1190: "Time"

[Swein]

Every Newframe's Awefulsome
The Knights Temporal Song
Megan and Cue

True, hilarious, and beautiful

ETA, and the silver lining: All the projects that were constantly behind can finally catch up; the voiceovers, the sourceification; the wiki can be brought up to standard, etc. Randall may be done with it, but we sure as chirp aren't!

What would we do with no new Yappobiccuits tunes?

Every Newframe's Awefulsome really sums up the craziness here better than I every could - it can't be explained, it can only be witnessed.

Blindposting from 1266 I just want to say that Yappobiscuits OTTifications is something that I will have a fond memory of in the future! Treeish!

[edit] Oh! Posttemporal Pope. Well, lets see... Bring me visual OTTifications .... please.

[NetWeasel]

Going through the OTC on Geekwagon, and...
Frame 2903 is mustarded. Mscha's 2898 (same frame) is fine.

Hmm, that's weird, according to my records, that frame was never demustarded – it's still the same as when it originally appeared.
What kind of mustard do you see? Geekwagon is barely loading for me (probably because of the link from xkcd.com/1190), but I don't see anything.

I'm thinking it's just in Geekwagon. Here's what I'm getting:

Spoiler:

It took all of me not to write
"Where you're going to?"
in the black area...

Spoiler:

doyouknowsm.png (21.48 KiB) Viewed 17671 times

[mscha]

I have to say, mscha, your viewer is incredibly well though out

Thanks.
I can (now) live with the GLR linking to Geekwagon, though. Mine's good for looking at specific frames, and seeing details (such as timestamps), but not for watching Time in its entirety.
(Plus, I'm not sure I'd be happy with the load that Geekwagon has to endure ... My server should be able to handle it just fine, but I don't mind not having to put it to the test...)

Heh, I ninja'd mscha on his own viewer. Do I win a prize?

Yes. Free lifetime use of my XKCD Time Viewer.

[yappobiscuits]

Blindposting from 1266 I just want to say that Yappobiscuits OTTifications is something that I will have a fond memory of in the future! Treeish!

Thanks - they sure ain't over just yet!

[ucim]

Amazon could change the prices of its books for each person, individually, tailored to what it would be best for them for you to read.

My grocery store does this already based on my membership card. Vaguely frightening, in a "Yay my lunchmeat is five cents cheaper than yours!" sort of way.

Now... when they gather your health information, social information, and demographics, and then alter the prices (differently from the prices they give your friends) in a manner that alters your diet, that's when it's creepy.

Jose

[jjjdavidson]

I said yesterday that I would publish "End of Time" versions of my graphs. I've decided (barring persuasive arguments otherwise) that my data cutoff will be next Tuesday, 2013/07/30, at midnight RDT. That will give those still ketchuping a couple more weekdays to discover the awful truth and make their posts about it, will give my graphs (if I've counted correctly) a pleasingly round 128 days of OTT data, and will give me a couple more days to demustard some of my code.

"‽" No, this doesn't mean I'm leaving the OTT Wednesday; I'm just setting a uniform cutoff date for all my graphs. I still have a couple of other graphs I want to create, and one ongoing project that's part graph, part short thesis.

I'm thinking it's just in Geekwagon. Here's what I'm getting:

Spoiler:

It's just the rising water, that's all; nothing to worry about.

[HES]

Amazon could change the prices of its books for each person, individually, tailored to what it would be best for them for you to read.

My grocery store does this already based on my membership card. Vaguely frightening, in a "Yay my lunchmeat is five cents cheaper than yours!" sort of way.

Now... when they gather your health information, social information, and demographics, and then alter the prices (differently from the prices they give your friends) in a manner that alters your diet, that's when it's creepy.

Jose

Are the things you buy getting cheaper (because they want you to buy them) or more expensive (because they know you're going to buy them)? If it's the first I can totally live with that.

[ZoomanSP]

Thanks, ZoomanSP.

I want to congratulate you, too, on the line "I'd rather lick a pricklymolp than thwap a leopard with a stick" which is probably my favorite line of the OTT.

Well, that one was actually my doing. Zooman's original line was "I'd rather lick a pricklymolp than thwap a big moleopard" which didn't quite sound right to me, so I changed it (and therefore also had to change the following line to rhyme).

IIRC, I wrote that line when we had not yet agreed (ni ni ni...) to call the raptorcat "Lucky", so molpy+leopard was an option. I now like your line better than mine. Although I might have gone for keyboard...

Happy 600 posts, Pelrigg!

@Zooman - thanks for submitting a VO for some of the Cueganites! Latent, yappo or I will make sure it gets added to the dropbox for the overall project.

Now that I read this, I remember vaguely that there was something like a dropbox folder. Thanks for adding it to the project!

I'm afraid our pricklymolp friend is for Davy Jones' locker, though.

I just read on the (German) wikipedia site that at least some pricklymolp species are fairly good swimmers. So there's hope!

Spoiler:

edit: playing with the attachment thing. Here's what I figured out:
If you upload an attachment, place it inline, preview it, right click on the image to get the URL, put that URL inside img tags, you'll put the image where you want it, and there will be a redundant attachment. If you delete the attachment (from the post), the attachment remains on xkcd, the URL remains valid, and the image inside img tags remains visible and quotable, without the need for a spoilered redundancy.

It's what I did here.

Let me know if this did not work.

It did not work. Quote: "The selected attachment does not exist anymore."

[jjjdavidson]

Playing with the attachment thing. Here's what I figured out:
If you upload an attachment, place it inline, preview it, right click on the image to get the URL, put that URL inside img tags, you'll put the image where you want it, and there will be a redundant attachment. If you delete the attachment (from the post), the attachment remains on xkcd, the URL remains valid, and the image inside img tags remains visible and quotable, without the need for a spoilered redundancy.

It's what I did here. Let me know if this did not work.

I found out the hard way that your method doesn't work. You can still see the image, but nobody else can. Your original post must contain the original [attachment] code, or nobody but you can see (or quote) the [img]. I had to fix several of my old posts after people reported that my images weren't appearing. That's the reason for all the spoilered attachments.

[Ebonite]

Neat ottification, SBN!

BTW, am I Pope for a page? Do we still have them? A Blitzer Pope--is that heresy, like an Anti-pope?

I think the papacy is a good tradition to continue - one of its purposes was to make each newpage more exciting while we Waited for it, and now we're Waiting harder than we ever have before...

And nope, not heresy - we've had blitzer and ketchup popes before.

It just occurred to me. . .although I've been here from the start, I don't think I've ever been a pope. . .or a goat. . .or ONGed. I've been rather ordinary when it comes to posting.

On a more useful note, content-wise: I hope that if GLR doesn't officially do a Time 2, that sometime in the future in the regular xkcd strip he occasionally revisits Cuegan's world with an update on their lives.

[yappobiscuits]

Thanks, ZoomanSP.

I want to congratulate you, too, on the line "I'd rather lick a pricklymolp than thwap a leopard with a stick" which is probably my favorite line of the OTT.

Well, that one was actually my doing. Zooman's original line was "I'd rather lick a pricklymolp than thwap a big moleopard" which didn't quite sound right to me, so I changed it (and therefore also had to change the following line to rhyme).

IIRC, I wrote that line when we had not yet agreed (ni ni ni...) to call the raptorcat "Lucky", so molpy+leopard was an option. I now like your line better than mine. Although I might have gone for keyboard...

Yeah, I originally tried it with "keyboard" but ended up preferring "leopard" in terms of how it rolls off the tounge. The main problem I had with the line was that it was missing a syllable (unless you pronounce "leopard" as "lee-oh-pard" which just sounds silly)

[HereBeUnmappedBits]

OTVO

Here is my go for the Voice of Buzzcut for frames 3019, 3020 and 3056.

OTVO.mp3

(383.63 KiB) Downloaded 128 times

----------------------------------------------------------

Regarding where to go next; Though I rarely have much to contribute and instead just lurk, I would be saddened if this community were to go away, something I feel would happen if things were to move to Facebook or Twitter. My own feeling is that the best option for continuing things beyond the OTC would be a new thread on this forum in the general section. Everyone is already be here so continuity would be maintained and it would help avoid issues such as blitzers reaching the present only to find it abandoned

[NetWeasel]

I'm thinking it's just in Geekwagon. Here's what I'm getting:

Spoiler:

It's just the rising water, that's all; nothing to worry about.

There are probably a lot of people who, upon seeing Time, said, "I'll wait til it's over and just watch the whole thing at once."
And then they'll see this.

Worst part of this particular mustarding is which frame it's on -- "DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?"
The main dun, dun, DUNNNN of the conversation. The "oh, chirpety-CHIRP!" part of that sequence.

Can anybody get in touch with the Geekwagon crew for a fix?

[mscha]

About randompixbot, I can certainly get something up & running quickly, but ...

I like the idea of re-posting random ONGs. (RONGs?)
But then I got all concerned that we would get off schedule (schedule, schedule) without newpixbot to help us.

I guess it might be like last nip, when we were still trying to figure out the epilogue loop and that one frame repeated only to be replaced (I believe mscha said 8 minutes after the hour?) and it was noticed by 19 after the hour.
It could end up being something like that. Someone notices that the on-the-hour post hasn't been made and goes ahead and post one 20, 30, 40 minutes late, only to have several people try to post on the hour for the next one.
New thought while writing this. Could newpixbot be programed to see if an old ONG has been posted for a given hour and randomly post an Oldpic by, let's say, 25 after the hour? It would give slowpokes a chance to come up with one, but still keep the thread going...

I like this idea, because I miss seeing the ONGs sprinkled through the most recent newpages. One concern might be, though, that the people posting "random" newpix might have a tendency to favor certain frames (close-up on trebuchet, LaPetite's return, etc.). Perhaps if we had a list like mscha's to pick our rONGs from, and when a new rONG was posted on the OTT that newpix would be marked as "already posted" on the list? ...But that might be too complicated. Could be I'm just overthinking this waaaay too much. I miss Time.

... this is all getting a bit complicated. Not impossible, but not sure it's worth the effort.

How about something simpler?

Proposal 1: randompixbot will post, at certain intervals (hourly? daily? something in between?) a random oldpix, unconditionally.
Beside this, people can post (at a certain schedule, with the usual “first to rONG” wins; or just whenever they feel like it) a favourite frame. (People aren't good at ‘random’.)

Proposal 2: we decide on a schedule for posting rONGs. For instance, hourly, or daily, or something in between. Randompixbot will run N minutes later (could be 10, as it is for newpixbot, or 25, 30, whatever we decide), check if any oldpix was posted since rONG time, and if not, rONG a random oldpix.

Any thoughts?

[Ebonite]

About shirts, the GLR should probably just sell a set of 3094 of 'em. There'd be plenty of people (yes, including me) who wouldn't be able to resist.

Maybe he should wait until the price of flexible screen technology comes down. Then he can sell t-shirts that display the entire OTC on the front, one frame at a time, changing the image automatically in real-time just like the comic did.

[schwartzbewithyou]

It felt rather cathartic this mornip to get up and have plenty of NP to read through. Almost makes me forget about the bad words frame...almost.

(snip)
Ok… I've had these ready to go for a while now, but have been putting off posting them since the OTC and OTT have been so full of excitement in recent wips, but now it's OVER, I feel the time is right...

Yappobiscuits - these OTTifications were amazing!! Everything was truly very well done. The 'Megan and Cue' was especially touching.

I can't imagine that this hasn't been posted before, but last night in conversation, the Green Day Song 'Good Riddance (Time of your Life)' came up and couldn't help thinking - it's all related! It doesn't even need an OTTifcation. Especially the "still frames in your mind" line...

"Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)"

Spoiler:

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it's worth it was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,
I hope you had the time of your life. (3X)

[Valarya]

A note about the WIKI:
Just the other day Yappo's full "We Love the Thread of Time" (2nd version) link was up there, and now it isn't. This was the youtube link to the full version rather than the dropbox link to the 1st (half) version that is currently up there. I was trying to show it to someone. Any ideas? Or yappo, could you edit the wiki and put it back in?

Also, I can't chirpin find the link to all our Double Dactyl's...

MOLPY UP!!

Spoiler:

True Facts About Sloths

That.. was great.

[fatness]

I don't care if they sell my facebook information, because it's all useless.

On the contrary. It's probably useless to an individual, but that's not where the problem lies. Rather, the network of who you know, who you interact with, and in what ways, is a good indicator of how to influence you without your being aware of it. This is useful for Amazon, Century21, the New York Times, and potential employers.

^ this ^

Friend of mine works for a data aggregator. Most people would be appalled at what a bit of info here and a bit of info there and a bit of info from facebook (although facebook is becoming a primary source for more than just a bit) gives them when assembled. It is VERY detailed and VERY personal, down to things like credit histories and arrest records. This is sold to insurance companies for underwriting purposes (its primary market) and sites like Intelius where it is sold to the public.

While I applaud the efforts to keep this going I am very hesitant to do it on facebook. Probably not an issue though since I am not a heavy contributor. If y'all want to try to do this on a separate site (or use the timewaiters.com domain name to point at whatever you do) just let me know . See my sig for the current redirect...

edit: annoying apostrophe transgression

[pelrigg]

I said yesterday that I would publish "End of Time" versions of my graphs. I've decided (barring persuasive arguments otherwise) that my data cutoff will be next Tuesday, 2013/07/30, at midnight RDT. That will give those still ketchuping a couple more weekdays to discover the awful truth and make their posts about it, will give my graphs (if I've counted correctly) a pleasingly round 128 days of OTT data, and will give me a couple more days to demustard some of my code.

"‽" No, this doesn't mean I'm leaving the OTT Wednesday; I'm just setting a uniform cutoff date for all my graphs. I still have a couple of other graphs I want to create, and one ongoing project that's part graph, part short thesis.

I'm thinking it's just in Geekwagon. Here's what I'm getting:

Spoiler:

It's just the rising water, that's all; nothing to worry about.

I kinda hope it won't be the absolute end of your great graphs. I can see why you might have a cut-off for this next one though. Perhaps an update every 50 or 100 NP, maybe? If you think there's enough call for it, of course. (Seeing how I don't know how much personal time you put into these things, what I just said is a suggestion only.)
Again and again, thank you for all your charts and graphs.

----

@ ZoomanSP : thanks for the cake. Everybody, don't be shy. Dig in. It looks like there's enough to go around.....

[Earthling on Mars]

-blindposting-

Forgive the non-blitzer...but was there ever an OTTification of "The Call", by Regina Spektor. Maybe 75% of the lyrics require no modification at all.

And yet, I hesitate to suggest it. I can barely fight back the tears listening to that song just the way it is...

That's what I'm working on. Please nobody ninja me.

[Ebonite]

Amazon could change the prices of its books for each person, individually, tailored to what it would be best for them for you to read.

My grocery store does this already based on my membership card. Vaguely frightening, in a "Yay my lunchmeat is five cents cheaper than yours!" sort of way.

Now... when they gather your health information, social information, and demographics, and then alter the prices (differently from the prices they give your friends) in a manner that alters your diet, that's when it's creepy.

Jose

Yesterday, someone on Twitter mentioned a restaurant in my city. I tweeted her asking her which location she went to, because my family goes there all the time and I've never seen her there. A couple of minutes later, the restaurant started following me on Twitter.

I'm being watched by a restaurant now. . .

[mscha]

I can't imagine that this hasn't been posted before, but last night in conversation, the Green Day Song 'Good Riddance (Time of your Life)' came up and couldn't help thinking - it's all related! It doesn't even need an OTTifcation. Especially the "still frames in your mind" line...

"Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)"

Spoiler:

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it's worth it was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,
I hope you had the time of your life. (3X)

⁷... If you'd told us that you ottified it, I would have believed you.

[yappobiscuits]

Yappobiscuits - these OTTifications were amazing!! Everything was truly very well done. The 'Megan and Cue' was especially touching.

I can't imagine that this hasn't been posted before, but last night in conversation, the Green Day Song 'Good Riddance (Time of your Life)' came up and couldn't help thinking - it's all related! It doesn't even need an OTTifcation. Especially the "still frames in your mind" line...

"Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)"

Spoiler:

Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
Time grabs you by the wrist, directs you where to go
So make the best of this test, and don't ask why
It's not a question, but a lesson learned in time

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,
I hope you had the time of your life.

So take the photographs, and still frames in your mind
Hang it on a shelf in good health and good time
Tattoos of memories and dead skin on trial
For what it's worth it was worth all the while

It's something unpredictable, but in the end is right,
I hope you had the time of your life. (3X)

Thanks! And yeah, that song fits perfectly! And, much nostalgia since they were my favourite band in my early teens (before I discovered metal )

A note about the WIKI:
Just the other day Yappo's full "We Love the Thread of Time" (2nd version) link was up there, and now it isn't. This was the youtube link to the full version rather than the dropbox link to the 1st (half) version that is currently up there. I was trying to show it to someone. Any ideas? Or yappo, could you edit the wiki and put it back in?

Done. Weird, I've no idea why it vanished. Maybe someone didn't realise it was different and thought they were just clearing up multiple links to what they thought was the same thing.

[BlitzGirl]

I'm afraid our pricklymolp friend is for Davy Jones' locker, though.

I just read on the (German) wikipedia site that at least some pricklymolp species are fairly good swimmers. So there's hope!

They also float!

Spoiler:

Amazon could change the prices of its books for each person, individually, tailored to what it would be best for them for you to read.

My grocery store does this already based on my membership card. Vaguely frightening, in a "Yay my lunchmeat is five cents cheaper than yours!" sort of way.

Now... when they gather your health information, social information, and demographics, and then alter the prices (differently from the prices they give your friends) in a manner that alters your diet, that's when it's creepy.

Are the things you buy getting cheaper (because they want you to buy them) or more expensive (because they know you're going to buy them)? If it's the first I can totally live with that.

Cheaper, hence why I still use my membership. But you could argue that in relation, everything else is now more expensive than those brands they choose to discount.

Oh! Posttemporal Pope. Well, lets see... Bring me visual OTTifications .... please.

Very well, but you only get one per papacy:

Redundant:

Spoiler:

Keywords: BGUM ottification random newpix random slides xkcd other comic othercomic

redundant68.png (129.67 KiB) Viewed 17552 times

Edit to fix quote attribution.

[Klear]

So.. Time is over then? I need to watch it, then. I've been waiting for it to end (as instructed).

[yappobiscuits]

Very well, but you only get one per papacy:

Spoiler:

⁴!

[mscha]

Update on the OTC:

As for the OTC, as we already concluded before I molpied down, we're now getting old epilogue frames served hourly (or should I say oldpixly?).
There was some confusion about hashes, so I dived into my log files and figured it out:
Frame 3089, as we all know, was the frame with that horrible text on it that I can't bear repeating.
After that, we got five more newpix, frame 3090 through frame 3094. For convenience, let's call those frames A, B, C, D and E. (C is the one where we were teased with a possible molpy. It's still there, hasn't been demustarded.)
At the time we were expecting frame 3095, we got C instead.
A newpix hour oldpix later, the URL did not change, we were still looking at C. But pelrigg noted, 19 minutes later, that the URL had changed to D. I checked my logs, and indeed, that happened at about 8 minutes past ONG time.
Every oldpix after that, we got a new oldpix. The list up to now is: CDCBAECDAE.
Conclusion: The GLR or one of his minions set it up to show a random epilogue oldpix every hour. It wasn't initially smart enough to ensure that it'd always be a different one than the hour before, but that was soon fixed.
(So not even a loop, He can't even make the loopists (a tiny bit) happy...)

This has still been happening every newp hour, we now have the following: CDCBAECDAEDCBAEDCC
Yes, that's two Cs right at the end. At last ONG time, the image did not change. Whether that's the return of the same bug, or the “looping” has been stopped, only Randall knows...

[NetWeasel]

Spoiler:

About randompixbot, I can certainly get something up & running quickly, but ...

I like the idea of re-posting random ONGs. (RONGs?)
But then I got all concerned that we would get off schedule (schedule, schedule) without newpixbot to help us.

I guess it might be like last nip, when we were still trying to figure out the epilogue loop and that one frame repeated only to be replaced (I believe mscha said 8 minutes after the hour?) and it was noticed by 19 after the hour.
It could end up being something like that. Someone notices that the on-the-hour post hasn't been made and goes ahead and post one 20, 30, 40 minutes late, only to have several people try to post on the hour for the next one.
New thought while writing this. Could newpixbot be programed to see if an old ONG has been posted for a given hour and randomly post an Oldpic by, let's say, 25 after the hour? It would give slowpokes a chance to come up with one, but still keep the thread going...

I like this idea, because I miss seeing the ONGs sprinkled through the most recent newpages. One concern might be, though, that the people posting "random" newpix might have a tendency to favor certain frames (close-up on trebuchet, LaPetite's return, etc.). Perhaps if we had a list like mscha's to pick our rONGs from, and when a new rONG was posted on the OTT that newpix would be marked as "already posted" on the list? ...But that might be too complicated. Could be I'm just overthinking this waaaay too much. I miss Time.

... this is all getting a bit complicated. Not impossible, but not sure it's worth the effort.

How about something simpler?

Proposal 1: randompixbot will post, at certain intervals (hourly? daily? something in between?) a random oldpix, unconditionally.
Beside this, people can post (at a certain schedule, with the usual “first to rONG” wins; or just whenever they feel like it) a favourite frame. (People aren't good at ‘random’.)

Proposal 2: we decide on a schedule for posting rONGs. For instance, hourly, or daily, or something in between. Randompixbot will run N minutes later (could be 10, as it is for newpixbot, or 25, 30, whatever we decide), check if any oldpix was posted since rONG time, and if not, rONG a random oldpix.

Any thoughts?

I had this one, below:

A suggestion for the new ONGs -- top of the hour, post your ONE favorite frame of the whole thing. If there's already one up, wait for the next hour -- we've got Time. If your favorite frame has been posted within the last three or four hours, say so, and then post your second favorite. That will give us a couple to re-discuss per hour....

Starting next ONG. So, whaddaya think? Joe Biden Sandwich fest, anyone?

I'm more for proposal two, myself -- it tries to keep the thread from being TOO clogged with rONGs.
Ditching the "once per hour" implies that the posting traffic is going to go way down...
But to use RandomPixBot, I'm not so sure -- meaningful frames vs. random... would it be better to not have any for awhile, as long as the ones that are posted are meaningful enough to someone that they would repost it? Not my call, could go either way there.
If RandomPixBot IS activated, here's my suggestion: if at 20 minutes after the agreed time for rONG post, RandomPixBot detects no ONGs in the previous 40 posts (=one NP) AND no ONGs in the previous 25 minutes, then it posts.
(possibly among a list of top frames from somewhere)

[BlitzGirl]

Very well, but you only get one per papacy:

Spoiler:

⁴!

Thanks, and GAH I JUST NOTICED A SPELLING MUSTARD. Randamn you, double letters! I mean, whoops.

So.. Time is over then? I need to watch it, then. I've been waiting for it to end (as instructed).

FTFY.

Spoiler:

About randompixbot, I can certainly get something up & running quickly, but ...

I like the idea of re-posting random ONGs. (RONGs?)
But then I got all concerned that we would get off schedule (schedule, schedule) without newpixbot to help us.

I guess it might be like last nip, when we were still trying to figure out the epilogue loop and that one frame repeated only to be replaced (I believe mscha said 8 minutes after the hour?) and it was noticed by 19 after the hour.
It could end up being something like that. Someone notices that the on-the-hour post hasn't been made and goes ahead and post one 20, 30, 40 minutes late, only to have several people try to post on the hour for the next one.
New thought while writing this. Could newpixbot be programed to see if an old ONG has been posted for a given hour and randomly post an Oldpic by, let's say, 25 after the hour? It would give slowpokes a chance to come up with one, but still keep the thread going...

I like this idea, because I miss seeing the ONGs sprinkled through the most recent newpages. One concern might be, though, that the people posting "random" newpix might have a tendency to favor certain frames (close-up on trebuchet, LaPetite's return, etc.). Perhaps if we had a list like mscha's to pick our rONGs from, and when a new rONG was posted on the OTT that newpix would be marked as "already posted" on the list? ...But that might be too complicated. Could be I'm just overthinking this waaaay too much. I miss Time.

... this is all getting a bit complicated. Not impossible, but not sure it's worth the effort.

How about something simpler?

Proposal 1: randompixbot will post, at certain intervals (hourly? daily? something in between?) a random oldpix, unconditionally.
Beside this, people can post (at a certain schedule, with the usual “first to rONG” wins; or just whenever they feel like it) a favourite frame. (People aren't good at ‘random’.)

Proposal 2: we decide on a schedule for posting rONGs. For instance, hourly, or daily, or something in between. Randompixbot will run N minutes later (could be 10, as it is for newpixbot, or 25, 30, whatever we decide), check if any oldpix was posted since rONG time, and if not, rONG a random oldpix.

Any thoughts?

I like proposal two, perhaps with a diply or bi-diply schedule (since we don't all share the same Time-zones).

[pelrigg]

About randompixbot, I can certainly get something up & running quickly, but ...

Spoiler:

I like the idea of re-posting random ONGs. (RONGs?)
But then I got all concerned that we would get off schedule (schedule, schedule) without newpixbot to help us.

I guess it might be like last nip, when we were still trying to figure out the epilogue loop and that one frame repeated only to be replaced (I believe mscha said 8 minutes after the hour?) and it was noticed by 19 after the hour.
It could end up being something like that. Someone notices that the on-the-hour post hasn't been made and goes ahead and post one 20, 30, 40 minutes late, only to have several people try to post on the hour for the next one.
New thought while writing this. Could newpixbot be programed to see if an old ONG has been posted for a given hour and randomly post an Oldpic by, let's say, 25 after the hour? It would give slowpokes a chance to come up with one, but still keep the thread going...

I like this idea, because I miss seeing the ONGs sprinkled through the most recent newpages. One concern might be, though, that the people posting "random" newpix might have a tendency to favor certain frames (close-up on trebuchet, LaPetite's return, etc.). Perhaps if we had a list like mscha's to pick our rONGs from, and when a new rONG was posted on the OTT that newpix would be marked as "already posted" on the list? ...But that might be too complicated. Could be I'm just overthinking this waaaay too much. I miss Time.

... this is all getting a bit complicated. Not impossible, but not sure it's worth the effort.

How about something simpler?

Proposal 1: randompixbot will post, at certain intervals (hourly? daily? something in between?) a random oldpix, unconditionally.
Beside this, people can post (at a certain schedule, with the usual “first to rONG” wins; or just whenever they feel like it) a favourite frame. (People aren't good at ‘random’.)

Proposal 2: we decide on a schedule for posting rONGs. For instance, hourly, or daily, or something in between. Randompixbot will run N minutes later (could be 10, as it is for newpixbot, or 25, 30, whatever we decide), check if any oldpix was posted since rONG time, and if not, rONG a random oldpix.

Any thoughts?

My thoughts: if we go with either proposal maybe the time frame should be every 2 or 3 hours or even 6 hours (I kind of like #2, which would still give folks the option of posting hourly). However, no matter what schedule we choose, I would make the addendum that if Randompixbot starts posting too many times in a row without posters in between, the project can be suspended.

Since it's been awhile since NetWeasel's post:

M1554-repeatONG


I like this one because it was our first real look at the general sophistication of the "Others".

Edit in a sentence ("Since...") and fix a spelling error.

[Montov]

Some analysis, I really think the dream about the rope was about the What-If at the time. It never happened later on in the comic as a precognitive dream. Anyone else has thoughts about that?

And we never fully understood Beanish. Probably it wasn't the intention, just the make the (solved) puzzle of the water rising more difficult. Sure, some punctuation, water and a greeting was "obvious". But knowing what we know now, the Beanish did know why the water was rising, so could we still get more information if we view it in context again? Maybe not enough repetition of words I fear.

[yappobiscuits]

Thanks, and GAH I JUST NOTICED A SPELLING MUSTARD. Randamn you, double letters! I mean, whoops.

Oh, yeah... (pssst, I never know how to spell that anyway and always just get spellchecker to correct me... would never have noticed had you not pointed it out )

[charlie_grumbles]

I'm thinking it's just in Geekwagon. Here's what I'm getting:

Spoiler:

It's just the rising water, that's all; nothing to worry about.

There are probably a lot of people who, upon seeing Time, said, "I'll wait til it's over and just watch the whole thing at once."
And then they'll see this.

Worst part of this particular mustarding is which frame it's on -- "DO YOU KNOW WHERE YOU ARE?"
The main dun, dun, DUNNNN of the conversation. The "oh, chirpety-CHIRP!" part of that sequence.

Can anybody get in touch with the Geekwagon crew for a fix?

Geekwagon has contact information on his front page. Maybe you should contact him, since you have already investigated the issue.

[mscha]

Spoiler:

Might be true, though.

[Sciscitor]

Two things:
First: No fb for me, I don't really like their style.
Second:

The Constellation of Time 4

Spoiler:

Bigger (101 Megapixel), better (interactive, searchable, clickable, linked) and more.
Just give it some time to load, depending on your connection. This thing is huge (twss).

And with that I want to thank all of you creative and clever people for four months of great entertainment. I won't name names, it would just be unfair to forget someone. You all know who you are!

[MajorDouble7]

Jose
edit: playing with the attachment thing. Here's what I figured out:
If you upload an attachment, place it inline, preview it, right click on the image to get the URL, put that URL inside img tags, you'll put the image where you want it, and there will be a redundant attachment. If you delete the attachment (from the post), the attachment remains on xkcd, the URL remains valid, and the image inside img tags remains visible and quotable, without the need for a spoilered redundancy.

It's what I did here. Let me know if this did not work.

Sorry, Jose, didn't work for me (Opera Mobile on Symbian). Also, probably ninja'd.

[pelrigg]

Two things:
First: No fb for me, I don't really like their style.
Second:

The Constellation of Time 4

Spoiler:

Bigger (101 Megapixel), better (interactive, searchable, clickable, linked) and more.
Just give it some time to load, depending on your connection. This thing is huge (twss).

And with that I want to thank all of you creative and clever people for four months of great entertainment. I won't name names, it would just be unfair to forget someone. You all know who you are!

First reaction.
Neat and sea-ish, Sciscitor.

Second reaction.
Is it just me, or does that look like a brain?????

[BlitzGirl]

Yay, new Constellation! It's like the OTT's giant brain! Full of stars!
And ninja'd!

Demustarded ottification:

Redundant:

Spoiler:

Keywords: BGUM ottification xkcd comic other othercomic random newpix slides chart OTTers

redundant69.png (153.86 KiB) Viewed 17456 times

[yappobiscuits]

Awesomeful, Sciscitor! Kinda sad too, seeing a new one of these at the end... and yeah, I see the brain too

[charlie_grumbles]

Now... when they gather your health information, social information, and demographics, and then alter the prices (differently from the prices they give your friends) in a manner that alters your diet, that's when it's creepy.

Jose

There is another effect that I worry about, perhaps more. News organizations can and do feed you stories they think will interest you. I got nothing but sports stories in the yahoo news site sidebar for quite a while since I had clicked on something about Venus Williams or the TdF. It took a long time to clear out.

The problem is that, with your profile, they can feed you stuff to influence your opinions on things. If they think you might vote for Grumbles but themselves prefer Blitz, they feed you only stories negative about Grumbles. It can be very subtle. If they know, for example that I like Venus they can let me know that Venus thinks Grumbles is a jerk. (Names changed to protect the innocent, of course.) I prefer to choose what I want to read, rather than have someone else, perhaps with a motive, to do so.