Awwwwwwe, Jin said it was smiling, where is the smile? Is it just me, or does it look like one of those clunky IBM copier machines? Maybe it just needs toner.
I would say you win the internetz, but people have given it away already. I’m HELPING you by not putting you in the fight for custody of the internetz. Your welcome.
This is the best comic ever! The 11-20 strip made me cry. It reminded me of times when I was an innocent kid. I know way too much now days. Innocence lost ? Probly forever… Big sighhh. Life sucks.
VERY nicely done, Paul! Having read nearly all of your side notes and links over the years, and having seen various models of the Antikythera mechanism, I suspected that is what you based the Calendar Machine on – thank’ee for the validation!
I’m incredibly intrigued by the war-helmet-like horns, external CPU-cooling fins(!??!) and what appears to be a display screen!
I guess I’m having trouble seeing the AM here – I can make out some wheels and stuff in the square window, but it’s pretty dark on my monitor. The six round things on the side are kinda washed out as well – can’t really tell what they are.
I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue – rich in irony, and most satirical.
Somebody needs to do an enhanced version of today’s strip, with the machine in the center “breathing” by growing and shrinking a bit, and maybe wobbling around the center, and the light ring pulsing outward…
Darn my computer limits! To only know what’s possible and not be able to program it m’self!
Monica: I’m going to need some ball-bearings.
Jin: What do you need ball-bearings for?
Monica: Oh, come on Jin, it’s so simple maybe you need a refresher course. It’s all ball bearings nowadays. Now you prepare that Calendar Machine with some 3-in-1 oil and some gauze pads, and I’m gonna need ’bout ten quarts of anti-freeze, preferably Prestone. No, no make that Quaker State.
Bah. If I’ve learned anything over the years, there is little that a solid whack with a hammer can’t fix. And someone just so happened to hand Shelly such a hammer.
Okay, maybe not. There’s a sidebar at the top of my blog, to which my name is a link, that includes a post where I suggest a number of reasons for staying with Windows.
Well, I had to. I advocate software freedom, so I reckon people are free to chain themselves to XP, Bad Vista, or Se7en, if they truly have good enough reasons to stick with captive software.
I got the impression the “evil bunny ears” were parts of the machine that twisted off into angles of space that we 3-dimensional-type people can’t quite see into. I’m sure if you’re looking at in in n-space it looks perfectly prosaic. Humdrum, even. It’s just a calendar, after all.
Ok, Well, I felt the need to read all of the comments before I posted as I may likely have put my foot in my mouth.
First off, I was expecting something more made of stone, like the sunstone, etc., but perhaps the size of a football stadium or so, and was underwhelmed. Then I thought, “well, hey, it’s all metallic and has lots of moving parts, so, well, maybe it’s the stone-football-stadium-sized-thing all condensed…” but then I thought that if these people had such access to super-tech/magic, why not simply us something more electrical, perhaps, circuit based, then something with alot of moving parts. Technically, an electrical circuit IS a bunch of tiny moving parts, but I won’t really go into that. Anyway reading this prolly knows exactly what I mean. Otherwise? e-mail me. I’m happy to talk with people who can impart beneficial knowledge or may think they can get it from me. (This thing makes us put in an e-mail addy, but… can any of us access it?)
But once again, I was underwhelmed. Then, I read about the AM http://io9.com/5441889/advanced-imaging-reveals-a-computer-1500-years-ahead-of-its-time
Congrats Paul. Very well played. It goes with the back story of all the ancient civilizations being connected, and one of them, I am thinking, is also Greece, which corresponds to the text written ON the AM itself. It is along the same TYPE of tech: cogs, moving mechanisms, etc. compared to circuitry or the like. Then, there’s the wonder I had in how we got from the AM, which, in that link provided, is a CALENDAR MACHINE but for only ~20 years, in our Gregorian calendar, to something that runs for so long. So, I guess, going from the AM to that, from ~20 years to however long it run (remember, the 1450 year cycle is due to some of it being thrown off axis/off-tilt due to Jin’s mother and possibly others trying to destroy it, etc. It’s broken, so, 1450 years is PROLLY not what it was designed for originally…) So, I guess it is believable for such a change from something the size of the AM to something looking like that. the knobbies and stuff, plus, what looks like a genuine “crank shaft” or “drive shaft” as we see form what looks like what may be protruding from the “bottom” of it… all those details make sense and are interesting to boot, like potential tuning knobbies and such. I am still unsure how something so… artificial looking in ANY era could be seen as “breathing, alive, etc.” but I guess it’s my lack of imagination rather than a lack of artistic ability to make atmosphere in a 2D static image. One can only do so much, and then it is on the shoulders of the viewer to take it from there. So, I’ll apologize for that slight case of underwhlemed… The previous two cases were OVERWHELMED by the allusion to the AM.
Also, to be honest, I saw those “evil bunny ears” as more of the attempt at making it look like energy radiating form it (many animes have used such weird sharp yet organic shapes) (but I still didn’t see the illusion of breathing, despite looking at some of the details as more than just random pieces of metal or some such material sticking off of it.)
I am also reminded of the idea of “we’ll make another gear out of phase with some of the other gears and then bring them in phase, etc… leading to a perpetual motion device.” I think that plan would have worked beautifully, perhaps, now that I see the calendar machine. But that also ignores any OTHER “defense” mechanisms, and other mechanics not quite visible at the moment. To which, if in the position of Jin, I would most liekly try to experiment with things over and over, figure out perhaps EXACTLY how it works, or, just, ya’know, ASK THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT IT (assuming they were still around when she was free to move on her own nearest the beginning of the cycle), so that I could then PLAY with it/use it/fix it, but I guess that was Brandi’s approach, even if she was not the one repeating the cycle of time. I still think I would have tried it and probably tried to find so many ways to enjoy the numerous cycles of 1450 years. I’d also have seen how else I could affect things, what else I could discover… It’s not said a Golem’s mind has the same limits of the human mind. The library is also one way to impart so much knowledge should one forget something. But, that is also a personal blurb and just a little rant to say “I don’t have the same character as Jin.”
Anyway, I guess I’ve spoken plenty here and have either run out of things to say (but one or two more) and/or I forget what I had planned to say at the beginning of this comment and am now simply ranting as the syrup falls out of my chocolate milk.
I have a bit more respect for your story telling and artistic ability, along with how well you’ve seemed to research and write this LONG story arc. Congrats on a job well done.
and if anyone cares, I use YIM and AIM, but I’ll just put my e-mail here for if anyone wants to contact me, especially Mr. Taylor himself: oxofintieoxo@gmail.com
Somehow “Also Sprach Zarathustra” keeps running through my head.
But how big is it?
That’s a rather personal question. OH! You mean the machine in the cartoon.
I was thinking that it’s new and improved and revised–and oddly mobile.
That’s better than “Tubular Bells.”
Awwwwwwe, Jin said it was smiling, where is the smile? Is it just me, or does it look like one of those clunky IBM copier machines? Maybe it just needs toner.
Looks like it’s made of Lego to me…
“Jin, was this all just a trick to get us to fix your dishwasher?”
That’s full of win right there.
Maybe to clean her clock?
Hey! A Mac Classic! :3
That’s exactly what ran through my mind. I worked on too many of ’em…
ditto
But with Evil Bunny Ears! ™
So who brought the case cracker and extra-long Torx?
If its a mac that explains why it doesn’t work right.
I would say you win the internetz, but people have given it away already. I’m HELPING you by not putting you in the fight for custody of the internetz. Your welcome.
This is the best comic ever! The 11-20 strip made me cry. It reminded me of times when I was an innocent kid. I know way too much now days. Innocence lost ? Probly forever… Big sighhh. Life sucks.
Sweet! The ancients used Duplo.
Why does Jin have this perpetual crazy Nicolas Cage grin on her face?
Because she has the perpetual Nicolas Cage craziness in her head?
WTF is that? I see a lego block and some sort of modern computer parts all thrown together with cardboard and some string..
That’s the calender machine?
Sorry Pablo, but I’m hugely disappointed. =(
It’s basically just supposed to be a larger version of the Antikythera Mechanism, and that’s basically what it looked like.
VERY nicely done, Paul! Having read nearly all of your side notes and links over the years, and having seen various models of the Antikythera mechanism, I suspected that is what you based the Calendar Machine on – thank’ee for the validation!
I’m incredibly intrigued by the war-helmet-like horns, external CPU-cooling fins(!??!) and what appears to be a display screen!
Channeling Jack Kirby here, I see. I approve.
I see it now – it doesn’t work because it’s butt-ugly. [laughter track]
It’s basically just supposed to be a larger version of the Antikythera Mechanism, and that’s what it looked like.
I guess I’m having trouble seeing the AM here – I can make out some wheels and stuff in the square window, but it’s pretty dark on my monitor. The six round things on the side are kinda washed out as well – can’t really tell what they are.
From the outside, it’s quite simple. All the interesting stuff is on the inside.
http://www.mosaiko.gr/view_article.asp?id=102
Heh 🙂
Some “butt-ugly” and simple-looking devices are incredibly scary – Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs come to mind, as does the military Vulcan (?) guns…
Just what IS waiting inside that floating cube???
Dirty clothes and sock stealing gremlins?
I am Arthur Frayn, and I am Zardoz. I have lived three hundred years, and I long to die. But death is no longer possible. I am immortal. I present now my story, full of mystery and intrigue – rich in irony, and most satirical.
Somebody needs to do an enhanced version of today’s strip, with the machine in the center “breathing” by growing and shrinking a bit, and maybe wobbling around the center, and the light ring pulsing outward…
Darn my computer limits! To only know what’s possible and not be able to program it m’self!
Would something like this do? ‘Taint perfect, but gives the idea…
Awesome.
Joyous rapture!
Yeah–to make it more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff?
…Is God in show business too?
“There’s your problem, somebody set it to EVIL.”
or…
“I need a hundred pounds of Lego, a big bottle of Mountain Dew, and a cruller, Stat!”
or…
Shelly says, “Honday Tzadle-bay Da!” Which is the Comanche equivilant of “Ain’t that the damndest thing.” Probably stronger than that, but close.
Monica: I’m going to need some ball-bearings.
Jin: What do you need ball-bearings for?
Monica: Oh, come on Jin, it’s so simple maybe you need a refresher course. It’s all ball bearings nowadays. Now you prepare that Calendar Machine with some 3-in-1 oil and some gauze pads, and I’m gonna need ’bout ten quarts of anti-freeze, preferably Prestone. No, no make that Quaker State.
I hope they stopped off at Radio Shack and Home Depot for some check valves and diodes.
This one’s going to take at least half a dozen niad pulse converters and an Anza brush…
Bah. If I’ve learned anything over the years, there is little that a solid whack with a hammer can’t fix. And someone just so happened to hand Shelly such a hammer.
“Solid whack with a hammer”? Puh-lease. “Percussive maintenance.”
Jazzman, whenever that fails to work, there is only defenestrative disposal left.
No, these guys are going to MacGyver it. Rubber bands, chewing gum and a couple of cookies lifted from Tina’s shop. Oh, and the stiletto, too.
and don’t forget the duct tape duct tape fixes everything with the principle of “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, if it is broke use duct tape”
Minnesota repair kit: Duck tape and WD-40. If it moves and shouldn’t, use the Duck tape. If it doesn’t move and should, use WD-40.
Hmmm…Fix it, or destroy it…Fix it, or destroy it…Fix it, or destroy it…Linux or Vista…
Linux, clearly.
Okay, maybe not. There’s a sidebar at the top of my blog, to which my name is a link, that includes a post where I suggest a number of reasons for staying with Windows.
Well, I had to. I advocate software freedom, so I reckon people are free to chain themselves to XP, Bad Vista, or Se7en, if they truly have good enough reasons to stick with captive software.
Antikythera Mechanism – Paul, you made me learn stuff!
I hear that…Just spent the last half hour researching the Antikythera Mechanism…interesting! By the way, i just love this strip!
geek
Welcome. Sorry about the Raiders.
LOL the correct term is “Brokeland Raiders”
more like “Choke-land Traitors”
I got the impression the “evil bunny ears” were parts of the machine that twisted off into angles of space that we 3-dimensional-type people can’t quite see into. I’m sure if you’re looking at in in n-space it looks perfectly prosaic. Humdrum, even. It’s just a calendar, after all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrfMFhrgOFc&feature=player_embedded
video of Antikythera Mechanism
To quote Spock, “Captain, I am now convinced that all og this, is V-Ger; that we are inside, a living machine…”
is that a laser on the bottom of it?
Heh. The cogs on the front panel are from a Girl Genius background image.
Ok, Well, I felt the need to read all of the comments before I posted as I may likely have put my foot in my mouth.
First off, I was expecting something more made of stone, like the sunstone, etc., but perhaps the size of a football stadium or so, and was underwhelmed. Then I thought, “well, hey, it’s all metallic and has lots of moving parts, so, well, maybe it’s the stone-football-stadium-sized-thing all condensed…” but then I thought that if these people had such access to super-tech/magic, why not simply us something more electrical, perhaps, circuit based, then something with alot of moving parts. Technically, an electrical circuit IS a bunch of tiny moving parts, but I won’t really go into that. Anyway reading this prolly knows exactly what I mean. Otherwise? e-mail me. I’m happy to talk with people who can impart beneficial knowledge or may think they can get it from me. (This thing makes us put in an e-mail addy, but… can any of us access it?)
But once again, I was underwhelmed. Then, I read about the AM http://io9.com/5441889/advanced-imaging-reveals-a-computer-1500-years-ahead-of-its-time
Congrats Paul. Very well played. It goes with the back story of all the ancient civilizations being connected, and one of them, I am thinking, is also Greece, which corresponds to the text written ON the AM itself. It is along the same TYPE of tech: cogs, moving mechanisms, etc. compared to circuitry or the like. Then, there’s the wonder I had in how we got from the AM, which, in that link provided, is a CALENDAR MACHINE but for only ~20 years, in our Gregorian calendar, to something that runs for so long. So, I guess, going from the AM to that, from ~20 years to however long it run (remember, the 1450 year cycle is due to some of it being thrown off axis/off-tilt due to Jin’s mother and possibly others trying to destroy it, etc. It’s broken, so, 1450 years is PROLLY not what it was designed for originally…) So, I guess it is believable for such a change from something the size of the AM to something looking like that. the knobbies and stuff, plus, what looks like a genuine “crank shaft” or “drive shaft” as we see form what looks like what may be protruding from the “bottom” of it… all those details make sense and are interesting to boot, like potential tuning knobbies and such. I am still unsure how something so… artificial looking in ANY era could be seen as “breathing, alive, etc.” but I guess it’s my lack of imagination rather than a lack of artistic ability to make atmosphere in a 2D static image. One can only do so much, and then it is on the shoulders of the viewer to take it from there. So, I’ll apologize for that slight case of underwhlemed… The previous two cases were OVERWHELMED by the allusion to the AM.
Also, to be honest, I saw those “evil bunny ears” as more of the attempt at making it look like energy radiating form it (many animes have used such weird sharp yet organic shapes) (but I still didn’t see the illusion of breathing, despite looking at some of the details as more than just random pieces of metal or some such material sticking off of it.)
I am also reminded of the idea of “we’ll make another gear out of phase with some of the other gears and then bring them in phase, etc… leading to a perpetual motion device.” I think that plan would have worked beautifully, perhaps, now that I see the calendar machine. But that also ignores any OTHER “defense” mechanisms, and other mechanics not quite visible at the moment. To which, if in the position of Jin, I would most liekly try to experiment with things over and over, figure out perhaps EXACTLY how it works, or, just, ya’know, ASK THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT IT (assuming they were still around when she was free to move on her own nearest the beginning of the cycle), so that I could then PLAY with it/use it/fix it, but I guess that was Brandi’s approach, even if she was not the one repeating the cycle of time. I still think I would have tried it and probably tried to find so many ways to enjoy the numerous cycles of 1450 years. I’d also have seen how else I could affect things, what else I could discover… It’s not said a Golem’s mind has the same limits of the human mind. The library is also one way to impart so much knowledge should one forget something. But, that is also a personal blurb and just a little rant to say “I don’t have the same character as Jin.”
Anyway, I guess I’ve spoken plenty here and have either run out of things to say (but one or two more) and/or I forget what I had planned to say at the beginning of this comment and am now simply ranting as the syrup falls out of my chocolate milk.
I have a bit more respect for your story telling and artistic ability, along with how well you’ve seemed to research and write this LONG story arc. Congrats on a job well done.
and if anyone cares, I use YIM and AIM, but I’ll just put my e-mail here for if anyone wants to contact me, especially Mr. Taylor himself: oxofintieoxo@gmail.com