Spirit
by Jeff
Image text: On January 26th, 2213 days into its mission, NASA declared Spirit a 'stationary research station', expected to operational for several more months until the dust buildup on its solar panels forces a final shutdown.
The title of the comic is a pun on the word "Spirit" because the name of the Rover is Spirit and in the comic, the rover is showing almost unwavering spirit as it goes about its mission for six years.
Retro Virus
by Jeff
Image text: He says this is the year of Linux on the desktop! The world of Windows will fade any moment now!
The image text is a continuation of the comic and an excerpt from Howard Dean's Friendster from 2003.
In the comic, when he says that he is cleaning viruses, the other characters in the comic list off other things from 2003, including Kazaa a P2P filesharing app that was the number 1 source of viruses because of the questionable sources of all of the files on Kazaa. Additionally, Howard Dean, was popular in 2003 when he was running for president in the Democratic primary before his unfortunate screaming speech which drove him down in the poles and out of the race. Lastly, there is Friendster, which was extremely popular in 2003 and is still around today, but I'm not sure anyone uses it.
If viruses are so 2003, spyware is so 2010.
Children’s Fantasy
by Jeff
Image text: I was going to be a scientist, but that seems silly now. Magical worlds exist. I've learned a huge truth about our place in the universe. I'm supposed to care about college? I mean, FUCK.
The main character won't just spend the next 70 years with his loved ones suspecting he is crazy. Everyone will suspect he is crazy.
Dirty Harry
by Jeff
Image text: Sci-fi has energy weapons because otherwise the people like me who watch it get distracted counting shots.
Here's the full quote from Dirty Harry (a movie about a San Francisco cop who lives a bit outside of the rules to get the job done):
I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire six shots or only five?" Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?
Rain Man is a movie about two brothers, one who is autistic played by Dustin Hoffman, the other played by Tom Cruise.
In the case of this comic, the person on the ground is autistic, so he has no trouble counting the bullets from Dirty Harry's gun.
Because of his counting skill, "Rain Man" is able to thwart Dirty Harry's intimidation's effect.
MicroSD
by Jeff
Image text: That card holds a refrigerator carton's worth of floppy discs, and a soda can full of those cards could hold the entire iTunes store's music library. Mmmm.
So let me get this straight, the character in the comic is faintly aroused by both a library and an micro SD Card?
UPDATE: Upon further reflection, it appears that the character is going to become sexually active with that SD Card.
In the image text, a refrigerator carton is referring to the box the refrigerator gets delivered in.
Semicontrolled Demolition
by Jeff
Image text: I believe the truth always lies halfway between the most extreme claims.
This comic is taking the idea of a compromise to its literal extreme.
9/11 Truthers are people that consider the conspiracy theories around the September 11th 2001 terrorist attack and they usually believe that the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York City was an inside job by the government.
So, this comic is a compromise between what the truthers believe and public knowledge of September 11th and since the comic takes the compromise to its extreme, in which both things happen.
FIRST Design
by Jeff
Image text: Pool on the roof must've sprung a leak.
This comic is about a robot competition between two sides. The protagonist's side comes up with a robot that has a match on an extending arm to set off the sprinkler system to disable the opposing robot. Then the protagonists added an umbrella to their robot so that their robot could complete the competition without getting wet.
The image text is the protagonist's flimsy excuse for the reason there is water everywhere.
UPDATE: As Zero Cool and Alexandra said in the comments, the Image text is a reference to the movie, Hackers.
Self-Description
by Jeff
Image text: The contents of any one panel are dependent on the contents of every panel including itself. The graph of panel dependencies is complete and bidirectional, and each node has a loop. The mouseover text has two hundred and forty-two characters.
This is a comic, like the name, that describes itself. However, as the image text explains, the contents are dependent on themselves and the other data.
The first frame is a pie chart of the black and white percentages of the whole comic strip. If more black or white is added to any frame in the comic, the pie chart will change.
If the pie chart changes, the graph in frame 2 will change, which will cause the pie chart to change again and so on and so forth.
The third frame is an infinite loop of the comic. If you look hard you can see the comic again and again in the last frame.
Dimensional Analysis
by Jeff
Image text: Or the pressure at the Earth's core will rise slightly.
Dimensional analysis is a tool to better understand the properties of items using an equation the helps to convert between different units of measure. In this case, the comic says that the units check out.
Planck energy is a system energy made up of Planck units.
The pressure at the earth's core is over 3.5 million times atmospheric pressure.
Prius's gas mileage (as tested by the EPA) is 51 highway / 48 city.
The smallest width of the English Channel is 21 miles between Dover, England and Calais, France.
The image text is a continuation of the teacher's comments from the comic.
Admin Mourning
by Jeff
Image text: And every day it gets harder to fight the urge to su to the user and freak people out.
This is a play on words with "Ghost in the/a Shell". Ghost in a shell is a concept from cyberpunk and especially the Japanese franchise by the name "Ghost in the Shell" that means when a human's brain and consciousness is inside a mechanical body. Ghost is the person and shell is the mechanical exterior.
In this comic, the play on words is saying if a person dies, they leave a "ghost" of themselves still logged on a server. And of course zShell is a Unix login shell. Which pulls the whole play on words together.
And the image text references "su to the user". Su is the Unix command to switch to another user from the command line.