calvin-and-hobbes on S Anand

Incapacity to tell the difference

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 13:17:41 +0800

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!

Calvin UMAP

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 21:42:38 +0530

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

Sun, 23 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks Pratap Vardhan – this was my best birthday gift this year!

I'll leave tomorrow's problems to tomorrow's me

Tue, 09 Jul 2024 15:59:27 +0000

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.”

From Calvin & Hobbes to Photo Tagging: Excel's Unexpected Image Capability

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 03:25:30 +0000

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.

Here’s how you can do this. Note: This works only on Windows.

STEP 1: Create a new Excel workbook and save it as an Excel macro-enabled workbook. (Note: When opening it again, you need to enable macros)

STEP 2: Open File > Options (Alt-F-T), go to Customize Ribbon. Under “Customize the Ribbon”, enable the “Developer” menu.

STEP 3: In Developer > Insert > ActiveX Controls, select Image and draw a rectangle from A1 to J10. (Resize it later.)

STEP 4: By default, this will be called Image1. In any case, note down the name from the Name box on the top left.

STEP 5: In cells A11 onwards, add paths to file names.

STEP 6: Click Developer > Visual Basic (Alt-F11), go to ThisWorkbook, and paste this code:

Option Explicit

Private Sub Workbook_SheetSelectionChange(ByVal Sh As Object, ByVal Target As Excel.Range)
    Dim img As String
    img = Sh.Cells(Target.Row, 1).Value
    If (img <> "" And img <> "file") Then ActiveSheet.Image1.Picture = LoadPicture(img)
End Sub

Replace ActiveSheet.Image1 with ActiveSheet.(whatever) based on your image name in Step 4.

STEP 7: Select Developer > Design Mode. Click on Image1. Then select Developer > Properties. In this panel, under PictureSizeMode, choose 3 - fmPictureSizeModeZoom to fit the picture.

Now scroll through the rows. The images will change.

Comments

Karthik 26 Mar 2024 9:54 am: Everything okay, but you were able to SIT and work on a laptop on train rides from Bandra to Churchgate??
S Anand 26 Mar 2024 12:16 pm: Ah, I took the fast trains that started and ended at Bandra and Churchgate 🙂

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 12:07:15 +0000

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.” 🙂

Calvin & Hobbes Salon

Fri, 10 Jun 2022 02:31:15 +0000

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!

I was thrilled to see that it's not the only Calvin & Hobbes salon in India. Google Maps shows almost a dozen! 😲

Poor Miss Wormwood

Sun, 17 Aug 2014 16:23:56 +0000

It’s hard not to feel sorry for Miss Wormwood.

Comments

Suraj 13 Feb 2016 4:34 am: I pity his babysitter Rosalyn more!

The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown

Fri, 21 May 2010 10:53:27 +0000

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.

At some point, I discovered a few archives of the complete Calvin & Hobbes images. These aren’t hard to find, and they’re still around in plenty. So that gave me a few more months of delight.

The trouble, though, was that I never could quite find a strip when I wanted to. A friend would refuse to accept something, and I’d want to pull out that strip where Calvin declares to reside in the state of “Denial”. Or if they said something fancy, I’d want to pull out the one where Hobbes says “I notice your oeuvre is monochromatic”. Or those strips where Calvin’s Dad explains how things work (“They build bigger and bigger trucks over the bridge until it breaks.”)

There were a few Calvin and Hobbes search engines around. None quite did what I wanted them to – which was to search the text, and show me the strip, with a nice scrollable interface.

So I set out to build one. I can’t remember when, exactly, but it was before Sep 11, 2002.

It took me many years. I’d spend several train rides and evenings typing this stuff out. My friends, employers and family were a 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 it.

I was able to do a lot of cool stuff with this, like statistically improbable phrases and some amusing posts as well.

It also increased traffic to my site, which was a bit disconcerting. I didn’t want to attract attention. In 2007, I removed the page from Google’s indexes, which cut the number of hits a fair bit. Since then, the site was only visited by a few people that knew of it, and the occasional stumblers.

A month ago, I got reddit-ed and MetaFiltered.

It didn’t take me long to figure that a takedown notice would be on its way. It turned out to be quite a friendly mail, actually – scary only in parts. (A bit of a carrot-and-stick approach, perhaps.) Anyway, it took me all of 2 minutes to remove all of the pages and links.

Of course, the reason I went to all of this effort was because the original Calvin & Hobbes site does not have the search feature. I’ve reached out to United Media, offering my transcripts and code. Let’s see what happens.

Comments

Pradeep 29 Jul 2010 8:25 am: what a shame. how are u doing buddy? been some time…
Frank 23 Jun 2010 8:03 pm: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Using two sites to do the work of one is not the ideal… but for now here is a way to find those strips you have in mind or are trying to search by topic or whatever. The first is a complete collection of all of the actual strips on the following site: http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/ The cool thing about this site is that you can actually download the entire collection in a zipped file (105mb) if you prefer to have the strips stored on your computer, and it opens with your web browser. The following site will allow you to search for key words: http://www.reemst.com/calvin_and_hobbes/stripsearch It used to have the actual strips posted as well, but alas has had the same woes as just about everyone else. One reason I think that the scripts have been allowed to stay up is that they are no the actual verbatim texts from the strips… it is a commentary on each strip… so essentially it has all of the key words you might want to search for and extra, in the sense that it is a narrative of what is happening frame by frame, including the dialogue in the 3rd person… so the interesting thing is that you may be able to find topics through the narrative as well, not just the script/ speech bubbles. So anyways, what you do is pop in the topic or words you are looking for in the second link I posted… find what date it was published on… and then go along to the first link I posted - and you will be able to search by year and month. Each month that opens has 28-31 “batches” of strips for that particular month. Just count down to the day you are looking for as you scroll down. This may be a long-winded explanation, but it’s just 2-3 steps instead of one, which is what I’m going to make do with until something more convenient crops up. I have tried the above search method, and surprisingly gives me the same results… if not more options. Check it out for yourself and you’ll know what I’m talking about. A suggestion… since none of the material posted on the above sites is wholly property of the site owner, perhaps someone with the know-how could combine the commentaries and the strips (With a lot of manual copy-pasting however) to end up with a single downloadable PDF or Word document where anyone could easily do a word/strip search by simply using the Adobe reader/ Word search functions. Anyways, that’s my five cents for now. Abraços Frank
Ravi Atluri 13 Aug 2010 6:50 pm: http://michaelyingling.com/random/calvin_and_hobbes/ Why did they shut down yours?
Kannan 21 May 2010 12:12 pm: Moral of the story : If you do something good, just keep it to yourself or your elite group who will appreciate it’s usefulness. Over reaching can be bad in “free world”. That said, it was indeed a really really good page :)
Srihari 21 May 2010 1:23 pm: Been reading Calvin and Hobbes from your site for quite a long time. Time and again I would try and recollect a particular strip, and the search feature made it very comfortable. Sometimes I would just key in a particular idea, and search for it, and more often than not, Calvin would have something or the other to say about it! Shame it had to be taken down :( All the same, thanks to your efforts, we all were so many smiles richer! :)
Arvind 21 May 2010 4:40 pm: Hey Anand! First of all,hi-5! I’m a huge calvin n hobbes fan n I started late too, pretty much like u! But yea, left no stones unturned in devouring whatever C&H content I can set my eyes or lay my hands on!! :) Ohh this is nothing in relation to this post but I’m totally hooked onto ur blog for a while,now…So much so it’s hampering my productivity at work place(A tobacco firm…No prizes for guessing which 1)…I’m totally lagging behind schedules n deadlines but for the moment it just feels like there’s nothing which can eclipse the joy of readind your posts! :) Ohh n I coudln’t help noticing a few commonalities between us! Gives a mere mortal like me to identify and associate with the almighty Himself, u c…I’m a Tam bram too, from chennai…Name starts with A and ends with D…Teetotaler…Engineer + MBA…Though I cudnt make it to the IITs, guess i’m just a notch behind, having graduated from NIT, Trichy…Followed by a coupla years work-ex…And MBA from NITIE…Can relate to all ur pranks from undergrad n workplace cliches! No wonder I’m just addicted to the content on ur blog… Wish I cud meet u in person, sometime! Thanks for writing, Anand…Keep up the good(no, absoultely fantastic) work! :)
408wij 21 May 2010 11:34 pm: I suggest mapping your database to the comics at a legit site (gocomics.com). I.e., you host the search, but they host the comics.
Deepak 23 May 2010 7:18 am: Anand, Time to come out of hiding! I think I got to your site coz I used to work for your current company. Your CnH site was lovely - I pulled out some gems through that search myself. Sorry and sad you had to take it town. Hope all that work you put in transcripting goes to good use!
George 24 May 2010 1:39 am: I was one of those people that ‘stumbled’ across your C&H site a couple years ago. The searchability was brilliant. Good luck on transferring it to the other site!
evans 25 May 2010 4:18 am: I’m a teacher and would frequent your site to pull relevent comics to delight my kids. It takes way too much time for me to flip through my books to find what I am looking for, so your site was a godsend. I’m sad to see it down, and I hope that your work can live on somewhere else. Right now I’m trying to find a good luck strip to put on my final exam… really missing your site.
Andreas Schamanek 25 May 2010 10:02 am: First of all, thank you very much indeed for all the efforts, the typing, coding, and keeping it up for so long. It’s a pity it is gone. I was reading the strips of gocomics on a daily basis but just like you write when I was looking for a particular quote I had your search engine bookmarked. I had no idea you had typed all the strips yourself. This was utterly amazing work. Thanks again.
Bjarne 12 Jul 2010 3:14 pm: What a shame. For the last 6 years this site has helped me digging down in strips to find the one which did just fit in the situation. Hope United Media will take over the job :-) Thanks for the good work from Denmark.
» very sad RT @sanand0 The Calvi… Thej Live 15 Jun 2010 7:38 pm (pingback): […] sad RT @sanand0 The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown http://www.s-anand.net/blog/the-calvin-and-hobbes-search-takedown/ […]
Graham 8 Jun 2010 12:51 pm: I can’t remember when i first stumbled apon your Calvin and Hobbes site but it was many moons ago. I’d just like to say a massive thanks really. I’d spent years laughing at the books while I was growing up and your efforts enabled me to instantly find all those excellent strips I’d remembered. All the best Graham:-)
Thejesh GN 15 Jun 2010 7:03 pm: sad :(
Naveen Arur 16 Jun 2010 1:02 pm: Really sad man. I am such a huge fan of C&H. Hope United Media comes to their senses and make use of your hard work.
Li 29 Oct 2010 6:43 pm: Anand, thanks for your great efforts. I stumbled across your Calvin & Hobbes site years ago and loved it, but I always knew it wouldn’t stay around forever. Alas, it was fun while it lasted. Ravi Atluri, thanks for posting on 8/13/10. I’m sure that’ll be taken down someday too. I’ll keep it to myself.
Hope 2 Dec 2010 10:19 am: I REALLY miss your website. :( I’d use it all the time, cuz i find myself in the exact situations as you, where I can come up with a calvin and hobbes strip for almost every situation in life and in most conversations.
x-f 7 Dec 2010 7:16 pm: Hi! I too used the search feature for a couple of years. It was sooo great I could instantly find the right strip I was looking for! Sad you had to remove it all. A very big thank you for your efforts writing it all down by hand! Hope it comes back one day.
Prashanth 14 Feb 2011 7:36 pm: It’s really sad that you had to take down the Calvin & Hobbes archives . I used to come to this site often to look up Calvin strips - for example the one where he goes into a dimension where time has no meaning! Came in today to look for strips where Calvin’s father tells him to eat his vegetables because it builds character and discovered this page. Anyway, just thought I would tell you - thank you for all your efforts!
BabyGodfather 15 Jan 2012 7:19 am: Man, this is really sad that you had to take it down. I had the exact same problems about searching the right Calvin’s strips at the right moment as you. Maybe only you know my annoyance. Is there anything that we could do ? I mean, I don’t think it needed to be taken down. They didn’t have any problems people posting Calvin strips in their blogs, did they ? Are they taking down all the pages that include Calvin Strips ? It’s ridiculous.
Visualising Text | Gramener blog 28 Jul 2012 5:01 am (pingback): […] to the joys that are lawyrs, @sanand0 was asked to take the Calvin & Hobbes text archive down. http://www.s-anand.net/blog/the-calvin-and-hobbes-search-takedown/ […]
From Calvin & Hobbes to Photo Tagging: Excel's Unexpected Image Capability - S Anand 26 Mar 2024 8:55 am (pingback): […] This is how I transcribed every Calvin & Hobbes. […]

Calvin, speechless

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:57:38 +0000

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?

Short notes

Wed, 20 May 2009 05:15:32 +0000

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.)

Hiccups

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 16:52:20 +0000

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.

Taare Zameen Par and Calvin

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:00:00 +0000

Watch this segment of Taare Zameen Par.

Then check these Calvin & Hobbes strips.

Bless them both -- Aamir and Bill.

Comments

Saurabh 30 Dec 2007 12:00 pm: Interesting! So we know who is the copy cat here :) BTW, I didn’t know that you can just post a segment using Google Video..Is this something that can be done for Youtube videos as well.
Chittaranjan 30 Dec 2007 12:00 pm: Yeah! That whole “Math Problem” and the Cartoonic representation of it Immediately reminded me of ‘Spaceman Spiff’…. I did look within my C&H archives for this strip but couldn’t find it. Thanks for this now…
Tarun 6 Apr 2009 12:27 pm: yeah…. i realised it the moment the maths problem came in front of that fellow.
JK 3 Dec 2009 5:00 am: God when will our people come up with our own ideas? Every movie and songs and albums have been a copy from some of the best in the Western countries. Sad on our education system that does not make us think out of box leading to such pathetic situation :(
Transmogrifier 4 Aug 2010 8:00 pm (pingback): […] Just found that the C & H ‘inspirations’ have been covered here and […]
BabyGodfather 15 Jan 2012 8:06 am: Maybe a little too late to respond here, but yup I did observe this too while watching the movie ! I just choose to say God Bless Bill, not Aamir for stealing / approving the stealing and making money out of it. Did the so called perfect and creative guy credit Bill Watterson there ? I highly doubt that. It’s a direct theft. P.S. : Big fan of your site.
Paul H 5 Sep 2012 9:36 pm: I remember a Looney Tunes cartoon about a boy that daydreams in class and has spaceman adventures during lessons. That must out date Calvin and Hobbes by at least a decade if not more.
Paul H 5 Sep 2012 9:43 pm: The Looney Tunes cartoons are A to Z-Z-Z-Z (1953) and Boyhood Daze (1957). The daydreams of Calvin are very similar to those of the Ralph Phillips character. I was off by a few decades. No doubt Bill Watterson saw these cartoons as a child.

Calvin and Hobbes animated

Thu, 17 May 2007 12:00:00 +0000

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!

Calvin and Hobbes Dad explains science

Fri, 04 May 2007 12:00:00 +0000

My second most favourite series from Calvin and Hobbes, where Dad teaches Calvin the wonders of science.

Comments

Joe 24 Oct 2008 5:56 am: Awesome!

I always love this strip!
Elizabeth 21 Dec 2008 12:51 pm: Dad’s know EVERYTHING. XD
Josh 23 Feb 2009 11:26 pm: ha ha - I love this strip. he should return!!
Frankie 17 Jun 2009 5:07 pm: Absolutely true! And I remember when you actually carried out the last frame of comic strip #3. Now…let’s go build some crazy snowmen!
domenico 23 Jul 2009 3:16 am: I have always been a fan of this strip…
domenico 23 Jul 2009 3:17 am: Sounds like me explaining stuff to my kids when they were growing up…I don’t know how they got so screwed up…
RaGe 13 Aug 2009 2:50 pm: Got the one about black and white photos and the world being black and white? R
Nethra 1 Sep 2009 10:42 am: Awesome!
The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net 21 May 2010 11:56 am (pingback): […] able to do a lot of cool stuff with this, like statistically improbable phrases and some amusing posts as […]
Blake 4 Aug 2010 4:41 pm: You’re missing the one time Dad gets it right. He explains a fact about two points on a record and Calvin is scared out of his mind.
Daren 7 Nov 2010 11:09 am: “Where does wind come from?” “Trees sneezing.”
New Subreddit: Explain It Like I’m Calvin | Slacktory | The only site on the internet. 22 Sep 2011 8:47 pm (pingback): […] the canonical answers from the actual comic here. And then go make up some answers for the current questions at […]
Don Wood 6 Jun 2012 7:10 pm: All four of my sons grew up with Calvin and Hobbs. That explains everything.
Paddy 23 May 2012 5:12 pm: Thanks, I’ve been looking for the B&W world strip for ages, and now not only did I find it here, you’ve collected strips from one of my favorite themes from C&H! Thank you!
- A dad maybe a bit too much like Calvin’s
Anjali 14 Apr 2012 1:33 pm: Ha, brilliant!! My favourite strip of all time.
Saturday 6.25.11 « Crossfit South Bend blog 25 Jun 2011 12:01 am (pingback): […] Calvin’s father explains science […]
Dave 30 Jan 2012 8:35 am: I’ve got to say, I have based some of my parenting from what I learned in C*H. Unfortunately, I’ve also taught my daughter to question things that don’t seem right. And she does, she definitely does.
Judy H 23 Feb 2012 7:37 am: I just remembered how I found your blog. I Googled “Calvin and Hobbes Bridge Load Limit”, this being my favorite C & H strip, and up popped your site. Lucky me! I pinned the strip to “Pinterest”, my newest favorite website, and that links me (and other folks who follow me on Pinterst) back to your site. Cool. I’m in California, BTW. Judy
If I could find words* « Mon Tout Petit Montréal 24 Oct 2012 7:20 pm (pingback): […] je songe à écrire un livre qui se nommera « Etymologie et linguistique pour le papa de Calvin« ) copyright : […]
James Robert Smith 8 Dec 2012 4:34 pm: I had completely forgotten that Calvin’s dad was a total asshole!
From the mouths of babes and sucklings – technology and toddlers « 28 Nov 2012 4:03 pm (pingback): […] of entertaining myself by warping his mind with made-up answers the way Calvin’s dad does (for examples, see this link), I tried to answer his questions as simply and logically as possible. However, reality is often […]
Why I’m Not Allowed to Have Children | Fangs and Clause 28 Aug 2013 4:35 pm (pingback): […] I like to call this the Calvin’s Dad School of Parenting. […]
The insidious costs of disability for spoonies | Nourish Creativity 31 Jan 2013 12:47 pm (pingback): […] I think about this, I am reminded of this Calvin and Hobbes strip: http://www.s-anand.net/blog/calvin-and-hobbes-dad-explains-science/ I live my life kind of like Calvin’s dad imagines civil engineers determine weight limits: I […]
Samuel 1 Mar 2013 8:57 am: Confession time: when I was younger, I actually believed Calvin’s dad’s story about how the world used to be black-and-white.
Minivans Are Hot | The Father to His Calvin 16 May 2013 1:19 pm (pingback): […] Image Credit […]
Calvin and his dad | ENGL388 16 Apr 2013 3:17 am (pingback): […] http://www.s-anand.net/blog/calvin-and-hobbes-dad-explains-science/ […]
Magic | Idle Log 8 Sep 2014 6:43 pm (pingback): […] of explanations on children. Bill Watterson satirizes it with Calvin’s dad, and it’s hilarious. Enjoy. It wouldn’t bother me much, but Liam was not asking very complicated questions. He wanted to […]
Dad, does the moon like me? | Just In Words 18 Feb 2016 3:49 am (pingback): […] One morning, after a full moon, the moon was clearly visible in the morning sky. I pointed it out to him. As we continued to drive, he noticed that the moon appeared to “follow” us — it basically stayed in the same spot in the sky as we drove along. “Dad, the moon’s following me…. Dad, does the moon like me?” My son clearly thought that the moon was following him and that therefore it only made sense that the moon liked him. At that moment I had a decision to make, I could explain to my son that the moon really wasn’t following us at all it just appears that way because the moon is 238,900 miles away and that at that distance, the angle between where we are and the moon would change so negligibly that it would only appear that the moon was following us; or I could lie, agree with him, and not shatter this adorable sense of self-Ptolemaic importance, somewhat like Calvin’s dad in these Calvin and Hobbes Comics. […]
Kaushik Banerjee 12 Nov 2017 5:22 am: Amazing alternative explanations . Why not, even scientists and everybody once knew that the Sun goes round the earth.
Hilariously Untrue Dad 'Facts' Part 1: Brought to You by the Father from 'Calvin & Hobbes' 23 Jan 2018 10:25 pm (pingback): […] collected some of Calvin’s father’s most sagely wisdom for you to try on for […]
Why does JNDI return a DataSource with a NULL uri instead of a lookup failure? - Tutorial Guruji 13 Aug 2021 7:55 am (pingback): […] Why did lookup create a useless BasicDataSource with a null URL? Is there a better way to detect if a JNDI name ‘doesn’t exist’ than to try using it and see if it blows up? That approach reminds me of how they test bridges. […]
70 Posts From ‘The Dad’ That Perfectly Encapsulate Parenthood - Success Life Lounge 18 Oct 2023 12:55 pm (pingback): […] fathers is to simply make things up, perhaps most famously, the dad in “Calvin and Hobbes,” whose hair-brained explanations for curious Calvin work as a pretty effective punchline. Instead of rolling their eyes, true […]

Calvin and Hobbes Tracer Bullet 1

Fri, 04 May 2007 12:00:00 +0000

My all-time favourite series from Calvin and Hobbes.

Comments

JEZZI 18 Nov 2008 4:55 pm: Tracer Bullet is so funny!
Comic Books – Mr. Andrews Classes 23 Dec 2011 1:16 am (pingback): […] Comic […]
Bullitt (1968) – CineHatch 9 Jul 2018 12:03 am (pingback): […] by spoofs like The Simpsons’ masterpiece McBain and the hat tip of Calvin & Hobbes‘ Tracer Bullet). Still, Peter Yates’ uneven direction doesn’t help, with pacing that lurches more than San […]

All Your Base Are Belong To Us

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:00:00 +0000

(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…

Statistically improbable phrases 2

Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:00:00 +0000

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.

While doing this, the single biggest problem that stumped me was: what is a word?

Is “it’s” one word or two words?
Is “six-year-old” one word or three words?
How do I distinguish between abbreviations (g.r.o.s.s.) and full-stops without a space ( … homework.what’s a …)?
Does a comma always split words? (It doesn’t in numbers, like “3,500”)

The other problem is, phrases with more words are more improbable. Right now, if a phrase occurs 5 times more frequently in Calvin and Hobbes than my other books, I include it. But three-letter words rarely occur that often, and four-letter words even less so. Maybe I should have a lower cutoff for longer phrases.

Anyway, this analysis is a crude first approximation. Clearly Amazon’s gotten much further with their system.

Comments

satish 20 Feb 2007 3:56 am: Hey Stud, Satish here, your junior from IIMB. Trying to get in touch with you. Do mail me at satishkgv@hcl.in and let us get in touch.
Oblio 14 Feb 2007 12:00 pm: Fantastic job man! You have unlimited patience!
Reinhard Ebner 14 Feb 2007 12:00 pm: Hey, only just now came across your page, but of the hundreds, if not thousands of C&H sites and tools, this is the most useful I’’ve seen! R
juergwachter 14 Feb 2007 12:00 pm: hello
nice stuff.I intend splitting a text into single words. can you please give me a hint how to do this? I guess there are simple programs doing this.
Many thanks
joe 11 Aug 2009 2:01 am: Nice. Do you have a page where I can try out v2 (phrases)?
The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net 21 May 2010 11:53 am (pingback): […] was able to do a lot of cool stuff with this, like statistically improbable phrases and many amusing […]

Calvin and Hobbes trivia quizzes

Sun, 24 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000

Calvin and Hobbes trivia quizzes.

Google searches that lead to my site

Sat, 16 Sep 2006 12:00:00 +0000

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”.

So I did this analysis. Here are the keywords that lead to my site. (This is based on 3 weeks of data).

excel in the context of cell, formula, function, leading to my Excel tips. People mostly want to know how to remove errors like #N/A.
calvin in the context of hobbes, fight, club. (There was a great article on how Fight Club is really Calvin and Hobbes.) Most of these queries are searches for specific quotes, and I’ve typed out all the Calvin and Hobbes quotes.
indian in the context of torrents, tv. One of my most popular posts is Indian Torrents. I simply linked to a couple of Google searches, so it’s popularity is unjustified.
tamil in the context of songs, lyrics, movie. This is mostly thanks to the recent tamil quizzes I’ve put up.
mumbai in the context of local, schedule, train. A shockingly large number of people search for Mumbai bus and train schedule, landing on my link to the IIT-B Mumbai Navigator.
anand in the context of s anand, bcg, infosys. This is people searching for me.
irr in the calculating, excel, formula. Calculating IRR turned out to be another unexpectedly popular post.
interview in the context of lehman brothers, bcg, landing at some of my interview experiences.
mckinsey in the context of ppt, presentation. Most of these people are looking for presentations, while I have a link to the McKinsey pre-placement talk at LBS. Interesting that BCG is not on the top 10.
google in the context of engedu, types, authors@google. Though I have several posts about Google, the ones about Google video like Meet the author and on Google TechTalks are the most popular.

Having read the actual queries, I’ve concluded that only the keywords excel, mumbai, anand, irr and interview definitely lead to relevant hits. The rest are debatable. Maybe I should reduce the importance of the less relevant posts on my sitemaps file.

Comments

The Calvin and Hobbes search Takedown | s-anand.net 21 May 2010 11:54 am (pingback): […] also increased traffic to my site, which was a bit disconcerting. I didn’t want to attract attention. In 2007, I removed […]