This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Hairy Plotter
Aug
19
2020
Here is a series of book titles and cover art that I’ve put together for what would happen if a famous boy wizard were an old-school pen plotter instead.
Book 1: Harry Plotter and the Sources of Toner
This is the most technically-incorrect title of the series, as a pen plotter does not use toner. And astute readers might notice that Harry Plotter is trying to catch containers of ink, not toner. But you get the idea.
And this is the book for American readers. British readers get “Harry Plotter and the Philosopher’s Toner”, which is not an engaging a plot as his search for the sources of toner. Spoiler alert: there are rivers of toner under the school, hidden under a trapdoor and guarded by Fluffy.
Book 2: Harry Plotter and the Chamfer of Segments
I suppose chamfering segments is a general CAD activity that has nothing to do with pen plotters specifically, but in my mind they’re tied together from one of my first college classes.
Book 3: Harry Plotter and the Prisoner of Ascii Ban
This is one of my favorites. Text is being rendered into gibberish during transmission and people have blamed the encoding. Forbidden to use ASCII anymore, Harry and his friends are forced to use EBCDIC to communicate.
Book 4: Harry Plotter and the Cable of Firewire
This one is anachronistic, as Firewire was not commercially implemented during the time I was using plotters. I found this one confusing, with all the people not really being who they were supposed to be. Like the movie Faceoff, but with potions instead of masks.
Book 5: Harry Plotter and the Order of the Pencaps
There’s not a better time to be had than the switch the pens around on the plotter when someone wasn’t looking, and then to watch the expression on his face when the carefully chosen colors of his CAD drawing were all wrong! At least, there’s not a better time to be had in the computer lab during CAD class.
Book 6: Harry Plotter and the Half Tone Prints
This one also doesn’t make as much sense in the context of a pen-based plotter, as no one in his right mind would subject a plotter to such torture, but I suppose if you wanted shades of colors a half-tone method would be the way to do it.
Book 7: Harry Plotter and the Deathly Pawls
This was my least-favorite title, as it was the biggest stretch to fit with a term that applies to plotters. For those not familiar with the term, a pawl is a mechanism that stops a gear at a certain point. In the case of plotters, the carousel that holds the pens rotates so the right pen is grabbed, and it’s the pawl that stops the carousel at the right spot. Right spot, assuming that no one switched the pens around.
I’ll end on this note: a major manufacturer of plotters to this day is HP.
When they saw him from a distance and before he came close to them, they plotted against him to put him to death.
Genesis 37:18
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:44 am and has been carefully placed in the Projects category.
