z2

re: the scaffold, apparently I wasn't paying attention at the time because I really meant to write "gallows" instead.

also I dare you to make as many pictures as you can using 10 lines.

Dr. Dos wrote:madtom if it's an ascii char it's there for a reason.

Well yeah but how many people would actually know what the hell it meant

Tomsacold wrote:

Wikipedia wrote:The symbol [three horizontal lines] is often used to indicate an identity, or a congruence relation in modular arithmetic.

A bit obscure but I suppose it still counts

But those are stacked on each other like this:

__
__
__

It's like an assignment operator with an extra line

i think the three lines in the zzt/kroz passage are meant to symbolise stairs, or a reinforced door.

i like it, it's an abstract icon

I never thought of it looking like stairs before, I suppose that was what Tim Sweeney had in mind

We just need to explain why omega is a lion and pi is a tiger and we're all set, I suppose

the omega is a lion's mane, and the pi is a tiger's squareish head with an ear protruding from either side. or it may be two legs, a head and a tail. who can say?

but why are tigers cyan??????????????????

What is ruffian lol.

Tomsacold wrote:We just need to explain why omega is a lion and pi is a tiger and we're all set, I suppose

the best explanation I saw for why omega is a lion is found on the zzt board in bernard the bard.

the congruence operator is used as a passage or teleporter in a lot of ascii games, sweeney was probably just borrowing from them.

there are only 254 chars to choose from anyways, how many look like doors? a grand total of three(let's say), and he needed one for a locked door. I think it just makes sense.

A cyan tiger would look pretty cool.

Dr. Dos wrote:I have to wonder how they decided to arrange the things though since A is char 65.

0-31 are control codes (0 being null, 8 being backspace, 10 being newline, 13 being carraige return, etc.), 32 on are printable characters.

Alphabets work like this:

Uppercase:
32+32+letter number (I.E. 32+32+1 = 65 = "A")

Lowercase
32+32+32+letter number (I.E. 32+32+32+1 = 97 = "a")


Why 32? 2^5, baby. Huzzah for binary!

I never thought about the character codes being based on 32 before, but now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense in that computery sort of way.

Yeah, I always tend to think things like that were more or less arbitrary, it's surprising the careful rationale that is ultimately behind things like that