Entries Tagged 'not being evil' ↓

Steve and I had the privilege of giving a keynote at last year’s PyCon. Watch the video [steal slides here] for Steve’s gripping account of the switch from Lisp to Python, see him artfully respond to questions about why reddit’s search is so unsatisfying, and hear me get asked if I’ll sponsor PyCon the following year (it’s near the end of Q&A, when the audience decides to give Steve a respite). I said yes, albeit while put on the spot, but it was a “yes” nonetheless.

I aspire to be a man of my word, so if you’re attending PyCon this year, be on the lookout for the breadpig booth (a very nice perk of “Silver Level” sponsorship, I might add) where we’ll be selling xkcd: volume 0. (Don’t worry, if you’re at a Python convention, yet don’t already have a copy, we won’t tell — plus, you’re saving on shipping costs, which is prudent).

Breadpig is proud to be sponsoring PyCon, especially given all that the language and community have done for reddit (open-source, btw!). Donating $3K to this foundation is just a small way of saying thanks.

After selling out (yay!) of the xkcd book, we had some printing delays over the last few weeks (sorry!) that have held up shipping for some of you. All books should have now been shipped, but if something seems very wrong, please forward your invoice to us.

After getting your feedback on the xkcd blag, Randall chose the following dedication to be inscribed on the plaque at the entrance of the xkcd school in Laos; we think it turned out quite well:

“Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.” – Plato.

This school is a gift from the readers of XKCD, an internet comic strip. The world is full of exciting things to discover. We hope you find some of them.

Here are the latest photos from the school’s construction, it’s coming along quite nicely. Breadpig is hoping to visit in January.

via blag.xkcd.com:

Sales of the xkcd book continue to be quite strong thanks to glowing reviews (thank you!). And the breadpig recently learned that we’d raised enough from our fundraising book tour to get the xkcd school built!

Now we need your help to dedicate it. You see, each school will have a permanent plaque installed with whatever Randall chooses. Leave your suggestions in the comments of his blag entry and we’ll report back to you later this week when xkcd chooses the final dedication.

We couldn’t have done it without you. We aimed to raise $32,000 for Room To Read to construct The Kengthan Incomplete Primary School in Laos (don’t be troubled about the ‘incomplete’ part, that’s just a tricky translation from Lao to describe the education level – it’s going to be 100% complete when it’s built). It wouldn’t be very helpful if we built a school that, for instance, were missing two walls.

Our fundraising events in New York and Silicon Valley alone brought in over $30,000 in generous donations from attendees, but we were pushed [well] over the top through book sales (all of our publisher profits are being donated to Room To Read). So even if you couldn’t attend, you helped by buying a book, and even if you didn’t buy a book, you helped by spreading the word, and if you didn’t do any of those things, that’s OK, too.

You can live vicariously through some of our event photos here.

We’ll be looking for help to write the dedication plaque to be placed in the completed school next week, but in the meantime, we thought we’d share some photos from Laos. If you’re ever in the neighborhood, the xkcd school is in Salavan Province on Road No. 13 South. (Breadpig will be doing a site inspection next year once construction is complete).

Here is their current school.

Those aren’t skylights. The holes in the roof make rainy season rather challenging.

And here’s the xkcd school – already under construction!

So far so good.

It’s still missing a dedication plaque, but it won’t be much longer…

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).

Breadpig was invited to the opening of the SF SPCA’s magnificent new facility, the Leanne B. Roberts Animal Care Center. Due to a sudden world-saving mission, Alexis & Liz visited the opening in breadpig’s stead.

How did our breaded swine end up with such an honor? Well, that’s thanks to you, breadpig legion.

At the end of 2008, breadpig donated $15,000 to the SF SPCA from the profits of LOLmagnetz.

We’ll post a full recap of 2008’s donations in the days to come, but LOLmagnetz was without a doubt breadpig’s biggest success.

This money went to help a number of orphaned dogs and cats; to show their appreciation, the SPCA kindly renamed a room for breadpig. Always a fan of food (and rather edible itself – though no one would ever try) breadpig chose the kibble kitchen. And even got a stunning full color sign!

Inside is a wide assortment of (you guessed it) kibble. Reminiscent of those cereal towers from your university cafeteria, these animals are getting fed with state-of-the-art-kibble-dispensing technology.

Oh, and here’s the obligatory puppy photo. This little girl needed some serious surgery when she arrived — something involving a colon not being where it ought to — that the SF SPCA gladly provided and she’s now on her way to recovery and, with some luck, a happy home.

I’m not trying to eat her.

Room To Read is a non-profit started by a former Microsoft exec, John Wood (something you can read about in his well-written book, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World). Their goal is straightforward and powerful:

We seek to intervene early in the lives of children in the belief that education empowers people to improve socioeconomic conditions for their families, communities, countries and future generations.

Recently, Richard Brownsdon of Japan, started a Facebook Cause to build a school in Cambodia. They’re aiming for $10,000 by Christmas and the breadpig wanted to help. It doesn’t look like they’ll hit that lofty goal in time — donate here if you’re interested — but what they’ve raised can be the start of something grand in Cambodia, a lovely country breadpig left its mark on earlier this year.

We made a $100 contribution, but we’re expecting a much stronger relationship with Room To Read in early 2009 when we unveil our newest and most ambitious breadpig project yet…

The hungry in Toronto are a little better off thanks to #HoHoTo. What’s most remarkable about this event isn’t just everything they raised, but how quickly they assembled it all together. Here’s the recap, but the quick & dirty facts are impressive nonetheless:

All in, we’ve raised more than $25,000 and people brought about 3,000 lbs of food for our drop off bins at the party. w00t!

Michael O’Connor Clarke helped organize this, the biggest charitable holiday party for Toronto’s geek community. He asked for a brief “hello” video from Alexis (whose full-time job is still reddit) to rally the geeks in attendance. Happy to oblige, Alexis also used the opportunity to announce breadpig’s donation of US$100 to the Daily Bread Food Bank.

It turns out that was actually CAD$100. The breadpig owes them a few loonies and toonies, but strongly supports the efforts of food banks — even when bread and pig products are included in the banked food.

They’re sold via ThinkGeek, but having LOLmagnetz on Amazon is still a thrill.

When I took that screenshot yesterday, LOLmagnetz were comfortably sitting at the number one spot. Too comfortably. Look at where that hubris has left us 24 hours later.

This is a task for the breadpig legions; put the breaded swine back in its rightful place — let’s not settle for #1 of “Refrigerator magnets.” At the time of this writing, we’re only 5,965 spots from #1 of all Kitchen & Dining.

Watch out, Elf on a Shelf. You’re going down.