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Munroe Heart Interventional Cardiologists - Munroe Heart munroeheart.com |
Randall Patrick Munroe is a programmer best known for creating the webcomic xkcd. He and the webcomic have developed a cult following, and he is one of a small but growing group of webcomic artists who are self-sufficient.[1]
[edit] BiographyMunroe was a fan of the funny pages from an early age,[1] starting off with Calvin and Hobbes.[2] 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.[3][4] Munroe worked as an independent contractor for NASA at the Langley Research Center[5] before and after his graduation. In January 2006 his NASA contract lapsed and he began to write xkcd full-time. He now supports himself by the sale of xkcd related merchandise.[1][6] The webcomic quickly became very popular, garnering up to 70 million hits a month by October 2007.[7] He has also toured the lecture circuit, giving speeches at such places as Google's Googleplex in Mountain View, California.[8] He is also known for a check he wrote to Verizon which used an advanced math expression to specify its amount.[9] The check was written as a protest against problems a fellow customer experienced with Verizon's billing department.[10] Munroe lives in Somerville, Massachusetts[1] and has two brothers: Doug[11] and Ricky.[12] [edit] WebcomicMain article: xkcd  xkcd is a stick figure comic with themes in computer programming, mathematics, science, language, and romance. He 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[6] 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".[7] 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.[6] His income derives from the sale of merchandise to his fans, sales consisting of thousands of t-shirts a month.[1] [edit] Other projectsMunroe is the creator of the websites "BestThing"[14], "The Funniest"[15], and "The Fairest"[16], which each present users with two options and ask them to choose one over the other. The "WetRiffs" website was started as a joke, one month after drawing the "Rule 34" comic, "lamenting the lack of guitar-in-the-shower pictures on the internet."[17] LimerickDB encourages the creation of new and the collection of old limericks.[18] 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.[19] 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.[20] [edit] See also[edit] References
[edit] External links
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