0381: "Mobius Battle"

[gtkarber]

http://www.xkcd.com/381/

Alt-text: Films need to do this more, if only to piss off the people who have to feed it into the projector.

It took me awhile to realize the full ramifications, that not only is the image reversed, but the victim is as well. But this is one of my favorite XKCDs in awhile. (Not to disparage the comic, which is always so much fun!)

[connorsname]

Made me think about it for a bit, but it's very clever. I now have a need to make one of those...

[woktiny]

Ever wonder if this is the true nature of time?

[Ondore]

I can never stop reading strips about mobius.

Although I love a good fight, an eternal one would get old rather quickly.

[podbaydoor]

Okay, this comic took me a minute to digest (it's been a long day). And then it blew my little mind.

Alt text was witty, but almost ruined the elegant simplicity of the comic.

[gtkarber]

I do agree about the alt-text. It would have been nice had it looped or something. But still, it's alt-text, so I guess I can just look at the picture because I happen to have a computer which displays images.

[++$_]

It's "Möbius." But the idea is very good, and I will have to make one of these.

[robzy]

That is just oh-so-awesome.

Rob.

[woktiny]

Speaking of the alt(title)text, I think it would be fabulous to load some mobius cut into a projector and run it for a while... how neat would that be?

(until it got old...)

[Anarchy965]

At first I thought it was just a pun. (mobius "strip") But once I looked again I realized how genius it is.

[LegosDrgn]

Hilarious! I love how the straight pic on the left shows the frames, while the mobius curve shows the transparency, to show just how beautiful this idea really is.

[nahtanoj999]

At first I thought he only needed a regular loop, but then I realized that the chirality reverses each time. Clever.

[Nullius in Verba]

I used to write trig identities onto mobius strips (cos2θ=cos²θ-sin²θ=1-2sin²θ=2cos²θ-1=cos2θ=... and then another strip for, say, sin2θ) and then make paper chains out of them. Good fun, but probably not nearly as awesome as this.

[Ksevio]

It would get messed up in a projector since the sound track takes up space on one side and would show up on the screen when it hit the reverse splice (listening to the sound readers play the picture as audio isn't much fun either)

[LegosDrgn]

It would get messed up in a projector since the sound track takes up space on one side and would show up on the screen when it hit the reverse splice (listening to the sound readers play the picture as audio isn't much fun either)

Then we shall have to use an old silent movie projector

[4=5]

I guess it would have to be a silent film then

[robzy]

I just made my first mobius strip

Unfortunately A4 paper is no really big enough.... need to do something about that...

Come to think of it, I think that shouldn't bee too hard....

Rob.

[The Taped Crusader]

This begs to be made into a looping gif.

[bbctol]

Oh my god. Pure win and awesome. xkcd has blown my mind again with sheer brilliance.

[Avram]

[b.i.o]

Strips like this are why xkcd is so amazing...

That's absolutely awesome in its simplicity and genius.

[DSDM]

Very nice. But it would be so much funnier if it was a nut shot

[djagir]

Flappity, floppity, flip
A mouse on a Möbius strip:
The strip resolved;
The mouse dissolved
In a chronodimensional skip.

[Syka]

I will fully admit to not really understanding it until I saw the gif.


Then I had to hold back from laughing since my roommate is asleep like four feet away.

Cheers,
Syka

[Jahoclave]

Speaking of the alt(title)text, I think it would be fabulous to load some mobius cut into a projector and run it for a while... how neat would that be?

(until it got old...)

And how long until the unsuspecting audience caught on?

[bcoblentz]

This is a good way to make an audio tape loop twice as long. If it wasn't a colossal pain in the ass to do without a screwdriver I'd probably make a couple right now.

[Jenora]

You know, Matt Howarth actually did a couple of Möbius strip comics in one of the old issues of Particle Dreams. One of them was just a long lineup of people, and could have been done on a non-Möbius loop as well; but the other one involved a guy walking through a weird spaceship and meeting himself, and at one point walking through a door that went to the other 'side' of the strip...

[theprince234]

I wish I had used a bigger piece of paper and had a better camera.

[mudge]

Here's my attempt (tweaked some of the positions to make the animation smoother)

mobius-comic.gif (11.92 KiB) Viewed 27168 times

[Steve the Pocket]

It would get messed up in a projector since the sound track takes up space on one side and would show up on the screen when it hit the reverse splice (listening to the sound readers play the picture as audio isn't much fun either)

NON! When you splice the ends together it would just abruptly shift from one end to the other. AND I believe some types of film have audio strips on both sides, one for the left channel and the other for the right.* So, assuming the same data is stored on both sides (front/back) of each sound strip, you could actually engineer the sound so that it does indeed have sound, and in perfect stereo at that.

* ^{Correct me if I'm wrong about this. I don't remember filmmaking class as well as I wish I did.}

[dreamcatcher_31]

"Are we to be two immortals, locked in epic battle until the trumpets of Judgement Day?"

I love the fact that it's not just a loop, but in fact it ONLY works with a mobius strip, because the left guy and the right guy need to be viewed from the other side for the looping effect to work.

[Azrael001]

Here's my attempt (tweaked some of the positions to make the animation smoother)

mobius-comic.gif

I am making this my avatar now. It rocks.

[Tychomonger]

There is no left guy and right guy. They are both the same person. This is a Mobius time loop and it is amazing.

[aerojad]

the levels of lol involved here made this comic

[Jach]

Whatever this comic was, it went completely over my head... Then I entered this topic to see what it was about, and I looked at the comic again, and I was enlightened...

It was a nice thing to see before going to bed.

[Chacor]

I'll admit too that it originally flew over my head. Then you guys absolutely made my day with this. Brilliant animation, by the way.

[kelerain]

http://dabritz.org/mobius_battle.png

For the purposes of printing using a fold-in-half method.
Easier than double sided printing I think, and sturdier.

[Experiment]

It would get messed up in a projector since the sound track takes up space on one side and would show up on the screen when it hit the reverse splice (listening to the sound readers play the picture as audio isn't much fun either)

NON! When you splice the ends together it would just abruptly shift from one end to the other. AND I believe some types of film have audio strips on both sides, one for the left channel and the other for the right.* So, assuming the same data is stored on both sides (front/back) of each sound strip, you could actually engineer the sound so that it does indeed have sound, and in perfect stereo at that.

* ^{Correct me if I'm wrong about this. I don't remember filmmaking class as well as I wish I did.}

I work as a movie theatre projectionist, and it's actually kind of fun to make loops, we made one out of a horror movie trailer to scare the employees who had to clean the theatre between showings.

Doing a mobius loop would be tougher, and no, most film (actually, all commercial film that I know of) uses a sound track on only one side, the left side (or at least, you'd see it on the left side of the screen if someone didn't have an aperture plate in). However, if one were to take a loop of film, but slice off the right side and splice on another sound track on the right (which wouldn't be too hard if you were using trailers, most theatres have like, a hundred of them at any given time), then you could add a turn to the film, splice the head and tail ends together, and have a mobius film loop that could conceivably work.

Problem is that you'd have to splice the second audio track on really well, or it'd probably end up slipping off of the sprockets, and you'd need a specially designed aperture plate or you'd end up seeing that right audio track being displayed on the screen as a bunch of purple lines.

[Bumnut]

I wish I could be bothered doing some tweening, or putting a version together in flash...

[mudge]

Here's my attempt (tweaked some of the positions to make the animation smoother)

The attachment mobius-comic.gif is no longer available

I am making this my avatar now. It rocks.

I tweaked even further

mobius-comic3.gif (20.14 KiB) Viewed 26237 times