xkcd at Google – What xkcd REALLY stands for
Posted by Jon Lee in Offtopic, tags: funny, video, web comic, xkcdRandall Munroe, the creator of my favorite web comic xkcd, gives a talk as part of the Authors@Google event last week. The video is about an hour long but quite insightful (warning: a lot of xkcd jokes you won’t guess unless you read the comic). It is funny how a lot of the audience seem to know him so well even though they have probably never met.
Some notable questions and summarized answers:
Question: How long it takes for him to write a comic.
Answer: Anywhere from a few minutes to a few days. (that’s just like blogging 
)
Question: What does xkcd really stand for?
Answer: It is a unique string of characters Randall created to represent himself on the Internet which meet the following criteria:
- No ambiguous characters (i.e. no L’s because it may look like an I or a 1).
- Not an existing acronym or have a valid acronym decoding.
- Unpronounceable (not a word) so it does not give any sort of pre-existing connotation.
- Available on all websites/services he used (including domain name I assume).
The purpose was so he could look up his own pseudo name and find things only pertaining to himself. Of course with the popularity of his web comic, xkcd no longer points to him! It’s a good idea, perhaps I should have done something similar instead of using my own name which is quite popular. Good news is, I have pretty much risen to the top of my Google twin quest!
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