1190: "Time"

[Darkfusion]

[TheMulattoMaker]

He escaped!

[darthjimmy]

He's climbing down!

[plumander]

Or maybe he's just fixing that side.

[AluisioASG]

Maybe he is sitting?

[Djehutynakht]

You know how people submitted a ton of chessboards-on-a-roller-coaster pictures to Randall in response to http://xkcd.com/249/?


I feel this summer we should have something where people design this exact castle on beaches and send in photos.

(especially dedicated people could, in theory, reconstruct the process frame by frame)


I have a vague feeling he's just going to walk away now.

[Helper]

No. Bad. Get back to where you belong.

[Zane0909]

I specifically signed up just because of this one, and also to be a part of the "challenge accepted," to make this the number 1 talked about topic.

Secondly, I like that a lot of us have turned more to the idea that it's a good joke/test of faith in Randall, and/or "a watched pot never boils," homage. Sadly, I'm more wrapped up in the baby/cancer theories... which are two terrible words to put next to each other.


Regardless of what this is about, I wanted to recognize that Randall has a dedicated fanbase that actually cares about what's going on, enough to follow that cancer is a big issue in his life, he has his wife as a partner in crime, and that we're all (deep down,) hoping this ends on a good, symbolic note.

As lame as it may sound, I'm glad this caught everyone else's attention as much as it did mine, simply because it made me feel better about the kinds of people that care/follow/enjoy one of the nerdiest and most insightful places on the internet (some would say, it's a very important tube...)

Also, hello world!

[bcdm]

That and "new-member-registration" pegging out this week.

Yeah... I didn't want to be part of that group, so I went back and registered about 5 years ago instead. Just to be different.

I checked some of the comics while I was back there. They looked about the same, from what I can tell.

Count me as another time-traveler. Apparently from 6 years in the past. What'd I miss?

[AluisioASG]

Alternative theory: The comic is a promotion for the forum to make up for dropping the link on the main page. (I signed up for this thread too, although I've been lurking for a while)

Ah. Can someone point me to the reason this happened? (I accept theories, too.)

The "What If" link replaced it.

Maybe he could replace the "Store" link with the forum. After all, there's also a bigger link to it right on the side.

[Zane0909]

I feel this summer we should have something where people design this exact castle on beaches and send in photos.

(especially dedicated people could, in theory, reconstruct the process frame by frame)


I have a vague feeling he's just going to walk away now.

A must! We need all need to for sure (and if you're not near a beach, get your little sibling's sand box...

[Uninfinity]

This is like the performance art version of a comic.

I'd like to see this comic redone with thought bubbles from the characters echoing some of these forum posts.

Hope I'm not too late:
<snip!>

I'd like to see this comic redone with thought bubbles from the characters echoing some of these forum posts.

Here we go: <snip!>

Neat! I'm going to do something with this tomorrow. But for now, I should probably get some sleep.

[Wraithlord]

If part of the castle collapses as he is apparently climbing out of it, it would be too amusing for words.

[Coal]

By the way she vanishes, I get the impression she's still there, either inside or behind the largest castle. Perhaps she'll jump out and yell "surprise" like it's a birthday cake.

Or maybe he's been watching Kubrick, and noticed how occasionally there are different numbers of people present in a scene between camera shots.

[Goggalor]

I'd like to see this comic redone with thought bubbles from the characters echoing some of these forum posts.

I decided to tackle the pregnancy theory, because most of the other theories are too goddamn depressing.
EDIT: These aren't thought bubbles, but I can't be bothered to go back and make them thought bubbles.

[Atmosck]

I really want this to end up looping, which wouldn't be too hard to do - just have a wave destroy the sandcastle.

[darthjimmy]

I really want this to end up looping, which wouldn't be too hard to do - just have a wave destroy the sandcastle.

But if it looped, this thread would stop being so interesting and we all would have to go back to our lives. And we don't want that, do we?

EDIT: Or just wait until the next interesting comic rolls around...

[Peter200lx]

I really want this to end up looping, which wouldn't be too hard to do - just have a wave destroy the sandcastle.

But if it looped, this thread would stop being so interesting and we all would have to go back to our lives. And we don't want that, do we?

Ah, but we can't ever escape, because we know if it started looping that at some later point he'd break the loop and start progressing again. We are all trapped watching it forever.

[Helper]

baby/cancer theories... which are two terrible words to put next to each other.

Obviously, the sand-castle building is a metaphor for the baby who has miscarried, because she has cancer. Christ, there's something wrong with this forum

[Black Hat Guy]

I personally think that this MMONS is going to go on for years.

[Crissa]

I saw the java back early the first morning firstly when I was wondering what 'wait for it' meant.

But by the time I read the comments, someone else eventually mentioned it near the end of them.

Ohwell ^-^

-Crissa

[Crissa]

You know something about Time?

It's linear and does not loop.

-Crissa

(sorry about the double-post)

[Darkfusion]

You know something about Time?

It's linear and does not loop.

-Crissa

(sorry about the double-post)

Breakthrough!!!!

[darthjimmy]

You know something about Time?

It's linear and does not loop.

-Crissa

(sorry about the double-post)

That's true. We are just stuck posting to the forum, checking 1190 every half hour for the rest of our lives. Or, at least, until my wife cuts off my internet access...

[AluisioASG]

You know something about Time?

It's linear and does not loop.

-Crissa

(sorry about the double-post)

How can you be so sure?
Have you ever been outside of it?

[AluisioASG]

He is climbing down.

[plumander]

Looks like he's behind it now.

[TheMulattoMaker]

If that was the first pic I'd seen, I would assume it was the sun setting behind the castle, not his head.

[AluisioASG]

If that was the first pic I'd seen, I would assume it was the sun setting behind the castle, not his head.

It's not circular enough to be the a sun.

[Jesse_V]

Yet another lurker registers just to comment on this comic. I've seen massively long threads here for other xkcd comics, ("click-and-drag" comes to mind) but wow.

Someone posted earlier about xkcd . aubronwood . com. Whoever runs that is a genius. I'm watching it for further progress of this animation.

[fiveofoh]

I have exactly 0 time to read the above posts so I'm sorry if I'm repeating any..

What's this: time07.min.js? At first glance it looks like the obfuscated javascript code looks like it updates the image every X (30?) minutes to the next png image uploaded on the server. Is this what it does?

Also I think the sand castle will be destroyed after the tide rises.

Hey there! While we're waiting for the next frame, thought I'd pop in and re-post some explanation for the newcomers wondering about how this thing actually works that haven't read through the whole thread. And yes, it's mostly because I like think my analasyis is pretty cool. Whatevs. I posted a detailed breakdown earlier, but briefly, here's my annotated, de-obfuscated code. Basically, it listens for instructions from xkcd's server and follows them. Those instructions at this point are either "load a new image" or "reload the page". So, you don't have to mash F5, it will automatically update the image when they're available. We have no way to control how fast the images come or when they do, and it's quite possible for them to update forever.

Whatever the reason he decided to take this format, it was planned. There is no way it was a sudden idea. All of these images were already on the server. They had to be. I induced this by looking at that huge chunk of JavaScript. It would take a while to come up with that many lines of code. But hey, he may be uploading them on the fly. But it seems like a lot to upload every day (48). Two days uses 96. This has to be something he worked on for a long time. So this is not about something that suddenly happened. Nor recently, even.

As others have pointed out, the Javascript was added on the fly, probably as a load-balancing measure, or just as an enhancement. It went through several revisions, and is currently at version 7. Plus, the bulk of the code in there is the EventSource object, which appears to be from a GitHub repo, so he didn't even write most of it.

[htom]

Thought I'd registered long ago, but ... computers.

I love it when he messes with my mind like this. Many thanks to those who collected the images I didn't see in real time.

Time, wait for it. Ummm no, don't. It's already gone.

[***]

I'm half expecting red spiders

[rocket3989]

I really want this to end up looping, which wouldn't be too hard to do - just have a wave destroy the sandcastle.

But if it looped, this thread would stop being so interesting and we all would have to go back to our lives. And we don't want that, do we?

EDIT: Or just wait until the next interesting comic rolls around...

perhaps we, in our reactions, are the true show- and all randal has to do to start the loop is to post an interesting/thought provoking comic?

[Fitzypyro]

I like how it seems that pretty much everyone is still super focussed on this comic and could almost care less about "The Past." Not sure why Randall even released another comic

EXACTLY! Thats time for you!

[KarMann]

I'm half expecting red spiders

I'm expecting a kind of Spanish Inquisition. Wait, no, that can't be right. Nobody . . . .

[squonk]

...just thought I would post a reply too...

Doing my little bit, and all that

Though who knows how far into the future this will be updating sporadically. We may have to write a script that constantly watches the hash of the image, then posts an alert when it changes :p [shouldn't be too hard now that I think about it...]

How can we assume that any comic will remain the same? How do we know that #247 has never been subtly changed over the years?

Faith in Randall.

Wait...what?

[KarMann]

. . . and then there were none.

[Darkfusion]

[dalcde]

He's gone!