xkcd

The link

xkcd main page

xkcd: Did you know you can just buy lab coats?

xkcd: Map of the internet

xkcd: Tech support flow chart

xkcd: Christmas Carols

 

What it is

‘xkcd’ is a self-described ‘webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language’ written by Randall Munroe. It updates on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. After years of reading it, I still don't know whether xkcd was ever supposed to stand for anything (it doesn't, according to the FAQ).

The comics are usually in black and white, with stick figures for people. Randall himself has admitted he’s not much of an artist. The quality of xkcd is in the text, and in the research behind it.

Comic topics tend towards science, wordplay, computer related things, and absurd humor. If you feel that you don’t ‘get’ a particular comic, it’s probably a reference to something.

After reading a comic, make sure move your mouse over it and wait for the pop-up text box. There’s an extra joke there.

What it means to me

xkcd is comfortable being itself. 

I understand a large number of the references, and share xkcd’s love of irreverent and of-the-wall humor. What I like about the comic the most is how deep it is willing to go, an how it xkcd assumes its readers are smart enough to figure out what it references. There’s no hand-holding or demographic research: the comic is just ‘I’m Randall and I like this’. That approach has directly influenced this blog.

Speaking of deep: every once in a while the comic will give a gigantic graphical breakdown of some subject. Randall has a knack for juxtaposing things you wouldn’t normally compare, like animal diving depths and pressure effects on household objects. Even the research comics still have funny Easter eggs to find!

XKCD’s popularity helped launch other projects – such as ‘Thing Explainer’, diagrams of complex things using only the thousand (‘ten hundred’) most common words in the English language. It started as a single comic and is now a book. “What if” is another project,  using real science to tackle strange hypothetical situations. For example, “what if everyone filled in multiple choice quizzes randomly”?

xkcd is the perfect one minute workday relief. Always good for a chuckle, sometimes a 'huh?', and sometimes a 'wow, that's cool!'.


Leonard