xkcd at MIT
Randall of xkcd is speaking at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tonight.
Someone brought a very large, inflatable velociraptor, but there are plenty of squirt guns loaded with grape juice to save us. During the talk, some ceiling panels in the room magically opened and dumped blue, green, yellow, and red playground ball pen balls on about the front 1/3 of the audience. Each ball has an xkcd comic attached to it. I wonder if there are enough balls for all of the comics.
Map of the Internet or is this map, which I posted earlier.
Randall discussed various captcha techniques, like having one with lots of one-liners and having the trick be picking the one that’s funny. I just wrote a few paragraphs about captcha today in an article I submitted somewhere for consideration for publication. I like his suggestions better. They’re much better.
He also mentioned how xkcd was getting a lot of play on reddit and people started objecting, so he eventually wrote a break-up letter to reddit, which, of course, got posted to reddit. I couldn’t find it in a quick and dirty Web search.
I picked up some balls after the talk. The label on them has the xkcd logo complete with stick figures and: “Our hobby: Posting ‘09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0′ in public places.” The string of numbers is the HD-DVD processing key, which it seems the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) is asking sites to remove. Apparently, there was a bit of a kerfuffle over on Digg about it. So, um, look quick because I might have to take the numbers down in a few minutes.
Yay for stealth Skyping.
*grins to Kim, who introduced me to the comic*
Addendum 5/16: The talk made Slashdot, of couse. And not surprisingly, someone posted photos. And video of the last bit of drawing Randall did for us.
I was going to go to sleep, but it seems like Kim keeps sending me new links every five minutes or so. Maybe I should give Kim access to the scratchpad …
*elbows Kim playfully in the ribs*
Thanks for the links!
