I’ll meet you at the corner of Gestalt and Rorschach
I asked my co-workers to help me decipher three enigmatic Xcode icons. Here’s what I got:
Me: Oscilloscope · Happy robot · Two parking spaces
BradB: Picture of a mountain through a viewfinder · Truck coming at you that shares the same color as the background · Two injection-molded toy model pieces needed for final assembly
Jamie: Angry cat’s eye · Two basketballs under a tree · Top down view of someone with hooks for hands holding a tray at a BBQ.
Brian: Looking downward in to a blender · An owl wearing a fancy hat · Boring UML diagram
Tyler: Wave generator · Anemometer · Tournament bracket
BradS: Sine wave signal generation component in labview · The world’s first ping pong ball carrier · Super rad spaceship traversing the 8bit galaxy
Pablo: Angrysad emoji · Rooster with square crest · My first sitemap
Jess: A cupcake from the top · Two people hiding under a desk · A crying puppy
Daniel: Political corruption (a revolving door) · Anybot with earrings · Flying car lanes
JonF: A pair of pregnant snakes eating each other · A billboard wearing earrings · Two tanks pushing a wall to the left (seen from above)
Tina: Snake in a hamster ball · Top view of a confessional stall · Sideways alarmed robot face
Zachary: Mountain pass ahead · Beware angry robot · The lone relic of old nightmares caused by a computational logic course I once took
Vinny: Marble ball · People on a ski lift · A segment of a photograph of a Ferris Wheel
Koop: Welcome to the wind tunnel · Don’t forget your steampunk goggles · Quick, hold onto that pole!
JonC: Cubist shoe gazer · Ball bearing cutaway from aerial perspective · Sideways frog face
Sarah: Locked key hole · Sad man resigned to his unibrow · Robot who wants a hug
Erich: Hurricane is coming!! · Bald couple, scared of the storm, hug each other under the bed for safety. · They don’t make it. ☹ Buried in adjoining plots.
Those icons are in Instruments, which is part of Xcode. They officially stand for Record settings · Display settings · Extended detail, but life’s so much better with a little imagination.
See also: The emoji ligature Rorschach test
