when the world didn’t need another blog, it got one about a pig with bread wings

Did you hear? The Internet was buzzing yesterday about the New York Times’ announcement of xkcd’s book deal. The breadpig couldn’t have been more pleased. Now we need get those books ready for the summer. Thanks to all of you who helped spread the word, left encouraging comments, or already started trying to place orders. There’s a mailing list if you’d like to be notified on the day they’re for sale.

We also had a number of independent booksellers contact us to get the xkcd book on their shelves; we’re happy to supply you!

And now for a buzz recap:

The story ran on the front pages of reddit (OK, not a huge surprise there), digg, and Hacker News.

Longtime breadpig loyalist, Scott Beale shared some linklove, as well as Cory “I sometimes wear a cape and goggles” Doctorow, who first convinced Randy to publish under a CC license (yes, the book will be under it, too). And our close friends at Wired wrote that we were promising summertime laughs with this dead tree edition of xkcd.

Robot 6 at Comic Book Resources included a link to the article in a roundup — we’ll see you all at Comic-Ccon, I’m sure.

The breadpig never expected to grace Gawker’s frontpage, but there it is. What was Gawker’s response to their first breadpig encounter?

“Randall Munroe, creator of the awesome (and popular) Web comic xkcd, skipped past the overtures of large publishers when it came time to publish his work on paper. Instead he’s working with “breadpig.” WTF?”

Hug.

Here’s the New York Times article.

The breadpig is thrilled to be working with xkcd on this venture and we’re expecting the book to hit the virtual shelves of the xkcd store this summer.

If you’d like to be notified, sign up for the breadpig mailing list (your information will not be sold, bartered, or used for any kind of evil). We’re not a traditional publisher, but this isn’t a traditional book — the majority of the profits from each sale will go directly to the artist (xkcd).

As for the rest (as with all breadpig projects) our profits will be donated; for this project, the non-profit recipient Room to Read, a splendid organization committed to bringing quality education to children worldwide (with books!).

2008 was a great first year for breadpig, with LOLmagnetz generating a solid $15,000 for the SF SPCA and shirts selling well throughout the year. ROFLDNA got 09 off to a good start and we’re all very excited about the xkcd book.

To celebrate Katee Sackoff’s 29th birthday yesterday, TCritic did a BSG shirt rundown. Props to Bo for the shoutout in the comments.

Got nothing to give that special skinjob in your life? I think you know what to do.

The auction got another bump from ScienceCommons before bidding ended this afternoon at $455. I trust they’ll enjoy the ROFLDNA.

This is breadpig’s second ROFL-success (last year’s ROFLaptop contest ended at $521 raised for OLPC) but this one-of-a-kind-DNA-artwork was the idea of Erik Martin, reddit community manager, troublemaker, and member of the breadpig honor guard. And the folks at DNA11 were all-stars for accommodating our rather unorthodox request — delivering a gorgeous final product.

Also, we couldn’t have done it without the great folks of ROFLCON and of course, our fabulous DNA-donating Internet celebrities:

• A.J. “HatPerson” Mazur of Lil’ Jon-Lazy Town Remix “Cooking By the Book”
• Jay “TRON guy” Maynard who needs no introduction
• Ian Spector of Chuck Norris Facts AND Mr. T Facts
• moot of 4chan
• Irina Slutsky of GeekEntertainment TV
• Jason Scott, owner of Sockington & master of TextFiles
• Charlie Todd of Improv Everywhere
• Damian Hess, AKA MC Frontalot of nerdcore hip-hop fame
• Vincent Connare, creator of Comic Sans
• Jamie Wilkinson of the FFFFF.AT Lab and Rocketboom

Thank you. The breadpig salutes you.

We kept the auction period for this ScienceCommons fundraiser to a crisp 3 days. ROFLDNA has done well thus far. Thanks to breadpig’s friends at Laughing Squid, ROFLCon, and all the wonderful people on the Twitter, we’re looking to send a nice check to a very worthy organization.

Bidding ends tomorrow (April 9th) at 14:00:20 PDT. This is a once-in-a-lifetime piece of geek memorabilia and humanities only hope for breeding a new super race of Internet meme generators.

Update! ROFLDNA also got some props from Sniffing the beaker (please keep sending in other shoutouts that we missed).

This shit just got serious. Now the DOJ wants a piece of breadpig. If you’re not familiar with the breadpig band, educate yourself and return to this post - we won’t hold it against you.

A breadpig ally at Harmonix (they make our instruments) named Matt kindly brought this to our attention in early March. We would have brought this to your attention sooner, breadpig loyalists, but we needed our legal experts to analyze this before we proceeded. This ruling makes “the Court” seem rather out of touch — as if they hadn’t downloaded our debut album When Will Then Be Now? from iTunes. Maybe they’re the one who gave us a 2-star review (our only one in a parade of 5-star glory).

Here’s a blurb. Read the entire damning PDF:

It is clear to any reasonable reader that the patent term “musical sounds” has a narrower meaning than that proposed by Gibson’s expert. Electric guitars and acoustic guitars are capable of producing some variety of sounds that are distinguishable, without additional processing, to the naked human ear. Gibson’s own expert admits that this is an important feature. Gibson’s expert also states that musical sounds have identifiable qualities such as “timbre” and “pitch.” Indeed, Gibson’s expert discusses at length various characteristics that “musical sounds” might have. Freeman Depo. at 31-40.

Gibson concedes that the guitar-shaped controller does not literally produce “musical sounds.” Gibson must concede the point because, for example and without limitation, the clacking of buttons as they are struck are (1) insufficiently varied or distinct; and (2) no reasonable person could say that any musical sounds heard during standard operation of a Guitar Hero controller come from the controller itself. Cf. Cl. Const. at 11 n.11 (discussing a hypothetical stereo button). Gibson’s concession on this point, however, is in tension with Gibson’s position on the drum-shaped controller. Gibson contends that the surfaces of the drum-shaped controller produce “musical sounds” even though they create, at most, thuds little more distinct than those one could produce by tapping a pen on a table. Summ. J. Hearing Tr. at 45:9-46:16, 56:22-57:6; Freeman Depo. at 40:15-41:10. There is no principled distinction between the clacking of a button and the dull thud produced when a plastic or rubberized drum-shaped controller is struck. True, striking a table or drum-shaped controller at different locations will produce somewhat different sound waves because the vibrations will differ based on where on the controller’s surface the force originates. True also, the degree of force should have some effect on the surface’s vibrations. But the same holds for striking a button at one position on a controller’s handle versus a button at another position; and for striking the same button at different velocities.

From the foregoing, the Court concludes that musical sounds must have more articulable characteristics than a button’s clack or the thud produced from striking a table, piece of rubber, or piece of plastic. A musical instrument must be capable of making, without additional processing, some variety of distinct sounds that can be sensibly described as having some or all the characteristics Gibson’s own expert discusses in his deposition. The Court observes, but does not conclude, that musical sounds may not need to be as complex as those the ’405 Patent’s only examples—guitars—and that musical sounds may not need have every characteristic discussed by Gibson’s expert, such as “timbre” and “pitch.” There is no reasonable dispute of material fact that Guitar Hero controllers do not themselves make musical sounds within the meaning of the patent. In fact, Gibson concedes literal noninfringement on the guitar-shaped controller. Even the recordings submitted by Gibson—where a player seems to exert some effort to strike the drum-shaped controller at different velocities such that the volume will correspond to features of the music the game console plays—cannot be musical sounds within the meaning of the patent. Vosburg Exh. 4.

Looks like LOLmagnetz have invaded some innocent officeworker’s cubicle. The result is a question that has haunted many for years. Who is Keyser Soze? LOLmagnetz might have a hunch…

see the twitpic original

The breadpig couldn’t be more pleased. This DNA artwork will be a handsome addition to someone’s desk, mantle, or dinner table. The designers at DNA11 did a great job synthesizing meme-master DNA and style it with their signatures.

Bidding will start on Monday, April 6.

Our first model-cat, Roslyn, was an exceptional feline (with an exceptional owner). So for version II of LOLmagnetz, the bar was set quite high.

Fortunately, Matilda didn’t let us down. Hopefully all this publicity won’t go to her head, but we’ve heard she has always been quite the diva.

Let us know what you think of the new model-cat. We’ll work out a more formal process to discover the next edition’s covermodel. We’ve got more felines to make famous.