In this age of AI psychosis, I think we have all been blessed with Calvin’s prayer. Calvin: Know what I pray for? Hobbes: What? Calvin: The strength to change what I can, the inability to accept what I can’t, and the incapacity to tell the difference. Hobbes: You should lead an interesting life. Calvin: Oh, I already DO!
Similar to the embedding map of my blog posts, I created an embedding map of Calvin & Hobbes. It uses the same process as before. Video
Thanks Pratap Vardhan – this was my best birthday gift this year! LinkedIn
What a delightful idea. I’ll leave tomorrow’s problems to tomorrow’s me. – Saitama, One Punch Man Saitama is now one of my favorite heroes. Right up there with Atticus Finch and Juror #8. Very few people can articulate such a wonderful philosophy as effectively. The closest was Calvin. Of course, it’s not a perfect system. But they do say, “Sometimes, the best way to get something is to stop trying to get it.”
In Excel, using Visual Basic, you can change an image as you scroll. This makes it easy to look at each image and annotate it. This is how I transcribed every Calvin & Hobbes. I used this technique first when typing out the strips during my train rides from Bandra to Churchgate. I had an opportunity to re-apply it recently when we needed to tag hundreds of photographs based on a set of criteria. ...
A friend told me today that using #ChatGPT will make humanity dumber. “Probably. Like always, #Calvin has the best response I know to that. “I propose we leave math to the machines and go play outside.” 🙂 LinkedIn
This is the Calvin & Hobbes Hair Salon in Hinjewadi, Pune. Calvin & Hobbes fans might remember Calvin's hairdresser, Pete, who certainly "knows which side HIS bread is buttered on." Maybe I too will go get "the top of my head shaved, and the sides dyed pink and cut in horizontal stripes" 😉 The signboard has a Tirupathi Namam drawn over the names of two famous theologians -- both of whom had great hair. That's a lot of hidden connections! ...
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Miss Wormwood. Comments Suraj 13 Feb 2016 4:34 am: I pity his babysitter Rosalyn more!
Eight years ago, I started typing out each of the Calvin and Hobbes strips by hand. Four years ago, I set up a site that let people search for strips. Early this month, I was asked to take it down. This is the story. I can’t quite remember when I started reading Calvin & Hobbes. The earliest reference I can find in my blogs is in July 1999. I remember it didn’t take me long to become a fan. I’d read every strip on the newspaper; hunt them out at bookshops; and spend a fair bit of time searching for archives online. ...
Comments Vinu 28 Apr 2010 11:25 pm: Nice ! what did you do? Manually erase the text? Knowing you, i suspect there is some automation at work here :) S Anand 29 Apr 2010 7:17 am: Oh, not quite. By 2006, I’d typed out all the Calvin and Hobbes (by hand, spending 6 years at it). This was just filtering all the strips that didn’t have any text on them :-) Vinu 30 Apr 2010 5:52 pm: Ouch. That’s a lot of typing. Surprised you did not crowdsource it… Perhaps for the next assignment? Asterix comics anybody?
I’m quite busy on a project right now, and don’t get time to write long articles. So for a while, I’m going to stick to short notes on interesting stuff. Peter Bregman has a very interesting piece on Why You Should Encourage Weakness. It boils down to a choice: do you focus on on improving strengths or minimising weaknesses? Conventional performance evaluations focus on the latter. I very strongly support Bregman’s view on this. The weakness isn’t why you hired the person! Unless it’s killing the organisation, just leave them to focus on their strengths. Google Analytics has a fairly interesting API that I hadn’t explored until recently. Picked up [Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics](http://www.s-anand.net/amazon-browser.html#advanced web metrics with google analytics) and learnt that you can track outbound clicks, page load times, Javascript events and error logs, almost anything at all using Google Analytics. You can also mirror the logging on your local server using pageTracker._setLocalRemoteServerMode() The whole concept of a Sandbox environment seems to be picking up within Google. There’s a Checkout sandbox, an AJAX API playground, an AdWords sandbox, an AdSense API sandbox, the Mapstraction API sandbox, even an event called Developer Sandbox. (After saying Sandbox 6 times, I feel a bit like Hobbes.)
This morning, I was watching an episode of Finley the Fire Engine in which one of the trucks had hiccups. Reminded me of this Calvin & Hobbes — especially Hobbes’ remark in the second strip. ...
Watch this segment of Taare Zameen Par. Then check these Calvin & Hobbes strips. ...
A Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, drawn by Dadomani. Comments kasi 28 May 2007 1:31 pm: Hi Anand, U must check this http://david-heron.me.uk/blog/2007/04/08/virtual-barbershop with ur headphone vol high.. wid 3d music, its really kewl :) n chk the more links given there Docsound 29 May 2009 8:45 pm: Calvin and Hobbes cartoon is not drawned by dadomani!
My second most favourite series from Calvin and Hobbes, where Dad teaches Calvin the wonders of science. ...
My all-time favourite series from Calvin and Hobbes. ...
(If you don’t get it, see what All your base are belong to us means) via This is my pizza. Comments Grant Carpenterk 17 Apr 2007 12:00 pm: LOL, that comic was made of pure awesome! Well done on your adaptation! Grand Carp 1 Oct 2008 12:24 pm: Awesome (no I’m not Grant Capenterk, I’m making fun of his name) Carpe Grand 1 Oct 2008 5:31 pm: May I join in the fun? S Anand 1 Oct 2008 5:32 pm: Hmm… comments are going a bit off-topic here…
My earlier list of statistically improbable phrases in Calvin and Hobbes is technically just a list of “Statistically Improbable Words”. I re-did the same analysis using phrases. Here are the top 20 statistically improbable phrases (2 - 4 words only): baby sitter chocolate frosted sugar bombs comic books doing homework fearless spaceman spiff() good night hamster huey ice cream miss wormwood new year peanut butter really think slimy girls spaceman spiff stuffed tiger stupendous man sugar bombs susie derkins watch tv water balloon That is, these are the 2-4 word phrases whose frequency in Calvin and Hobbes is substantially (at least 5 times) higher than in the other books I have. ...
Calvin and Hobbes trivia quizzes.
I stopped using Google Analytics when I redesigned my site. I track my own statistics. This gives me access to raw data, and I can do my own analyses. I wanted to know the keywords on Google that led to my site. (Google Analytics only gives you phrases.) I also wanted independent words. If you search for “Calvin and Hobbes”, I want to count only “Calvin”, knowing that it’s in the context of “Hobbes”. ...
Calvin and Hobbes has some recurrent themes, like Hobbes pouncing, snow art, polls, letters to Santa, … Over the last 5 years, I’ve transcribed the Calvin and Hobbes comics, and tagged them manually by theme. But can I generate themes automatically? One way is to use Amazon’s statistically improbable phrases. It’s a list of words that occur a lot in a book, but rarely occur in others. It gives you a good feel of what topics the book is about. ...
Martijn’s Calvin and Hobbes Extensive Strip Search is back. It doesn’t let you search the quotes themselves, but a (pretty detailed) description of each cartoon instead. (Mine searches Calvin and Hobbes quotes). Comments Anonymous 21 Oct 2006 8:55 am: if you know calvin and hobbes u know how many are there. I have been looking for March 24, 1994 for an ages and this helped me to find it in a minute. great site I do recomend
On a related note, 60% of the search queries that lead to my site this year were Calvin and Hobbes quotes. “i can’t help but wonder what kind of desperate straits would drive a man to invent this thing.” topped the list (Calvin referring to a yo-yo), with i always catch these trick questions following closely. People searching for Excel related stuff were next (20%): excel indirect(address(, row() excel offset address and the like. ...
Calvin and Hobbes in Chennai. The posts between 10-13 March 2006 have (pretty good) doodles of Calvin & Hobbes eating idli and visiting the Marina beach. Comments Doodler 1 Apr 2006 5:11 pm: :) hi anand..great blog with something new everyday!well am frm infy too..do u blog in the infy blog? S Anand 1 Apr 2006 7:20 pm: Wow, you’re from Infy? Amazing cartoons you had there. My Infy ID is subramanian_anand. Drop me a line, if you can?
My Calvin and Hobbes index is current up to June 1993. Two-and-a-half years left to complete.
Len goes in search of Bill Watterson, the author of Calvin and Hobbes. He visits Bill’s home town, and manages to interview Mom. Apparantly, Dad is quite like Dad, but Bill is more like Hobbes than Calvin.
My Calvin and Hobbes index is current up to June 1990. Comments Sathya 28 Dec 2005 3:23 am: Are you manually typing all these stuff ? Ammadiyov … why dont u outsource such stuff :-) S Anand 28 Dec 2005 8:04 am: Whom to? :-) ritzkini 28 Dec 2005 8:32 am: !!! :O all by yourself !!?? crazy about C&H,eh ? S Anand 28 Dec 2005 10:55 am: Completely. And I’m not the only one I know either! vikram 29 Dec 2005 12:03 am: wow awesome man! i’m crazy about C&H too. great work man. :) Sathya 30 Dec 2005 3:25 am: Now you know whom to outsource to ;-P S Anand 30 Dec 2005 10:43 am: Hey, my index vanished! S Anand 30 Dec 2005 10:24 pm: It’s back. Madhu 5 Jan 2006 7:57 am: Did you try the Calvin Hobbes entire collection for their 20th Anniversary. Its about 5k in India. S Anand 5 Jan 2006 6:00 pm: Very tempting! Anonymous 9 Jan 2006 8:07 am: i have an internet link to the complete c&h, let me know if you would like iy S Anand 10 Jan 2006 9:08 am: Is it in text? I’d really like the complete Calvin in TEXT. S Anand 11 Jan 2006 11:16 am: Calvin theme subjects. Madhu 18 Jan 2006 9:53 am: Let me help you with this. I will work on Calvin and Hobbes backwards from 31-12-95 and see where I can reach S Anand 18 Jan 2006 10:52 am: Thanks, Madhu! That’ll be wonderful. Someone else I know in Germany working backwards from 31-12-95. How about if you take it forward from 01-01-93? JustSomebody 3 Apr 2010 5:17 am: Excuse me, but I think this strip search is broken. For some reason, it only has comics up to July 31, 1988. All the other comics aren’t showing and the text is replaced with jibberish. S Anand 3 Apr 2010 8:02 am: Yes – thanks for pointing this out. Fixed it now. The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net 21 May 2010 12:02 pm (pingback): […] bit puzzled, but just added it to my list of eccentricities and carried on. I was halfway there in 2005, pushed further in 2006, and with some help, I managed to finally complete […]
Real-life Calvin snow art.
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes will be released. (I’ve transcribed the quotes.) Comments Anonymous 20 Sep 2005 6:08 pm: btw its available at a website, all strips ever published Anonymous 20 Sep 2005 6:09 pm: and its searchable thru google, let me know if you want the link S Anand 21 Sep 2005 4:58 pm: YES PLEASE! Can you mail me at root dot node at gmail dot com?
I’ve typed up a some Calvin and Hobbes quotations Comments FrogsIntoPrinces 1 Aug 2005 2:05 pm: By the way I have the entire C S Anand 1 Aug 2005 7:26 pm: As text? Or the images? Dhar 2 Aug 2005 2:44 pm: Unfortunately images… Dhar 2 Aug 2005 2:45 pm: And for links, check out http://digg.com/spy They use Ajax, which is a Good Thing (TM). Ravi 2 Aug 2005 7:14 pm: There is a searchable text-index at http://users.rcn.com/dtweed/calvin/index.htm S Anand 2 Aug 2005 7:38 pm: I know. I wrote to David in Feb. He could not share his database with me. So I am recreating it.
Fisheye photo of a stadium. Comments Aditya Chaturvedi 7 Mar 2005 7:28 pm: Really Nice Pictures Nik 20 Mar 2005 12:22 am: Reminds me of a Calvin
Complete Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Grab while the site lasts. (Alternate Calvin and Hobbes collection. I’ve typed the quotes.) Comments S Anand 15 Apr 2005 3:11 pm: Quotes from Calvin’s Dad
Calvin and Hobbes search from David Tweed. You can search for your favourite comics (mine are Tracer Bullet), note down the dates, and check them out on ucomics. (You need a subscription to view old comics.) I’ve typed out the quotes. Comments Anonymous 4 Feb 2005 12:00 pm: This is cool
Fight Club - Calvin and Hobbes? A discussion on how the movie The Fight Club is really Calvin and Hobbes in disguise. Read only if you like Calvin and Hobbes, and have seen the movie.
Math comics. Including some Calvin & Hobbes.
My current project: transcribing every Calvin and Hobbes into text. Because I’d like to search, using text, for the strip in which Tracer Bullet has “six slugs, one of lead and five of bourbon” or where Dad explains why the Sun rises. Comments The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net 21 May 2010 11:55 am (pingback): […] So I set out to build one. I can’t remember when, exactly, but it was before Sep 11, 2002. […]