explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2633: Astronomer Hotline

2022-06-15T14:17:48Z

Sqek:

Someone really needs to check on the bot. This is the second day in a row where I have had to begin the article! [[User:SqueakSquawk4|SqueakSquawk4]] ([[User talk:SqueakSquawk4|talk]]) 13:06, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

The fact that this is the Astronomer Helpline seems like commentary on the frequency with which astronomers are asked about mysterious objects, and/or the fact that astronomers (who tend to spend a lot of time looking at the sky) rarely report seeing unidentified objects. It could also be noted that calling fireflies a UFO would technically be accurate, as they are objects which are flying that the observers apparently could not readily identify. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.82.121|172.71.82.121]] 13:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Title text probably referes to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodical_cicadas Periodical cicadas] that appears every 17 years.
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.98.99|172.71.98.99]] 13:58, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

As someone from a country without fireflies, is "Ground Stars" a normal word for fireflies or a joke? (similar to how planets are "wandering stars", so to an astronomer everything is a star, similar to [[2017: Stargazing 2]]) [[User:Sqek|Sqek]] ([[User talk:Sqek|talk]]) 14:17, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2633: Astronomer Hotline

2022-06-15T14:13:36Z

Sqek:

Someone really needs to check on the bot. This is the second day in a row where I have had to begin the article! [[User:SqueakSquawk4|SqueakSquawk4]] ([[User talk:SqueakSquawk4|talk]]) 13:06, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

The fact that this is the Astronomer Helpline seems like commentary on the frequency with which astronomers are asked about mysterious objects, and/or the fact that astronomers (who tend to spend a lot of time looking at the sky) rarely report seeing unidentified objects. It could also be noted that calling fireflies a UFO would technically be accurate, as they are objects which are flying that the observers apparently could not readily identify. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.82.121|172.71.82.121]] 13:36, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Title text probably referes to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodical_cicadas Periodical cicadas] that appears every 17 years.
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.98.99|172.71.98.99]] 13:58, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

As someone from a country without fireflies, is "Ground Stars" a normal word for fireflies or a joke? (similar to how planets are "wandering stars", so to an astronomer everything is a star) [[User:Sqek|Sqek]] ([[User talk:Sqek|talk]]) 14:13, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

2633: Astronomer Hotline

2022-06-15T14:10:29Z

Sqek: corrected start to stars in transcript

{{comic
| number = 2633
| date = June 15, 2022
| title = Astronomer Hotline
| image = Astronomer Hotline.png
| titletext = Employment statistics have to correct for the fact that the Weird Bug Hotline hires a bunch of extra temporary staff every 17 years.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A HUMAN! (AGAIN) - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is a joke about {{w|Helpline|helplines}}, and how people sometimes call helplines for non-significant reason.

The comic starts with someone having called the "Astronomer hotline", hence the title. Judging by the way the helpline employee, [[Cueball]], starts the call, by asking for a description of the weird lights, it is implied that this is the main/only purpose of the helpline.

The caller is in panic, and don't know how to describe the light. But Cueball is used to this and asks the caller to stay calm. And then goes through his check list, asking them if it is day time. Because then he would assume they have just noticed the Sun. This could be seemed very condescending, but it is like when the employee at a tech support hot-line asks if the computer is turned on, or if the caller tried to restart the computer, see [[806: Tech Support]].

The caller is not affronted, but tells that the Sun set, and when Cueball asks if they are stars, and thus stationary, the caller says they are zipping around in the bushes.

At this point Cueball realizes that the the caller just have seen {{w|Fireflies}}. He describes them for the caller as lightning bugs, tree blinkers or ground stars, and tell the caller he is fine, so the caller is now relived.

However, Cueball must admit that astronomers do not know much about fireflies, since they are too fast for the astronomers' telescopes (in general, astronomers don't study terrestrial phenomena {{citation needed}}). And he thus transfers the caller to the "Weird Bug Hotline."

Before the call ends, at Cueball's end, he hears the first question from the new hotline: Is it currently biting you.
Again going directly to the most important part, is there any immediate danger...

Some people (Often {{w|Unidentified flying object|UFO}} enthusiasts) tend to get a little over-excited about calling every light in the sky they don't expect a UFO. This comic takes this to the extreme, where someone calls a helpline because they saw fireflies, and thought they were UFOs. While UFOs are not mentioned by name, they are heavily implied.

The title text is a reference to bugs that have several years between emerging from their larva state. Most famously are the {{w|Periodical cicadas}}, 13- and 17-year cicadas, that only emerge every 13 or 17 years depending on species. The 17 years in the title text, thus refers to the 17-year cicadas. Every 17 years the bug hotline hires a bunch of temporary staff. Either because there will be more callers due to the unexpected new bug, no one has seen for 17 years, (or it could be because they just like to emulate nature and thus do this every 17 years). However, not all broods emerge in the same year. Extra staff is likely only hired for the emergence of the largest brood, Brood X, which last occurred in 2021.

The joke in the title text is that the employment statistics for the weird hotline have to correct for this fact.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}

:[Cueball is working at a helpline. He is sat at a desk, with a headset on and a screen in front of him. There is a caller, but they are not shown]
:Cueball:Hello, Emergency Astronomer Hotline. How would you describe the lights in the sky?
:Caller:I don't know! Help!
:Cueball: Stay calm. Is it day? If so, that's The Sun.
:Caller: No, the sun set and then the light appeared!
:Cueball: Hmm, could be stars. Are they stationary?
:Caller: No, they're all zipping around bushes.
:Cueball: ''Aha!'' Fireflies!
:Caller: "Fireflies"?
:Cueball: Lightning bugs. Tree blinkers. Ground stars.
:Cueball: They're fine.
:Caller: ''Phew!''
:Cueball: We don't know much about them as they're too fast for our telescopes, but I can transfer you to the Wierd Bug Hotline.
:Caller: Sure, thanks.
:[Something, most likely a mouse, goes "*''Click''*"
:Wierd Bug Hotline [Offscreen]: Hi, Weird Bug Hotline, is it currently biting you?
Caller:

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2601: Instructions

2022-04-02T10:05:03Z

Sqek:

== Turtle graphics ==

So these are instructions for a turtle graphics program. The audio is drawn from https://xkcd.com/2601/radio.mp3, a 9 hour 7 minute 12 second long audio file It's generated by feeding turtle code into a text-to-speech program, but idk which language or which program. If you can convert the speech back to text, somehow without ruining the formatting (or just do a lot of editing with regex until it looks right), you could feed it into a turtle graphics program and get the resulting drawing.

: If you're not familiar with Turtle and Logo, look at this [[https://www.tutorialspoint.com/logo/logo_quick_guide.htm|quick guide]]. The short version is that these commands move a little cursor, called a turtle, which draws a line as it moves and turns. At this time, contributors have applied a few different computer transcriptions to the entire audio. There are quotes about turtles from a variety of sources intermixed with Logo code. It is expected that some correction to the code is needed, such as adding parenthesis that are not spoken in the audio. Standard Logo commands found in the audio are: PENUP, PENDOWN, SETHEADING (N) (N), SETXY (N) (N), and FORWARD (N). Some custom functions are defined, including DIST (N) (N) (N) (N), LERP (N) (N) (N), MIX (N) (N), CUBIC (N) (N) (N) (N), and SQUARE (N) (N). The next steps are to test the transcripts of these custom functions in a Logo interpreter, at which point we can begin drawing the picture. [[User:Mannerisky|Mannerisky]] ([[User talk:Mannerisky|talk]]) 02:45, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

: The picture indeed will be Bob Ross. The first hour of radio has him saying, "A happy little tree - holding up a happy little world." We can coordinate transcribing this code at [https://github.com/theinternetftw/xkcd2601 GitHub Repository]. Credit for this progress goes to the GitHub owner. [[User:Mannerisky|Mannerisky]] ([[User talk:Mannerisky|talk]]) 04:55, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I don't know what the current image on this page is. Is that the drawing you get by following these instructions? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.4|172.70.100.4]] 20:58, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

: Wait I see now, that is the actual image for the comic. It just gets covered up by the button so I can't see it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.87|172.70.126.87]] 21:03, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

: Ah, it looks like someone realized it's actually longer than that. After downloading it, I found it to be 131,329,389 bytes. The Windows Properties viewer claims it is 8h41m08s in length, but that's wrong. It is actually 9h07m06s. By the way, the code is in the Logo language. He seems to have copied this from a book, but I don't know which one. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.100.4|172.70.100.4]] 21:12, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

::Worth taking a look at? I can start looking for books that contain that text[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.52|162.158.107.52]] 21:39, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

:The automatic speech system is using standard punctuation processing, meaning that critical marks for the code aren't being announced. You can't get the code from the samples without filling in the blanks after getting a transcript. [[User:N|N]] ([[User talk:N|talk]]) 22:19, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

The MP3 file ends with this text: "''I even talk to turtles at times. But you need to understand LOGO to appreciate the great, great things that have been created. We spend so much of our life typing, looking, but never ever seeing.''" [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.151|162.158.222.151]] 21:17, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

april fools' comic? [[User:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e]] ([[User talk:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|talk]]) 21:18, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I think it's an April Fool's joke. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.148|108.162.238.148]] 21:20, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

:Well is it 2022/04/01 [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.189|141.101.77.189]] 21:26, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I think mine's broken. I don't get it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.91|172.70.130.91]] 21:29, 1 April 2022 (UTC)
:You press the radio button, it selects it, then you can press it a zillion times in any pattern and all it ever does is blink the entire image. Nothing else ever appears other than the radio button, and there’s never any sound so pressing the speaker in the corner to supposedly turn it on or off is also completely pointless.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.65|172.70.126.65]] 23:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Given the alt text "happy little turtles" and the tone of the narration I assume we're supposed to pretend the narrator is Bob Ross guiding us to creating an artistic masterpiece with Logo [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.72|172.70.211.72]] 21:31, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Guys, it's been HOURS and the transcription is still incomplete. Step it up! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 21:37, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

:Not even sure what the transcript should be. I did my best[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.52|162.158.107.52]] 21:41, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

::I have a feeling this might be one of the longest transcripts on the site. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.43|108.162.245.43]] 21:57, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

Up until someone automates the process, I'll be working on the transcript and saving it in exkcd in parts (: Don't worry too much about edit overrides, I'll be transcribing in a google doc to avoid that! --[[User:Char Latte49|Wielder of the Staple Gun]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 21:53, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

:The sections about turtles between the code blocks seems to be from

Interesting Facts About Turtles
A Little Nature Study by a Scientist that will Interest Old and Young Naturalists Alike
By Randle C. Rosenberger M. D., Professor of Hygiene and Bacteriology, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pa.
https://archive.org/stream/foreststream861916newy/foreststream861916newy_djvu.txt

The uni.xkcd version of this comic also just shows the turtle like this article. So much for uses two April Fools comics against each other ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.77|172.70.114.77]] 22:44, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

I ran the MP3 through Amazon Transcribe. It can do only 4 hours at a time, so I had to split the original file. I went from start to 03:59:59, 03:59:59 to 07:59:58, and 07:59:58 to end. Amazon Transcribe also gave me some subtitle files (index 1). They have time codes in them. So if someone wanted to note the times of the little quips, and host the audio file somewhere where links to the middle of the file can be generated (like YouTube), that could be cool. Below are the transcriptions for analysis. Replace X with 1, 2, or 3; and replace Y with json, srt, or vtt. [[User:Pgn674|Pgn674]] ([[User talk:Pgn674|talk]]) 23:15, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

:<code><nowiki>https://pgn674.s3.amazonaws.com/xkcd-2601/xkcd-2601-X.Y</nowiki></code>

:: No need to host anything special. Let's say we want to jump to time code 02:35:14.840 from the vtt subtitle file #1 (line 7084, subtitle 1771). 2*60*60+35*60+14=9314. Subtract a few seconds, and make a link like this. Click here to learn about turtle noises: https://xkcd.com/2601/radio.mp3#t=9310 [[User:Pgn674|Pgn674]] ([[User talk:Pgn674|talk]]) 23:48, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

::: I went and found all mentions of "turtle", extracted those lines, and generated links to them. Programmatically. If anyone wants to go through and do some manual review and fine tuning, go ahead. [[User:Pgn674|Pgn674]] ([[User talk:Pgn674|talk]]) 00:57, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I threw Adobe Premiere Pro at it: https://anonfiles.com/pbYfK7Sax4/radio_csv; and https://anonfiles.com/35YbKeScxe/radio_txt are the results. Note: these transcribe until 07:01:28:19. I am currently in the process of making APP suffer more and churn out the last two hours. --[[User:ẞ qwertz|ẞ qwertz]] ([[User talk:ẞ qwertz|talk]]) 23:54, 1 April 2022 (UTC)

So... what language is this? I'm hearing: PENUP, PENDOWN, SETHEADING (N) (N), SETXY (N) (N), FORWARD (N) - all of which are standard LOGO commands. But I'm also hearing something that sounds like CUBIC (N) (N) (N) (N) (N) (N), though it could also be QBIT, or text-to-speech for something like "^3". Either way it's NOT a standard LOGO command, so suggests it's a variant. Does not seem to be KTurtle, POOL, UCBLogo. QLogo, FMSLogo, and then I got bored searching. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.91|172.69.71.91]] 00:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
:In the automatic transcription it has "Two cubic colon X one colon Y one colon X two"... which would be TO CUBIC :X1 :Y1 :X2 ... so it is defined above. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.230|162.158.107.230]] 01:15, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

: Yes, some of the commands seem to be defined at the top. CUBIC at the top, SQUARE maybe somewhere else. So a shortcut to decyphering it might be to just extract and render all the cubes from the "CUBIC" and "SQUARE" commands, given their values. But what format are the cubes? Are they even the coordinates of cubes? For both commands, the six numbers seem to be in the format A B A B A B where the As and Bs are similar or even in some cases identical, which seems a strange thing for a cube:
<blockquote><pre>
SetXY -443 412
PenDown
Square -443 405 -443 397 -444 390
</pre></blockquote>
The definition seems to be something like:
<blockquote><pre>
ToCubic : X1 : Y1 : X2 : Y2 : Ex : Ey --- Parameter definitions?
local Make " X0 XCor --- Local variable definitions?
Local Make " Y0 YCor
Local Make " ErrX1 Lerp : X0 : X 0.25
local Make " ErrY1 Lerp : Y0 : Ey 0.25
Local Make " ErrX2 Lerp : X0 : Ex 0.75
Local Make " ErrY2 Lerp : Y0 : Ey 0.75
IfElse
Or
LessP : picks error Dist : ErrX1 : ErrY1 : X1 : Y1
LessP : picks error Dist : ErrX2 : ErrY2 : X2 : Y2
[
Local Make " Qx0 mix : X0 : X1
Local Make " Qy0 mix : Y0 : Y1
Local Make " Qx1 mix : X1 : X2
Local Make " qy1 Mix : Y1 : Y2
Local Make " Qx2 mix : X2 : EX
Local Make " Qy2 mix : Y2 : Ey
Local Make " Lx0 mix : Qx0 : QX1
Local Make " Ly0 mix : Qy0 : QY1
Local Make " Lx1 Mix : Qx1 : Qx2
Local Make " Ly1 Mix : qy1 : Q
Local Make " PmX Mix : Lx0 : Lx1
Local Make " PmY Mix : Ly0 : LY1
Cubic : Qx0 : qy0 : Lx0 : Ly0 : PmX : PmY
Cubic : Lx1 : Ly1 : Qx2 : Qy2 : Ex : Ey
]
[
SetXY : Ex : Ey
]
</pre></blockquote>
Least, that's what it sounds like, but I suspect round brackets and suchlike are not spoken aloud :( --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.95|108.162.221.95]] 01:54, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Feels like the speech processing is lossy, so generating the code will be a lengthy labor of love transcribing it, then debugging it, trying to fill the gaps. The code may also have been fed through an automated "Bob Ross filter" which may have lost even more data. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.91|172.69.71.91]] 00:37, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

About a quarter of the way into the text is the line "You know, I'm beginning to suspect it's turtles all the way down!" [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.215|162.158.78.215]] 00:46, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

it's concerning that the only real way we'll be able to figure this comic out is to compile the entire 9 hour computer-generated voice speech. [[User:Lettherebedarklight|youtube.com/watch?v=miLcaqq2Zpk]] ([[User talk:Lettherebedarklight|talk]]) 01:40, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Here's my attempt to transcribe the first 11 minutes of this monstrosity or so: (I haven't run any of the transcribed code for the record.) --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.118.59|172.68.118.59]] 02:12, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

{| role="presentation" class="wikitable mw-collapsible mw-collapsed"
!'''Partial Transcript'''
|-
| <pre>
# 0:00:00
# And here we want to show you that you can program a picture right along with us. We'll use a single color, some unorthodox functions, and each line we'll put a bit of nature's masterpieces right here on our canvas. Today we'll have them run all the functions across the stream, right now, that you need to program along with us. Starting with a simple one:

TO DIST :X0 :Y0 :X1 :Y1
LOCAL MAKE "RX DIFFERENCE :X1 :X0
LOCAL MAKE "RY DIFFERENCE :Y1 :Y0
OUTPUT SQRT SUM PRODUCT "RX "RX PRODUCT "RY "RY
END

# 0:00:50
# There we go. Just like that.

TO LERP :A :B :T
OUTPUT SUM :A PRODUCT :T DIFFERENCE :B :A
END

# 0:01:05
# One more done, no pressure.

TO MIX :A :B
OUTPUT LERP :A :B 0.5
END

# 0:01:15
# Really makes our programming life easier.

TO CUBIC :X1 :Y1 :X2 :Y2 :EX :EY
LOCAL MAKE "X0 XCOR
LOCAL MAKE "Y0 YCOR
LOCAL MAKE "ERRX1 LERP :X0 :EX 0.25
LOCAL MAKE "ERRY1 LERP :Y0 :EY 0.25
LOCAL MAKE "ERRX2 LERP :X0 :EX 0.75
LOCAL MAKE "ERRY2 LERP :Y0 :EY 0.75
IFORELSE LESSP :PXERR (DIST :ERRX1 :ERRY1 :X1 :Y1) LESSP :PXERR (DIST :ERRX2 :ERRY2 :X2 :Y2) [
LOCAL MAKE "QX0 MIX :X0 :X1
LOCAL MAKE "QY0 MIX :Y0 :Y1
LOCAL MAKE "QX1 MIX :X1 :X2
LOCAL MAKE "QY1 MIX :Y1 :Y2
LOCAL MAKE "QX2 MIX :X2 :EX
LOCAL MAKE "QY2 MIX :Y2 :EY
LOCAL MAKE "LX0 MIX :QX0 :QX1
LOCAL MAKE "LY0 MIX :QY0 :QY1
LOCAL MAKE "LX1 MIX :QX1 :QX2
LOCAL MAKE "LY1 MIX :QY1 :QY2
LOCAL MAKE "PMX MIX :LX0 :LX1
LOCAL MAKE "PMY MIX :LY0 :LY1
CUBIC :QX0 :QY0 :LX0 :LY0 :PMX :PMY
CUBIC :LX1 :LY1 :QX2 :QY2 :EX :EY
] [
SET X Y :EX :EY
]
END

# 0:04:16
# I think there's a programmer hidden at the bottom of every single one of us.

MAKE "PXERR 0.5

# 0:04:25
# Let me show you what is going on up here.

CLEAR SCREEN
WINDOW
PENUP
SET X Y -473 391

# 0:04:38
# I've just covered the entire canvas with just a bit of white.

PENDOWN

# 0:04:44
# We start with a vision in our hearts and we put it on canvas.

CUBIC -469 424 -458 416 -456 389
PENUP
SET X Y -471 400
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 87
FORWARD 14
PENUP
SET X Y -443 412
PENDOWN
CUBIC -443 405 -443 397 -444 390
PENUP
SET X Y -442 400
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 84
FORWARD 10
PENUP
SET X Y -431 409
PENDOWN
CUBIC -432 403 -432 397 -431 390
PENUP
SET X Y -427 392
PENDOWN
CUBIC -422 419 -415 416 -412 391
PENUP
SET X Y -426 400
PENDOWN
CUBIC -422 400 -418 401 -414 401
PENUP
SET X Y -409 410
PENDOWN
CUBIC -408 404 -408 398 -408 391
PENUP
SET X Y -409 409
PENDOWN
CUBIC -395 421 -390 396 -408 403
PENUP
SET X Y -393 410
PENDOWN
CUBIC -392 405 -392 399 -392 393
PENUP
SET X Y -393 411
PENDOWN
CUBIC -380 419 -377 400 -392 402
PENUP
SET X Y -372 391
PENDOWN
CUBIC -371 402 -374 400 -377 408
PENUP
SET X Y -372 400
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 37
FORWARD 13
PENUP
SET X Y -471 380
PENDOWN
CUBIC -471 366 -480 357 -460 361
PENUP
SET X Y -457 379
PENDOWN
CUBIC -457 372 -457 366 -457 360
PENUP
SET X Y -448 379
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 179
FORWARD 19
PENUP

# 0:09:30
# Miriam Webster defines a turtle as: noun, any of an order (Testudines synonym Chelonia) of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine reptiles that have a toothless horny beak and a shell of bony dermal plates usually covered with horny shields enclosing the trunk and into which the head, limbs, and tail usually may be withdrawn.

SET X Y -454 378
PENDOWN
CUBIC -449 379 -444 380 -440 380
PENUP
SET X Y -434 379
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 179
FORWARD 16
PENUP
SET X Y -439 378
CUBIC -434 379 -430 380 -425 380
PENUP
SET X Y -425 377
PENDOWN
CUBIC -424 367 -431 356 -415 360
PENUP
SET X Y -400 380
PENDOWN
CUBIC -404 379 -413 382 -412 376
CUBIC -410 360 -416 356 -400 360
PENUP
SET X Y -412 368
PENDOWN
CUBIC -409 369 -406 370 -403 370
PENUP
SET X Y -376 380
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 178
FORWARD 21
PENUP
SET X Y -383 378
PENDOWN
CUBIC -379 379 -374 380 -369 381
PENUP
SET X Y -366 379
PENDOWN
CUBIC -365 372 -366 366 -366 360
PENUP
SET X Y -366 379
PENDOWN
CUBIC -353 384 -349 375 -363 371
CUBIC -358 372 -356 365 -353 361
PENUP
SET X Y -338 379
PENDOWN
CUBIC -341 378 -351 381 -350 376
CUBIC -348 359 -355 358 -336 361
PENUP
SET X Y -350 370
PENDOWN
CUBIC -347 370 -344 370 -341 370
PENUP
SET X Y -320 379
PENDOWN
CUBIC -338 381 -331 375 -333 362
CUBIC -332 358 -323 362 -320 361
PENUP
SET X Y -332 370
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 89
FORWARD 7
SET HEADING -79
FORWARD 1
PENUP
SET X Y -474 336
PENDOWN
CUBIC -473 329 -473 322 -474 316
PENUP
SET X Y -473 327
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 85
FORWARD 11
PERNUP
SET X Y -461 338
PENDOWN
CUBIC -461 331 -461 323 -460 316
PENUP

# 0:16:03
# Here are some interesting notes from interesting facts about turtles:
# A little nature study by a scientist, Forest and Stream, January 1916:
# Over a great many years I have taken a great interest in the land turtle.
# I have at the present time a number, some of which I have had for at least
# 17 years. To most people, they were ugly and repulsive, as the head when
# fully protruded and extended, looks like a snake. And furthermore, their
# clumsy method of progression does not add anything attractive.

SET X Y -453 335
PENDOWN
CUBIC -460 331 -456 312 -447 319
CUBIC -442 324 -444 339 -453 335
PENUP
SET X Y -439 335
PENDOWN
CUBIC -439 329 -441 322 -439 316
CUBIC -437 315 -433 316 -430 316
PENUP
SET X Y -426 315
PENDOWN
CUBIC -412 316 -408 339 -427 336
CUBIC -426 329 -426 322 -427 315
PENUP
SET X Y -409 336
PENDOWN
CUBIC -409 330 -409 323 -409 316
PENUP
SET X Y -405 316
PENDOWN
SET HEADING -1
FORWARD 19
CUBIC -400 329 -397 322 -394 316
SET HEADING 4
FORWARD 20
PENUP
SET X Y -381 325
PENDOWN
CUBIC -379 325 -377 325 -375 325
CUBIC -373 322 -375 319 -377 318
CUBIC -393 311 -390 343 -375 334
PENUP
SET X Y -359 335
PENDOWN
CUBIC -366 307 -340 310 -348 336
PENUP
SET X Y -342 315
PENDOWN
CUBIC -341 321 -343 329 -342 335
CUBIC -326 342 -322 324 -342 325
PENUP
SET X Y -319 315
PENDOWN
CUBIC -315 344 -305 337 -303 313
PENUP
SET X Y -317 324
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 87
FORWARD 12
PENUP
SET X Y -473 303
PENDOWN
CUBIC -473 296 -473 289 -473 282
PENUP
SET X Y -473 292
PENDOWN
CUBIC -469 292 -465 293 -461 293
PENUP
SET X Y -460 303
PENDOWN
CUBIC -461 297 -462 290 -461 284
PENUP
SET X Y -456 285
PENDOWN
CUBIC -453 312 -445 306 -441 284
PENUP
SET X Y -455 292
PENDOWN
CUBIC -451 293 -447 294 -443 293
SET HEADING -7
FORWARD 1
PENUP
SET X Y -438 302
PENDOWN
SET HEADING 179
FORWARD 17
PENUP
SET X Y -439 301
PENDOWN
CUBIC -425 311 -422 288 -438 293
PENUP

# One of the interesting points about turtles is their great variety of foods.
# They are, as a rule, good scavengers eating all kinds of decomposing and putrefying
# materials, beef or in fact any meat is eaten.

# I have seen them eat the flesh of birds and of moles, and while earthworms are
# relished by them, any worm or grub is taken worms from shell barks, and ordinary
# maggots are gotten rid of in a hurry.

# Blackberries, may apples, cherries and mulberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, and
# one vegetable eagerly eaten by my stock is green sugar corn, either raw or cooked.
# In the spring when they first come out of the soil, and food is not plentiful in
# their pen, I have bought canned corn and they certainly have made it disappear
# very quickly. Beetles and tumble bugs, potato bugs, either in larval or mature
# forms, are destroyed

# Toadstools, especially the large flat pink ones, white and yellow ones are eaten
# while I have seen them pass a black toadstool by several days unnoticed.
</pre>
|}

Here is a transcript of the non-code part:
<pre>
And here we want to show you that you can program a picture right along with us.
We'll use a single color, some unorthodox functions, and each line we'll put a
bit of nature's masterpieces right here on our canvas.

Today we'll have them run all the functions across the stream right now that you
need to program along with us, starting with a simple one:

(code)

There we go, just like that.

(code)

One more done! No pressure!

(code)

Really makes our programming life easier!

(code)

I think there's a programmer hidden at the bottom of every single one of us!

(code)

Let me show you what is going on up here:

(code)

I've just covered the entire canvas with just a bit of white.

(code)

We start with a vision in our hearts and we put it on canvas.

(code)

Miriam Webster defines a turtle as a noun. Any of an order Testudines,
genus Chelonia, of terrestrial, freshwater and marine reptiles that have
a toothless, horny beak in a shell of bony dermal plates usually covered with
horny shields in closing the trunk and into which the head, limbs and tail
usually may be withdrawn.

(code)

Here are some interesting notes from interesting facts about turtles:
A little nature study by a scientist, Forest and Stream, January 1916:
Over a great many years I have taken a great interest in the land turtle.
I have at the present time a number, some of which I have had for at least
17 years. To most people they were ugly and repulsive, as the head when
fully protruded and extended, looks like a snake. And furthermore, their
clumsy method of progression does not add anything attractive.

(code)

One of the interesting points about turtles is their great variety of foods.
They are, as a rule, good scavengers eating all kinds of decomposing and putrefying
materials, beef or in fact any meat is eaten.

I have seen them eat the flesh of birds and of moles, and while earthworms are
relished by them, any worm or grub is taken worms from shell barks, and ordinary
maggots are gotten rid of in a hurry.

Blackberries, may apples, cherries and mulberries, tomatoes, cucumbers, and
one vegetable eagerly eaten by my stock is green sugar corn, either raw or cooked.
In the spring when they first come out of the soil, and food is not plentiful in
their pen, I have bought canned corn and they certainly have made it disappear
very quickly. Beetles and tumble bugs, potato bugs, either in larval or mature
forms, are destroyed.

Toadstools, especially the large flat pink ones, white and yellow ones are eaten
while I have seen them pass a black toadstool by several days unnoticed.

(code)

Here we have a happy little "pen down" statement
That's it!
And then:

(code)

Occasionally when a female drops an egg on the ground, it is quickly eaten by the
others. Ordinary hen's eggs are eaten and a great relish enjoyed hugely by them
as thick sour milk. I have placed a quantity of this milk in two or three places
in the pen and in five minutes it is surrounded by the turtles, just like flies
on a lump of sugar. The scrapings of Limburger cheese have also been eaten.

(code)

A piece of butter which had been upon a platter in the icebox for months was placed
before them and this was eaten in due time, crab apples and cantaloupe are enjoyed
by them, but watermelon is not so eagerly gobbled up like the cantaloupe.
I was surprised one morning when I found1 of the large turtles had caught and
disembowel, the very large toad, which I had in the yard.
I have seen turtles eating at 11:00 at night when1 would think they would be resting.

(code)

Here you have the power to do anything you want!

(code)

They prefer the shade and at certain times during the day if the sun is very hot,
they retreat under the logs which I have for a shelter during rain, they are very
active and move about with heads and necks outstretched, enjoying the shower bath
hugely and evidently on the outlook for worms. Just as some birds after or during
a shower, the youngest of turtles I have ever had seems to take to the same food
as the adults.

(code)

As a rule, they emerge in April sometimes the middle of the month, but as early as
April six they made their appearance. If the weather does not stay warm, they
again go back to their retreats, mating commences almost within a day or two after
their emergence. The males are quite persistent in their lovemaking, biting at
the female etcetera. And on two occasions I have seen the scale removed from the
shell of the female and blood ooze from these surfaces

(code)

I made friends with a turtle yesterday and he gave me his phone number.
I asked is that a landline? He said no it's my shell phone.

(code)

It is interesting to see the males fight among themselves. They raised themselves
as high as possible and lunge and bite and snap at each other In getting away
from his opponent. The Beaten one will beat a hasty retreat and retract his front
feet or back feet as occasion demands and glide, not run, away.
Running away is slow as compared to this turtle propulsion. It is not a slide,
it is really a darting forward glide. Just recently I saw one male maltreating
another in which the second fellow had all parts retracted and was being snapped
at pushed and actually rolled over on his back by his opponent.

(code)

Occasionally one can see a turtle dragging another one along, the first one
having the second fellow's hind leg between his shell. This has probably been
the result of a scuffle. I have never known a land turtle to bite but have
often seen them open their mouths wide and hiss or draw in their breath with
a hissing or sighing sound.

(code)

Some people have turtles in their cellars believing that they catch rats and mice.
I tried keeping some of mine in the cellar for two seasons in the wintertime.
They kept up a constant walk exactly like a caged beast. I gave them meat,
vegetables and water, but on no occasion did they take the proffered food.
In the spring, I found several of them dead. I believe that these turtles died
because they were exhausted from wandering around and around during their time
of hibernation. I also believe that this unnatural hibernation led them to
refuse all food.

(code)

Regarding the catching of rats and mice in cellars, I believe that rats and mice
might be kept away by the noise made by the turtle making its endless march
around the cellar, but doubt whether a turtle could catch a rat or a mouse.

(code)

In my yard, I had a galvanized iron pin three ft. in length by two ft. in width by
3 inches in depth for water. In this the turtles would enjoy themselves drinking
from the edge with heads submerged or with the entire body submerged for sometimes
as long as several hours. And even for a whole day, even in the country where I
now have the herd, I have a small dish in which they can just get in and they
certainly appreciate a bath.

(code)

How about some interesting things in 10 facts about marine turtles from the WWF UK?
There are seven species of marine turtle. Marine turtles were around more than
100 million years ago and lived alongside dinosaurs. These days, scientists
recognize seven species of marine turtle, the hawksbill, the loggerhead, the
leatherback, the olive Ridley, the green, the flatback and the Kemps Ridley.

(code)

Turtles do not have teeth. They use their beak like mouth to grasp their food.
This beak is made of keratin, the same stuff your fingernails are made of.

(code)

Turtle shells are made of over 50 bones fused together. So they are literally
wearing their bones on the outside. They also have light spongy bones that
help them float.

(code)

Their young lives are a mystery. The first few years of a marine turtle's
life are known as "the lost years". That's because the time between when the
hatchlings emerge until they return to coastal shallow waters to forage is
incredibly difficult to study. The "lost years" they spend at sea, which can
be up to 20 years largely remain a mystery to us.

(code)

They can be ginormous. Marine turtle species vary greatly in size.
The smallest Kemps Ridley measure around 70 cm long and weigh up to 40 kg
whilst the leatherback can reach up to 180 cm long and weigh 500 kg.
That is over 10 times heavier. Amazingly, Wales holds the world record
for the largest marine turtle ever found. In 1988, a leatherback was found
ashore measuring 2.5 m long, 2.5 m from flipper to flipper and weighing over
900 kg.

(code)

It's survival of the fittest. It is estimated that only around one in 1000
marine turtle hatchlings make it to adulthood. This is down to the long time
it takes for them to reach maturity and the many dangers faced by hatchlings
and juveniles, from predators to marine plastics.

(code)

They make some interesting noises. Female leatherbacks make some strange
noises when they are nesting, some of which sound similar to a human belch.

(code)

Just let it happen!

(code)

They have color preferences, turtles seem to prefer red, orange and yellow food.
They appear to investigate these colors more than others when looking for a meal.

(code)

You know I'm beginning to suspect it's turtles all the way down!

(code)

Marine turtles can migrate incredibly long distances. The longest known record
is for a female leatherback who swam nearly 13,000 miles over 647 days from
Indonesia to the west coast of America. That is over 20 miles a day!

(code)

They always return home. Females return to the same beach they hatched on to
lay their own eggs and bury them in sand nests. Marine turtles' amazing ability
to navigate comes from their sensitivity to the earth's magnetic fields.

(code)

Move the turtle. Playing, working, just having fun.

(code)

Here are some more interesting bits from interesting facts about turtles:
A little nature study by a scientist Forest and Stream, January 1916:
The laying of eggs, this is one of the most instructive things that I have ever
watched. Invariably they chose in my yard a situation with a southern exposure
when desiring to lay. In only two instances was an eastern exposure observed,
and once a western part of the yard being a cement walk, we could sometimes
observe the female making motions as for digging the nest. Sometimes for a
half a day she would remain stationary and with her back legs commenced to work
for this purpose, lifting her to the grass plot In a short time she would
commence to dig first with the left hind foot she would remove a little dirt
and pile it up on her left side, then with the right hind foot and pile the
removed dirt upon the right side. This would be repeated again and again
probably for hours until the proper size hole and depth was obtained.

(code)

Egg laying does not always occur during the daytime, as I have observed one or
two digging away past midnight. Sometimes they will have dug for about an
inch or so and then not make any more progress downward. In these instances
they have met with obstructions like a small stone which they cannot remove.
I have with a pair of forceps removed the obstruction on several occasions
with the turtle still in c two and after a minute or two she resumes her work.

(code)

The nest or repository is about 3 inches in depth and about an inch and a half or
a little more in width. When she has it finished, she discharges her eggs into it.
When the egg is deposited in the hole, she is not just satisfied in dropping it,
but she reaches down with her hind leg and places the egg horizontally and covers
a little dirt over it. Then the second egg and the remaining eggs are all treated
similarly and when the last1 is deposited and placed, she commences to fill up with
the dirt that remains. This she puts into the hole with an alternate right and
left leg until all is filled in.

(code)

After it is all done, she pats it with both her hind feet together and then with
her body raised and lowered pets and smooths over the place where the eggs are
buried. Then she leaves it and never looks after it as the sun now plays its
part in hatching the eggs. The eggs are whitish in color with a semi-elastic
shell about the size of a pigeon egg.

(code)

The number laid by a turtle varies. I have seen three and on one occasion I
have seen eight laid at one sitting. I have also observed one turtle laying
its eggs, covering them over, and a little later a day or two, another female
dig in the same place, remove the eggs and lay her own in this doubly-dug
repository. Once a female dug six hours and laid four eggs. Another dug
several hours. The hole measured two inches across and three and one half
inches in depth. And she laid eight eggs within a half hour.

(code)

Not all eggs hatch out. But in the instance where eight were laid, I had
the pleasure of seeing six little baby turtles come out other eggs which were
laid in a hole dug with a western or eastern exposure, never came to anything.
I have dug carefully into these nests, but I have always come upon decomposing
eggs.

(code)

For the most interesting egg laying I ever witnessed, the turtle commenced
to dig at six pm, and was still busy at work the next morning at eight o'clock.
Five days later a second turtle dug these eggs out arid, deposited four of her
own and covered the nest up personally. I do not believe that the turtle digging
out the previous batch of eggs was vindictive or mischievous but that the ground
seemed soft and easily worked. Therefore it took advantage of the spot.

(code)

Average person paints three turtles a year, factoid!
Actually just statistical error. Average person paints zero turtles per year.
Turtles George who lives in cave and eats over 10,000 each day is an outlier
and should not have been counted.

(code)

The young turtles when they make their emergence at the end of three months,
are dark in color and quite active. If you place one on its back at this time
it will arch its head and neck and come around its normal position.
The shell, of course, is quite soft, but in about three years the shell really
becomes hardened though some clear portions of the shell around the edges are
still soft. The color of the shell gradually changes to that usually seen in
the head, and soft parts are modeled speckled or of a solid color.
I have two in my collection where the head and neck are solid yellow.

(code)

Do you know what a sea turtle's favorite sandwiches? Peanut butter and
jellyfish! That sounds weird, but it's actually true. Just ask the next
sea turtle you meet. But I think we shouldn't mention it to the jellyfish.

(code)

Here are some interesting observations from odd facts about turtles:
Christian Observer, May 11th 1919: It has been said that the turtle, like
the whale, has no other enemy than man and as much as both the little creature
and the big pursued their various ways in practical immunity from harm and the
fear of sudden death.

(code)

In many ways, the turtle is one of the strangest of living things. Whales must
come to the surface frequently to breathe and it is pretty well known what they
feed upon. The seal cannot remain beneath the sea nearly so long as the whale
and his food is very well known. But the turtle in all his varieties in all his
ways, is a most mysterious animal. It does not indeed seem to matter to him
whether he stays beneath the surface for an hour or for a week.
Nor does it trouble him to spend an equal time on I land if the need arises.
Your turtle is neither fish, flesh nor fowl. Yet his flesh partakes of the
characteristics of all three.

(code)

Eating seems a mere superfluidity with him since for weeks at a time he may be
headed up in a barrel with a bung out and emerged after his long fast.
Apparently none the worse for his enforced abstinence from food from light and
almost from air.

(code)

All you need to draw is a few instructions, a little turtle and a vision in your mind.

(code)

In the whole category of animal organisms, there is none so tenacious of life
as the turtle. Injuries that would instantly be fatal even to fish
leave the turtle apparently undisturbed and his power of staving off
death is nothing short of marvelous.

(code)

Just as soon as a baby turtle emerges from the egg off he scuttles down to the sea.
He has no one to teach him, no1 to guide him in his curious little brain.
There has implanted a streak of caution based upon the fact that until a
certain period in his life his armor is soft and no defense against hungry fish,
and he at once seeks shelter in the tropical profusion of the gulf weed which
holds within its branching fronds, an astonishing abundance of marine life here.
The young turtle feeds unmolested while his armor undergoes the hardening process.

(code)

Whatever the young sea turtle eats and wherever he eats it, facts not generally
ascertained, one thing is certain: It agrees with him immensely. He leads
a pleasant sort of life basking in the tropical sun and cruising leisurely in
the cool depths.

(code)

Once he has attained the weight of \xc2\xa325 which usually occurs within the first
year, the turtle is free from all danger after that no fish or mammal,
however ravenous, however well armed with teeth, interferes with the turtle.

(code)

When once he has withdrawn his head from its position of outlook into the folds
of his neck, between the two shells intending devours, may struggle in vain
to make an impression upon him

(code)

How about some neat facts courtesy of "10 Cool Facts About Turtles"
from Deutsche Welle? They have been around for a really, really long time.
There is a reason why turtles look a little prehistoric. The first ever
specimens evolved around 260 million years ago in the late Triassic period.
Shortly after their arrival, the earth experienced a mass extinction event
that wiped out about 90% of all life on land. Luckily for the turtles,
their burrowing and water dwelling habits set them up for long term survival
in this strange new world.

(code)

They have one of the longest lifespans in the animal kingdom. While a
turtle's lifespan largely depends on the species, almost all of them have
the potential to live to a ripe old age. A typical pet turtle can make
it to anywhere between 10 and 80 years while larger species often keep going
for more than 100 years. Because it's so difficult to accurately measure age
over a century, researchers think some turtles could even be hundreds of years old.

(code)

See how easy it is to create a tree in your little world!

(code)

They come in all shapes and sizes. There are currently 356 known species of
turtles. As a rule, they are all reptiles with a hard cartilage shell, but that
is about where the similarities end. There are sea turtles, leatherback turtles,
snapping turtles, pond turtles, soft shelled turtles, and of course tortoises.

(code)

Not all turtles are tortoises but all tortoises are turtles. Yes, technically
all tortoises are in fact turtles. They belong to the Testudines family which
includes reptiles whose bodies are protected by a bony outer shell.
But the main difference between turtles and tortoises is that tortoises live
exclusively on land while most turtles live in or near water.

(code)

Some turtles are vegetarians while others are carnivorous. Most turtles are
actually omnivores but a few species are more picky when it comes to their diet.
Most tortoises are happy to munch on leafy greens or fruit. Not to the fearsome
looking alligator turtle which is almost entirely carnivorous and feeds on
anything from fish to small mammals that venture too close to the water's edge.

(code)

All species lay their eggs on land when they are ready to lay their eggs.
Even water dwelling turtles will dig their nests in the sand or the earth near
their habitat but they are not the nurturing type. No species of turtle
sticks around to raise their young. When the babies hatch they are on their own.

(code)

A turtle's gender is determined by temperature like crocodiles and alligators.
A turtle's gender is determined after fertilization. If the turtle's eggs
incubate below 27.7 degrees Celsius, the hatchlings will be male. But if the
eggs incubate above 31 degrees they will be female. If the temperature is
somewhere in between our fluctuates, a mix of male and female babies will
hatch. As oceans warm, turtles tend to give birth to more females.

(code)

They have an amazing sense of direction. Sea turtles are known for their
amazing ability to return to the exact beach where they were born years later.
Like many animals, turtles can navigate their way at sea by sensing the individual
lines of the magnetic field, but they can also remember the magnetic signature of
coastlines and sends tiny variations in magnetic fields allowing them to guide
themselves home.

(code)

And excellent vision, too. Turtles have strong underwater eyesight.
Researchers have discovered that they can see a range of different colors and
even prefer some colors to others. Although sea turtles are famous for their
internal GPS, there is evidence to suggest they do not see very well on land.

(code)

Many species are endangered. Having survived for millions of years, six out of
seven turtle species are classified as threatened or endangered as a result of
human activity. Every year thousands become trapped in commercial trawl nets while
in some parts of the world they are killed for their eggs, meat and shells.

(code)

How about some interesting facts from turtle facts by Alina Bradford,
writing for livescience.com? Turtles are reptiles with hard shells that protect
them from predators. They are among the oldest and most primitive groups of
reptiles, having evolved millions of years ago. Turtles live all over the world
in almost every type of climate.

(code)

And then according to the integrated taxonomic information system, the turtle
order Testudines genus Chelonia splits into two sub orders, Cryptodira, and
Pleurodira, and then further splits into 13 families, 75 genera and more than
300 species.

(code)

They say everything looks better with odd values for things but sometimes I put
even values just to upset the interpreter.

(code)

Turtle, tortoise and terrapins are often used interchangeably as synonyms, but
there are distinct differences between the types of Chelonians, according to
the San Diego Zoo.

(code)

Turtles spend most of their lives in water. They are adapted for aquatic life
with webbed feet or flippers in a streamlined body. Sea turtles rarely leave
the ocean except to lay eggs in the sand. Freshwater turtles live in ponds
and lakes and they climb out of the water onto logs or rocks to bask in the
warm sun.

(code)

Tortoises are land animals, their feet are around and stumpy adapted for walking
on land. They also dig burrows with their strong four limbs and slip underground
when the sun gets too hot. Terrapins live on land and in water usually in swamps,
ponds, lakes and rivers.

(code)

With so many different types of turtle, there is no average size. The
largest sea turtle species is the leatherback turtle. It weighs 600 to
1500 and is about 4.5 to 5 and a quarter feet long. According to the
World Wildlife Federation, the Galapagos tortoise grows up to six ft.
long and 573(lb?). According to the San Diego Zoo, the largest freshwater
turtle in North America is the alligator snapping turtle. It can grow to 2
5 ft long and weigh as much as 200(lb?). The Yangtze giant softshell
turtle is the largest softshell turtle. It measures up to 3.6 ft across
and weighs up to 309(lb?).

(code)

A turtle's shell is a modified rib cage and part of its vertebral column,
according to the Animal Diversity Web at the University of Michigan.
The top part of the shell is called the carapace and the bottom is
called the plastering. According to the San Diego Zoo, the shell is
made up of about 60 bones that are covered by plates called scoots.
Scoots are made of keratin, the same material that makes up humans
fingernails.

(code)

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote that "All the thoughts of a turtle are
turtles and of a rabbit rabbits." So let's try to think like a turtle!

(code)

Many turtles are able to retract their heads and feet into their shells.
Turtles are placed in the two sub orders based on the method of retraction.
According to the Animal Diversity Web at the University of Michigan,
Pleurodirs pull their heads in sideways, Cryptodirs draw their heads
straight back into the shell. Sea turtles have lost the ability to retract
their heads.

(code)

Turtles are very adaptive and can be found on every continent except Antarctica.
Most turtle species are found in southeastern North America and south Asia.
Only five species live in Europe, according to Drs. Foster and Smith,
a veterinarian business based in Wisconsin.

(code)

Sea turtles can be found in the Coral Triangle, an area that includes the
waters of Indonesia Malaysia, the Philippines and Papua, New Guinea;
coastal east Africa, the meso-American reef in the Caribbean, the Galapagos
Islands and the Gulf of California.

(code)

Hey, what do you get if you cross a turtle with a giraffe? A turtleneck!

(code)

The african helmeted turtle is the most common turtle in Africa, according to
Animal Planet. It is a hunter scavenger that eats young birds and small mammals.
It steals bait from fishermen's hooks. It also releases a foul smelling liquid
from glands in its legs.

(code)

Roti Island snake-necked turtles are found only on Roti Island,
a 62 square mile island in Indonesia, according to the San Diego Zoo.

(code)

Turtles are not social creatures. While they typically don't mind if there
are other turtles around them, they don't interact or socialize, according
to Encyclopedia Britannica. Most turtles are active during the day, spending
their time foraging for food.

(code)

Turtles are not silent creatures. Some sound like electric motors, some
sound like belching humans, and some bark like dogs. The red-footed tortoise
from South America clucks like a chicken.

(code)

Most turtles are omnivores. They eat a variety of different things
depending on their species. Musk turtles eat molluscs, plants, small fish,
and insects. The Cooter turtle is mostly vegetarian and the green sea turtle
only eats grasses and algae.

(code)

I read in the L.A. Times this morning that 42,000 Mazda cars were recalled
because of a spider problem. Really makes you think doesn't it?

(code)

The alligator snapping turtle lures in fish with its tongue which looks like a
worm. It wiggles its tongue to attract a hungry fish and then snaps down on it
with its strong jaw. It also eats aquatic plants, snakes, frogs, fish, worms,
clams, crayfish and other turtles.

(code)

All turtles lay eggs. They find a place on land to lay their eggs, dig a nest
into the sand or dirt and then walk away. No species of turtle nurtures their
young.

(code)

Turtles reach the age to mate at different times. Some come of age as young
as a few years old, while others don't reach sexual maturity until around 50
years has passed.

(code)

Some species fight for the right to mate with a female while others seduce her
with a mating ritual to mate. Male and female turtles intertwine their tails
so that their shell openings line up perfectly.

(code)

Sea turtles travel from the ocean to lay eggs on beaches. Usually, sea
turtles lay around 110 eggs in a nest, though the flat back turtle only
lays 50 at a time.

(code)

The temperature of the sand affects the sex of the turtle. The perfect
beach temperature produces an equal number of male and female offspring due
to rising temperatures. Too many sea turtle females are being born, contributing
to the decline in species numbers, according to the Sea Turtle Conservancy.

(code)

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, many turtle
species are listed as threatened, endangered or critically endangered.
For example, the plow share tortoise and radiated tortoise are estimated
to be extinct in the next 45 years.

(code)

A pair of Russian tortoises went into space in 1968. The Soviet Union
launched Zond Five, a space probe that was the first spacecraft to orbit the moon
It returned safely and the tortoises survived. They had lost about 10% of
their body weight, but they remained active and showed no loss of appetite,
according to NASA.

(code)

I even talked to turtles at times but you need to understand logo to appreciate
the great, great things that have been created. We spend so much of our life
typing, looking, but never, ever seeing.

</pre>

OMG, fond memories of LOGO! I'm in a loud bar at the moment so I can't listen, and I'm not listening to NINE HOURS anyway, LOL! Everybody DOES realize, someone needs to extract the program and run it in LOGO, right? I would guarantee this draws something interesting and/or stupid. :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 03:27, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I found a [https://github.com/theinternetftw/xkcd2601 GitHub Repository] for transcription. May be of use to you guys for adding more info and citations to this Wiki. By the way, I didn't know this wiki existed. I don't want to create an account for it right now so good luck guys ;-; 04:12, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

I tried running some code through "ucblogo" on a Linux distro, but didn't get very far with it. ---Tim 04:16, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Given that the audio is generated by text-to-speech, could a source-aware speech-to-text work better (fewer errors and less manual correction) than a generic one? For example, finding the right text-to-speech, extracting a sound for each phoneme, and then searching for near-identical snippets of waveform, seems like it could potentially be more reliable than the generic neural nets which are primarily trained for real human speech. Or even training a neural net on the same text-to-speech source, with a big block of sample data, if that would help distinguish homophones. Presumably someone here is good enough at this sort of thing to try that? [[User:Sqek|Sqek]] ([[User talk:Sqek|talk]]) 10:05, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2292: Thermometer

2020-04-13T10:27:09Z

Sqek:

First non-Covid post other than April fools?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.167|162.158.107.167]]
23:04, 10 April 2020 (UTC)
:Since a fever is a common symptom of Covid-19, I'd say this is as much about Covid-19 as all the previous comics on the topic. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 02:59, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
::I'd disagree. Fevers aren't inherently related to COVID-19, and while it's certainly easy to draw a connection based on current events, at no point is the connection made explicit. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.104|172.69.34.104]] 10:29, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
:::Seriously? Fever is associated with 88% of COVID-19 cases! I'd say that's inherently related, and I'm drawing a connection based on that fact. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 12:59, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
::::Fevers are associated with almost all infectious diseases. By that logic, this could be about the flu, mono, or a hundred other conditions. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 17:24, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
:::::I, too, think calling this a Covid-19 comic is excessive. Sure, thermometers for measuring body temperature are sold out at my local drugstore, and pandemic likely inspired the comic, but if it had been published a year ago, we wouldn't infer any connection to a specific disease or global epidemic. - Ada in New Hampshire, USA [[Special:Contributions/172.69.6.22|172.69.6.22]] 07:56, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
::::::I would assume anything that can be linked, even loosely, is probably part of this chain. I have been assuming since the 6th one that Randel would aim for 19 of these just because. Though perhaps he will keep going till the hype is over. Either way, requiring that it directly mentions the topic it was inspired by would be way overkill. Mentioning things that likely inspired a comic is something we have done for a long time, and the virus seems like the most likely inspiration, especially when taking the full comic chain into account[[Special:Contributions/172.69.198.52|172.69.198.52]] 21:33, 12 April 2020 (UTC)
::The comic doesn't mention a fever. For all we know Cueball is trying to measure the outside air temperature, or how hot his coffee is. We can rule out the idea that he is trying to measure the temperature of some liquid helium only because he skipped past the kelvin scale. [[User:Jeremyp|Jeremyp]] ([[User talk:Jeremyp|talk]]) 18:39, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

A common practice in schools and the like prior to quarantine was temperature taking upon arrival. So it's like that this comic continues that to the home setting. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.112|162.158.78.112]] 23:19, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

A pessimist would guess that this means someone in Randall's household has a fever. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.52|108.162.219.52]] 23:26, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

> The Physician Ducks[[Special:Contributions/172.69.62.94|172.69.62.94]] 23:32, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Personally I'd welcome a home thermometer marked off in Kelvin, avois all the "twice as cold" sort of confusion you can get with an arbitrary zero as used in Celsius and Fahrenheit. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.210|162.158.34.210]] 23:21, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

I might have enjoyed a "Degrees of Kevin Bacon" joke in this comic somewhere. :-) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.143|172.69.68.143]] 23:42, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Double-plus-dissapointed we didn't get the Delisle measure referenced at all... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.202|162.158.34.202]] 01:17, 11 April 2020 (UTC) ...and now added. It would be better in any Trivia section, but we don't have one so hoping it's no more out of place in the explanation as Fahrenheit. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.202|162.158.34.202]] 02:02, 11 April 2020 (UTC) ...''aaaand'' someone removed it (as pure trivia, of course), fair enough. Anticipated. Anyone still interested in what I put just needs to check this IP, at about this timestamp, in Page History, though, so not going to argue the point. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.202|162.158.34.202]] 02:08, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

No temperature scale is defined using melting or boiling points of water anymore. Since 2019 Kelvin is defined via the Boltzmann constant, and all other temperature scales have been (re-)defined relative to the Kelvin scale for quite a while. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.103|172.69.63.103]] 01:24, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Randall forgot the Réaumur scale.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.123.97|162.158.123.97]] 03:00, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure why some people seem to look for any opportunity to take a dig at the US, but I removed the line in the explanation about US-based readers not being familiar with the Celsius temperature scale. I'm sure most Americans are familiar with it but prefer the Fahrenheit scale instead. I don't understand why anyone holds that against us. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 03:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
:Hey, let's assume good faith. Chances are, some rando just genuinely had no idea how that kind of stuff works here. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.104|172.69.34.104]] 10:22, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Regarding USA Fahrenheit and non-USA Celsius preference, I was in Niagra Falls a few years back, listening to a Canadian station on the radio (ok, more than a few years ago...) and the DJ gave a weather report, saying “The current temperature is 25 degrees, that’s 77 on the understandable scale.” [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.201|173.245.54.201]] 04:22, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

I guess if you wanted to use the Newton scale you'd need to have Newton's original "degrees of heat" measuring device. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.67|108.162.250.67]] 04:31, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Nitpicking alert : the correct writing is "kelvin", not "Kelvin".

100°F is "really hot"? Maybe on a stripper... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.190.106|162.158.190.106]] 13:00, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

Randall, as a physicist, should know about the equipartition theorem. It states that all degrees of freedom will carry the same average amount of energy in thermal equilibrium, not only the translational kinetic ones (but also rotational, and potential energies). It is technically not false to exclude some of these, but an arbitrary choice. I guess he just wanted to include the terms “translational” and “kinetic” to make sure it sounds ridiculously over-specific (which works well). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.213|162.158.91.213]] 15:07, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
:No, it's still an important distinction. Many Thermometers can only 'measure' the average Translational energy and the rotational and elastic energy is just assumed to match that. (The only Thermometers that measure rotational and elastic Energy are the ones who only measure their own temperature... which is 99.5 of all consumer Thermometers.) And it probably does except in some very specific cases with ultra high speed pressure changes.

+Using the average Translational Energy would would sidestep all the problems with the different units of temperature and would also eliminate the necessity of using the Boltzmann constant, simplyfying a lot of physics. But nobody wants to make the transition since most everyday temperatures would be between 5 and 8zJ, with 5 being freezing, six being tolerable and seven a desert at noon. The Unit, Zeejays would sound cool though.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.70|162.158.92.70]] 09:30, 13 April 2020 (UTC)
:Alternatively, use molar mean disordered translational kinetic energy per mole, making the numbers nicer by a factor of Avogadro's number, and bringing the scale to 2-3kJ/mol. Or add in a factor of 1.5 as well to make the gas K.E. formula simpler. [[User:Sqek|Sqek]] ([[User talk:Sqek|talk]]) 10:27, 13 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, it has Fahrenheit after a fashion. Just substract 460 from Rankine. It's even easier than converting Kelvin to Celsius!
:I find it much quicker to subtract 0.01C° 27,315 times than to subtract 0.01F° 45,967 times, personally. I think you're quite barmy to suggest otherwise, Unsigned... :P [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.222|162.158.34.222]] 16:17, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
::Now that I, the formerly Unsigned, think of it, I must agree with you - but for an entirely different reason. 273.15 in binary is a nice, round 100010001.001(00101) with 3 1's in the integer and 4+2n 1's for every 3+5n fractional digits, whereas 459.67 is much messier: 111001011.10110001111110... , with 6 1's in the integer alone. The more 1's there are in a number, the more operations you have to do for each addition or subtraction. So in binary, Kelvin-to-Celsius is much easier to convert than Rankine-to-Fahrenheit. Yet another point in favor of the glorious metric master system, da? [[User:Osato|Osato]] ([[User talk:Osato|talk]]) 19:57, 11 April 2020 (UTC)

I removed the weasel words, indicating that Fahrenheit is "generally appreciated" because 0 means very cold and 100 very hot. I adjusted it to "some claim" and adjusted the text to fit.

Make the scale in Celsius 0 to 200, and I think you would have a system much more relatable to Fahrenheit users.

Talk:1638: Backslashes

2017-12-14T13:18:30Z

Sqek:

It should be noted that this also occurs in almost every programming language where "\" is the escape character. i.e.
print("Hello")
> Hello
print("\"Hello\"")
> "Hello"
print("\\Hello\\")
> \Hello\
Oh, and by the way, isn't this the third comic to mention "Ba'al, the Soul Eater"? Maybe we should start a category. (Others are [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1246:_Pale_Blue_Dot 1246] (title text) and [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1419:_On_the_Phone 1419].)
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.29|173.245.54.29]] 06:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:Did that before seeing you comment, so yes I agree. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::But Davidy did not so the category has been deleted again. I have just cleaned up after my mess ;-) so there are no left over links to the dead category... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 22:27, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The last entry may also be an oblique reference to the infinitely-expandable recursive acronym "GOD = GOD Over Djinn" mentioned in Richard Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach.[[User:Taibhse|Taibhse]] ([[User talk:Taibhse|talk]]) 16:42, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

;I don't think the regex is invalid
''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below''

According to <tt>man grep</tt> you need to specify the <tt>-E</tt> option to use extended regex; without it unescaped parentheses are not interpreted, so they don't need to match.

My - very wild - guess is that it was the command he used to find the line with the most special characters, but I am not confident enough to edit the article (if someone can confirm?). {{unsigned ip|141.101.66.83}}

If it was supposed to do that, it doesn't work. Running it on my bash history matches no lines, and I have lots of special characters in there [[Special:Contributions/197.234.242.243|197.234.242.243]] 07:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Explain it to me like I'm dumb. What is this comic going on about? I think the explanation needs more examples like that hello, above, because that's almost understandable. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.231|198.41.238.231]] 07:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:I agree. But I cannot help either.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

This is the third time Randall has mentioned Ba'al the Soul Eater xD [[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 08:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:Yes, that was already mentioned a few hours before you comment, see the first comment. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

After passing the regex through bash, you get <nowiki>\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$</nowiki> That is, the literal character \, followed by [ or (, followed by any number of any characters, followed by \, followed by ] or ), followed by any number of characters that aren't ) or ], until the end of the line. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.44|108.162.216.44]] 08:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:It sounds like you know what you are talking about. Anyone who can explain it good enough for the explanation, and correct the explanation of the title text if it is wrong to say that it would not work. I have added this as the reason for incomplete. But maybe also examples are needed for people with not programming skills/knowledge. We also enjoy xkcd ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:I'm thinking that it's grepping for regular expressions that contain regular expressions. A regex containing <nowiki>"\[...\]"</nowiki> or <nowiki>"$...$"</nowiki> will match other regular expressions, as almost all non-trivial regexes use either character lists or groups. Now why out.txt is likely to contain not just regexes but rather regexes that search for regexes I have no idea - perhaps he had actually put too many backslashes in and he was trying to grep just for <nowiki>"[...]"</nowiki> or <nowiki>"(...)"</nowiki> (i.e. to locate probable regular expressions in out.txt, or anything else in parenthesis for that matter such as countless kinds of code/markup)? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.185|162.158.152.185]] 17:35, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

For fun:
cat ~/.bash_history | xargs -d "\n" -n 1 -I {} bash -c 'chars="$(echo "$1" | grep -o "[a-zA-Z0-9 ]" | wc -l)"; echo "$(( 100 - $(( $chars * 100 / ${#1} )) )) $1"' _ {} | sort -nrk 1 | less

Outputs your bash_history, ordered by relative gibberishness. This was copied by hand from desktop to mobile, might well have a few typos.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.208|162.158.90.208]] 10:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::Besides the fact that -d is a GNU extension to xargs (so it won't exist on OS X, FreeBSD, or anything else but Linux), this is a weird way to calculate gibberishness; I'm guessing functions, variable substitutions, .. and ./, etc. are going to swamp the more unreadable grep and the like. Plus, I think you need a uniq in there somewhere; otherwise, aren't the first few pages are all going to be filled with the 78 copies of "422 cd .." that tied for most gibberishy in my last 500 commands? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.82|162.158.255.82]] 22:51, 7 March 2016 (UTC)

The problem in the comic is not with regexes per se but with situations when the entered text or expression passes through several interpreters, like bash -> grep/sed/awk, or program text -> external shell command. In such cases, you have to escape backslashes for each program in the sequence, and it gets worse if you have 'real' backslashes in the final text that you're processing with the utilities (Windows' file paths, for example). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_toothpick_syndrome.
Feel free to lift this to the explanation page, since I'm not good at longer and more careful explanations than this one.
Also, gotta notice that Feedly stripped paired backslashes in the title text (probably passed it through some 'interpreter' embedded in its scripts). [[User:Aasasd|Aasasd]] ([[User talk:Aasasd|talk]]) 10:13, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

:A funny comment about the MediaWiki software, which is even worse than this comic: <code><nowiki><Nikerabbit> I looked the code for rlike and didn't find where it does this. Can you point me to it? <vvv> $pattern = preg_replace( '!(\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\)*(\\\\\\\\)?/!', '$1\\/', $pattern ); <Nikerabbit> I thought that was ascii art :)</nowiki></code> ([https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P110$275 source]) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.215|162.158.91.215]] 10:18, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Interestingly, I first looked at this on my phone (using <strike>Chrome</strike> Feedly for Android), but the title text did not display correctly in that the backslashes didn't appear (which was a little confusing!). In Chrome on my Windows desktop, the title text appeared correctly. [[User:Jdluk|Jdluk]] ([[User talk:Jdluk|talk]]) 11:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

enough with the harry potter fancruft. "elder" is a [[Wiktionary:elder|perfectly good word]]. just because you came across it for the first time in harry potter means you are *typing carefully* the kind of person that likes harry potter. unless this is a ''harry potter reference'' wiki, of course. in which case i'll prepare a complete list of every word that appears both here and there and put a list on every page. oh, right, no i won't. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.161|141.101.106.161]] 12:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Remember that "Elder" is used in a lot of RPGs to denote high level enemies or items. I feel like that's what Randall's referring to here, more than Harry Potter or the general sense of the term "Elder." {{unsigned ip|108.162.245.156}}
: +1. Between the fact that harry potter (, ages, or tribes) aren't mentioned anywhere else in the text and the comic being a progressive list, I see this being the most likely explanation. Plus the metion of demons, which are easily the most* common usage of the modifier.
:: (*) or second most, after "elder gods", who are, let's face it, also demons. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.125|162.158.180.125]] 14:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::: I'm pretty sure that "Elder backslash" is in reference to the "Elder gods" of Lovecraft. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.35|173.245.54.35]] 16:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
:::: Note also that it's called 'The Elder Wand' not as an intensifier, as in this comic and the other examples given, but because it is literally ''made from the wood of an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambucus_nigra Elder Tree]'' I'm pretty sure it's not an intentional reference. -Graptor [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.23|173.245.54.23]] 19:29, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
::::: If it's an intentional reference to anything, it's to Lovecraft (or to something similar). I suspect the Elder Wand was an intentional pun by Rowling, however. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.137|162.158.180.137]] 04:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
::::: Since no-one else seemed to want to, I just restructured that paragraph to make it more clear that if anything Harry Potter was inspired by the older examples, not the other way around. Expanded the LOTR reference and added DnD. If anything Randall is likely to be referencing either the Lovecraft references, or the concept of Elder in general. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.64.173|141.101.64.173]] 11:50, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Attempting to add to the discussion: This regex is not necessarily invalid or incomprehensible. (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.'') It looks like he was looking for a line with a regular expression or definitely some code. You just have to work your way through the backslashes. Although it might be invalid depending on the precise rules. He has some unescaped closing brackets and closing parenthesis. If these have to always be escaped then the regex is invalid. If however you don't have to escape a closing bracket with no opening bracket, then things are fine. I'm not familiar enough with grep's regex parser to know how it handles that edge case. Presuming those unescaped paren and brackets are fine, his regex searches for:

1. A backslash

2. An opening bracket

3. An opening parenthesis (this is a character set but the only character in it is an opening paren)

4. Any number of any characters

5. A backslash

6. An opening bracket

7. A closing bracket

8. A closing paren (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening paren)

9. A closing bracket (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening bracket)

10. Any number of character that are not a closing paren or closing bracket

11. The end of the line

Basically he is looking for a string that looks like:

\[(AAAAA\[])]AAAAA

Looks like a regex to me, and it looks like this regex also doesn't escape closing paren/brackets that don't have an opening paren/bracket, so I'm guessing that he knows what he is doing and his regex is fine. Maybe he was playing regex golf?
[[User:Cmancone|Cmancone]] ([[User talk:Cmancone|talk]])cmancone

Ninjaed by Cmancone, above. I agree with that result in every respect except for the start-of-string being potentially anything, but putting my own analysis in here because it took long enough to type!

Depth-of-backslash might depend upon depth of utility. In Perl, <nowiki>''</nowiki>-quotes (among others) treat everything within as literal whilst ""-quotes (and variations) interpolates any special characters, variables, etc that you put in it. (Search for "Quote and Quote-like operators" in your favourite PerlDocs source.) '\sss' is a literal backslash followed by three 's' characters , while "\sss" is the special \s escape (a whitespace) followed by two further regular characters. You might need to define the first when you need to use it to provide a not-previously-escaped \s so that it might be escaped within another context. ''Or'' you define it as "\\sss" (escaped-\) the first time, as equivalent to '\sss'. But '\\sss' would be a literal that, later, could be interpreted as an escaped-\ to the input of a further context where the \s finally becomes 'match a whitespace'.

'\\\sss' would be literal, whilst "\\\sss" could be equivalent to '\ ss' (literal backslash, literal space, rest of characters). Then, instead of literal '\\sss', for some purpose, you could interpolate two escaped-backslashes "\\\\sss"... and so on.

Meanwhile I ''think'', just from visual inspection, "'''\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$'''" in Bash should obey the interpolation rules quite nicely. The first two characters must be a literal backslash (from the escaped-backslash) and a literal open-square bracket (again, escaped). The next open-square and the close-square shortly after depict a character class that contains only an open-parenthesis, and could have been written as '''$'''.

The '''.*''' indicates zero-or-more (the asterix) instances of ''any'' character (the dot). There is then a literal backslash (from the next '''\\''' duo) and a literal open-square (the '''\[''' pair) and close-square (the '''\]''' pair). The ''')''' is literal and does not need escaping (as a parenthesis group had not yet been opened), as is the next ''']''' character. To be sure, I would have written these two as the pair escapes '''$\]''', but horses for courses...

Then there's another character class (the next '''[''' and the final ''']''') required zero-or-more times (the asterix) to use up all the rest of the characters to the end (the ending '''$''' character). As there was no '''^''' character (a.k.a. caret/circumflex/etc) at the start, the match isn't bothered about what unmatched characters appear before the original '''\('''. This character class, however, starts with a '''^''' which in this context (the very first character of a character-class definition, not somewhere where an entire match-string starts) indicates negation of the following selection, so it is all characters ''but'' those specified, which is the regular close-parenthesis and (because it needs to be contained within a '''[]''' pair) the escaped close-square.

So, all matching strings must start with '''\[(''', i.e. the backslash, open-square and open-paren. They can continue with ''any'' further text, before then having a '''\[])]''', i.e. backslash, open-and-close-squares and close-paren, close-square. After this, the match continues just as long as there are no non-closing square/classic brackets before the ending.

The minimum matching literal string would be '''\[(\[])]''' with longer variants being of the form '''X\[(Y\[])]Z''' where X and Y can be replaced by anything (or be absent), and Z can be replaced by anything (or absent!) ''so long as it doesn't contain possibly relevent close-brackets!''. The latter stipulation is likely because the Y (and X) ''is'' allowed to contain these characters, and for some reason you don't want to confuse the test by finding some other '''\[])]''' segment within the X/Y-zones. (In this context, it doesn't actually seem to matter too much. But it might do in ways I haven't spotted or just be a hang-over from a prior permutation of the test.)

The "grep -o" function is working on the output to the file being '''cat'''ed (there are alternate ways of doing this that some people might prefer), to only accept the lines in the file that match the '''X\[(Y\[])]Z''' string. These lines would appear to be lines of out.txt (a fairly generic name that reveals little to its original purpose) that are well-formed for some other purpose. A safety-escaped (i.e. not to be taken literally by any simple parser) '''[]'''-grouping containing a '''()'''-group (''not'' escaped, perhaps reasonably in context) containing potentially random text followed by an empty '''[]''' pair (again, safety-escaped). Depending on the source, the empty '''[]'''-pair could mean many things, as with the other layers. And the lines may end with any further text.

The "out.txt" file might be the result of a prior Grep (string-search function) quote possibly scanning code for lines of particular importance by another pattern and dumping the results to out.txt for further perusal. And then Randall finds the need to dig further into the first result by extracting just those already selected that all have the '''X\[(Y\[])Z]'''-ish pattern to them.

But I could be wrong, and that's way too long for an official explanation.
(Perhaps just something like the penultimate paragraph, if we're not entirely mistaken?) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 14:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The regex is supposed to be looking for (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.''):
\\\ backslash
[[(] [ or (
.* any character (repeated 0 or more times)
space space
\\\ backslash
[[\])] probably meant to match either [, ] or ). However, it's not correct, it instead matches the literal characters [)]
[^)\]]* probably meant to match any character that isn't ) or ], repeated. Instead it means one character that's not a ), and then a ] zero or more times
$ end of string

The first problem is that you're not supposed to escape ] in a [...], and it also has to be first in the grouping (unless negated with a ^) It should be [][)] or something similar.

The second problem is the same. The last bit should be [^])]*$ and not [^)\]]*$. [[User:Khris|Khris]] ([[User talk:Khris|talk]]) 14:24, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I was reading through the regex, if using grep you run into an error with an unmatched ")". Removing this gets a string such as \[(AAAAA\[]]AAAAA$ http://regexr.com/3cng8 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.230|162.158.214.230]] 14:42, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

The regex relies on several special cases (*surprise*). (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.'')
First: bash double-quote expansion (see [https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Double-Quotes.html#Double-Quotes]). Perhaps non-intuitively, \\\ followed by a character that \ doesn't escape is an escaped backslash followed by a literal backslash, effectively the same as \\\\ followed by that same non-escaped character. After bash double-quote expansion, this results in:

\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$

grep interprets this as:

# any leading non-\ characters
# literal backslash
# character class containing [ and (
# zero or more *any* characters
# another literal backslash
# yet another literal backslash, via a character class containing only a backslash. Note this does not contain an escaped ], as it might appear at first glance. See [http://www.gnu.org/software/grep/manual/html_node/Character-Classes-and-Bracket-Expressions.html]
# literal )
# literal ]
# character class of anything except ), \
# zero or more ]
# end of line

Matching examples:
*echo 'asdf\[asdfasdf\\)]a]]]]]]' | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"
*echo '$\$]P' | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"

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[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.34|108.162.216.34]] 16:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)rb

One key thing to understand is that \ is not a special character when it's in a bracket expression - you can't escape characters in bracket expressions. So [^)\] simply means any character other then ) or \. Also, ( and ) are just regular characters unless they are escaped in basic regular expressions - extended regular expressions reverse this rule. {{unsigned|Kalfalfa}}

I don't know about the regular expression in the title text, but I think the explanation is incorrect in that it starts off talking about regular expressions. Escaping backslashes is an issue with strings in programming in general. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.46|173.245.54.46]] 17:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
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I suspect that Randall may have used the regexp in the title text to *find* malformed regular expressions in a file (out.txt) that he (or someone) had previously filled with output from some error message (or collection of error messages, or at least the output of something where a regular expression had been expected to work but had not worked as expected). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.252.227|162.158.252.227]] 19:06, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

You can use metacharacters in character classes, the only metacharacters in a character class that must be escaped are the closing square bracket (]), the backslash (\), the hyphen, and the carat and hyphen (^) if they are the first listed item in the set. The closing square bracket requires escaping because including it without would signal the end of the set otherwise, which then means the backslash must also be escaped. The hyphen must be escaped because, without it, it signals a range (unless it is listed first, then it is literal without escaping). Carat when listed first because otherwise it signals a negative set. 
Therefore, the end of the title text regex matches a backslash followed by either ] or ), which is then followed by any number (including none) of characters so long as they are not ] nor ) which means the whole regex can match "\[something\] more" or "$something$more" or "\[something\) more" as well as "\[something\]". — [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.117|162.158.255.117]] 01:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll add that I use an ''almost identical'' regex in my mail server for matching mailing-list subject lines which often have a format of "[Listname] normal subject line" which made it pretty recognizable to me. — [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.117|162.158.255.117]] 01:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

;Example of a match
''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below''

First, the shell will do some escaping substitution. So, in order to easily read it, let's see what grep really receives:

$ echo "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"
\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$

Let's break it out:

* <code>\\</code> matches a <code>\</code>
* <code>[[(]</code> matches either a <code>[</code> or a <code>(</code>
* <code>.*</code> matches any series of characters until the next match
* <code>\\</code> matches a <code>\</code>
* <code>[\]</code> matches a <code>\</code>
* <code>)]</code> matches <code>)]</code>
* <code>[^)\]</code> matches anything but <code>)</code> or <code>\</code>
* <code>]*</code> matches any number of <code>]</code> (including none)
* <code>$</code> matches the end of the string

So the string '''\[aaa\]\\)]a]]]]]]''' matches! {{unsigned ip|108.162.228.167}}

...Maybe it's meant to search for all Game Grumps transcripts which make mention of the "[http://gamegrumps.wikia.com/wiki/Grep Grep]" gag? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.55|108.162.216.55]] 15:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

...Wow, guys, and here I was thinking he wanted to put the cat out, when the cat didn't want to go out.... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.158|108.162.249.158]] 04:03, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

What I think is that Randall probably ''intended'' the regex to match "backslash, opening round or square bracket, anything, backslash, closing round or square bracket, anything that doesn't involve closing round or square brackets", since (unlike most other possibilities given) that actually looks like something one might want to search for. Whether it ''does'', in fact, match that or something else (or indeed anything at all) is another question entirely. (For all we know, it didn't work, Randall figured out it didn't, and wrote the correct thing the next line over.) Unrelatedly: this comic (and the backslash proliferation in general) reminded me of the Telnet Song. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.180.137|162.158.180.137]] 04:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

That explanation is wrong: <code>[\]</code> does not match a literal backslash; it would still need to be escaped inside the brackets. That backslash escapes the next character, a ], so the group doesn't end there. The actual expression there is <code>[\])]</code>, a character group containing an escaped ] and a ). Just like the first part. It is most likely intended to catch content surrounded by [ ] or ( ). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.15|141.101.104.15]] 13:43, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
:To clarify: this makes the expression catch anything that starts with a block surrounded by escaped round or square brackets. So stuff like '''$Hello world$more text here''' but with either round or square brackets (or combinations, since there's nothing enforcing they have to match. I'd have made it an OR case with two groups with matching brackets, personally) -[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.15|141.101.104.15]] 13:51, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
:You're making the same mistake Randall did: while many (most?) regex dialects use \ as escape inside a character class, this is not true for grep's default syntax. I've expanded that interpretation in my comment below, however the analysis by 108.162.228.167 is a correct explanation of how this expression is ''actually'' interpreted by grep. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.75.185|141.101.75.185]] 15:42, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Your analysis is thorough and correct, however it is unlikely this is what the regex was intended to accomplish. (''Note: The regex changed after initial publication. See '''Changed Regex''' below.'') More likely, Randall is more accustomed to other regex dialects such as Perl(-compatible) regex where a backslash ''does'' work to escape special characters inside a character class. Under that assumption the regex (with some whitespace inserted for readability) would break up as:
* <code>\\ [[(]</code> an escaped opening bracket or paren
* <code>.*</code> anything
* <code>\\ [\])]</code> an escaped closing bracket or paren
* <code>[^)\]]* $</code> no closing bracket or paren occurring on the remainder of the line
Although the final condition is still a bit obscure, this still makes a ''lot'' more sense. Unfortunately it also crushes Randall's hope the regex worked as intended, since this simply isn't how the expression is parsed with grep's default syntax (which is why I always use <code>grep -P</code>). --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.75.185|141.101.75.185]] 15:34, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
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Did anyone notice the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_%28Unix%29#Useless_use_of_cat Useless Use of Cat]? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.101|141.101.106.101]] 19:36, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

:Yup - I hereby award Randall with the Useless Use of Cat Award of the day. Cherish it.
:[[User:Zedn00|Zedn00]] ([[User talk:Zedn00|talk]]) 03:51, 5 February 2016 (UTC) Zedn00
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;Changed Regex
At some point before 2016-02-09 18:00 +0100, Randall has modified the bash command in the title text!

Original command:
cat out.txt | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$"
New command:
cat out.txt | grep -o "[[(].*[])][^)]]*$"

For the old command, 108.162.228.167's and 108.162.216.34's explanations above were correct.

The new command matches:
[[(] either a '[' or a '('
.* an unbounded and possibly empty sequence of arbitrary characters
[])] either a ']' or a ')'
[^)] any character except for a ')'
]* an unbounded and possibly empty sequence of ']'
$ anchored at end of line

It now e.g. matches '''123[abc.<>)x]]]]]''':
$ echo "123[abc.<>)x]]]]]" | tee /dev/stderr | grep -o "[[(].*[])][^)]]*$"

This makes hardly more sense than the original command.
--[[User:Markus|Markus]] ([[User talk:Markus|talk]]) 17:38, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
:Randal may have been sincere about finding it in his history and wondering if it worked. I think he probably meant
cat out.txt | grep -o "[[(].*[])][^])]*$"

:which breaks down as:
[[(] either a '[' or a '('
.* an unbounded and possibly empty sequence of arbitrary characters
[])] either a ']' or a ')'
[^])]* any number of any characters except for a ')' or ']'
$ anchored at end of line

:This matches any line that has a '[' or '(' followed by a ')' or ']', matching from the first '[' or '(' to the end of the line. The final part of the regex, '[^])]*$', is not really necessary here, but it is a common pattern to follow a character pattern with an opposite character pattern to be sure the first character pattern matches the last instance of a repeating character, so he might have added it out of habit, which would explain also why he got it wrong (since he just followed '[blah]' with '[^blah]' which in this special case doesn't work because 'blah' has a special character in it: ']').
:[[User:Jgro|Concerned Netizen]] ([[User talk:Jgro|talk]]) 02:23, 25 April 2017 (UTC)
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Funny enough, I'm literally looking at some other dev's code right now that actually implements an eight backslash regex sequence, with just the comment "backslash". I'm still scratching my head over what they were trying to accomplish or even communicate with this. [[User:Domino|Domino]] ([[User talk:Domino|talk]]) 21:45, 16 August 2016 (UTC)domino
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I believe the regex is a reference to xkcd 1313 (Regex Golf)
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.90|108.162.221.90]] 16:08, 26 August 2016 (UTC)
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I had to use a backslash that escaped the screen today. I have a Discord bot written with Node.js, and my "friends" demanded I add a shruggie output [despite Discord having that already]. So, I now have a string that looks like <code>'¯\\\\\\_(ツ)\_/¯'</code>.{{unsigned|Papayaman1000}}
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Regarding the change to the title text (with all backslashes being removed) it appears that this may not be a deliberate edit, as other comics (e.g. 1277) have also had all backslashes disappear from the title text. It appears that one of the tools Randall is using may be 'solving' accidentally escaped characters by doing a sed 's/\\//g' [[User:Sqek|Sqek]] ([[User talk:Sqek|talk]]) 13:18, 14 December 2017 (UTC)