the ways of human interaction. With everyone placing their personal interests on their Facebook profile pages, it has become fairly easy to gather a lot of information about people. In the comic, Cueball uses this information to his advantage: He ascertained Megan|... | |
301 | August 10, 2007 | Limerick | null | Fun game: try to post a YouTube comment so stupid that people realize you must be joking. (Hint: this is impossible) | :[Cueball sits at a computer, typing.]
:Cueball (typing): I used to find slashdot delightful,
:Cueball (typing): but my feelings of late are more spiteful;
:Cueball (typing): my comments sarcastic
:Cueball (typing): the iconoclastic
:Cueball (typing): keep modding to plus five (Insightful). | A limerick (poetry)|limerick is a well-known type of poem that is usually humorous or bawdy. Technically, a limerick is primarily [http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/meter.html anapestic trimeter]: each line contains three "feet," each foot consisting of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable. ... | |
303 | August 15, 2007 | Compiling | null | 'Are you stealing those LCDs?' 'Yeah, but I'm doing it while my code compiles.' | :The #1 Programmer Excuse for Legitimately Slacking Off: "My code's compiling."
:[Two programmers are sword-fighting on office chairs in a hallway. An unseen manager calls them back to work through an open office door.]
:Manager: Hey! Get back to work!
:Cueball: Compiling!
:Manager: Oh. Carry on. | Computer programming involves writing instructions for a computer to follow, in a specific programming language, which is largely human readable and writable, at least to programmers who understand that language. However, for the computers to follow instructions, they need to be given machine code — the actual "langua... | |
304 | August 17, 2007 | Nighttime Stories | null | Cue angry letters from all seven fans of Xenocide. | :[Cueball sitting in an armchair in a darkened room, with a bookshelf and an open window. Megan is seen outside reading a book by a glow.]
:For a few weeks now, sometime past midnight, a girl has wandered past my apartment reading by flashlight.
:[Outside, Megan walking down the street passing under a street lamp.]
:I... | Cueball observes Megan walking around at midnight, reading a book that he can't see. Curious, he leaves his apartment to ask her what she is reading. It is revealed as Orson Scott Card's ''Xenocide'', the third book in the Ender's Game series following ''Ender's Game'' and ''Speaker for the Dead'' (and since followed b... | |
306 | August 22, 2007 | Orphaned Projects | null | His date works for Red Hat, who hired a coach for her, too. She advised her to 'rent lots of movies like Hitch. Guys love those.' | :[Voices are coming from behind a door with a sign that reads "Debian Linux HQ."]
:First voice: Problem: One of the volunteer developers has a date this weekend. Dates lead to romance. Romance leads to orphaned projects.
:Second voice: What's the plan?
:First voice: We're hiring him a relationship coach. He's like Wil... | Debian is a GNU/Linux distribution (but also ships GNU Hurd and BSD versions). Red Hat is the company behind Fedora Linux and RHEL.
The comic is about orphaned Linux projects, because volunteer FOSS developers will often leave their projects aside whenever something of greater importance to them requires more time (li... | |
308 | August 27, 2007 | Interesting Life | null | Quick, fashion a climbing harness out of a cat-6 cable and follow me down. | :[On the left hand side of the panel is a cutaway of several floors of an office, in gray. On the right side, a blue sky with clouds, and green hills below. Hanging from a cable is Megan, clearly having rappelled down the side of the building, next to a Cueball at his desk, who is looking at Megan.]
:Megan: You know h... | 'May you live in interesting times' (or, in this comic, 'may you have an interesting life') is supposedly a Chinese saying, except that a few people (usually the worst-case-scenario kind) believe it to actually be a curse, even though it is usually meant in a good way when said. The quote also provides the title of the... | |
309 | August 29, 2007 | Shopping Teams | null | I am never going out to buy an air conditioner with my sysadmin again. | :[Three teams are looking at a counter with two cubes on it. Above it all is written in very large letters:]
:<big><big>Shopping teams</big></big>
:[Above the first team consisting of two Cueball-like guys is written the following text (the first line written with larger letters):]
:<big>Bad:</big>
:Two non-nerds
:
:N... | Randall is comparing the ways different people look at choosing between similar products. In the first example, which Randall considers "bad," two "non-nerds" look at two products (without a description of any kind) and instantly decide which one they want. In the second example, which is considered "good," one of the ... | |
310 | August 31, 2007 | Commitment | null | Could be worse. The last guy in that situation fell for one of the transient trumpeting angels. | :[Cueball proposing on his knee holding a box with a ring in it up to a girl with long blond hair. The text is written above them in a frame with yellow background.]
:I understand now. There's no choir of angels when you meet the right person. It's about growing out of your fears to realize what you have is what you wa... | In the first panel, Cueball proposes to a woman. While he does this, a narrator (most likely the man's inner voice) explains why he wants to marry her. It's implied that he had doubts about their relationship. He'd never experienced a moment of overwhelming love and certainty, especially when they met, which he describ... | |
311 | September 3, 2007 | Action Movies | null | By my count, only 48 of the 158 minutes in Live Free or Die Hard have action. That's pathetic, guys. Crank is better, but needs a bigger budget and more Summer Glau. | :[Cueball and Megan are talking together as they walk away from a cinema.]
:Cueball: Another summer gone without a mindless big-budget action movie.
:Megan: Huh? ''Die Hard'' was nothing <u>but</u> action!
:Cueball: No, it was too talky.
:Megan: What? Too <u>talky</u>?
:Cueball: I tallied it minute-by-minute. It's at ... | A common complaint about Action film|action films is that they are light on plot and heavy on pointless violence and special effects. The ''Die Hard (film series)|Die Hard'' series (including ''Live Free or Die Hard'') are typical action films about which this complaint has been made. However, Cueball reverses the comp... | |
312 | September 5, 2007 | With Apologies to Robert Frost | null | Some say the world will end in fire; some say in segfaults. | :[A not-very-realistic view of the universe, in profile. To the left, a sectional view of the Earth, with its Moon and few clouds overhead, and a little Cueball standing, looking up. Extending to the right of the Earth, various stellar objects: some planets, some spaceships, another galaxy. Above them, on an artistical... | This comic presents a poem about a god's dilemma of whether to create the world using Perl or Lisp (programming language)|Lisp, two popular computer programming languages. The god has chosen to write it in Perl, but since then appears to lament the choice, apparently expressing that if given the chance to write the wor... | |
313 | September 7, 2007 | Insomnia | null | Crap, I have levitation class at 25:131. Better set the alarm to 'cinnamon'. | :[It is black, except a few blue and green lights, and red numbers from a clock.]
:[The clock shows 4:31]
:Lying awake at night I realize how many little lights there are in my room. The alarm clock is the brightest. Can't sleep I'm alone with those glowing red numbers
:[The clock now shows 4:32]
:Time slows
:Does time... | Simply put, the narrator's insomnia, combined with small bright lights in an otherwise pitch-black room, is causing him to hallucinate. Furthermore, the narrator is well aware that he will be unable to distinguish the hallucinations from reality. This finally occurs when his clock reads 13:72, which would not be possib... | |
314 | September 10, 2007 | Dating Pools | null | The full analysis is of course much more complicated, but I can't stay to talk about it because I have a date. | :[Megan is sitting on the ground with her elbows on her knees and her hands on her chin.]
:Megan: This sucks. The median first marriage age is 26. The pool of singles is shrinking. I'm running out of time.
:Cueball: Actually, not quite.
:Cueball: Yes, older singles are rarer. But as you get older, the dateable age ran... | File:half-plus-seven.png|right|Half Plus Seven Rule
Megan is upset because she is apparently older than 26, and among people who marry, median|half do so below 26. The intuitive conclusion is that the number of potential partners is decreasing as time goes on.
The [http://onehalfplusseven.com Half Plus Seven Rule] is ... | |
315 | September 12, 2007 | Braille | null | The only big difference I've seen is in colors. Where the regular text reads 'press red button', the braille reads 'press two-inch button'. | :I learned to read braille a while back, and I've noticed that the messages on signs don't always match the regular text.
:[A sign reads "Third Floor Office" with braille print underneath. Cueball is reading the braille.]
:Cueball (thinking): s-i-g-h-t-e-d-p-e-o-p-l-e-s-u-c-k ... Hey! | Braille is a writing system for the blind and Visual impairment|visually impaired using bumps on a paper, slate, etc. However, since most sighted people have no need for braille, and because braille messages may need to convey purely-visual information to blind people, the braille message may be adjusted from the origi... | |
316 | September 14, 2007 | Loud Sex | null | Spherical or parabolic reflectors would of course lead to aberrant behavior. | :My neighbor has loud sex.
:[Cueball in bed, covering his head with a pillow. There is sound coming from outside.]
:''OHHHHH''
:''GASP''
:''AAAAAAA''
:Good for her and all, but it keeps me up at night.
:And she's so smug about it.
:[Cueball and neighbor coming out of their apartments.]
:Neighbor: Sorry, could you hear... | Cueball's neighbor likes to engage in loud sex, which keeps Cueball awake at night, and she pretends to apologize for it as a way of bragging, so Cueball wants to get revenge. A simple way would be to inflict the same to her in retaliation by having loud sex when she is not. But Cueball adds a science nerd's touch to i... | |
318 | September 19, 2007 | Nostalgia | null | If you don't get this one, don't Google it. | :[Cueball and Megan, both wearing headsets with antennae, sunglasses, and jetpacks, are hovering.]
:Cueball: Darling, let's put on our best fake accounts, connect to the core ForumSpace, and trick people into looking at a picture of a man's distended anus!
:Megan: Oh, it'll be just like old times! | Cueball and Megan refer to the practice of tricking people to see shock sites using bait-and-switch pranks. A shock site is a website that is intended to be offensive, disgusting, and/or disturbing to its viewers, containing materials of high shock value that is also considered distasteful and crude, and is generally o... | |
319 | September 21, 2007 | Engineering Hubris | null | Chuck Jones is a vengeful god. | :[This comic is illustrated in color. Landscape in the background, canyon with a winding road.]
:Maybe engineering is the pursuit of an unattainable perfection.
:Maybe it's impossible to create something bug-free.
:Maybe I'm a fool
:Maybe the tyranny of Murphy is the penalty for hubris.
:But I just can't shake the fe... | This comic starts with a philosophical musing about engineering. The last panel reveals a joke about Wile E. Coyote and The Road Runner, a cartoon series created by Chuck Jones. In the cartoon, the Coyote is constantly building odd contraptions (with parts ordered from the Acme Corporation) to catch the Road Runner. Th... | |
320 | September 24, 2007 | 28-Hour Day | null | Small print: this schedule will eventually drive one stark raving mad. | :[Above the panels of the main comic, there is a ruler-like time line diagram that shows the hours in a week. It has 6 black sections labeled "bed" in white text, at the top and 7 black sections labeled "night" in white text, at the bottom (the first and last sections are split in two as it goes from the end of the wee... | The {{W|Circadian rhythm#Enforced longer or shorter cycles|28-Hour Day}} is a modified sleep schedule proposed to accommodate the discrepancy between the earth's day-night cycle and certain people's preferred sleep schedules. It discards the traditional notion of sleeping at night and replaces it with sleeping when it ... | |
321 | September 26, 2007 | Thighs | null | My thighs have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord? | :[Cueball is singing into a microphone he is holding while Megan sit in her office chair typing on her computer. Musical notes fly around Cueball.]
:Cueball: It's the thigh of the tiger
:[Cueball continues to sing, titling his head upwards.]
:Cueball: When the moon hits your thigh like a big pizza pie, that's amore.
... | In each panel, Cueball sings a verse from a different song where he replaces the word "eye" with the word "thigh." First it is Survivor (band)|Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," then Dean Martin's "That's Amore," and finally Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl."
The comic shows how vastly different each song's meaning becomes... | |
322 | September 28, 2007 | Pix Plz | null | But one of the regulars in the channel is a girl! | :[Black Hat stands in the entrance to a room. The door has been broken down. A surprised Cueball has turned away from his computer to face the remains of the door.]
:Black Hat: Hi. I'm here about the girl who visited your IRC channel last night looking for Java help.
:Cueball: What did you do to my door?
:Black Hat: W... | Though this comic predates it, there is an [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/there-are-no-girls-on-the-internet Internet meme] best stated as "there are no girls on the Internet." It is also known as [http://rules-of-the-internet.urbanup.com/2799580 Rule 16] or [http://rulesoftheinternet.com Rule 30] [http://knowyourmeme.... |
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