The Meetup
xkcd readers successfully overran a park in Cambridge a week ago, and it’s taken me this long to fully recover. But boy, was it fun. Here’s a wrap-up:
Back in the spring, when I lived in Virginia, I drew this comic. The date was in the future, the coordinates were a park in Cambridge. When the date came last weekend, hundreds of people showed up.
How it went:
People were camped out there starting the night before. Without any obvious organization, they brought altered signs for the park, raptor costumes, signs, red spiders, and a tent full of xkcd-related memorabilia. They climbed the octahedral structure in the middle of the park and did their best to collapse it. Afterward, at the nearby Danahey Park, there was a trebouchet.
I had made a point of staying quiet about my plans for the coordinates. I just directed people back to the comic, which suggested that no one showed up. And, indeed, when I have dreams like that and go to the place or look for the person, there’s no one there. Dreams don’t work like that. So if they’re just your own desires whispering to you, of what use are they? As Haroun would ask, what’s the use of stories that aren’t even true? The answer was obvious. Dreams are where messages start, not where they arrive.
I realized roughly what would happen if I drew up the coordinates in a comic. And people came. It couldn’t happen exactly like it did in the comic, obviously, but it was a gathering of lovely people all brought together by their shared interest in adventure, puzzles, and people, and dreams. And it was a wonderful party.
I hung out nearby, with some friends and relatives, and put together my contribution to the gathering. Since the comic had created a counter to its own conclusion, clearly it needed to be corrected. I got 40 feet of whiteboard in 4×8 segments. I drew up the Dream Girl comic on the first one, but left out the concluding line. Instead, I left the next 35 feet for people to fill in what had happened.
I said a few words explaining this, passed out Sharpies, and then was swept to the center of a crowd of autograph-seekers. For a couple hours, I signed every blank surface anyone showed to me. This included playpen balls, shirts, breasts, a mattress, a picture of two monkeys having sex, and, at one point, the side of a Mobius strip. Afterward, we went to a trebouchet demonstration, had food, and (in a complicated string of events) reenacted the couch affair from Dirk Gently. After hanging out with some folks from Kansas and having a lovely hour-long conversation about the Animorphs, I fell asleep at 6:00 AM and slept for a full day — 25 hours — waking up briefly to eat.
Here’s an article in the Phoenix about the meetup.
Click here for a page with high-res images of all five whiteboards:
A few selections:
There were far too many pictures taken for me to wade through them all, but here are a few I pulled from the Flickr pool:
Goodness, there were a lot of people.
All the park signs were helpfully rewritten.
There were several gallant protesters insisting that all assertions be fully backed-up.
There are no words that can improve this picture.
I have not forgotten about the red spiders, by the way. The final two episodes will appear eventually.
There’s a giant structure in the middle of the park — an octahedron with a network of ropes inside. It was covered with people for the entire day, and — for no clear reason — they crowd-surfed a mattress to the top.
The structure, enveloped in people.
Isn’t CD Cambodia?
There was a mighty trebouchet.
Buckles were swashed.
Love was sought.
And thank you to all the people who picked up trash.
This was fun. Let’s do it again next year. Keep an eye out for coordinates.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:18 am
Yes, let’s! That was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.
There’s a nice park in Medford we could overrun…
October 1st, 2007 at 12:20 am
First!
*runs away from encroaching mob*
Wish I could have been there, sounded fun. Also, the fourm is broken, both links.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:22 am
[...] to get them all scanned or photographed and put online at some point. (UPDATE: Here they are, and here are Randall’s thoughts on the meetup.) Here are some interim work-in-progress [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 12:59 am
Wow, love the spam protection. I’ll feel horrible if I get it wrong. Anyway, looks like fun, too bad I’m on the other side of the country. Parents don’t exactly let their 16 year-old sons go to the other side of the country to go to something that’s not even an official event.
usually.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:03 am
Wow, front page.
To be fair, try the west coast plzplzplz.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:06 am
I am sad that it never occurred to me to just go there. From now on I am on the lookout for coordinates in this comic.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:10 am
Thanks for signing my head Randall! You rock!
http://flickr.com/photos/10796179@N03/1428945515/in/set-72157602125415794/
October 1st, 2007 at 1:16 am
I am astoundingly jealous. I’m all the way on the other side of the country. Wish I could have been there.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:31 am
Man, first I find out I missed a trebouchet, now a Dirk Gently homage! I really wish I could have stayed longer. What exactly was done with the couch?
October 1st, 2007 at 1:40 am
Couldn’t the coordinates have been slightly harder to figure out? like just 4 floating point numbers? x,y,z,t - ECEF coordinates and time in GPS weeks.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:42 am
Come down to New Haven sometime. We’ll have fun.
October 1st, 2007 at 2:22 am
That must’ve been quite a groovy moment.
^^
Greetings from Argentina.
October 1st, 2007 at 2:39 am
you’d think cd is cambodia, but .cd is actually for some reason the domain for congo.
October 1st, 2007 at 2:48 am
4×8 pieces of whiteboard, eh? Are they the big pieces of shower board (I think that’s what its called) from home depot that cost about 4 bucks? I hung two of those up in my room, there’s nothing like 64 sq. ft. of whiteboard! Do you coat the boards with anything? Because my boards are more akin to wet-erase than dry-erase boards. I tried pledge because something on the internet told me to (always a good decision), but it doesn’t work very well.
October 1st, 2007 at 3:07 am
What side of the Modius strip did you sign?
October 1st, 2007 at 4:38 am
Oh wow, that looks like it would have been fun. A pity I immediately forgot the coordinates the second I finished reading that comic. I don’t know why, but whenever I see a date, my mind secretly has instructions to commit the previous and next few seconds to write-only short term memory. Effectively, it just threw a few seconds of my life into the garbage bin. I won’t even remember writing this, because the post above mine has a date on it.
October 1st, 2007 at 5:02 am
next year don’t do it in your backyard but at some coordinates where you’ve never bin in a country where you’ve never bin. then see who still shows up.
October 1st, 2007 at 5:30 am
I agree with the “west coast” suggestion. More specifically, I suggest somewhere in the immediate vicinity of Los Angeles, California.
I mean, if you were REALLY going to be fair you’d put it in China, but I don’t live in China, so you never heard that.
For those of us who didn’t get that we should go and couldn’t have anyway…
Don’t you feel pathetic now?
October 1st, 2007 at 5:39 am
This is just outstandingly neat. You may have the net’s coolest fandom.
Hadn’t realised the date was coming up, but it’s a bit of a hike from London anyway.
October 1st, 2007 at 6:00 am
To be fair, the next time should be at -42.39561, 71.13051?
I’m from HK, so there’s no chance for a meetup anywhere near anyway. :)
October 1st, 2007 at 7:39 am
“You may have the net’s coolest fandom.”
+1
(I came here to write that.)
October 1st, 2007 at 7:44 am
Hah. After having a less than perfect day, this cheered me up pretty quickly. Sometimes the internet community just works the right way, and it’s really good to see it happen. You may indeed have the coolest fandom around, too.
I’m upset I missed it, sounds like it was a pretty brilliant day. Oh well, maybe next time. :)
October 1st, 2007 at 8:04 am
Sounds like tremendous fun!
October 1st, 2007 at 8:10 am
Damn.
And Damn again.
October 1st, 2007 at 8:24 am
Next time in Germany, please? :)
October 1st, 2007 at 9:28 am
God damnit, if only getting to the US from Brazil wasn’t so incredibly expensive and troublesome. I’ll make it my goal to be able to be there next year if it happens again, though.
You guys are all awesome.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:50 am
Damn, it’s been 2 years since I last heard the word “Animorphs”.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:15 am
The big problem is you have fans worldwide! What about an average coordinate beetween every place in the world, so it’s quite near everyone? The problem with 0,0 is the water.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:29 am
I am dying inside to know that I missed a conversation about “Animorphs.” Really, please give me the gist of the discussion . . . that series was ridiculously fantastic.
October 1st, 2007 at 10:51 am
It was a very fun time. Definitely looking forward to next year.
October 1st, 2007 at 11:39 am
I’m happy for everyone who was there. I also admire you for catching on to the hint in the comic.
October 1st, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I guess that sometimes, wanting something DOES make it real.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:13 pm
Well… I would really love to go to that sort of thing, sure sounds like a lot of fun…
I just love the comic, it’s the best thing i’ve read!
And btw, come to Sweden, plz?
October 1st, 2007 at 1:22 pm
[...] xkcd » Blog Archive » The Meetup Now this is fucking beautiful. (tags: fun xkcd webcomics) [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 1:22 pm
nothing for it. I have to say it.
OH MY GOD.
I had no idea such people still existed. I love being a part of a fandom such as yours. xkcd is the best thing to happen to nerds since the internet.
October 1st, 2007 at 1:27 pm
[...] damn, I would have soooooooooo loved to be there :-/ [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 1:35 pm
[...] The Return of Batgirl Superheroes don’t die, they just respawn « Mondays are really not great days This? Is awesome October 1st, 2007 xkcd meetup. [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Can we do Cambridge, UK next time please? :-)
October 1st, 2007 at 2:35 pm
[...] blir helt salig i hjärtat när jag läser om xkcd-träffen i Cambridge Park i Boston, MA. Det är förjäkla otroligt. Synd att jag inte var [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Your trebuchet/shoe idea was pretty sweet. It’s too bad they were always too heavy for the strings. I think I’ll try doing that the next time I take it out. Only I’ll use stronger string this time. That should work well. Either that or just use two or three strings on the same set of shoes.
There’s a video of us loading the shoes on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGYqLeRws0M
-mike
October 1st, 2007 at 4:46 pm
hmm,yes Cambridge UK would be good, I’d be able to go then :D
October 1st, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Now I’m even more jealous that I couldn’t go. Next year I’m planning better. (I would claim that I didn’t show up to stay true to the comic, but I’d only be fooling myself.)
And now that you’ve reenacted the Dirk Gently couch caper, do you have any plans to rent out your time machine?
October 1st, 2007 at 7:07 pm
C’mon, why not the midwest? I can say that you’d find an awesome reception in Madison, WI.
October 1st, 2007 at 7:10 pm
San Francisco please!
October 1st, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Cambridge, UK would indeed be infinitely cool. I get the impression that it’s the kind of place that would work really well with something like this (reality checkpoint, anyone?) XKCD fans are everywhere, so it’s only fair that other Cambridges get a go too.
Wonder how much the airfare would be, and how many people might chip in?
October 1st, 2007 at 7:53 pm
[...] woot [...]
October 1st, 2007 at 7:59 pm
Anyone interested in coming to Australia? The weather’s always fine Down Under! …. and that way I’d be able to make it :)
October 1st, 2007 at 8:15 pm
the topic of “animorphs” just popped into my head for no particular reason yesterday and I am nowhere near the east coast. synchronicitic lag?
October 1st, 2007 at 9:15 pm
You have no idea how happy it makes me just to know that this happened. Thanks to everyone of you.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Man, you talked to some people from Kansas? I wish I could’ve been one of them, but the coords were too far away for me. Next time you should pick something more along the lines of N 37°20.282′ E -95°15.175′
October 1st, 2007 at 9:34 pm
The affair was, indeed, very fun. It was like a county fair of my childhood, except without the funnel cake and with more talk about writing blag entries about the experience afterward.
Seriously, where in the physical world can you sit under a tree and indulge in a conversation which includes the line, “You haven’t made it as a science blagger until you’ve been criticized by Matt Nisbet”?
I also introduced a person I knew from the Internet to a person who works in my office. That was pretty freaky.
October 1st, 2007 at 9:46 pm
I don’t CARE if next year I have other obligations like this year. I’m going. As long as it’s in the US. And not on the west coast. Aaaack.
Anyway, it looks beyond Amazing (yes, capitalized). And I mean Amazing + the highest number possible. Yay for your Amazing fandom!
October 1st, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Wow…not much else to say. This sounds like it was a lot of fun, and I’m sure confusing to any non-xkcd fans.
So, where shall the raptors strike next? Canada, eh?
October 1st, 2007 at 10:35 pm
what! i am so upset i missed this.
please do it in the GTA again next year!
October 1st, 2007 at 10:55 pm
Thanks for posting all of this, especially the rewritten comic. I’d been planning to come, but I dislocated my patella the Friday before, and my knee was still to swollen for me to trust it to get me there, so it means a lot that I can still experience it vicariously through this blag (also through the “epsilon-theta” duck that my roommate brought back for me).
October 1st, 2007 at 11:06 pm
it really was the best road trip ever!! i imagine we’ll totally be there next year… i guess we’ll have to start referencing comics now so we’ll have another tent full of inside jokes!! :D
October 1st, 2007 at 11:50 pm
Thank you Randall!
:D
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:48 am
I once attempted to write a paper about Animorphs. To be fair, I was in fourth grade at the time….
oh well. the meet-up was incredible, and the four smartest people I know were there looking dumb (from Caltech, Bryn Mawr, Yale, and MIT).
Also, confession: I may have been the only liberal arts type in that park.
did anybody propose?
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:40 am
The whole thing sounds awesome, and then seeing the picture of the DFAs written on one of the boards made me about cry last night when studying for an Automota test.
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:24 am
[...] showed up at that time and place (last week, a local park in North Cambridge, Massachusetts) and made something happen. They apparently came with all sorts of costumes, props, toys, and supplies, and [...]
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:52 am
Who’s already jumpy every time they see any numbers?
Each new comic, I realize I’m scouring for clues as to the location of the next meet.
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:37 am
To see the most awesome comment on the whiteboards, go to the hi-def page, then scroll to the extreme bottom right.
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:46 am
[...] ni? Mycket bra, det säger allt i ämnet. Jätte-OT: Såg ni hur sjukt mycket människor som samlades utifrån den här xkcd-serien? Häftigaste internet-grejen på [...]
October 2nd, 2007 at 7:31 am
> What about an average coordinate beetween every place in the world, so it’s quite near everyone?
I like this idea! Western Egypt next time!
http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showflat.php?Number=865562
October 2nd, 2007 at 9:37 am
Man oh man am I sorry I missed this. I’ve read everything here about 5 times and I still didn’t think about it! Oh well, next time…next time.
October 2nd, 2007 at 11:57 am
That bastard skater kid (the one who auctioned off any sharpie he came in contact with for people’s posessions and then had Randle sign his skateboard) erased what I wrote on the first whiteboard…and since I didn’t write anything else, now I only have my own pictures to prove that I said something witty. Alas. A slight sense of dismay for not being able to locate myself in any of the flickr pictures, either.
Ah well, the meet-up was fun.
October 2nd, 2007 at 12:06 pm
[...] Randy finally got around posting a blog about the Boston “Dream Girl” meetup. I was [...]
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:44 pm
Animorphs. Ah, yes. I still maintain that my friends and I could have pwned the Yeerks as they acted in the book. It would have take a fraction of the time it took the Animorphs to pseudo-win.
Moral of the story: Show no mercy to Visser Three. I don’t care how much Ax has a conscience. He should have killed the guy back in Book Whatever (something before 15, I think).
Anywho, ’twas fun! Let’s all do it again sometime. ^_^
October 2nd, 2007 at 1:54 pm
West Coast Please! I’m in Oregon…
October 2nd, 2007 at 2:35 pm
back when that comic was published, i considered making a trip to the other side of the country… it would have been worth it just to talk nerd for a day. of course, i am breaking out in a cold sweat after seeing all the math on the whiteboards… it’s all still too recent. *gulp*
October 2nd, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Cambridge UK next time!
Or at least somewhere else in the UK or at least Europe :D
October 2nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
Penguin5201, you son of a bitch.
October 2nd, 2007 at 5:30 pm
My only reason for not going is because I’m 13. But that’s not a good reason! I live on the seacoast for New Hampshire. I think that a 2-hour drive is worth it if people from that part of the ocean on the exact other side of the world are there (Atlantis?)!
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:21 pm
Now I wanted to go just to ask people what the third word in the Enlgish language ends in -gr- AAH! GET THE CHAINSA- OW! NOOOOO!
October 2nd, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Isn’t it supposed to be spelled “Sweet Ass-Park”, with the space there, for clarity’s sake even if not for grammatical correctness?
I sort of wish I’d gone, but I was afraid it was going to be an awkward event with a bunch of people I didn’t know, and I didn’t want to take that long of a trip just to go and be awkward (I could accomplish the same by taking a much shorter trip to see my aunt. On the other hand, there would definitely not have been a trebuchet at my aunt’s place.) It does sound like it was fun, though.
October 2nd, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Nope, Mkat, there were at least two of us. I was there, and I’m a double-majoring in Political Science and English.
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:48 am
I’ve never been so happy and sad in my life…
Happy for all the fellow fans that made it to this event.
And sad because I couldn’t make it.
Anyways, I just blagged about it all in my brand-new blag on blogspot (^click name).
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:54 am
Warning: the blag which I’ve just unashamedly whored out is kept by a rabid xkcd fan and the degree of homage which I pay to Randall is almost sickening.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:09 am
I wish I could have made it… of course… even if I were in the area, I would have stupidly NOT gotten the hint in the comic and felt 10x worse.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:13 pm
How about someplace down in Richmond? Represent your state, Monroe!
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:57 pm
“Dreams don’t work like that. So if they’re just your own desires whispering to you…”
edit: “desires or fears”
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
I’m so jealous! … Gosh! I so wish i could be there and join the crowd!
still from my little corner here in a parallel universe (read opposite pole).
best wishes! … Long live stick figures! … and stuff
From Tehran with Love!
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:11 pm
[...] from last spring in which coordinates and a date were mentioned. Well, as the author of the comic wrote in his blog, “The date was in the future, the coordinates were a park in Cambridge.” [...]
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:09 pm
damn the one who put the “you just lost the game again” comment on there :( Looks like you all had a lot of fun, wish i could’ve been there.
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
I wanted to be there so bad. I was supposed to go with some friends of mine. They had a week’s vacation from the coffee shop where they work. It was actually a week before the meeting, but we were going to go anyway and leave a note…
Unfortunately, the driver was placed on probation, and was unable to leave the state. So we went to Tallahassee instead. Sorry Randall! Maybe next time.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Here’s an idea for the next one:
http://www.spheremania.co.uk/res_website.asp?supplierCode=sph100&page=mobile_sphereing
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:27 pm
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:30 pm
October 4th, 2007 at 4:27 am
This is literally the most awesome thing I have ever seen. I vote for somewhere in Nevada next time. Then we can all go out for drinks and gambling afterward.
Also, I live in Nevada. :)
October 4th, 2007 at 6:30 am
[...] A more fan-oriented summary, with lots of good pictures. [...]
October 4th, 2007 at 6:55 am
Oh god, I wish I could have gone.
Personally, my favourite is the panel with ‘But apparently she had told other people too’ XD
Whoever wrote ‘Doctor Who fans love XKCD too’, you are not alone :P
October 4th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
Come somewhere in the UK next time ok?
Edinburgh’s nice, the meadows is big enough for a couple of hundred nerds. =]
October 4th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
XKCD, can you please delete the post by Johnny Jizz. he just wrote “Wibble!” 8192 times, taking up 911 lines. and all this twice! it is very difficult to scroll properly now because it takes up about 2/3 of the height of this thread
btw,
“Whoever wrote ‘Doctor Who fans love XKCD too’, you are not alone :P” X2
October 4th, 2007 at 11:43 pm
I would be consumed by the jealousy monster if the jealousy monster wasn’t being consumed by the “OH-MY-GOLDFISH-THAT’S-SO-AWESOME-IT-EVEN-HAPPENED” monster. Next time, I’m not going to allow the fact there’s a whole planet between me (Perth, Australia) and the next co-ordinate stop me from getting there.
I vote the moon next time, it’s closer to Perth :D
October 5th, 2007 at 12:18 am
Anyone know who wrote “Dream Girl went home with a Wellesley woman”? Because it wasn’t me and I had no idea any of my classmates were there.
October 5th, 2007 at 1:39 am
I remember figuring out the comic but I forgot to write it down to go. :o
Guess I’ll be more thorough next time.
Also, can someone explain the (BC)^2=Wellesley equation?
October 5th, 2007 at 3:41 am
This is awesome!
But a very important question remains unanswered in my mind, Randall: did you meet Dream Girl?
October 5th, 2007 at 11:51 am
[...] everyone else is calling it), the comic’s own creator, Randall Munroe, has written a fine blog post about how the whole thing went down. Includes photos, a description of the trebuchet they used to [...]
October 5th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Xkcdstock.
October 6th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
When the Phoenix article came out, I got about six emails saying “Katherine I saw you in this article!” Talking to random strangers with notepads pays off sometimes.
October 7th, 2007 at 9:33 pm
[...] at the end of September, I was in Cambridge, protesting [...]
October 8th, 2007 at 12:15 am
You know the two guys sword fighting?
One of them is holding a Master Sword!!
October 8th, 2007 at 12:18 am
(BC)^2 is Wellesley’s Biology and Bio Chem club thing. The letters were made of a phospholipid bilayer…
October 8th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Central Park next time!
October 8th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Here Here, to the Central Park notion!
And I’m gonna get grammar-nazied over “here” vs. “hear”, aren’t I?
October 8th, 2007 at 9:09 am
I think philadelphia would be good. or a suburb.
October 8th, 2007 at 9:32 am
Wow, that sounds/looks like awesome fun. If only I was anywhere near there. Alas.
Hour-long convos about Animorphs rock muchly. As does the person with the raptor mask.
October 8th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
This looks like the single most awsome thing that has ever happened
(to qoute: “traded in-jokes about velociraptors, engaged in spontaneous foam-sword duels, and hauled a mattress to the top of a jungle gym they had overtaken.”) To bad it’s on the other side of the world (Netherlands)
Lets just hope its in Europe (England perhaps?) next time.
October 9th, 2007 at 6:32 am
God, I wish I’d been able to get there. Maybe next year?
October 9th, 2007 at 9:28 am
“Johnny Jizz”, may your eyelids be lacerated for your gratuitous spamming.
Randall, mad props on your massive fanclub. It’s rather shocking that such a large number of people would disrupt their lives for such a thing, but that’s what fanclubs are for. I didn’t go, but Anonymous made an appearance in my stead (see bottom-center of board #5). Keep on rockin’ in the free world!
October 9th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
AAAAAAAARGH I WISH I WAS THERE. Stupid youthiness. You must have this every year until I turn eighteen.
October 10th, 2007 at 12:34 am
Just awesomeness. I’m at a loss for words and proud of the power of nerds to organize themselves into such displays of fandom. Now, how is it that you are allowed to change the signs?
October 10th, 2007 at 11:28 am
[...] has an interesting superpower — things that he casually includes in his webcomic come true. Sometimes it’s out of his control, and just due to readers gettin’ creative. Sometimes Munroe [...]
October 11th, 2007 at 7:16 am
wow , just wow, i`t is refreshing to see that in this age of decadence there are some truly good things , people alike brought together almost spontaneously , just great :)
October 11th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
[...] el juego a las tallas internas de xkcd. AsÃ, por ejemplo, el 23 de septiembre de este año hubo una especie de reunión en un parque que quedaba bajo ciertas coordenadas que habÃan sido mencionadas, junto con la fecha [...]
October 12th, 2007 at 11:28 am
I was right across the river! How foolish of me.
I wonder what the chances are of having it in the Boston area again next year…
October 14th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
I KNEW IT, I just knew there would be a huge group of people. I even used my newly acquired mapping skills to find the location but seeing as how I live in Oregon, it just wasn’t possible to go. Let’s do west coast next time.
October 14th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
[...] xkcd readers successfully overran a park in Cambridge a week ago, and it’s taken me this long to fully recover. But boy, was it fun. Here’s a wrap-up: Back in the spring, when I lived in Virginia, I drew this comic . … [...]
October 14th, 2007 at 5:24 pm
Awesome!
First thing I did was to enter those numbers in Google Earth. Found the park and thought: ‘Well maybe there will be a few people at this spot at this time. Would be interesting to be there and to see who comes by’.
Sometimes I wish I lived in the US =)
October 18th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
My world, (Yes, MY world…Yours too.) I am dreadfully sad I missed it. I’m in a new school system and have been overwhelmed with work :(
I remember, twas many a months ago I vowed to come.
I failed.
What am I to be?
October 18th, 2007 at 10:55 pm
The comic with the coordinates that you drew while in Virginia has an eerie resemblance to many DMT (dimethyltryptamine) experiences. Or _maybe_ salvia divinorum. Can you elaborate on the circumstances in which this dream occurred?
October 22nd, 2007 at 3:10 am
Another vote for Central Park, here. :)
October 24th, 2007 at 5:09 am
Im so JEALOUS! Next time, come to New Zealand! Have it in a really big park! Like Tongariro National Park! There are mountains!
Or I vote for the suggestion of having on the moon.
October 24th, 2007 at 9:05 am
a couple months or a year ago, interspersed with the nerdery were heavy doses of romance. The dream girl and coordinates is a good example. These days all the romance seems to have been replaced with heavy doses of lust, that seems to border on misogyny (whereas the old stuff exuded reverence, fantasy and passion).
October 24th, 2007 at 6:25 pm
Son of a bitch. I just sold my entire collection of Animorphs books like two months ago… (Animorphs 1-54, Megamorphs 1-4, Andalite Chronicles, Hork-Bajir Chronicles, Ellimist Chronicles, Visser, Alternamorphs #1 [didn't have #2]…. i think that was it). Now I’m sad. I read most of them again before I sold them, of course I read the Chronicles and megamorhs. I remember thinking, after having not read them for a while, that they weren’t terribly deep, and I would still argue that while some character development was lacking, but after having read them again, I was very impressed… *sigh* I got two hundred bucks for the set, and that was supposed to go to an Xbox 360 (which it did not.) Hopefully someone will put them on the internet in 85 years when their copyright runs out, and hopefully I will still be alive… I hope whoever has them isn’t just some collector, they better enjoy them…
At least I can lament with people who would care and/or understand
October 24th, 2007 at 6:31 pm
Damn, I should have taken more time when writing that, it’s not very grammatically accurate… c’est la vie blogosphoir (dude, did I just make up an awesome new idiom?)
October 26th, 2007 at 1:14 am
Haha that just made me feel really, really happy for some reason. People are wonderful. I hadn’t even thought of something like this happening. Aaaauuuuuoooorgh so cool so cool soooo coooool
October 29th, 2007 at 1:28 am
Ah, well.
I just started reading XKCD a few months ago and had just reached this panel in the comic archives today. After looking it up and finding it literally 15 blocks from my house, I was really disappointed that the datetime had just passed a month before. And now that I see how mind-blowing the event was, I’m kicking myself for not calling in sick for two days and reading all 335 of them at once!
November 1st, 2007 at 10:29 pm
[...] real world (read through the blag for more info on Wet Riffs, and of course the Stallman issue and The Meet Up but it’s the roller coaster chess ride that really did it for [...]
November 13th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Haha.. this is the most brilliant thing. I’ll keep my fingers crossed for Europe next year. There’s plenty of us to fill up space and act like children, too. I’ll be keeping an eye out for those coordinates.
November 15th, 2007 at 4:42 pm
On my birthday! I wish I had been there. I will be looking forward to the next one.
November 28th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
[...] The Meetup: Back in the spring, when I lived in Virginia, I drew this comic. The date was in the future, the coordinates were a park in Cambridge. When the date came last weekend, hundreds of people showed up. [...]
November 30th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Reading about this just made my night. ?
November 30th, 2007 at 12:46 am
Reading about this just made my night. ^_^
December 1st, 2007 at 2:38 am
“There are no words that can improve this picture.”
I have words to improve upon it. Because the song was stuck in my head just before I saw the image…
“He doesn’t look a thing like Jesus..but he..talks like a gentileman.”
It was glorious…
December 2nd, 2007 at 11:08 am
[...] was reading up on the xkcd meetup that happened in Cambridge in September. A bunch of geeks descended on the local park which was [...]
December 9th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
[...] Wired - Wikipedia - xkcd blag - Googlified - BoingBoing Prohibida su copia total con o sin fines comerciales. Copias [...]
December 12th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
[...] The webcomic xkcd has become enormously successful in the year and a half since I mentioned it here. Author Randy Munroe’s mother, Julie, is a reader of this here blog, and she’d e-mailed me the link a few weeks previously, suggesting that I might enjoy his nascent comic. The Virginian has since given a talk to a packed house at MIT, constructed a ball pit in his home, inspired people to play chess on roller coasters, and — based only on a single comic with an encoded message — got hundreds of strangers to show up for a bizarre gathering in a Cambridge park. [...]
December 24th, 2007 at 1:04 am
Wow. I, also, am very sad that I didn’t think to go to the coordinates in the comic. But, there is next year and a location has yet to be chosen. There have been a few good suggestions, but none seem too fair for everyone. The middle of the fan base is probably the center of the Earth, in the ocean, or Nebraska (which is an awesome place, by the way). I know you will probably come up with some over-my-head equation for finding a place, but I believe the best place would present itself through a dream.
Also, expect many many more people and half of them in raptor suits.
January 6th, 2008 at 12:11 am
I read the article, some comments and looked at the pictures.
I cried.
So, so beautiful. I wish I could have been there.
January 7th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Not a meetup, but a mashup.
http://img258.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hackingfingerprintsrs5.png
As I’m not as genius as you are, I didn’t get a better idea to realise my thought of hacking fingerprints for XSS.
Of course feel free to get inspired by this if you want, all my thoughts on this are public domain. :-)
January 10th, 2008 at 8:19 am
[...] comic, which is a bit heartbreaking in and of itself, inspired this meetup, which is heartbreaking in a whole different [...]
January 20th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Herm … Is there any chance that this year’s meet-up will take place on the European continent (or in the Uk) ? Raptors haven’t been around here a lot since … whenever.
One of your many faithful french readers (AND also a fan of NG’s The Sandman, in case you were wondering. Loved your quote. And also a Firefly fan, even thought I found it too short, but didn’t we all ? Well, we actually have a lot of references in common, and I’d love to keep on but I gotta go. Linear algebra doesn’t wait. Plus I just ran across comic 16. I guess I’ll see you’round.)
PS: I love n°24. Sorry. Couldn’t help it. And what’s the ‘your mom/sister’ stuff about anyway ? Sorry. I’m leaving you alone now. I swear.
January 21st, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Another voice in favour of the original Other Place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other_place). Surely T-shirt etc sales would make a decent dent in the airfare, and a whip round could get the rest of the way?
January 24th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
[...] One afternoon in Cambridge, Massachusetts, geeks took over. Hundreds of readers converged simultaneously on a school park, and unleashed in-joke havoc. Mock battles ensued between young men in cardboard jousting outfits. Red spiders made of pipe cleaners were suspended from lamp posts. At one point, dozens of dorks climbed a jungle gym, and for no particular reason passed a mattress, hand over hand, to the very top. Nearby, a man in a dinosaur mask, with suit and boom box, read a newspaper quietly. [...]
January 27th, 2008 at 5:58 am
[...] brand while XKCD currently enjoys the enthusiasm cult creation (has a huge fan base ,who meets regularly offline) ” I have 2 XKCD shirts and 3 Dilbert books. Dilbert is still vastly popular, while XKCD has a [...]
January 28th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
You probably realize with this unholy power you hold over us all, the government is basically yours for the taking?
…Randall Munroe in ‘08.
February 12th, 2008 at 4:21 am
find gps coordinates…
yes indeed……
February 14th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
location of gps coordinate…
If you are in the market for a navigation system, you cannot go wrong with the portable gps ratings and reviews system….
May 4th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Okay, so I’m late. Whatever. :]
BUT YES. There is a HUUUUGE park in my city (dear ol’ Louisville, KY) named Seneca Park. It also happens to connect to Cherokee park (osio Samantha dawado) which is cool. It has tons of grass, playgrounds, things to climb, hills, and other assorted epic things. It would be perfect for another gathering. Big Rock would be something like that octahedron, except Big Rock is in the middle of the creek and you can jump off of it to go swimming in the creek. Just throwin’ that out there, in case you’re still looking for places :]
And to the people too far away to go: It may not be much, but I’d be willing to help pay for a plane ticket or someone’s gas. I’m sure if everyone sponsored someone else for like, ten or twenty bucks, more people would be happier. And more people could come! And it would be awesome.