Happy New Year! May all your characters stay viable!

The funny thing about today's New Years Day comic is that it isn't the one I might have done a week ago. What would I have done? I have no idea. I forgot -- didn't write it down. But something came to me that I liked.

I've done binary jokes, along with other bases, and even a modulo (remainder) function. And factoring when it was interesting. (In this case, 101 wasn't so interesting, at least not as a new character.)

Every year, in the last week of December, I see a post or tweet from some math person I follow online with a list of "fun facts" about the number of the New Year. The "fact" is that there are so many of them, you can always find something.

For example: Let's say you wanted to find a bunch of consecutive numbers that add up to 2020. Then see if the answer to any of the following are whole numbers:

I had unnecessary notation when words are fine. You can see the progression. The coefficient increases by 1 and the constant is the next triangle number.

A quick check online yields the following:

Additionally, many numbers can be written as the the sum of two squares. Most can be written as the sum of three squares, and all can be written as a sum or difference of three squares. Moreover, every square is the sum of two triangular numbers, so that just expands the possibilities.

It looks great, but makes for stale comics. The formula I used today is incredibly arbitrary and created backward from the solution. It doesn't have any particular meaning.

As for the 20/20 vision jokes, along with the Barbara Walters gag, have been old for months now. Which is why I did one on Monday, and not today. Not going to toss it out just because it's old if I can find a way to use it.

In any case, thank you for being one of the blog readers. I appreciate the ones who take the time to come here and read the posts, instead of just looking at the comic on line. Even moreso the people who comment here or on social media. (Note: the social media comments may drive some traffic here but those comments will be lost in the bit-storm like tears in rain.)

Have a Happy New Year. Here's to hoping that there is at least 100 new comics before it's over.