1190: "Time"

rhomboidal · Postby **rhomboidal** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:09 am UTC

Title Text: Wait for it.

I have no patience for entropy.

[The eternal journey continues even after the end of Time, since it seems like the essential idea of this epic comic of comics is that while time might appear to be a strictly linear phenomenon, its manifestation as life is actually a profoundly open, richly holistic, poly-temporal inter-creative experience with as many entry points, narratives, and interpretations as there are participants in it. The ever-flowing moment of the present is in fact a portal to all times -- a mysterious window which invites us to simultaneously invent the world as we explore it. While we personally might have different beginnings, adventures, and inevitable endings, together our searching individual journeys map the living landscape of our boundless humanity and reality.

Also, castle silhouettes look crazy cool. (And I wonder what thermodynamics says about Time having a sequel...?)

Link to the wonderfulous wiki for The One True Thread.]

Alsadius · Postby **Alsadius** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:10 am UTC

I can't tell if Randall is trying to be deep, or just trying to take a day off work.

Edit: Having now seen the whole thing, I think it's safe to say that "taking a day off work" was not his intention. Wow.

eaglef2 · Postby **eaglef2** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:10 am UTC

I feel like something will happen at sunrise.

Alsadius · Postby **Alsadius** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:15 am UTC

eaglef2 wrote:I feel like something will happen at sunrise.

True. My first thought was to drag it around, like #1110, but no go. That would be a worthy alternative, though. (Though if it was going to base off day/night cycles, shouldn't it be night right now?)

ysth · Postby **ysth** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:15 am UTC

eaglef2 wrote:I feel like something will happen at sunrise.

I thought I saw the sun quickly come up and go down again, but can't duplicate it and now my eyes are seeing all sorts of oddities from staring at the black and white too long.

Luggage · Postby **Luggage** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:15 am UTC

I don't really get it. Nothing is happening. Yet I am sitting here, staring at it. Thinking about what those two might be thinking about. Maybe they just talked about something, something important perhaps. Maybe they're content just to sit there, together in silence. Watching time happen.

Somehow, I feel that this is the strongest xkcd yet. It's in my head.

goorpy · Postby **goorpy** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:20 am UTC

I just hope his wife is okay. Something in my gut is telling me there's either good news or bad news in that area, and I hope it's good news.

westrim · Postby **westrim** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:21 am UTC

Maybe it's not deep or duration based or anything, maybe it's another ubersized comic that he hasn't quite completed- so, wait for it.

glasnt · Postby **glasnt** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:23 am UTC

I can't see any javascripty auto-image changing, nor any evidence to suggest this time.png is actually masquerading as a gif. this updating must be manual/time based.

I don't think it's making be very zen, all this rushing and investigating..

Quicksilver · Postby **Quicksilver** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:27 am UTC

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wfYIMyS_dI

DSDM · Postby **DSDM** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:31 am UTC

Right-clicked, viewed source, the comic was "time.png" not a Flash file, no javascript wrapped around it, so unless there's some PHP that's going to update this image (at the time of this post, a girl and a guy sitting on a black gnoll with blank white sky) I'm guessing he's trying to be deep here. I guess we'll see in the morning.

DSDM · Postby **DSDM** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:33 am UTC

...Unless it's a multi-part comic. We'll see Wednesday.

deskjethp · Postby **deskjethp** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:33 am UTC

I only waited about 30 seconds. I figure maybe if you load it at midnight or noon or 1:37 P.M. or something it might be different. It's more likely it's just a static image.

Exkakx · Postby **Exkakx** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:36 am UTC

What an interesting comic. This is probably the most simplistic xkcd yet...

EDIT: Well, never mind! Also, I'm on the first page, whoo!

joeyvalentine · Postby **joeyvalentine** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:41 am UTC

Changing my computer clock to 9:30 AM didn't seem to do anything...

mitchell22 · Postby **mitchell22** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:42 am UTC

I think the text that appears is supposed to be a subscript, answer, or complement to the title. Like: "Time. Wait for it" or "Time: wait for it." The "it" is time, not some event that's going to happen if you stare at the comic long enough. I don't think it's a literal command. From my interpretation of the comic, it is just supposed to be poetic.

Either way, I love it. Great comic. I liked it enough for me to sign up for this forum and give my opinion about it.

rainspeaker · Postby **rainspeaker** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:47 am UTC

A cool comic, definitely.
I kinda hope it's as simplistic as it seems, but it may not be. Note that the url of the image is quite different from the url of normal comics images. More precisely, when you open this image on its own, you are redirected to a non-standard url:
http://origin.imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time ... 420672.png
Whereas, for example, "Voyager 1" is at:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voyager_1.png

ziphi · Postby **ziphi** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:48 am UTC

What are they seeing, what are they waiting for? I hope there's no problem in his family or anything like that.

ubergeek · Postby **ubergeek** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:53 am UTC

rainspeaker wrote:A cool comic, definitely.
I kinda hope it's as simplistic as it seems, but it may not be. Note that the url of the image is quite different from the url of normal comics images. More precisely, when you open this image on its own, you are redirected to a non-standard url:
http://origin.imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time ... 420672.png
Whereas, for example, "Voyager 1" is at:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voyager_1.png

This. If I had to venture a guess, something (probably the date) is being hashed to create the url. Under different circumstances (like maybe tomorrow), we get a different url and a different picutre. The hash is to prevent us from skipping ahead or understanding it ahead of when we're supposed to. I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

Spaceman_Spiff · Postby **Spaceman_Spiff** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:05 am UTC

I opened the page in a second window and the image was slightly different from the first. The lines were thinner and the figures were in a slightly different position. It hasn't changed since.

arotenbe · Postby **arotenbe** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:07 am UTC

I think I may have got it figured out. I just tried refreshing the page after an hour and noticed that the image looks slightly different than before. Very similar, but the stick figures are positioned a little differently. I had this thread open in another tab, so I refreshed it there too and it definitely changed. Someone should start saving periodic copies if there isn't going to be an archive with all the variations...

WK1 · Postby **WK1** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:08 am UTC

I looked at the Response when one does a HEAD Request for http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time.png. It gives a 301 Moved Permanently response. If Randal intended to change it, he would have used a 302 Found Response.

I also look forward to see where this is going.

I got the same URL that rainspeaker got. The time is now March 24 05:07 UTC.

typhy · Postby **typhy** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:09 am UTC

Spoiler:

Found a second slide ^^^

sfwarlock · Postby **sfwarlock** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:10 am UTC

rainspeaker wrote:A cool comic, definitely.
I kinda hope it's as simplistic as it seems, but it may not be. Note that the url of the image is quite different from the url of normal comics images. More precisely, when you open this image on its own, you are redirected to a non-standard url:
http://origin.imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time ... 420672.png
Whereas, for example, "Voyager 1" is at:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voyager_1.png

I noticed that too. The morbid side of me says that one of them is going to suddenly disappear. (Does the page maybe set a cookie to track the initial time you viewed the comic?)

Goggalor · Postby **Goggalor** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:11 am UTC

The image just changed for me at 1:10am.

EDIT: Either I am hallucinating or the original image just updated itself to the newer image.

Alex-J · Postby **Alex-J** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:13 am UTC

As of now, the girl turned her head to look behind them. The boy has shifted slightly.

I hope some record of the progression will exist when it is finished. The picture at the top of this thread has been updated.

Wtcher · Postby **Wtcher** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:13 am UTC

Perhaps time itself is the answer.

Poohblah · Postby **Poohblah** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:13 am UTC

Wow, this is really clever. There is no javascript or other client-side functionality, and the image urls are hashed, so we can't skip ahead on our own. We can only wait for the server to push out updates.

Very zen, indeed.

dtbell91 · Postby **dtbell91** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:14 am UTC

Bet me to it! Had to sign up and was going to post that the image had changed

rhetorical · Postby **rhetorical** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:14 am UTC

It appears to update each hour, then.

Edit: or not, as the image has just reverted.

Edit1: and back again.

abb3w · Postby **abb3w** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:15 am UTC

Previous:
http://origin.imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time ... 420672.png
Current:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time/1e349a ... 589b97.png

Hm.

arotenbe · Postby **arotenbe** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:17 am UTC

I've got copies of the first three images. The two links already posted are actually to the second and third slides; I don't have a link to the first, though, only an image.
Edit: here.

Like I said, it's almost identical to frame 2, but not quite.

Poohblah · Postby **Poohblah** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:17 am UTC

sfwarlock wrote:
rainspeaker wrote:A cool comic, definitely.
I kinda hope it's as simplistic as it seems, but it may not be. Note that the url of the image is quite different from the url of normal comics images. More precisely, when you open this image on its own, you are redirected to a non-standard url:
http://origin.imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time ... 420672.png
Whereas, for example, "Voyager 1" is at:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voyager_1.png

I noticed that too. The morbid side of me says that one of them is going to suddenly disappear. (Does the page maybe set a cookie to track the initial time you viewed the comic?)

That does not appear to be the case. My browser is reporting no cookies from XKCD other than old ones.

Pangolin · Postby **Pangolin** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:20 am UTC

Do we know how frequently the comic is changing? I know that in the fifteen minutes since I've been looking (and the tabs I opened with previous iterations) it has moved at least once.

tarry · Postby **tarry** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:20 am UTC

No one has talked about the cookies. Are they just red herrings? There was one called "seen it" - I've deleted it and it hasn't come back. But two others are created when I view the comic.

Alsadius · Postby **Alsadius** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:21 am UTC

I take back my mockery above. If this is meant to be a super-slow-motion video, I entirely approve.

Quicksilver · Postby **Quicksilver** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:21 am UTC

no cache, database blob files and AJAX. If I was going to update images periodically, that's how I would do it. Of course, it's probably for the best I'm not in a high profile coding job.

rhetorical · Postby **rhetorical** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:22 am UTC

So far it's flipped back and forth between two images a few times. There doesn't appear to be a constant time between changes, but I could be wrong.

Fredski · Postby **Fredski** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:26 am UTC

I am loving this. We have no way to cheat the system, just wait for time itself to pass before seeing the next tiny bit of movement in the story.

We all know the level of work Randall has put into previous projects, be it Click and Drag, or some of the more intense graphs. If he applied a similar amount of time on this project as he has a graph like Money, this animation could well go on for more than a month, even more.

Regardless, I am loving the simplicity and beauty of the story - Up to everybody's personal interpretation of every frame.

abb3w · Postby **abb3w** » Mon Mar 25, 2013 5:27 am UTC

Poohblah wrote:
sfwarlock wrote:
rainspeaker wrote:A cool comic, definitely.
I kinda hope it's as simplistic as it seems, but it may not be. Note that the url of the image is quite different from the url of normal comics images. More precisely, when you open this image on its own, you are redirected to a non-standard url:
http://origin.imgs.xkcd.com/comics/time ... 420672.png
Whereas, for example, "Voyager 1" is at:
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voyager_1.png

I noticed that too. The morbid side of me says that one of them is going to suddenly disappear. (Does the page maybe set a cookie to track the initial time you viewed the comic?)
That does not appear to be the case. My browser is reporting no cookies from XKCD other than old ones.

Almost certainly not cookie-based, from opening more browsers that I usually don't browse from.
Might be based from IP traffic? Anyone got multiple computers behind a NAT box to compare?

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