https://www.thefarside.com/2026/09/25/4
Caption:
The Etch A Sketch division at work
Alt text:
TOY RESEARCH & DEVELOPMENT
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damniticant 7 points 17 days ago
Great now I’m endlessly thinking about how you’d make that work
agamemnonymous 4 points 17 days ago
Most reasonable thing I can come up with is a radial version where one knob rotates the diameter and the other moves along it
AnarchoEngineer 2 points 17 days ago
But then the point would get dragged along when the diameter rotates right? I mean that still sounds cool (I’d buy that), but not the desired behavior.
If one could “compute” the tangent of the angle knob using a gear system which then sets the ratio between x and y motion, we could keep the main drawing mechanism the same. Basically an analog polar-cartesian calculator for the motion of the etcher.
This would allow for angles to be set/changed at arbitrary positions without changing the position of the etcher. Idk how hard it’d be to design though, and if the dust/sand gets into the gear system we have a problem.
schipelblorp 2 points 17 days ago
Yes!
blackbrook 4 points 17 days ago
Alright, what am I not getting?
thefarside
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Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
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Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
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thefarside
@sh.itjust.works
7842
4917
1786
Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:
Bello Bear !BelloBear@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/bellobearofficial
Bloom County !bloomcounty@lemm.ee https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty
Calvin and Hobbes !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes
Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness
Garfield !garfield@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/garfield
The Far Side !thefarside@sh.itjust.works https://lemmy.world/c/thefarside@sh.itjust.works
Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
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You know, I wouldn't mind an etch-a-sketch variant where one dial moves the pencil foward, and the other rotates its direction.
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