Archive for the ‘xkcd’ Category

Slashback

Thursday, May 17th, 2007

For the uninitiated Slashback is a /. feature that periodically redresses previous stories with clarifications, more information, or new developments.

  • Some more on the xkcd talk: at one point someone asked Randell “Where are you from on the Internet?” (see the hover text). He talked a bit about a chat room of yore (no reminiscent of the dustbowl) where he hung out, but then he let everyone know that he spent a lot of time at live journal during high school (apparently thats a frowned upon place to be from). So I got to thinking where do I come from. In 8th grade (my family didn’t get the internet until part way 7th grade (1997)) I spent a lot of my time in the wy2 (thats wonder years 2) chat room, on some IRC server I don’t recall. That seems like a good place to be from, at least its on IRC. But really before that I was from geocities. http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/2296, that link, of course, is long broken. I’m proud of that though, I had a website about, um, Star Trek/Sci-Fi , The Site, and later Wonder Years complete with easy to send of a 14.4 modem Real Audio clips. Where are you from?
  • For anyone missing Gilmore Girls a little bit: Kirk’s top 10 moments. Ok so I don’t really miss it like I miss a person so much as I feel the need to seek out these kinds of stories which you can only find shortly after the end of the show. I don’t remember even half of the episodes kirk lists so I will have to go back and watch each one. Feel free to drop any similar links on the comments.
  • I have been super busy this week (at home — work is normal). I don’t even know why but it feels like I’ve got no time. Its not like I’m doing lots of things. I guess I should be going ;-)

xkcd @ MIT

Tuesday, May 15th, 2007

xkcd @ MIT The xkcd guy @ MIT Last night was my first time in an MIT lecture hall, and wow was it fun. Someone was video-taping most of the talk right in front of me, but I haven’t found that video online yet. Meanwhile, there is thread where more pictures will likely show up here. Randall started his talk with an expose on what people will do when presented with a string un-obviously suspended from an out of site kite. He later returned to kites and what could be dropped from them (video). final version of the comic here. Randell seemed like he had a bit of every friend I know, who appreciates xkcd, in him.

  • Favorite Ice Cream: J.P. Licks Cake Batter — me
  • 300 character 1 line perl program to display website hits — Paul
  • Calvin and Hobbes: the best comic of its generation — everyone!
  • Expanded music tastes to Guitaur Hero 2! — Jed
  • All things related to kitties — Beth
  • Emacs user — everyone except Paul?

He started talking how he was inspired to start xkcd by MIT’s hacks page (link pending). Shortly after he said that a whole bunch of play pen balls, with the HD-DVD key on it fell from trap doors in the ceiling. The balls made /. I managed to snag one in the thrush of flying balls that followed:

xkcd ball 1 xkcd ball 2

Most of the talk was a question and answer session including “will you make me a sandwich?”. Overall it was just an hour and a half of hilarious inside joke geeky-ness. I am so glad I went, but I did feel almost unprepared for it. I am just on the outskirts of the xkcd universe, that is for sure. It was really interesting getting an inside look at the real people who live the blogosphere and drive internet culture, or at least a small part of it. Randall waxed a bit on his ideas on the nature of humor as a decision problem which I wish i could recreate here. Anyways, you all should have been there, esp those of you in Boston. On a down note I didn’t make any new xkcd friends as I had hoped I would.

Mission Success: xkcd Tickets

Sunday, May 13th, 2007

The Prize On Friday I succeeded in my mission to get an xkcd ticket. The ticket has one of my favorite comics on it. The talk is on Monday so I’ll let you all know how awesome it was then. On a side note, I just learned my HDTV will arrive tomorrow (Monday) morning.

Mission Failure: xkcd Tickets

Monday, May 7th, 2007

XKCD SandwichFor those of you who don’t know xkcd is a webcomic. Now I know I have been known to proclaim that webcomics, with the possible exception of exception of Penny Arcade are the devil, but that was before xkcd. Anyways, its great and amazingly popular. I’ve definitely had random people at parties, gaming, and even work bring it up unprompted. This is of course not withstanding the Online Communities poster thats been making the rounds. Amazingly enough if you write the name of a certain social networking site really large on an image and put it online, n00bs will link to it. I can’t say as I’ve introduced many people to xkcd as, most people I know had already learned of it and had failed to introduce me to it.

Anyways, the author of xkcd, is giving a talk at MIT soon, and I ventured to campus yesterday to purchase tickets well in advance, as I totally expect it to sell out. I got there too early and had to wait around (damn quick efficient public transport). Eventually someone showed up indicating tickets would be coming. This is par for the course for student organized events, so no big deal. In the end the student in physical possession of the tickets was described as having “fallen off the face of the Earth.” Not much you can do about that; Hopefully said student will return to the Earth by next weekend.