6Jan/1257
1000 Comics
by Jeff
Image text: Thank you for making me feel less alone.
This is obviously the 1000th xkcd comic. In this comic, click on the image above to see the large version, Randall has put (almost?) every stick figure character he has used through the 5+ years into the number 1000. Can't know for certain if this is all the characters, but it is an awful lot and I recognize a bunch.
The joke in this comic is Cueball saying at the bottom, "Only 24 more to go for a big round number". First and obviously, 1000 is a big round number, but in binary notation, 1024 is represented as 10000000000, making it a simple round number occurring frequently in computers.
January 6th, 2012
Something noteworthy is hidden in the middle: A big heart. Who can find it?
January 6th, 2012
Spoiler ( http://rot13.com/index.php ):
Pbaarpg gur ovanel ahzoref ba gur fznyy fvtaf va cnvag-ol-ahzoref znaare.
January 6th, 2012
Do you mean connect-the-dots?
January 6th, 2012
Yes. Thanks for the spoiler Phillip; didnt see it myself.
January 9th, 2012
Thank you very much
January 6th, 2012
I do! Thanks for noting it.
Anyway, where is the big-sword dragging guy from?
January 6th, 2012
I would say it’s Cloud:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Strife
January 6th, 2012
but there is no comic for 404…wouldnt that make this the 999th comic or am i missing something?
January 6th, 2012
There IS a comic for 404 — I was just there!
January 6th, 2012
In some other universe, perhaps. In this one, there is no comic there, leaving the 404 page to report a “404 – Not found” error.
January 6th, 2012
That itself was the comic 404. I personally believe it couldn’t had been wittier!!
January 6th, 2012
True, just watch the html code, you’ll see it’s on purpose.
January 8th, 2012
BINGO! Our genius Randall arranged for the “404 – Not found” error message to be the message you get when you access comic 404 so you THINK you didn’t see comic 404 . . . but you DID!
January 6th, 2012
Yes, this is the 999th comic.
January 6th, 2012
Using the next/previous buttons misses out http://xkcd.com/404/ so technically there is no 404th comic (or /505/ is the 404th).
But then http://xkcd.com/409/ is a double comic, so todays IS the 1000th!
Glad we got that sorted.
January 6th, 2012
Why would /505/ be the 404th?
January 9th, 2012
I’m sure that was a typo, he probably meant /405/
January 6th, 2012
how would 404 be the 999th comic? Isn’t 999 in binary equal to 1111100111?
What am I missing?
January 6th, 2012
Not 404, the current comic, 1000; it is suggested that comic 1000 is truely comic 999 because one number, 404, does not have a comic.
January 6th, 2012
PS: it is clearly not a coincidence, as 404 is the error code for ‘file not found’ on the web; so there being no comic 404 is most likely a joke in and of itself (or else may happen to be a coincidence in that xkcd.com/404 was the location of the 404 error page which Randall realized when he got to 404; but given this wasn’t an issue for other errors like 403, this probably isn’t the case)
January 6th, 2012
I like the “Kitty!” one best
January 6th, 2012
Hammer-Dance Chick is in there, so I’m happy!
January 6th, 2012
Any thoughts on the characters clustered together in the first and second zeros holding up numbered signs?
January 6th, 2012
No idea, but they all seem to ones and zero’s, but never mind that, to the right of the 101 guy there’s two girls kissing! Woot
January 7th, 2012
At the bottom of the hole of the first zero there are also two dudes kissing.
January 6th, 2012
Look at the first (and second) reply to this very comment section.
January 8th, 2012
See earlier comments. If you consider the signs (all binary numbers) as connect-the-dots they make a shape….
January 6th, 2012
It is amazing how many of those I look at and am reminded of the comic they come from.
Give it a try.
I never thought stick figures would be so distinct but there were about 30 of them that instantly brought me back to the source material.
January 6th, 2012
Ok – Who’s a better person than me and is going to make the image-link-map that will take you (at least one) related comic for the stick figure?
January 6th, 2012
I don’t care precisely which number this one is, I just want to thank Randall for publicy sharing the inner thoughts of his twisted mind – and for Jeff and others who help interpret his sick dreams!!!
Thanks all!!!!!! Me loves my XKCD!!!!!
January 6th, 2012
And … through a total freaking coincidence, this morning I listened to “Pictures of Matchstick Men” by Camper Van Beethoven – and couldn’t help but think of Cueball ad company.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAkcSd5l9Qg&feature=fvst
January 6th, 2012
So did anyone count the number of stickfigures that build the “1000″?
January 6th, 2012
Apparently some people in the XKCD forum did:
http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=78978&start=20
http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=78978&start=33
Also this:
http://comicjk.com/comic.php/404
January 6th, 2012
I just count the number of stickfigures and there are exactly 1000 of them!
For your information :
I count also the animals.
Each stickfigures acting in one scene (one comic) is counted indivually, so two girls kissing count for 2 for example.
I did not count the two big in the bottom.
Maybe I skipped someone and count others twice (sorry, I’m not perfect
).
Also, maybe a scene count for 1, so the two girls kissing count for one and the girl with the kitty count for one. Ultimately, it should be equivalent. I did not count this way because I don’t know enough XKCD to recognize if two stickfigures facing themselves are in the same scene. Maybe someone else would try to count this way
January 7th, 2012
You’re Christ. You must be perfect.
January 6th, 2012
Rough estimate is that they are there (in one of the zeros I counted 7 across, ~50 around the midpoint-line, that’s 350 per zero, but I’m probably high, so I’m betting it’s accurate). Of course, one can’t use a zero-knowledge proof in this case because it’s easy to diff images unless one wrote an algorithm to shuffle the people, but it is kind of funny that just yesterday I was reading an article about zero-knowledge proofs and today there is a need for one! See http://drdobbs.com/article/print?articleId=232300619&siteSectionName= and pay attention to the pail of sand question!
January 6th, 2012
why would comic 404 be the 999th comic?
January 6th, 2012
No, people are saying there is no 404 comic, so this one is 999th.
January 6th, 2012
ohhh, I see.
what did you mean by it’s a “double comic” so today IS the 1,000th?
January 6th, 2012
Quote from above for the reading impaired:
Vote +1Torrello
January 6th, 2012
Using the next/previous buttons misses out http://xkcd.com/404/ so technically there is no 404th comic (or /505/ is the 404th).
But then http://xkcd.com/409/ is a double comic, so todays IS the 1000th!
Glad we got that sorted.
January 6th, 2012
lol, sorry, I didn’t click on the link!
January 6th, 2012
That’s also a joke. If you enter http://xkcd.com/404 in the URL bit of your browser you get the “404 Not Found” message.
January 6th, 2012
Is the floating Python dude there? I couldn’t find him.
January 6th, 2012
top of the hole in the first 0
January 6th, 2012
Okay, wow. There’s a lot of different ones. I found the Pope, Cloud, “Kitty!”, and Waldo. I feel like I’m going have to keep revisiting this page and that comic until I’ve seen all of them.
January 6th, 2012
Incidentally, there are a lot of filler characters.
January 6th, 2012
Given that most of the comics consist solely of cueball, megan and/or black hat, – and many other characters appear more than once – there probably aren’t 1000 unique characters.
January 6th, 2012
not to mention all the diagrams / graphs etc without characters
January 6th, 2012
Oh, I didn’t realize there were even 1000 characters at all in this comic. I thought it was just whatever number was needed to get the “1000″ shape.
January 6th, 2012
I don’t see Sauron!! The “put a ring on it” is pretty much my all-time favorite xkcd so.. if someone spots him lemme know!
January 6th, 2012
Anyone else think he might be serious about having something planned for the 1024th comic?
January 7th, 2012
I started religously reading these at 650. Its amazing to think how far its all come. Anyone else remember when they started?
January 7th, 2012
Thank you, Randall, for the first 1000 bits of irony, sentiment, math, science, and sheer silliness! We hope you make at least another 1000 of ‘em!
January 7th, 2012
There IS a 404 comic, the joke is that is not found because it ‘escaped’ to another website: http://comicjk.com/comic.php/404
January 9th, 2012
Congratulations to xkcd for reaching the 1000th comic
January 9th, 2012
I can see Medusa
At least I think it’s Medusa
Did he ever use that in an xkcd?
And where are Donald Knuth and Richard Stallman?
January 9th, 2012
1024 is also the number of bytes needed to go from one level of bytes to the next