xkcd Blog

Interesting. Never even knew XKCD had a blog until now. I love the way you can read all his posts on one massive page lol https://blog.xkcd.com

Wow, awesome. This looks very very slick, and the Google Reader direct import is just...nice! Bug report, though: A couple of my blogs that I chose to "turn on" only show up as their comments feed. If I go ahead and turn them on, and click on the feed itself in the left pane, I get the site (fair enough), but the list of items in the bottom pane then only shows up the comments feed items. And clicking on them takes me to the comments. weird. Haven't been able to figure out why. E.g. the XKCD blag (http://blag.xkcd.com) and Cheap Talk (http://cheeptalk.wordpress.com) feeds. p.s: when this bug is fixed, and archiving support added, I'm totally premium-ing - hold me to it! Great work once again!

Just leaving some links here because I had been researching this intensively before a planned shoulder surgery: (Definitely adding this to my list) Frogpad: German language one handed keyboard. Unfortunately discontinued http://frogpad.com/ Mirrorboard (my favorite): Intruiging mirror solution that builds upon the assumption that it is easier to access muscle memory from the other hand when you've learned it before https://blog.xkcd.com/2007/08/14/mirrorboard-a-one-handed-keyboard-lay… Mistel Barocco fully split Keyboard: Can (and unfortunately must) be programmed without software. Right half is the main keyboard. Left side connects to it, works also in standalone mode but is not programmable then. https://mistelkeyboard.com/products/bd20945a731491407807e80d48c5d790

Reminds me of this old image (can't find the original link, but it's the same picture) that jokes about the difference between men and women with names for colours: https://cdn.psychologytoday.com/sites/default/files/styles/article-inl… Oh, and of course the xkcd follow-up: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

This was because the code was being worked on by multiple teams who ended up working on code stored in the following directories: fuscia fucsia fucshia fuschia fushia fuchia Trying to unravel and integrate all the code has proved to be too daunting a task. EDIT: Spellings taken from https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

I have always found the XKCD color survey of 2010 to be a most excellent reference in color perception: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ And still, nobody can spell fuchsia.

XKCD's Randall Munroe did a survey about color names, and the report he did on it is fantastic: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ , both informative and hilarious.

Great visualization! I think the balls dropping metaphor is a brilliant one (and just heart-breaking). From a command-line perspective, though, there's xkcd's actuary.py - http://blog.xkcd.com/2012/07/12/a-morbid-python-script/ - which has some nice options.

I just love this story. It's inspiring to see what's possible, especially knowing this was done by enthusiasts in a non-professional setting (i.e. not their day job). ... and, of course, obligatory xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1337/ http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/

Worth a mention of xkcd's color survey [1] results [2] with two different shades of cerulean. [1] http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ [2]http://xkcd.com/color/rgb/

Also, he is preparing to publish a 'What If?' book [1]. Always a good idea to support your favorite authors. [1] http://blog.xkcd.com/2014/03/12/what-if-i-wrote-a-book/

> For a light treatment of the topic, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_equivalent_dose Please don't. The "banana equivalent dose" people make the wrong assumption that the excess potassium brought in the organism by eating a banana stays there for 50 years. Because of the way potassium homeostasis works, the excess is eliminated within a few hours, when urinating. So let's reduce the average exposure time from 50 years to 12 hours and the radiation exposure from 0.078 microsievert to 0.00000213 microsievert. We're losing respect for some cool comic strip in the process[1], but the reality is worth it. [1]: http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/03/19/radiation-chart/

Great Radiolab episode. On a related note, the Crayola-fication of the world [1] and XKCD color survey [2] 1. http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/06/05/the-crayola-fication-of-the-wo… 2. http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

I found both really interesting. Whereas the xkcd article (http://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/) goes into some detail into one experiment, the original article has a wider scope and touches on several experiments, the xkcd experiment being one of them. Also interesting is the follow-up article about how language is used by the brain to distinguish between different colours (http://www.empiricalzeal.com/2012/06/11/the-crayola-fication-of-the-wo…

And a followup blog post recently: http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/05/08/michael-bays-scenario/

Good one. Randall Munroe trained himself to turn off his computer whenever he switched tasks, so that the handful of seconds worth of power down, and then boot up, would break his habitual distraction. http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-exte…

This was posted today on the XKCD blag [sic], which is distinct from the comic feed. http://blag.xkcd.com/

Well of course it's not worth the cash outlay, that's the point! That's one of the hallmarks of nerd-dom. Taking a joke or a concept, and going to extraordinary lengths to bring it into reality, for novelty and to impress people. "You know that one _____ thing? Somebody actually made/did it!" Prime example: http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/04/19/life-imitates-xkcd-part-ii-richard-sta…

Sorry, but obligatory http://xkcd.com/150/ Edit: and the follow-up on the artist's blog, er, "blag": http://blog.xkcd.com/2007/11/19/growing-up/ and http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/27/ballpit-phase-ii/

I truly feel sorry for people who have this little sense of humor, and am glad that we haven't had much of that reaction (e.g. taking at all, even mildly seriously) to the signs and The Zone. Taking the High Five Zone seriously is like taking seriously a sign in the mens bathroom proclaiming "Please follow the International Choice of Urinal Protocol" (c.f. http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/09/02/urinal-protocol-vulnerability/ ).

Seconded. Worth looking on eBay for an X200s - it's arguably superior to the current X201. It was the superlight version of the x200, available with a 1440*900 display and had all sorts of carbon fibre bits and an ultra-low-voltage processor. With the 9-cell battery, you've got a machine that weighs under 1.5kg and will run for ten hours away from the mains. Randall Munroe has one - http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/06/12/laptop-update/

Rather than having a daily list, I use Feeder (Chrome extension: http://feeder.co/) to read my RSS feeds, I had always preferred it to Google Reader, I never did get myself into the mantra of checking Reader often (it ended up being once every few months, when I randomly remembered) ; however Feeder is nice in its minimalistic approach, just showing me how many items for each feed, which encourages me to zero it out, although unlike Reader it just shows the titles of RSS feed items, so I end up judging whether or not to read an article based on the title. A few feeds I follow: News * Hacker News - https://news.ycombinator.com/ (https://news.ycombinator.com/rss and https://news.ycombinator.com/bigrss [a lot of the posts are repeated over both, and note these are not necessarily the front page posts, my guess is that they are upvoted new posts, so I end up reading some posts before they reach the front page]) * Phoronix - http://www.phoronix.com/ (http://www.phoronix.com/rss.php) * ThreatPost - http://threatpost.com/ (http://threatpost.com/feed) * TheNextWeb - http://thenextweb.com/ (http://feeds2.feedburner.com/thenextweb) * Wired - http://www.wired.com/ (http://feeds.wired.com/wired/index) * iClarified - http://www.iclarified.com/ (http://iclarified.com/rss/rss.xml) * TorrentFreak - https://torrentfreak.com/ (http://feeds.feedburner.com/Torrentfreak) * r/WorldNews - http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews (http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/.rss) Blogs * Securelist -…

When I upgraded Kindles, I had to go without one for a little while after I sold the old one. There was a book I wanted to read at the time, so I picked up a mass-market paperback of it. I found that I preferred reading on the Kindle in almost every way. It's more comfortable to hold, you can make the text bigger, and you don't have to move it around when you change pages (related: http://blog.xkcd.com/2009/04/13/the-pursuit-of-laziness/). So then I hear people say things along the lines of "Sure ebooks have their advantages, but a physical book just feels better". They often make it sound like everybody either agrees with them or is indifferent, but this isn't the case. Ebooks are cheaper to distribute than physical books. They are easier to carry around (thanks to the Kindle synchronization service, I _always_ have my book with me, because I always have my phone). The barrier to entry is lower, so we get to see books that wouldn't have, otherwise. Sure, a lot of it's crap, but most of everything is. We get some good stuff, too. The increased convenience and available gets many people (myself included) to read more. Moreover, some people, like me, just like it better. Then I hear people say that the impending supremacy (in the sense of popularity) of ebooks over physical books is a catastrophe? What? More people are going to read more books, more often, more easily, and this is a tragedy? Really? How is this not excellent? How is this not wonderful? Besides, physical…

Talking about stuff like this is bound to sound esoteric, I think. So I want to put this disclaimer upfront that I detest esotericism. I can only assume that your problems are similar to mine, so I can only suggest what works for me. And that might not completely work out for you in the end, but it's worth a try for sure. Concentration: The problem of not being able to keep distracting thoughts away can be lessened with meditation. I came across this suggestion in the book Pragmatic Thinking and Learning [1] and have found an excellent CD to listen to called Guided Mindfulness Meditation [2] by Jon Kabat-Zinn. I tend to try to avoid meditation because for a while I seem to do fine and so long as I do fine it just feels like a waste of time for me. Time that I could invest reading a book. But eventually I always end up having an extreme amount of distracting thoughts to the point that I cannot learn anymore. I've now had this problem crop up often enough with meditation always helping that I'm now a lot more willing to spend the time and meditate. I want to emphasize that for *me* it was necessary to get to the dead end and suffer from it to become willing to change something. Maybe you can relate. Structure: Well well, the way you write it sounds a little bit rigid to me. I tightened up imagining all that structure you strive for and I'm thinking you should relax a little bit. Or at least…

Does http://blag.xkcd.com count as "hacker" haha

Obligatory XKCD https://xkcd.com/color/rgb/ and the survey https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1317227

https://xkcd.com/862/ >[Reddit page.] >Luke (thinking): I shouldn't be looking at Reddit. Why can't I stop? >After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected. https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-correction-ext…

As Randall Munroe pointed out in https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/, almost nobody knows how to spell "fuchsia" correctly. I only remember it by the mnemonic of it's fuck, but with an s.

Xkcd Colour names based on a survey: https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/

Obligatory xkcd (from 2010!) - https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/05/03/color-survey-results/