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mangonel. On the bright side, next update should have pictures and an analysis of its performance. I've worked out the optimum release angle at 58.21 degrees (a physics background is as much a curse as a blessing, really), so once I get a good protractor and set that up I suspect some excellent range.

Today's comic is inspired by the numerous offers I have by friends who want me to get drunk. I seriously have, at this point, enough standing offers to buy my first drink, that if I timed it right, I could get drunk every night for at least a week free of charge. I have no idea exactly why it is that people want to see me drunk, but I can only guess that they have horribly sinister motivations behind it.

Finally, I wanted to share with you the following conversation I had with a friend the other day. I think it is the single geekiest conversation I've ever had, and that's competing with such conversations as the two hour debate on the merits of a Borg sphere versus the cube design (spheres are clearly superior in every way). Anyway, without further ado, here's the conversation:

Mike: know what'd be awesome?
Mike: zombie packets
Mike: packets that just wander the tubes, eating the checksums of other packets, and turning them into zombie packets
Don:  this seems like it would cause problems
Mike: yeah
Mike: eventually the entire network would be a zombie network
Don:  which is the concern with all zombie outbreaks
Mike: but for a ragtag band of packets which have barracaded themselves behind a firewall of an otherwise abandoned server
Don:  unless of course the normal TTL applies
Mike: but it wouldn't for the zombie packets
Don:  regular zombies degrade and die after some time
Mike: fine
Mike: the act of becoming a zombie sets the packet's TTL to 255
Don:  very well
Mike: virtually guaranteeing that it will outlive any other non-zombie packets
Don:  unless the filters trap for that
Mike: that would only prevent new zombies from leaving the server
Mike: by the time a zombie packet got to a server its TTL will have fallen below 255
Mike: you'd have to filter for all high TTLs, and even that wouldn't be foolproof
 [an error occurred while processing this directive] 5/25/08 [an error occurred while processing this directive] Today's comic is all in German. You shouldn't need to understand the language to get it, but if you need a translation, I've put it in the comments thread over there. --> Hopefully I got all the German in here right. I don't speak it well (took two semesters and promptly forgot most of it), so there's bound to be an error or two, beyond the intentional one. If you speak the language better than I and have suggestions to improve the dialog, please let me know. Also note that I realize that I am missing a number of umlauts. The font I use doesn't have them.

I was supposed to be observing at the 61 inch telescope tonight. Unfortunately, I am greatly hated by the fates. It is cloudy, which means I can't get a good picture of the target. It was hailing, which means we can't open the dome. No fewer than three parts of the telescope were broken (the autoguider, the dry air blower, and the telcom server). Oh, and a power line had fallen, so the whole site was running off a generator. So no observing for me, but on the bright side that means that I have a comic for you tonight.

With school finished and everything in order again, I should have no problem giving you guys 6 comics in June, plus some long overdue wallpapers. I also hope to get a buffer setup to last through some summer excitingness that may occur. So keep checking and I'll keep drawing. Oh, and click on some of the ads on the right. Some very kind people are paying way too much for ads right now, and I'd love if they'd get their money's worth. [an error occurred while processing this directive] 5/3/08 [an error occurred while processing this directive] I'm back! Well, mostly. After over two weeks, Cox still hasn't fixed my internet connection. At this point I have multiple customer service people emailing the managers of the technicians. When will it be all fixed? They are now saying May 12th. In the meantime, let's just say that I "managed to obtain internet access" and leave it at that.

And with the good news comes some bad. Next Sunday is right in the middle of final's week (and also in the middle of the week in which I have to observe every third night). This means I'm going to be over stressed and under timed. I'm going to do my damndest to get an update up Sunday, but I can't guarantee that I won't miss another update. I can promise that the Sunday after (the 18th) I will be back in action for good, and I have a few ideas for new wallpapers for then. So stick around, I promise I'll do my best to make it worth your while. [an error occurred while processing this directive] 4/13/08 [an error occurred while processing this directive] What's this? An early update? Has the world gone mad? I'm going to be busy this afternoon/evening/night with various Yuri's Night events and parties, which will rather prevent my updating on the schedule that I'd like to. As I'm sick of being late of the updates (even if it is only by a few hours) I'm going the other way and updating ahead of time. Don't get too used to these early updates though, as we both know that I'm not likely to keep them going for long.

I'd love to be able to update next Wednesday, but tests on Monday and Thursday, with a presentation on Friday are likely to conspire to prevent any such thing. Odds are the next update won't be until next Sunday, but if I get too tired of, or annoyed by, studying I might surprise you all (and myself) with an update Wednesday.

Sorry it took so long, but here are the pictures I promised forever ago from my camping trips this March. They all (except for the last one) click to even bigger versions.


The (nearly) full moon rising over the treetops on the base of the Mogollon Rim near Payson, Arizona.


On the top of the rim (about 600m higher than the base) the ground was still covered in snow from a storm a few days earlier. The snow caused many of the roads on the rim to be closed, preventing me from hiking along the edge. It did, however, lead to some fantastic pictures.


At the Grand Canyon, I accidentally took this photo while the camera was pointing into the air. The campfire next to me coupled with the flash of the camera serendipitously provided this image.


More fun with the campfire and the settings on my camera. I found this picture particularly striking due to the pareidoliac birds that appear in it.


The view looking up from my hammock which I had betwixt a pair of trees. This was taken with the panorama mode on my camera, thus the odd view of trees growing both upwards and downwards.