1190: "Time"

[ChronosDragon]

Sigh ....

Is this another duplicate no-action ?

We seem to be on a cycle of action/no-action, as Megan works back and forth to bring the materials for...whatever it is she's building.

I'm not going to go back and look at the present time, but from what I remember she's brought:
- 3 or 4 poles/boards
- A rope
- Two white unidentified boxes

Seems it could be just about anything, though a giant trebuchet seems likely...

[udscbt]

Sigh ....

Is this another duplicate no-action ?

The sea level (if it is the sea) has increased.

[rainycity1]

I postulate that she is converting part of the sandcastle to a boat (with supplies) and will float off once the water gets high enough...

[Jafloi]

Wait for it...

...whatever it turns out to be.

A giant trebuchet?

[Perilous_3D]

Time is infinite

[Jafloi]

Gong!...

[Magdiragdag]

[Shepherdess]

She's baaaaaaaack.

[partingLance]

It'll be a lame analogy once (if?) the comic ends, but I like it for now anyway.

I'm almost positive this comic is Randalls commentary on global warming. The "I don't understand what the ocean is doing" is what really hit it home for me.

Pay attention. It's called Time, not Temperature.

Even so, the "retreat" of the river is another bit of evidence.

[/gloom]

Huh. Looks like that switch is stuck. [/gloom] [/gloom]

Sigh.

Oh! I've totally neglected to mention that, when I was young, I had a tiny trebuchet myself, just about the same size as Megan's tiny #403 one, probably something like 8" tall to the crossbeam. Made out of cardstock, with a counterweight full of pennies. It was a pattern from some magazine I got back then. And it did actually work for launching small objects. Too bad I didn't have any pebble nukes yet back then.

For a high-school history class, I built a Roman-style catapult from scraps of pine lumber. It worked almost too well, proving to be more powerful than I'd expected, or than the teacher was really comfortable with. I don't think anything got broken, though.

EDIT:

My coworker has a tiny trebuchet on his cubicle desk, in amongst the dragons and piles of thumb drives. He likes to shoot M&M's and/or Peanuts out of it!

Hold on. Waitjustablameminute, here. He has dragons on his desk, and yet needs to defend it with a trebuchet -- and a tiny one, no less?

Bah. In my day, dragons -- even desktop-sized ones -- worked for their keep, by cracky. None of your useless ornamental dragons for us, nossir. Why, we even had to keep an ice-dragon on retainer, for those times when the conventional sort got a bit too overzealous, and started igniting our paperwork....

[SBN]

[htom]

Just like the driftwood of a dream
Left of the seashore of sleep
Just like the words that wouldn't rhyme
Lost in the desert of time
Time waits for no one at all
No, not even you
You thought you'd seen it all before
You really thought you knew
...

Moody Blues, "Driftwood"

[udscbt]

Is she holding a ball?

[buffygirl]

Frame 446

Yep, it certainly seems that she is carrying yet another item.* Oh, and I definitely think the visible white box is some kind of explosive device.

*hmmmm .... maybe map, lighter, knife, key?

EDIT: changed (some of the) stoopid sounding stuff

[Angelastic]

Is she holding a ball?

No, she is holding the head of a person (possibly Cueball) that she shrank with the same shrink ray she used on the trebuchet.

[flicky1991]

I think the strip will end when it hits frame 1190. Or, alternatively, when it hits whatever the strip number is at the time.

[Exodies]

At least we learnt one thing this weekend - Time isn't made of strawberries.

[ChronosDragon]

I think the strip will end when it hits frame 1190. Or, alternatively, when it hits whatever the strip number is at the time.

End?

According to some theories about the end of the universe, its expansion gradually slows down and it cools down as it proceeds into the distant, distant future.

In other theories, its gravity proves pervasive enough to stop the expansion and reverse it, bringing everything back to the beginning.

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.

I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

[buffygirl]

I think the strip will end when it hits frame 1190. Or, alternatively, when it hits whatever the strip number is at the time.

End?

According to some theories about the end of the universe, its expansion gradually slows down and it cools down as it proceeds into the distant, distant future.

In other theories, its gravity proves pervasive enough to stop the expansion and reverse it, bringing everything back to the beginning.

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.

I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

I'm always up for a party! ... And I can design a special new hat! WOOT!

[partingLance]

I think the strip will end when it hits frame 1190. Or, alternatively, when it hits whatever the strip number is at the time.

End?

According to some theories about the end of the universe, its expansion gradually slows down and it cools down as it proceeds into the distant, distant future.

In other theories, its gravity proves pervasive enough to stop the expansion and reverse it, bringing everything back to the beginning.

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.

I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

I personally am hoping this comic follows the third option fairly closely and exactly (the cool people party bit, that's to say). I find theories of the Eternal Return** almost as dispiriting, somehow, as the idea of the heat death of the One True Comic. (I assume we can safely discount Outsider ideas of what they're pleased to call, variously, the "cosmos" or the "universe" as so much pathetic delusion). Like the time scales involved in cosmology or geology*, they just tend to make me feel extremely small and insignificant. Which could, I suppose, be a part of their purpose.

But does not all this talk of the End of the OTC tend toward heresy, at least in the eyes of the Initiates/Timewaiters/TimeWatchers? Is not the major implication of the First and Greatest Commandment that there is or can be no End, at least not one that we can comprehend or articulate, and that we are enjoined to eternal Waiting?

*I wouldn't begin to presume to set myself up in competition with the Holy Geophysicist, but in my Outside life I'm a geologist. But I specialize in soils and groundwater. The idea of development over five or ten or twenty thousand years, I can sort of deal with. So many millions of years, or tens or hundreds of millions? Not so much.

** Speaking of Eternal Returns, I was just going to ask if there'd been any Battlestar "All This Has Happened Before, and All This Will Happen Again" Galactica references on this thread, when I remembered someone's theory that Megan and Cueball are toasters. I'd have to say I'm doubtful about it.

[Mr Moriaty]

I think the strip will end when it hits frame 1190. Or, alternatively, when it hits whatever the strip number is at the time.

End?

According to some theories about the end of the universe, its expansion gradually slows down and it cools down as it proceeds into the distant, distant future.

In other theories, its gravity proves pervasive enough to stop the expansion and reverse it, bringing everything back to the beginning.

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.

I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

I'm always up for a party! ... And I can design a special new hat! WOOT!

And if not we can throw our own party, with blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the party and the blackjack. Ahh, screw the whole thing!

[dreiarmumig]

At least we learnt one thing this weekend - Time isn't made of strawberries.

No, that would be unacceptable.

[HAL9000]

I think she might be pulling something with one of her arms, that is currently just barely out-of-frame.
Also, cmyk: I have to know this. What is your avatar a picture of? Did you custom-create it? Or is your username based on the image?

[SBN]

But does not all this talk of the End of the OTC tend toward heresy, at least in the eyes of the Initiates/Timewaiters/TimeWatchers? Is not the major implication of the First and Greatest Commandment that there is or can be no End, at least not one that we can comprehend or articulate, and that we are enjoined to eternal Waiting?

We are enjoined to wait for it, but we do retain hope that it may yet come, and we shall learn what it is, and why we were waiting for it.

[tman2nd]

Good Morning

[partingLance]

But does not all this talk of the End of the OTC tend toward heresy, at least in the eyes of the Initiates/Timewaiters/TimeWatchers? Is not the major implication of the First and Greatest Commandment that there is or can be no End, at least not one that we can comprehend or articulate, and that we are enjoined to eternal Waiting?

We are enjoined to wait for it, but we do retain hope that it may yet come, and we shall learn what it is, and why we were waiting for it.

I see. Difficult, but strangely comforting, nonetheless. Thank you (and thanks, incidentally, for the welcome the other day 20 or so newpix back. I still wonder about comics prior to the One True, but perhaps I can think of those as so many John the Baptists (Johns the Baptist?)).

Like the man said: "Watchman, what of the night?"

EDIT: But of course! I've just realized -- it's in Eliot, it's all in Eliot:

Four Quartets

Bless me. What do they teach them in these schools?

[Smithers]

Updated the sea level graph up to frame 447:

Also making a (non-auto-updating) gif at http://smithers.net63.net/downloads/time-10-100.gif, it's 1.2 MB so I don't think I can upload it to the forums. It runs at 10fps for most frames, but shows text and tiny trebuchet close-ups for 1 second. It is also correct up to frame 447 and will be updated as often as I get around to it.

[Rosewinsall]

dead time?

[RobIrr]

[udscbt]

She's... doing something! It looks like she's digging. Does she want to create a bunker?

[tman2nd]

What is she doing?! I can only wait for it.

[buffygirl]

But does not all this talk of the End of the OTC tend toward heresy, at least in the eyes of the Initiates/Timewaiters/TimeWatchers? Is not the major implication of the First and Greatest Commandment that there is or can be no End, at least not one that we can comprehend or articulate, and that we are enjoined to eternal Waiting?

We are enjoined to wait for it, but we do retain hope that it may yet come, and we shall learn what it is, and why we were waiting for it.

*harumphs in agreement* Just like Godot, a reference which has been made before in this thingy-pulled-by-a-needle, but bears repeating, I believe.

I see. Difficult, but strangely comforting, nonetheless. Thank you (and thanks, incidentally, for the welcome the other day 20 or so newpix back. I still wonder about comics prior to the One True, but perhaps I can think of those as so many John the Baptists (Johns the Baptist?)).

Like the man said: "Watchman, what of the night?"

EDIT: But of course! I've just realized -- it's in Eliot, it's all in Eliot:

Four Quartets

Bless me. What do they teach them in these schools?

Perhaps partingLance is on to something! But does that mean I need to read the whole thing? Where on earth will I find the Time?

[partingLance]

Updated the sea level graph up to frame 447:

sealevel.png

Also making a (non-auto-updating) gif at http://smithers.net63.net/downloads/time-10-100.gif, it's 1.2 MB so I don't think I can upload it to the forums. It runs at 10fps for most frames, but shows text and tiny trebuchet close-ups for 1 second. It is also correct up to frame 447 and will be updated as often as I get around to it.

Thanks, Smithers. I assume the units on the vertical axis are pixels?

Seems to me the last 5 or 10 pages look far more like talk.bizarre than xkcd forums. Have we been assimilated by a group of lost souls from the roaring 90's of Usenet?

Aw, you had to remind me. I had the pleasure of getting Usenet access a year or so before the eternal September started. I really do miss talk.bizarre, news.announce.newusers (when I was a university sysadmin in the mid-nineties, I still made a point of directing any new users to read the guidelines - what a shame people don't seem to know about them anymore), comp.sys.mac.programmers, alt.models (which sometimes had erroneous crossposts from naughty image groups, and thus was moved to rec.models.scale), comp.lang.perl and a.s.b. Just to mention a few...

I guess I am a lost soul from the roaring 90's of Usenet... and I think the WWW has been trying to recreate Usenet badly ever since. I never have understood why there needs to be a forum on almost every large community website, often duplicating topics and questions asked, when everything could be in a nice hierarchical order... Not to mention the variety of discussion interfaces (forum software), all of which stink in comparison to efficient newsreaders like NewsWatcher (which did have an issue with stripping the msb of Latin1 though, until I hacked it a bit). Just the other day I noticed that Facebook is finally experimenting with threaded nesting comments!!

Testify, brother*, testify! I too discovered Usenet around 1992, when I went undercover as a grad student. (My cover was blown within a few months, and I was revealed in my true aspect as a layabout and malcontent).

So far from being a sysadmin, I was and am just about competent to tell FORTRAN from a Ford transmission, but I had a lot of fun messing around. If I remember right, my university was hooked up to something called BITNet -- or actually, being in Canada, NetNorth (I hadn't remembered quite right, and had to look that up). My hangout of choice was alt.folklore.urban. According to the old Jargon File, the term "troll," meaning "to prank the newbies," originated on a.f.u. I was one of those who stoutly maintained that trolling and flame-baiting were different things, but that distinction's been lost.

Anyway, when I finally joined a latter-day forum, and beheld how the software worked, my initial visceral reaction was, more or less: you gotta be kidding. And I still maintain this wasn't just old-fogeyism speaking, though I can't deny there was some of that.

* I'm assuming, based on your first name.

[Mikeski]

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.
I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

I'm always up for a party! ... And I can design a special new hat! WOOT!

If you believe the artwork about said party, they give you a hat when you arrive! And it doesn't even mess up your hair because it hovers above your head!

[Haine]

I think the strip will end when it hits frame 1190. Or, alternatively, when it hits whatever the strip number is at the time.

End?

According to some theories about the end of the universe, its expansion gradually slows down and it cools down as it proceeds into the distant, distant future.

In other theories, its gravity proves pervasive enough to stop the expansion and reverse it, bringing everything back to the beginning.

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.

I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

Actually, the expansion is accelerating. Fact.

[partingLance]

But does not all this talk of the End of the OTC tend toward heresy, at least in the eyes of the Initiates/Timewaiters/TimeWatchers? Is not the major implication of the First and Greatest Commandment that there is or can be no End, at least not one that we can comprehend or articulate, and that we are enjoined to eternal Waiting?

We are enjoined to wait for it, but we do retain hope that it may yet come, and we shall learn what it is, and why we were waiting for it.

*harumphs in agreement* Just like Godot, a reference which has been made before in this thingy-pulled-by-a-needle, but bears repeating, I believe.

It's probably been done, but If I were in the Footlights at Cambridge, or similar outfit, I'd be tempted to put on a travesty production of Waiting for Godot that ended -- or perhaps even better, began -- with an elegant, jaunty, businesslike figure striding in from the wings and saying "Hello, my name's Godot. I hope you haven't been waiting long."

I see. Difficult, but strangely comforting, nonetheless. Thank you (and thanks, incidentally, for the welcome the other day 20 or so newpix back. I still wonder about comics prior to the One True, but perhaps I can think of those as so many John the Baptists (Johns the Baptist?)).

Like the man said: "Watchman, what of the night?"

EDIT: But of course! I've just realized -- it's in Eliot, it's all in Eliot:

Four Quartets

Bless me. What do they teach them in these schools?

Perhaps partingLance is on to something! But does that mean I need to read the whole thing? Where on earth will I find the Time?

Surely the WarpPix time-dilation effect -- in which a Newpix now appears to correspond to an hour of Outside time -- will help in that respect?

Anyway, you don't need to read it beginning to end (which might be a bit tedious anyway). Just dip in at random, like the I Ching. Interesting things will emerge.

[RobIrr]

She's... doing something! It looks like she's digging. Does she want to create a bunker?

Looks like she's chucking something over her shoulder..

megan.png (1.87 KiB) Viewed 13925 times

[buffygirl]

Seems to me the last 5 or 10 pages look far more like talk.bizarre than xkcd forums. Have we been assimilated by a group of lost souls from the roaring 90's of Usenet?

Aw, you had to remind me. I had the pleasure of getting Usenet access a year or so before the eternal September started. I really do miss talk.bizarre, news.announce.newusers (when I was a university sysadmin in the mid-nineties, I still made a point of directing any new users to read the guidelines - what a shame people don't seem to know about them anymore), comp.sys.mac.programmers, alt.models (which sometimes had erroneous crossposts from naughty image groups, and thus was moved to rec.models.scale), comp.lang.perl and a.s.b. Just to mention a few...

I guess I am a lost soul from the roaring 90's of Usenet... and I think the WWW has been trying to recreate Usenet badly ever since. I never have understood why there needs to be a forum on almost every large community website, often duplicating topics and questions asked, when everything could be in a nice hierarchical order... Not to mention the variety of discussion interfaces (forum software), all of which stink in comparison to efficient newsreaders like NewsWatcher (which did have an issue with stripping the msb of Latin1 though, until I hacked it a bit). Just the other day I noticed that Facebook is finally experimenting with threaded nesting comments!!

Testify, brother*, testify! I too discovered Usenet around 1992, when I went undercover as a grad student. (My cover was blown within a few months, and I was revealed in my true aspect as a layabout and malcontent).

So far from being a sysadmin, I was and am just about competent to tell FORTRAN from a Ford transmission, but I had a lot of fun messing around. If I remember right, my university was hooked up to something called BITNet -- or actually, being in Canada, NetNorth (I hadn't remembered quite right, and had to look that up). My hangout of choice was alt.folklore.urban. According to the old Jargon File, the term "troll," meaning "to prank the newbies," originated on a.f.u. I was one of those who stoutly maintained that trolling and flame-baiting were different things, but that distinction's been lost.

Anyway, when I finally joined a latter-day forum, and beheld how the software worked, my initial visceral reaction was, more or less: you gotta be kidding. And I still maintain this wasn't just old-fogeyism speaking, though I can't deny there was some of that.

* I'm assuming, based on your first name.

Yes, yes, I remember too! I was one of the few chicks in undergrad who hung out in our Science Library computer lab in the late 80's goofing off and making up silly names for our email accounts (I was _______ - don't ask), although I was not a computer science major. There was also some kind of text-based Role-Play type place with the word "island" in it or something. Does anyone recall that?

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.
I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

I'm always up for a party! ... And I can design a special new hat! WOOT!

If you believe the artwork about said party, they give you a hat when you arrive! And it doesn't even mess up your hair because it hovers above your head!

Yay! Got it covered! (hehe)
I know you said they provide it for you, but I usually like to design my own headwear.

EDIT: removed possibly identifying information

[KarMann]

At least we learnt one thing this weekend - Time isn't made of strawberries.

Spoilers, sweetie.

(As it happens, I've finally caught up to the current midseason. Expecting to watch at least the Christmas special tonight. Should be all caught up within a day or two.)

[Smithers]

Updated the sea level graph up to frame 447:

sealevel.png

Also making a (non-auto-updating) gif at http://smithers.net63.net/downloads/time-10-100.gif, it's 1.2 MB so I don't think I can upload it to the forums. It runs at 10fps for most frames, but shows text and tiny trebuchet close-ups for 1 second. It is also correct up to frame 447 and will be updated as often as I get around to it.

Thanks, Smithers. I assume the units on the vertical axis are pixels?

Indeed they are; and unless I have erred in the calculations, they measure from just inside the two-pixel border on the Image. To be completely specific, it is based entirely on the sum of the pixel values in the rightmost column of the Image.

In some religions, at the end of (their) time, a religious figure comes back from the dead and brings them all to a cool people party in space for all eternity.
I personally am hoping this comic loosely follows the third option.

I'm always up for a party! ... And I can design a special new hat! WOOT!

If you believe the artwork about said party, they give you a hat when you arrive! And it doesn't even mess up your hair because it hovers above your head!

Can I have a hat that covers my hair instead, as my hair is a tragic mess.

[buffygirl]

Surely the WarpPix time-dilation effect -- in which a Newpix now appears to correspond to an hour of Outside time -- will help in that respect?

*sighs.* My darling child, you are suffering from Menopause. Repent!