XKCD!!!!!!!!

[theyellowhobbit]

For those of you who are fans of the webcomic xkcd, read on. You'll like this post, guaranteed.

Some of you may know that my brother, lopaanre is the president of the SFS at WPI (i.e. he's head nerd). And lopaanre got Randall Munroe to come speak at WPI about his webcomic, xkcd.

I was smart and brought a camera. And then lopaanre needed a camera, so I lent him mine. Thus, I got pictures of the event without having to put any effort into it. They aren't perfect, but there are a bunch of good ones in there.

And afterwards, lopaanre said that I could print out a comic and he'd get it signed for me. So I'm going to have a little contest- if anyone can guess which comic I printed for Randall to sign, you can have one of my authentic xkcd red spiders. (Well, authentic inasmuch as lopaanre's craftsmanship counts as "authentic" xkcd merchandise. He and his friends made like a hundred of them and threw them out into the audience. So I kept a few.) And lopaanre is disqualified, but I don't think he'll mind, since he made all of the spiders. Why would he need more?

*edit* 3 hints:

It's not the Cat Proximity comic, since that was used for the facebook invite already.
It's not the one I posted below.
It's not any of the spider ones.

There are a lot of pictures and they might take a while to upload, so I'll put the album in my next post so I can post this now.

And in the meantime, this comic was really amusing:

Perhaps I should marry him, since my name is Rachel.

Nevermind. The pictures are here:

xkcd!!!

Comments

[lopaanre.livejournal.com]

I have the comic all signed and sitting on my desk. Is there any chance at gaming weekend I can get the full resolution pictures you took?

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Yeah, sure. Do you want all of them? Otherwise I'll go through and take out all of the blurry ones before giving them to you.

[lopaanre.livejournal.com]

Take out the blurries please.

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Ok.

[ranka.livejournal.com]

I LOVE XKCD.

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Me, too. :)

[cynara-linnaea.livejournal.com]

I want to hear about what he said!

And you totally got the Nerd Girls one.

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Wow. You've got yourself a red spider! (If you e-mail me your mailing address, I'll send him to you.)

He said a lot of things. It was all done as a question and answer session. I asked about the "my hobby" comics, and he said that the one with the KY jelly and cucumber was based on a conversation he got into about the most disturbing pair of items you could get in a grocery store, and what two items you could get that the grocer would refuse to ring up. I thought of your cigarettes and baby formula post. Of course, his answer was a pregnancy test kit and a coathanger.

There were a lot of programming questions that were above my head, so I don't remember those.

He talked a bit about the impracticality of getting playpen balls to fill up a bedroom. It would take at least a few tens of thousands. So even if the cost a tenth of a cent each, that would still be a few thousand dollars. Though I think if each fan chipped in and sent him ten playpen balls, he'd get the required amount in no time!

And he talked about a few instances where xckd affected reality. Such as the one about Richard Stallman sleeping with a katana under his bed- some fans went out and sent Richard Stallman a katana, and he had no clue what to make of it, having not seen the comic, so he sent them a thank you note saying "...I am not sure what to do with it, other than keep it near my bed."

And the one about the one about Cory Doctorow dressing up in a red cape and goggles- apparently he got an award, and when he went up to accept it they gave him a red cape and goggles to wear.

And he drew a velociraptor playing guitar in the shower.

That's all I can remember off the top of my head, but they taped his talk.

[leftyjew.livejournal.com]

I thought of you when I read that comic...

[alanscottevil.livejournal.com]

I didn't understand your story at all, but yay XKCD!

[sen-ichi-rei.livejournal.com]

Too many acronyms?

lopaanre goes to Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI.) He had Randall Munroe come in as an event for the Science Fiction Society (SFS) at his school. They made red spiders out of pipe-cleaners beforehand. They threw them out into the audience. (Actually there was one big one that whoever found it could get a free SFS t-shirt.) I wore mine on my head for most of the talk.

Afterwards lopaanre's friend/apartment-mate C and I went up to the computer lab in the building and used his account to sign in and we printed off comics to give to lopaanre to give to Randall to sign.

I was pretty tired when I wrote the post. There was a lot of driving to and from WPI that I did. And I had a detour on the way home, so it took even longer (though then I drove as fast as I thought I could get away with once I was on the highway, so I could get home sooner). Sorry for the incomprehensibility of the above post.