Randall Munroe

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Randall Munroe
Randall Munroe balancing a stack of rubber duckies on a diner table.
Randall Munroe
Born Randall Patrick Munroe
October 17, 1984 (1984-10-17) (age 27)[1]
Easton, Pennsylvania, USA
Nationality American
Area(s) Pen and pencil
Webcomics
Notable works xkcd
Signature
Official website

Randall Patrick Munroe (born October 17, 1984)[1] is an American webcomic author and former NASA roboticist[2] as well as a programmer,[3] best known as the creator of the webcomic xkcd. He and the webcomic have developed a cult following, and he is one of a small but growing group of professional webcomic artists.[3]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Munroe was a fan of the funny pages from an early age,[3] starting off with Calvin and Hobbes.[4] After graduating from the Chesterfield County Mathematics and Science High School at Clover Hill: A Renaissance Program, he graduated from Christopher Newport University in 2006 with a degree in physics.[5][6] Munroe worked as an independent contractor for NASA at the Langley Research Center[7] before and after his graduation. In October 2006 NASA did not renew his contract[8] and he began to write xkcd full-time. He now supports himself by the sale of xkcd related merchandise.[3][9] The webcomic quickly became very popular, garnering up to 70 million hits a month by October 2007.[10]

He has also toured the lecture circuit, giving speeches at such places as Google's Googleplex in Mountain View, California.[11]

As of May 2008, Munroe lived in Somerville, Massachusetts.[3]

Munroe was married in September 2011.[12]

[edit] Webcomic

Main article: xkcd
"Wikipedian Protester", with title-text "SEMI-PROTECT THE CONSTITUTION"

xkcd is a stick figure comic with themes in computer science, technology, mathematics, science, language, pop culture and romance.

Munroe had originally used xkcd as an instant messaging screenname because he wanted a name without a meaning so he wouldn't eventually grow tired of it. He registered the domain name, but left it idle until he started posting his drawings[9] in September 2005.[13] The comic has a very loyal fanbase. Munroe said, "I think the comic that's gotten me the most feedback is actually the one about the stoplights".[10]

Munroe licenses his creations under the Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial 2.5 license, stating that it isn't just about the free culture movement, but that it also makes good business sense.[9] His income derives from the sale of merchandise to his fans, sales consisting of thousands of t-shirts a month.[3]

The popularity of the strip among science fiction fans resulted in Munroe being nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Fan Artist in 2011 (although the award for that year ultimately went to Brad Foster).

[edit] Other projects

Munroe is the creator of the websites "BestThing",[14] "The Funniest",[15] "The Cutest",[16] and "The Fairest",[17] each of which presents the user with two options and asks them to choose one over the other.

He started the "WetRiffs" website as a joke, one month after drawing the "Rule 34" comic,[18] "lamenting the lack of guitar-in-the-shower pictures on the internet."[19]

LimerickDB encourages the creation of new and the collection of old limericks.[20]

Most recently he started a Geohashing wiki based on one of his comics which contains an algorithm that generates pseudo-random coordinates around the world every day.[21]

Aside from maintaining his websites, Munroe also engages in kite photography, in which cameras are attached to kites and pictures are then taken of the ground or buildings.[22]

Various doses of radioactivity in sieverts, ranging from trivial to lethal.

In response to concerns about the radiation released by the Fukushima I nuclear accidents, and to remedy what he described as "confusing" reporting on radiation levels in the media, Munroe created a chart of comparative radiation exposure levels. The chart was rapidly adopted by print and online journalists in several countries, including being linked to by online writers for The Guardian[23] and The New York Times.[24] As a result of requests for permission to reprint the chart and to translate it into Japanese, Munroe placed it in the public domain, but requested that his non-expert status should be clearly stated in any reprinting.[25]

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b http://www.facebook.com/munroerandall?v=info
  2. ^ "Real Geek Heart Beats in Xkcd's Stick Figures". WIRED. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/11/xkcd. 
  3. ^ a b c d e f Cohen, Noam (2008-05-26). "This Is Funny Only if You Know Unix". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/26/business/media/26link.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Retrieved 2008-09-25. 
  4. ^ @Google Talks (venue) (2007-12-11) (Adobe Flash). Authors@Google: Randall Munroe (Digital video). Mountain View, California: Google. Event occurs at 24:13. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24. Retrieved 2008-09-25. "...Calvin and Hobbes was the first comic that I discovered." 
  5. ^ Munroe, Randall. "About". xkcd. http://xkcd.com/about/. Retrieved 2008-09-26. 
  6. ^ "582 students receive diplomas from Christopher Newport University". Christopher Newport University. 2006-05-17. Archived from the original on 2008-06-11. http://web.archive.org/web/20080611060823/http://universityrelations.cnu.edu/news/2006/05_17_06grads.html. Retrieved 2008-05-30. 
  7. ^ "Authors@Google: Randall Munroe". @Google Talks. Mountain View, California: Google. 2007-12-11. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24. Retrieved 2008-09-25. 
  8. ^ "Authors@LiveJournal: Randall Munroe". 2006-10-08. http://xkcd.livejournal.com/. Retrieved 2010-06-30. 
  9. ^ a b c Fernandez, Rebecca (2006-10-12). "xkcd: A comic strip for the computer geek". Red Hat Magazine (Raleigh, North Carolina: Red Hat). http://www.redhat.com/magazine/025nov06/features/xkcd/. Retrieved 2008-09-25. 
  10. ^ a b So, Adrienne (2007-11-13). "Real Geek Heart Beats in Xkcd's Stick Figures". Wired (San Francisco: Condé Nast Publications). ISSN 1059-1028. http://www.wired.com/entertainment/theweb/news/2007/11/xkcd. Retrieved 2008-09-25. 
  11. ^ Spertus, Ellen (2007-12-21). "Randall Munroe's visit to Google (xkcd)". Beyond Satire. http://www.beyondsatire.us/?q=node/272. Retrieved 2008-09-25. 
  12. ^ "Munroe's Blog post "<3"". http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/09/12/672/. 
  13. ^ @Google Talks (venue) (2007-12-11) (Adobe Flash). Authors@Google: Randall Munroe (Digital video). Mountain View, California: Google. Event occurs at 48:05. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJOS0sV2a24. Retrieved 2008-09-25. "I'm pretty sure I started in September 2005." 
  14. ^ "bestthing.info". http://bestthing.info. 
  15. ^ "The Funniest". http://thefunniest.info. 
  16. ^ "The Cutest". http://thecutest.info. 
  17. ^ "The Fairest". http://thefairest.info. 
  18. ^ Munroe, Randall. "Rule 34". xkcd. http://xkcd.com/305/. 
  19. ^ Munroe, Randall (2008-03-18). "Nudity + Guitars + Showers". http://wetriffs.com/. Retrieved 2008-09-26. 
  20. ^ Munroe, Randall (2008-02-04). "LimerickDB.com". Blag. xkcd. http://blag.xkcd.com/2008/02/04/limerickdbcom. Retrieved 2008-09-26. 
  21. ^ "Geohashing Wiki". http://wiki.xkcd.com/geohashing/Main_Page. 
  22. ^ Kuchera, Ben (2 July 2007). "The joys of kite photography". Ars Technica. http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2007/07/the-joys-of-kite-photography.ars. 
  23. ^ Monbiot, George (2011-03-21). "Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power". The Guardian (London). http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/21/pro-nuclear-japan-fukushima. Retrieved 29 March 2011. 
  24. ^ Revkin, Andrew (2011-03-23). "The 'Dread to Risk' Ratio on Radiation and other Discontents". Dot Earth blog (The New York Times). http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/23/the-dread-to-risk-ratio-on-radiation-and-other-discontents/?hp. Retrieved 29 March 2011. 
  25. ^ Munroe, Randall. "Radiation Chart". www.xkcd.com. http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/03/19/radiation-chart/. Retrieved 29 March 2011. 

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Randall Munroe
Wikinews has related news: Randall Munroe, writer of xkcd, talks about the comic, politics and the internet
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