A "stick-figure strip featuring humour about technology, science, mathematics and relationships", former NASA roboticist Randall Munroe's webcomic xkcd was pretty much destined to be a huge hit on the internet. We're not sure if we'd mentioned it before, but the web is still populated by a whole bunch of nerds and science bros who just eat up jokes about differentials and atoms and other things we don't bother trying to understand, because we're busy watching movies where the laws of physics rarely apply. Besides all the brainbox humour xkcd has on offer Munroe has also done a number of cool things with the online webcomic format, including a series of one-panel strips that he has released periodically over the course of years and turned out to be like a time-lapse video, ultimately adding up to over three thousand panels that told a complete story. That was pretty cool, but everybody knows about it. Less people know about the dozens of other easter eggs, secret pages and the like that are hidden throughout the xkcd and numerous specific strips. Most of these cropped up as a result of a Reddit user's quest to discover the secrets hidden in the site's directories - sparked by a robot.txt page, as a matter of fact. The user in question found some interesting stuff listed under the "personal" directory ad Munroe himself seems to have noticed the curious nose-poking himself, and addressed the site directly, which was pretty cute.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
