Comics 1229-1231: Spaced Out

So I have learned today that Blogger's automatic publishing feature sucks. Apologies again to those of you refreshing the page madly 24 hours after the last post.

1231: Habitable Zone

This is one of those comics that makes you chuckle just a bit before you realise the many ways in which it doesn't make sense. Surely the astronomer would know the telescope was pointed back at earth? Surely this is not how they actually discover planets. Surely that would take months of peer-reviewed research?

B for humour and the immediate impact. D for the stupid premise that you notice 5 seconds after laughing at the thing.

1230: Polar/Cartesian

If it's wrong that I thought of slash fiction when I saw the title, then maybe I don't want to be right.

Yeah, I don't know what to think of this one. At first you're uncertain whether the graph is cartesian or polar. But as time goes on, you slowly realise that it is cartesian. But the circle-ish curve gives it the appearance of a polar graph, hence the initial uncertainty. Now that I think about it, there really isn't much to it.

C- for humour - it took a little while to understand, and the pay-off isn't great. B for absurdism. Yes, self-referential graphs fall under the category of absurd in my opinion. And B+ for alt text, which is similarly absurd. A for effort, because I genuinely believe Randall thought about this one. F for failing to label the horizontal axis.

1229: Screensaver

So at first I thought this was a reference to some game. Just as I was writing this review, I noticed it was actually a reference to the Starfield screensaver from Windows. What can I say - it's been a while since I've seen it, and I'm an idiot who doesn't read comic titles. So I am probably the last person in the world to get the joke.

In all honesty it's brilliant. It's clever a twist on something we're familiar with that's original and well tolf. Now that I think about it, I'm sure I've noticed how some stars stay really close to the middle for a long-ish time. But it's not something you'd automatically come up with yourself after seeing that screensaver. That, to my my mind, makes it original.

I'm not even going to discuss the idiocy of staring at a screensaver for 20 years, because I believe that is part of the joke. Furthermore I know a screensaver would not actually do that unless it was deliberately programmed that way, but it's wish fulfilment - I'm sure we'd all like to see this happen.

A for originality. A+ for wish fulfilment (even if it's just a small one). C for topicality - yeah I'm gonna let the harsh marks slide because Windows 3.1 was already fifteen years old when he started xkcd. There is no way he could have possibly made this comic topical. A for execution - the comic timing is just right. B for artwork - I can't help but feel I'd understand it sooner if it was more obvious that  we were looking at a computer screen.