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June 2003


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Singleminded p04



Oh, thank you so very much.  If that doesn't give me nightmares I don't know what will...  I can smell your brains... >.<  And just after I found a wonderful recipe for human brains in the book you lent me as well.  Are you trying to tell me something??  *shudder* *shudder* --Kazuhiko

It's tame compared to IronWokJan?, IMO ;) - MoonShadow



Just thinking p05


Hmmm.... do they indeed, Peri? What's yours, then?  --AlexChurchill
(Is it that you once wore a skirt, and tried to hide this fact from everyone but just accidentally showed us in a flashback?)

Keeping two pets?  I'm confused.  Which one was the other one? --Angoel
Her snake? Not CinnamonTheTrainedSleepingSnake. Honest. -- TI
Shaam, surely.
that fits most obviously with the 'something she isn't telling us' comment.  --Vitenka



Just talking p06


Did the lab blow up again?  Is it coincidence that it was just when Sha'am's name is mentioned?  If not, which of the three (or what mysterious observer) dunnit?



Interlude 6 h11


Wai! Wai! /Rin looking cool and showing her brains and the difficulty of her situation... Oh, the trials of serving an EvilOverlord. New /RinFanClub members, sign up here!

Interesting that she does actually consider him to be of the 'Evil Overlord' type and yet still acts as his agent.  Have a great holiday SunKitten, and MoonShadow when you go out there.  We promise to take care of the Wiki while you're gone... *sound of something fragile and expensive breaking in the background*  You'll hardly notice the difference, honestly... --Kazuhiko



No comic



*wait* *wait* *click* ...no update... *twitch* *wait* *wait* *click* ...no update... *twitch* *wait* *wait* *click* ...no update... *twitch* *wait* *wait* *click* ...no update... *twitch* *wait* *wait* *click* ...no update... *twitch* *wait* *wait* *click* ...no update... *twitch* ... --Kazuhiko
I share your pain... :(  --AlexChurchill
You're just doing that because SunKitten doesn't usually miss updates. Four of my comics haven't updated today as usual - PF, MT, Dominic Deegan, and Nukees. --PT
Well, MT has a note up saying the update should be up at 4pm US time today.  MagicTheGathering.com 's Friday article isn't up either... sniff, sniff... --AC
You mean it isn't "The Size of Sets: What the number 306 will mean to you, by Randy Buehler"? --PT
It is. It didn't go up until about 2pm (local). --SF
It was up when I wrote my first comment, you see. Therefore it was up when the reply to my comment was written, and thus I deduced some confusion. --PT
I'm far more confused now that I was previously....Eh? --SF
Have signed all the comments, which ought to calrify a bit. Peter was referring to my reply to his comment. --AC
It's been linked from the front mtg.com page all day, but if you click the link it says "This article is not live yet" :( --AC
Used to do that for me, but it started working around 2ish. --SF
Works for me now.  Didn't at about 3ish.  Maybe difference in our servers' caching or something *shrug* --AC
Worked for PeterTaylor about 11:00.

Oh go on then. The next strip is up. Aren't you lucky :) - SunKitten



Valentine's Day val01


Wow! Wow! That's... so cool of you, SunKitten! Wow!  ^_^  She gave us a comic, all!!

And the line from the /SnowBallCommittee made me LaughOutLoud? :)

Wai!  Arigato SunKitten :)  Very much appreciated.  :) --Kazuhiko

I want to know how you managed that... did you hide it somewhere on the web server, only to be activated at the right time, or did you manage to find a scanner somewhere? --M-A
Sore wa himitsu desu >:) - SunKitten



Seashell Exe q01



(PeterTaylor) I'm not sure that spell would work anyway - does it have enough "Please"s?
AlexChurchill noticed that reference too, and had to restrain himself from excessive giggling. Well, we knew the PhoenixFeathers magic had certain compsci nature, so why not the Compiler Language With No Pronounceable Acronym? CLWNPA, pronounced kluh-wuhn-pa.
Yes, but of all the languages that /Megaera had to try to do her first spell in... :) --Kazuhiko
 please abstain from abstaining
please don't give up

My personal favourite is the "come from" instruction...

Oh ye... I hadn't realised that was the language.  Yes, I love :)  And to all you poor fools out there who don't get the joke, take a look at [Intercal] and then, um... you probably still won't get the joke.  Most people would take that as a compliment :)  --Vitenka
I was musing the other day, if Intercal has no IfThenElse? construction, how it could be considered a proper programming language (conditionals being approximately the strongest requirement for equivalence of languages). Then I realised that you could have a variable evaluating to 100 or 0, and then give a DO ... var% command.
No CompSci thee, then.  Intercal has enough variable manipulation to be equivalent to a register machine - which is sufficient to say it is TuringComplete.  --Vitenka  Hang on.  You were willingly musing about Intercal.  I take it back, you obviously are CompSci.
Really? I couldn't immediately see a construction equivalent to "If possible, subtract 1. If not, go somewhere else" --CH
It doesn't have an if since that would conflict with its goal.  I believe the alternative involves set up some kind of process involving the 'abstain' command, but I didn't read enough to work it out... --Kazuhiko
The easiest way I can think of doing conditionals would be to use RESUME or FORGET to drop return addresses from the stack inside a subroutine depending on the result of an expression. - MoonShadow
Oh ye gods, don't make me go back into Intercal ;)  The mechanism is, I believe, to use select as an equivalent for 'if zero' since select 0 will always be 0, but select anything else won't be - and similarly mingle ( select x, x ) gives you either x leftshifted or 0.  X is your state in unary - and you're building up operations I and S.  It's not procedural, but it's evilly turing.  And... I can't find the proper proof.  Damn.  The TuringTarPit? is unhelpful.  --Vitenka
Name a language which isn't Turing-complete. It's possible to design them, but jolly hard, and that wasn't one of the design aims of Intercal.
Umm - being TuringComplete is pretty much the definition of 'as powerful as any other language' - the aim of Intercal was to achieve that whilst being in every other way incomprehensible.  As for jolly hard - not really.  To make something useful that isn't TuringComplete is hard, though.  --Vitenka
Have you seen [Threaded Intercal]? -- Senji
[this] page carries overviews of CLC-Intercal and Quantum Intercal.. MoonShadow



Postmodern Magic q02



That's a very long comic there.  With JaffaCakes.  Bets as to whether a spell in the near future will be cast in English and BackfireHorribly??  A quick question - are the strip titles present anywhere on the strip page itself?  Or are wikizens the only ones to be honoured by the UnknownArmies reference?  --Vitenka
I tend to check the Archives page. --CH

It's mildly cool to have /Yozhik explaining magic to /Megaera (and by extension, the audience). I was hoping that this storyline would come up eventually. Domo arigato, SunKitten! --SF

Crossreference: nntc02 ;) - MoonShadow
I don't want to make it too much like a tutorial - too obvious. You'll just have to pick up what you can :) I did tell Kazuhiko that if PhoenixFeathers finishes without fully explaining the rankings or any other bits of the magic system, then I'd explain it properly at that time. It might be a bit of a wait, though. Alternatively, you can prod MoonShadow for a NazeNaniToothycat? strip on the subject.. *EvilGrin* - SunKitten



The Society of Odd Fellows h12



As a matter of interest, is Dr (Phelan / Phelon?) Midsummer related to Amadan in any way? --Kazuhiko
I wondered if anyone would notice that - he was inspired by Amadan, yes. It's 'Phelan', and if you carry on doing that you will need glasses very soon :) - SunKitten
And whose phone number is that?
Next time I shall blur the image! Honestly, people... I made it up. Phone it and see :) - SunKitten
We'll be sending you our opticians bills if you do ;)  --Vitenka

Oh, wow!! How cute is /Rin in pics 3, 8 and 9?  When she blushes, goodness me...!  --the RinFanClub

And any speculations on just what on earth she saw through Prof. Midsummer's window which caused her such embarrassment?!  Is it to do with the /SocietyOfOddFellows (a fabulous name BTW), or is it to do with Prof. Midsummer's personal life?  Or both?

I read this rather shortly after a conversation about the things exclusively male-only groups of fellows might or might not get up to (and this was from the point of view of a friend who works at John's, and was prevented from serving to them, by dint of being female. She also has a history of massive exaggeration, and grasping the wrong end of the stick - but the story stuck in my mind). This produced the relatively obvious image (and the question 'surely they'd close the curtain?'). Great name for a society.

Hmm...I think we're observing a shift towards seeing /Megaera and /Rin as; well, they can't really be called protagonist and antagonist yet, but that's certainly the way the storyline seems to be heading, with the rest of the cast increasingly relegated to supporting roles. I wonder if /Rin was intended to have this much of a role from the start, of if the /RinFanClub won her a bigger part... --StuartFraser

I agree about /Megaera and /Rin seeming to become the two "principal" characters, and confess to also having wondered if the /RinFanClub's existence has encouraged a larger proportion of /Rin-featuring strips.  But I don't think they're heading towards any conventional kind of pro/anti relationship. Possibly /Rin's loyalties to the /MysteriousEvilDude might pull her that way; but I think it's more likely that, when they eventually meet, /Rin and the ["original" five main characters] will end up working together rather similar aims and goals.
Of course, MoonShadow has had a role in the writing of PhoenixFeathers. So we can't really take *anything* for certain! --AlexChurchill

THAT's what was odd. He looks just like Nick Shepard-Barran (sp?) the Groups, Rings and Fields lecturer of ill repute. Well, somewhat. He's smiling, though - which is where the similarity ends. -- TI
...Who in turn is the spitting image of LuciusMalfoy? in the HarryPotter films. There, the similarity starts...--CH
Are you telling me that NSB is LuciusMalfoy? in disguise? -- Senji



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