yesterdays-xkcd - Tumblr blog

[yesterdays-xkcd]

Never bring tequila to a key-signing party.

Responsible Behavior [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball on the phone.] Voice: Hey, I just got home from the party Cueball: The one with the IRC folks? Voice: Yeah.

Cueball: How was it? Voice: Got too drunk. I screwed up, bad. Cueball: What happened?

Voice: There was a girl. No idea who she was. Don't even know her name. I was too drunk to care. Cueball: And what, you slept with her?

Voice: No. Voice: I signed her public key. Cueball: Shit, man.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

Clearance for this Sign: 11 Feet

Reset [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball stands in front of a doorway looking at a flip-counter sign posted on a wall.] Sign: 38 days since someone reset this sign

[yesterdays-xkcd]

Blade Runner: classic, but incredibly slow.

Blade Runner [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball is on the couch watching the TV. A Friend stands behind him.]

Friend: What DVD is this? Cueball: Blade Runner. I got it for Christmas. Friend: The one with Harrison Ford, right? And the Olsen twins?

Cueball: Ye— What? Olsen twins? No, this is the 80's sci-fi classic! Friend: Huh. I didn't know the Olsen twins even did sci-fi. Cueball: ...They don't.

Friend: So is Ashley the replicant, or is Mary-Kate? I can never tell them apart. Cueball: Neither! They're not in this movie! Friend: Then who is? Cueball: Daryl Hannah!

Friend: I liked her in Full House. Cueball: I hate you. Friend: Man, this movie is just a New York Minute rip-off.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

Family going to bed at 10 PM is so much worse than jet lag.

Christmas Back Home [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[The panel depicts the interior of a house with numerous Christmas decorations. Santa stares at Cueball, who is sitting at his desk with his laptop.] 'Twas the night before Christmas at my family's house. There were no sound of stirring save the click of a mouse. For 'twas just like a childhood Christmas except I'd forgotten the hours that normal folks slept.

Santa: What are you doing out of bed so late? Cueball: Late? It's barely 3AM!

[yesterdays-xkcd]

He's just jealous because everyone's up in the attic listening to Stephen Colbert.

Writers Strike [Explained]

Transcript

[Cueball sits in front of a desk with a computer. Black Hat stands behind him.] Cueball: This writer's strike sucks. Black Hat: Why? You don't watch sitcoms. Cueball: Yeah, but it sucks having political campaigns without Jon Stewart's commentary.

[Cueball is off-panel.] Black Hat: True. I finally got sick of it a couple weeks ago. Cueball: And you quit following the campaigns?

[Black Hat points at a door. Cueball is still off-panel.] Black Hat: No. I kidnapped Jon Stewart to do analysis for me. Cueball: You what? Black Hat: He's locked in the basement.

[Black Hat is shouting at the door. Black Hat: Jon! Obama's leading in Iowa! Gimme a wry, witty comment on the situation! Jon Stewart [Voice coming from door]: Please let me go. I have a family.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

I'm gonna have to add something to the strum bar so it makes a clicky sound like the old controllers. I'm so used to the feedback; the silence throws me off.

Rock Band [Explained]

Transcript

[Three people are playing Rock Band, one on guitar, another on drums, and the last on vocals. Music notes float above them. Cueball with arms crossed is looking at them.] Cueball: You know, playing this doesn't make you cool like a real rock band. Cueball: Guys? Cueball: Didn't you hear me? Cueball: Stop having fun!

[yesterdays-xkcd]

I'm glad this is so much fun because I'm not sure how we're getting down.

Loud Party [Explained]

Transcript

[In a loud party, Megan and Cueball are looking at each other, both thinking of the same scene: they are sitting on opposite branches of a large leafless tree, each with a laptop. There's cloud in the distance and a grass field around the tree.]

[yesterdays-xkcd]

I don't know about houseflies, but we definitely caught a lot of fruit flies with our vinegar bowl. Hooray science!

Flies [Explained]

Transcript

[Cueball is typing on a computer, and his friend is lying on the floor.] "Noob" (on computer): *$@#! Friend: Hey, ease up on the noobs. Like my mom always said, you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

[Cueball has turned his chair around.] Cueball: No, you don't. Friend: You don't? Cueball: Nope, set out a bowl of balsamic and a bowl of honey. The vinegar gets more.

[Cueball's friend is now sitting on the floor.] Friend: ...Seriously? Cueball: You have fruit flies. Try it yourself.

Later: [Cueball's friend is standing in front of a table, talking into a phone. On the table, there are two bowls, and the bowl on the left seems to be surrounded by flies.] Friend: Mother! You lied to me! And it gets worse. I was watching a pot yesterday, and guess what it did? It boiled, mother.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

I first saw this problem on the Google Labs Aptitude Test. A professor and I filled a blackboard without getting anywhere. Have fun.

Nerd Sniping [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Black Hat is sitting on a chair, Cueball is standing next to him. Across the street, another Guy is coming from a building walking towards the pedestrian crossing across from Black Hat.] Black Hat: There's a certain type of brain that's easily disabled. Black Hat: If you show it an interesting problem, it involuntarily drops everything else to work on it.

[The Guy across the street is about to enter a crosswalk, which is seen from right behind Black Hat in his chair, holding onto the sign, which is still pointing down. Cueball is looking on.] Black Hat: This has led me to invent a new sport: Nerd Sniping. Black Hat: See that physicist crossing the road?

[Black Hat lifts up the sign when the physicist is in the middle of the street, halfway across the pedestrian crossing.] Black Hat: Hey!

[A close-up of Black Hat's sign is shown in a frameless panel. There is text above and below an image of a four-by-five grid of nodes with resistors (shown as wiggly lines) between every node and also continuing away from the 16 outer nodes. A total of 5 columns with 5 and 4 rows with 6 resistors for a total of 20 nodes and 49 resistors. Two nodes, a knight's move apart, are marked with red circles in the 3rd row 2nd column and the 2nd row 4th column.] Sign: On this infinite grid of ideal one-ohm resistors, Sign: what's the equivalent resistance between the two marked nodes?

[The Physicist has stopped pondering the questions, a hand to his chin.] Physicist: It's... Hmm. Interesting. Maybe if you start with... No, wait. Hmm... You could—

[In another frameless panel, a ten-wheeled truck is zooming past from the right, apparently going through the spot where the physicist just stood.] Truck: Foooom

[Cueball looks down on Black Hat, who looks back up from his chair at the curb, again holding the sign down. He lifts one hand up while replying.] Cueball: I will have no part in this. Black Hat: C'mon, make a sign. It's fun! Physicists are two points, mathematicians three.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

Facebook defines relationships. 'Yeah, we would have broken up last night, but the net connection was down.'

Couple [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball and Megan in bed.] Cueball: So is this it? Are we a couple now?

Megan: I just don't know. I like this. I just... don't know.

[Silence.]

Cueball: Well will you be my "it's complicated" on Facebook?

[yesterdays-xkcd]

We actually reached the future about three years ago.

Startling [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

Narration: I still do this every few months. [Cueball sits silently in front of his computer.]

[Beat.]

[Beat.]

Cueball: Holy crap, it's the 21st century.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

[yesterdays-xkcd]

I wrote 20 short programs in Python yesterday. It was wonderful. Perl, I'm leaving you.

Python [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[A Friend is talking to Cueball, who is floating in the sky.] Friend: You're flying! How? Cueball: Python!

Cueball: I learned it last night! Everything is so simple! Cueball: Hello world is just print "Hello, World!"

Friend: I dunno... Dynamic typing? Whitespace? Cueball: Come join us! Programming is fun again! It's a whole new world up here! Friend: But how are you flying?

Cueball: I just typed 'import antigravity' Friend: That's it? Cueball: ...I also sampled everything in the medicine cabinet for comparison. Cueball: But I think this is the python.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

Sometimes an impulsive 2:00 AM cross-country trip is the only solution.

Far Away [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Cueball hugging Megan in the messenger window of an early Microsoft Windows version.] Cueball: Meh. Cueball: Some nights, typing "*hug*" just doesn't cut it.

[yesterdays-xkcd]

And I was really impressed with how they managed to shock the Goatse guy.

Trolling [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Black Hat and Cueball are in Rick Astley's yard, hacking into his cable TV connection and replacing the signal. Rick Astley is sitting in a chair in his house, watching TV.] TV: CNN has obtained this exclusive footage of the riot-torn-- *CZZZHT* ♫ Never gonna give you up... ♪ Rick Astley: What the hell?

[Caption below the frame:] GREAT MOMENTS in TROLLING: Rick Astley is successfully Rickrolled

[yesterdays-xkcd]

Viruses so far have been really disappointing on the 'disable the internet' front, and time is running out. When Linux/Mac win in a decade or so the game will be over.

Network [Explained]

Transcript Under the Cut

[Megan looking at a large screen with many green and red squares. The squares have writing in them and lines connecting them.]

[Side view. The screen is a huge LCD connected to a wireless router.] Cueball: Pretty, isn't it? Megan: What is it?

Cueball: I've got a bunch of virtual Windows machines networked together, hooked up to an incoming pipe from the net. They execute email attachments, share files, and have no security patches. Cueball: Between them they have practically every virus.

Cueball: There are mail trojans, warhol worms, and all sorts of exotic polymorphics. A monitoring system adds and wipes machines at random. The display shows the viruses as they move through the network. Growing and struggling.

[Cueball walks past the girl and touches the monitor.] Megan: You know, normal people just have aquariums. Cueball: Good morning, Blaster. Are you and W32.Welchia getting along? Cueball: Who's a good virus? You are! Yes, you are!

[yesterdays-xkcd]

40% of OpenBSD installs lead to shark attacks. It's their only standing security issue.

Success [Explained]

Transcript

[Four full-width panels arranged vertically, each with a label for number of hours elapsed, with a title above the stack of panels.] Title: As a project wears on, standards for success slip lower and lower.

[Megan is standing behind Cueball, watching him as he sits at a desk working on a desktop computer on the desk.] Label: 0 hours Cueball: Okay, I should be able to dual-boot BSD soon.

[Cueball is on the floor fiddling with the open tower in front of him. Megan is not shown in the panel, but may be off-panel unless Cueball is talking to himself.] Label: 6 hours Cueball: I'll be happy if I can get the system working like it was when I started.

[Cueball is standing in front of the computer, which now has a laptop plugged into the tower. Megan is still not shown in the panel, but may be off-panel again.] Label: 10 hours Cueball: Well, the desktop's a lost cause, but I think I can fix the problems the laptop's developed.

[Cueball and Megan are swimming in the sea; an island and a beach can be seen in the distance.] Label: 24 hours Cueball: If we're lucky, the sharks will stay away until we reach shallow water. Megan: If we make it back alive, you're never upgrading anything again.