Saturday, July 31, 2010

Zombie Dice App

If there was ever a reason to spend hundreds of dollars for a device just so you can play a 99-cent app, there is it: Zombie Dice is now on the iPhone -- except that I don't own one and don't have any plans to get one. But I do have plans to connive and convince someone else to download it (with the same probability of success as when rolling a red zombie die).

What could be better than that?

Well, there is the free version of the app to try out before getting the full-featured version.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Personal Ad

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


You can't have a four-oval Venn diagram. Five, sure, but it's messy.



EDIT: As discussed in another Venn diagram thread (5/22/14), you can have a four-oval shaped diagram, but you can't have a four-circle Venn diagram. I figured that I'd better correct this one before someone else jumped on it.

So you could have ovals representing "Like Pina Coladas", "Getting Caught in the Rain", "Making Love at Midnight", and "Have Half a Brain (at least)". The song doesn't exactly state that it is a minimum of half a brain, but I believe this to be the correct interpretation.

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Punchline

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Missed the joke? What's the difference...?

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Grayscale

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Grayscale. Graph skill. Grade scalar.
You make the pun.


Friday, July 23, 2010

Window Shopping

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


I'm curious how much is that gorilla in the window of the pet shop next door.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Review: Zombie Dice (Steve Jackson Games)

Zombie Dice is a fun, quick game of odds and probabilities and generally pushing your luck from Steve Jackson Games. It's a somewhat reminiscent of FOR*GET*IT, but with streamlined rules and a better scoring system that avoids one of that game's biggest flaws. (*)

Each player is a zombie searching for brains while trying to avoid shotgun blasts as represented on the sides of the nicely crafted green, yellow and red dice. The colors are important because your probability of success is higher with green than with red, but the dice you roll are chosen randomly, so look out. (Note: if playing a zombie bothers you for some reason, you could easily flip this game around and be humans looking to shotgun the zombies before your brains are eaten, but that would be more challenging with these dice. The zombies numbers are overwhelming.)

The rules literally take seconds to learn, and their simplicity might fool you into believing that the game is too simple. Start believing that and you'll pay everything (to paraphrase the song) when you roll the dice just one more time. You risk all the points for the round on every roll, and you can only dodge the shotguns for so long. Under the best circumstances, there's better than a 40% chance of seeing the business end of those barrels.

There were a few drawbacks discovered from our first sessions. First, going last is a major advantage, so we have a House Rule that the first player from the previous round goes last in the following round so that this position rotates.

Second, there's no interaction between the players other than goading them into taking another dangerous roll or convincing them to play it safe. Psychological manipulation aside, maybe an expansion could address this with some kind of challenge dice or interference cards or some other twist.

Third, after a few games, the nifty Zombie Dice cup start to show signs of wear around the rim, caused by players shoving their fingers down into the narrow can to draw their dice randomly. (It's called "gravity", people. Tip the cup upwards and the dice will come to you!) Quick Fix for next time: put the dice in a spare dice bag and use the cup to roll only the three you select.

Summary: Great, quick game. Perfect between longer games, for the one-last-game-before-we-go game, or a we're-still-waiting-for-you-know-you game. (And then tell them about all the fun they missed for coming late.) And if you like zombie games, you probably have bags of little plastic zombies. use them to keep score.

(*) In FOR*GET*IT, if, for example, all the "IT" dice are out of play, you're free to continue rolling until you max out of points without any chance of losing. There's always the possibility of Bad Stuff on every die in Zombie Dice

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Summer School Math

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Did you realize that not only C related to A and B, but you can use a T to draw your AXIS.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Hollywood Magic Squares

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


There aren't too many ways to "mathematize" Charo's name, which is actually
María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Gutiérrez de los Perales Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Hinojosa Rasten,
or so she says.

(x, why?) Number Puzzle #1.


Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A Sad Week for New York Yankees Fans



I haven't decided yet whether or not to add this into the "official" comic count on (x, why?) on the CG site.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Love Quadrangle

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


"Love parallelogram" just didn't have the right ring to it. And if you love it, you have to have a ring on it.
"Love trapezoid" was right out.


Thursday, July 08, 2010

Classic Cartoon Statistics

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


There were so many absolutes in the classic cartoons, and the only shades of gray were the penguins and rabbits.

It's been too hot to work on this stuff, so there's a bonus comic today.

(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


(Note: if anyone can provide me with trademark info for the above -- or even proper wording -- please let me know. Thanks.)

Sunday, July 04, 2010

It's All About the Timing

(Click on the cartoon to see the entire image.)
(C)Copyright 2010, C. Burke. All rights reserved.


Other than "GOL!", I have no clue what they're saying on the Spanish station. But they have much more enthusiasm than the guys on ESPN or ABC. And they seem more intelligent, too.

And if things were really well-timed, this would've been posted a couple of days ago.
Happy Fourth of July!