Plop

Plop is an onomatopoeic term for the sound of an object falling onto a surface or onto water.

It may also refer to:

Plop!

Plop!, "The New Magazine of Weird Humor!", was a comic book anthology published by DC Comics in the mid-1970s. It falls into the horror / humor genre. There were 24 issues in all and the series ran from Sept./Oct. 1973 to Nov./Dec. 1976.

Background and creation

According to Steve Skeates, Plop! was based around a horror / humor story he wrote called "The Poster Plague", which was published in House of Mystery.

The title initially was intended to be called Zany. A number of the one-panel cartoons published in the comic included the visible prefix ZA, in reference to the originally intended title. Sergio Aragonés credits publisher Carmine Infantino with coming up with the final title: "Joe Orlando and I were sitting in a restaurant talking with Carmine Infantino. They wanted a magazine that was different, something about black humor. Carmine came up with the name. We were talking about it and he said, ‘What will we call it?’ And I said, ‘We can call it anything, because if the magazine is good, then it will stay.’ And he said, ‘No, we can’t call it, for instance … PLOP!’ And I said, ‘Yes, we can.’ And so I started making sketches of things going PLOP! and they laughed and decided the name was good."

The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark

The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark is a children's book by Jill Tomlinson, of which there is also an audio version read by Maureen Lipman. It was published in 1968, illustrated by Joanne Cole, and an abridged edition illustrated by Paul Howard published in 2001.

The story is about a young barn owl called Plop, who is frightened of the dark. The plot is divided into seven chapters, each covering a night during which Plop learns something new about the dark: dark is exciting, dark is kind, dark is fun, dark is necessary, dark is fascinating, dark is wonderful and dark is beautiful. Plop is gradually persuaded that the dark has its advantages.

The book shows what constellations are, especially Orion's belt, and has been adapted as a show at the London Planetarium. There have been stage adaptations of the book by Simon Reade and Tina Williams

The book has been recommended by clinicians for treatment of fear of the dark.

References

Pattern Languages of Programs

Pattern Languages of Programs is the name of a group of annual conferences sponsored by The Hillside Group. The purpose of these conferences is to develop and refine the art of software design patterns. Most of the effort focuses on developing a textual presentation of a pattern such that it becomes easy to understand and apply. This is typically done in a writers' workshop setting.

The flagship conference

The flagship conference is called the Pattern Languages of Programs conference, abbreviated as PLoP. PLoP has been held in the U.S.A. since 1994. Until 2004 it was held annually at Allerton Park in Monticello, Illinois, a property of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Since then, its location has alternated between Allerton park and being co-located with OOPSLA, a large computer science conference and the Agile Conference in 2009. The 20th PLoP will be back at Allerton Park.

Notable people who chaired the conference in the past include Ward Cunningham, Richard Gabriel, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides and Kent Beck.

PLate OPtimizer

PLate OPtimizer, or PLOP is a CAD program used by amateur telescope makers to design primary mirror support cells for reflecting telescopes. It was developed by telescope maker David Lewis, first described in 1999, and used to simplify calculations needed in the design of mirror support cells. It was based on Toshimi Taki's 1993 program PLATE, with a simplified user interface, thus giving it wide acceptance among makers of large Dobsonian style amateur telescopes, with good support of mirrors as thin as two inches for a diameter of thirty inches.

Comparisons and limitations

A basic mirror cell may be built using minimal calculation and simple materials such as wood and outdoor carpet, with a good example being Dobson's original telescopes. However, as amateurs sought to build larger and thinner mirrors, they found such designs inadequate.

Many amateur telescope makers use cells which are designed via equal area rule calculation, using programs such as David Chandler's public domain program, Cell. However, such calculation does not account for mechanical stresses introduced in one part of a telescope mirror by another part, whereas finite element analysis can be used to reduce such stress. Although general finite element analysis programs such as Nastran will work for mirror cells, an advantage of PLOP is that it can be set to ignore deformation that merely results in refocus of a mirror's parabola. PLOP can be used to calculate floating support points for a mirror's axial (rear) support; however, additional tools are needed to calculate potential error from a mirror's lateral (edge) support.