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Monday, April 2, 2012

1037: Well played Randall


Title:  Umwelt ; Alt-Text: "Umwelt is the idea that because their senses pick up on different things, different animals in the same ecosystem actually live in very different worlds."


So yesterday I went to the xkcd.com site and saw a comic (this was April 1st) and today I went to xkcd.com while connected to my office VPN and saw a comic with the same title and alt-text... but a different image. I clicked back and forward and refreshed a few times and then decided it was time to check the forums...


Forum Thread Discussing the "Gag"

We now know why xkcd has sucked so blandly in the recent past... never quite bad enough to incite rage or good enough to love. Randall must have been working on all the variations and scripts to generate a unique xkcd experience for every visitor... frankly I can't help but giving kudos to the guy... he really HAS been screwing with us and now we know WHY!



7 comments:

  1. umm. that. and his wife has cancer. dick.

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  2. Yeah, I could understand his wife's cancer affecting the comics if it were a hobby but this is his job.
    I only saw one comic, it was rubbish. Tried to zoom in/out, same comic, still rubbish. He probably got a good laugh out of his April Fools joke but all I got was one awful comic.

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  3. An April Fools joke consists of convincing someone of something implausible, then revealing it was just a joke. That makes the target an April Fool. Serving domain/browser-specific comics isn't an April Fool's joke.

    This fact remains true no matter who has or does not have cancer.

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  4. Yeah, I thought the Umwelt stuff was over-rated too.

    The fountain comic, OTOH, is not bad at all; like an early-style xkcd.

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  5. The work for the April fools joke was done by his 'sysadmin.'

    All he did is draw a bunch of crappy comics, most of which were minor variations of a theme, many of which contained glaring errors.

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  6. Thing is. As cute as the "different comics on different browsers" thing is. It was in no way surprising or technically interesting. And the comics themselves had no individual merit.

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