David Morgan-Mar (also known as DangerMouse) is an Australian physicist, known for his

webcomic Webcomics (also known as online comics or Internet comics) are comics published on the internet, such as on a website or a mobile app. While many webcomics are published exclusively online, others are also published in magazines, newspapers, or ...

s and for creating several humorous

esoteric programming language An esoteric programming language (sometimes shortened to esolang) is a programming language designed to test the boundaries of computer programming language design, as a proof of concept, as software art, as a hacking interface to another language ...

s. He is also the author of several ''

GURPS The ''Generic Universal Role Playing System'', or ''GURPS'', is a tabletop role-playing game system published by Steve Jackson Games. The system is designed to run any genre using the same core mechanics. The core rules were first written by St ...

'' roleplaying sourcebooks for

Steve Jackson Games Steve Jackson Games (SJGames) is a game company, founded in 1980 by Steve Jackson, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, and card games, and (until 2019) the gaming magazine ''Pyramid''. History Founded in 1980, six years after the cr ...

, as well as a regular contributor to ''

Pyramid A pyramid () is a structure whose visible surfaces are triangular in broad outline and converge toward the top, making the appearance roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be of any polygon shape, such as trian ...

'' magazine. Morgan-Mar is a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

graduate from the

University of Sydney The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, and has worked on camera, lens, and image processing projects at

Canon Canon or Canons may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canon (fiction), the material accepted as officially written by an author or an ascribed author * Literary canon, an accepted body of works considered as high culture ** Western canon, th ...

Comics

Morgan-Mar has produced, or been involved in producing several webcomics. These include '' Irregular Webcomic!'', ''Infinity on 30 Credits a Day'', ''Darths & Droids'', ''Square Root of Minus Garfield'' and ''mezzacotta''.

Irregular Webcomic!

''Irregular Webcomic!'' is a

photo comic Photo comics are a form of sequential storytelling using photographs rather than illustrations for the images, along with the usual comics conventions of narrative text and word balloons containing dialogue. They are sometimes referred to in ...

that consists mostly of photographs of

Lego Lego (, ; ; stylised as LEGO) is a line of plastic construction toys manufactured by the Lego Group, a privately held company based in Billund, Denmark. Lego consists of variously coloured interlocking plastic bricks made of acrylonitri ...

characters and sets with speech balloons added above them. The art also includes photographs of painted miniatures as well as of the author and background scenes. The strip has several (usually) distinct casts of characters (called "themes") with many different kinds of jokes and story arcs. The comic started around the end of 2002. It ended late in 2011, but was resumed in April 2015 following a successful Patreon fundraiser. The strip updates every weekday, with reruns appearing on other days.

Infinity on 30 Credits a Day

''Infinity on 30 Credits a Day'' is an idea that was developed by David Morgan-Mar in response to a poll he conducted, asking the fans of ''Irregular Webcomic!'' whether they would create a webcomic, given the ability to do so. It is a webcomic created entirely through collaboration between the 500 or so fans that signed up to help. Essentially, the creation of each comic was a collaborative effort by several people, chosen for their skills. The comic started off with many contributions, but input tapered off during 2008.

Darths & Droids

Morgan-Mar helps to produce ''Darths & Droids'' as part of a group of eight friends known as the Comic Irregulars. Inspired by '' DM of the Rings'', ''Darths & Droids'' follows players of a

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, or abbreviated as RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of player character, characters in a fictional Setting (narrative), setting. Players take responsibility for acting out ...

that follows the ''

Star Wars ''Star Wars'' is an American epic film, epic space opera media franchise created by George Lucas, which began with the Star Wars (film), eponymous 1977 film and Cultural impact of Star Wars, quickly became a worldwide popular culture, pop cu ...

'' franchise, though takes place in a world where ''

'' itself was never created. Concepts from ''Star Wars,'' such as lightsabers' deflection abilities, midichlorians, the Gungan race and main characters are either made up by the players themselves or hastily invented by the Game Master after the players go off his prepared plot line. In a review, Fantasy Magazine said: "Aside from being a wonderfully fun send-up of the ''Star Wars'' movies themselves, ''Darths and Droids'' plays with conventions of tabletop gaming and makes loving fun of the basic player archetypes.''..'' If you aren’t a fan of either ''Star Wars'' or ''Dungeons and Dragons'', this isn’t the comic for you. But anyone with that overlapping geekery should do themselves a favor and check this comic out."

Esoteric programming

Morgan-Mar has created a number of

s, including Piet, Ook!, and Chef. He invented Piet, where the code is an image rather than text, as part of an esoteric programming language project. Chef produces code in the apparent form of recipes, and one user has produced a recipe that both functions as a program and as genuine baking instructions. Some of them are full

Turing-complete In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as a model of computation, a computer's instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing-complete or computationally universal if it can be ...

languages while others are simple jokes, often based upon the idea of how a given group (e.g. chefs, orangutans, or necromancers) would be expected to program. Morgan-Mar has also created esoteric algorithms, particularly sorting algorithms. His “intelligent sort” algorithm (a parody of

intelligent design Intelligent design (ID) is a pseudoscientific argument for the existence of God, presented by its proponents as "an evidence-based scientific theory about life's origins".#Numbers 2006, Numbers 2006, p. 373; " Dcaptured headlines for it ...

) which does no actual sorting, but simply suggests that any sufficiently complicated list is already sorted according to the whims of a sorter implying any further sorting is unnecessary, was referenced in the "Feedback" section of ''

New Scientist ''New Scientist'' is a popular science magazine covering all aspects of science and technology. Based in London, it publishes weekly English-language editions in the United Kingdom, the United States and Australia. An editorially separate organ ...

''. The Intelligent Design Sort algorithm just says that information must already be sorted according to the will of a great unknowable being, instead of actually sorting the information. Another algorithm, "LenPEG", is an image-compression algorithm that always reduces the standard test image

Lenna Lenna (or Lena) is a standard test image used in the field of digital image processing, starting in 1973. It is a picture of the Swedish model Lena Forsén, shot by photographer Dwight Hooker and cropped from the centerfold of the November ...

to an output file of one byte, drastically outperforming the standard methods in

benchmark Benchmark may refer to: Business and economics * Benchmarking, evaluating performance within organizations * Benchmark price * Benchmark (crude oil), oil-specific practices Science and technology * Experimental benchmarking, the act of defining a ...

tests.

Writing

Morgan-Mar is also the author of several ''

'' roleplaying sourcebooks for

, as well as a regular contributor to ''

'' magazine. He helped to write the CiSRA Puzzle Competition, which ran from 2007 to 2013, and a successor, the Mezzacotta Puzzle Competition, which ran in 2016.

Scientific work

Morgan-Mar was one of the inventors on the 2013

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

"Determining a depth map from images of a scene", and on the 2014 patent "Geometric parameter measurement of an imaging device". Morgan-Mar worked at Canon until 2019 when he was made redundant.

References

External links

DM's home page''Irregular Webcomic!''''Infinity on 30 Credits a Day''''mezzacotta''''Darths & Droids''

David Morgan-Mar :: Pen & Paper RPG Databasearchive
{{DEFAULTSORT:Morgan-Mar, David Australian science communicators Australian webcomic creators Living people University of Sydney alumni Year of birth missing (living people)