New XKCD: How Many Coins for a Cinnamon Roll?

The latest xkcd is great!

Emoji and \Latex: Bowser, Peach, Mario, and the Dynamics of Love

Today I was figuring out how to successfully put emoji into equations in \latex (I'll have a cool example in my talk at @CompleNet on Monday), so I decided to take @stevenstrogatz's "dynamics of love affairs" example and make it Mario-themed.

See also: https://t.co/7AlMv4fDdj pic.twitter.com/3sVVAhAYSI

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) March 14, 2019

Update: I should have zoomed in more to show a higher-quality screenshot. Here is one, where you can see that the graphics are rather clear.

Live Action Super Mario Plumbing

I love this.

Levels of Super Mario Brothers Can be PSPACE-Hard

Erik Demaine of MIT and his collaborators have demonstrated that one can use the raw materials of the game Super Mario Brothers to construct levels that are PSPACE-hard.

The new paper follows up on prior work that includes a subset of the authors that demonstrated that Super Mario Brothers is NP-hard.

Super Mario Scenes with Skittles

This is awesome.

Matlab Does Super Mario (Again)

If you are a reader of my blog, you might have noticed previous posts about listening to a theme song from Super Mario Brothers, playing Risk, and playing Tetris on Matlab.

Well, you can also try your hand at playing a short demo of World 1-1 (sort of) of Super Mario Brothers on Matlab. Sweet!

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts for Matlab on Facebook.)

Game Soundtrack: A Violin Rendition of Super Mario Brothers in Real Time

Some people are so talented that they can play the Super Mario Brothers soundtrack (overground, underground, and underwater --- and the sounds for things like coins, character death, super shrooms, etc) in real time while somebody else is playing the game. Now that is impressive!

(Tip of the cap to Jimmy Lin.)

MATLAB Does Super Mario

Do you want to listen to (a portion of) the theme song from Super Mario Brothers in MATLAB? Of course you do!

(Tip of the cap to whoever posts Facebook stuff for MATLAB.)

Exploring the World of xkcd

Wow, today's xkcd is awesome! I haven't explored all of it yet --- and maybe I haven't gotten anywhere close to all of it? --- but I'll have to stop now because I urgently need to get some things done. Still, this is awesome! [Maybe today was not the optimal day for this particular one to come out, but that's hardly the worst problem in my life. I'll just have to look at it more later. :) ]

Update: This particular xkcd is not only awesome but also supremely evil, especially for those of us with OCD.

Magic Mushrooms

Mario would certainly agree with the premise of this article.

I'm only posting this because the headline immediately made me think of the Super Mario games.

Mushroom Death Suit

I have to say that when I saw this headline, I immediately thought of Super Mario Brothers and raining death upon my enemies with this new suit.

Mamma Mia!

Georgia Tech astronomers have found a new planet that seems to be made of diamond.

One has to go to the original paper to find this, but the same scientists also report what appear to be red plumber outfits on that planet. One of the scientists also claims to have heard muted words that sounded something like "Mamma mia!"

(Tip of the cap to the Georgia Tech Department of Physics.)

Super Mario Brothers crossover

As Kotaku reports, there is a new flash game that allows one to play Super Mario Brothers as not only Mario but also characters from other games (e.g., as Link from Zelda or as Simon Belmont from Castlevania). I approve! (It's hard to control the character, but this is still pretty damn awesome.)

(Tip of the cap to Louis Wang.)

Horoscope of the Day

I found the following horoscope in the December 2007 issue of Electronics Gaming Monthly (which I just finished reading... my magazines got sent to Lemming's place, so I've been catching up on them a bit during my visit):

"Cancer (June 21-July 22): Though you long for love, your princess will forever be in another castle. So you might as well hump the hell out of the next toadstool you find."

I am very amused!