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xkcd's 13-Gigapixel Webcomic
New submitter Nomen writes "Today's xkcd: Click and Drag (Google Maps version) is probably the world's biggest web comic at an RSI-inducing resolution of 165,888x79,872 pixels. It's made up of 225 different images that take up 5.52MB of space. Now, if only the mines were powered by nethack..."
there was a huge, worldwide drop in productivity today. Especially at universities, research labs, software development companies etc.
How do you do it. Hell, how do you even THINK of doing it. This is so great.
"Hello, IT... Have you tried turning it off and on again? Yeah... No problem."
Some guy made a keyboard-controllable fullscreen interface: http://ares.aylett.co.uk/xkcd/
www.xkcd.com/1110/
Your face isn't all that impressive.
This would be one hell of a last comic before retirement.
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
Yeah, the GoogleMaps version really sucks for some reason. Try this one instead.
Note that is privately hosted, and since a Slashdotting is likely to turn his suspicions about hosting costs into reality you might want to consider a donation, or at least a like to help him with the Facebook "Like" for the image linked from the page.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
http://clickanddrag.azurewebsites.net/
quis custodiet ipsos custodes
I kinda regret seeing this comic immediately when it became live, as just as the working day had just begun here and I sunk an enormous amount of time into exploring it, but I'm nonetheless thrilled whenever webcomics do something that extends the comic format beyond the limitations of paper.
Earlier XKCD strips could easily be converted to print format, just see the first collection XKCD Volume 0 that Randall published (yes, he found a way to put the alt text in there too). But taking advantage of HTML and Javascript, making the comic interactive to a degree, feels like something fresh. Cyanide and Happiness have also been employing animated GIF elements. There's a lot of room for creativity in the webcomic format.
Someone has already published a complete zoomable image. Its a bit of a spoiler, but saves a lot of time!
My buddy wrote up a script that pulls the whole map into a big clickable image: http://hydra.drawert.net/xkcd_clickdrag/
I have just found a bigger time waster than Slashdot.
. .
Of course it is. It's a digital scavenger hunt :)
Quite fun, and will probably be the most-bookmarked webcomic of the year as people realize the size of it and flag it for perusal in their off hours.
Well played Mr. Munroe, well played indeed.
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
Try this version
That's easy, try finding these without zooming out:
2 MD-80s
2 other airliners, possibly 767s
Apollo 13
Two X-Wings
Soooo... Glass half empty kind of guy, huh?
Give Randall some credit, this must have taken ages to put together, and is all the more impressive once you realise that it's more or less all draw to the scale. The real mindfsck is when you read the comment from the girl on the far left and work out that, despite all of that apparently vast area to explore, the whole thing represents is only about five miles from one side to the other. I just didn't expect it [the drawing] to be so small!
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Agreed - can we drop the tetchy comments? In fairness, it was kinda cool...
Find Icarus ;-)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Clever. Another way to work out the dimensions would be to scale it to the Burj Khalifa located in the center.
Facebook? Get out of here.
We are in agreement if by kinda cool you mean one of the coolest, if not the coolest, web comic ever, so far.
It is what it is.
WTF is an "artefact"?
It's very similar to an artifact, except artefacts are only found by people who don't know what the little red, squiggly line under the word is for.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I really hope that Randall trolls the internet (or at least slashdot) looking for mentions of his name. It's like having a friend on the internet. He's a genius, and sometimes (well, most of the time), I feel like he's writing and drawing just for me. Thank you.
- Right click the comic, select "Inspect Element"
- in the console, expand the "middleContainer" div
- select the "comic" div
- in the box on the right of the console, uncheck "overflow:hidden"
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I was hoping someone would do something like that. I hope that server can handle some traffic.
Anyone esle wish that one of the whales in the sky was a flower pot thinking to itself "not again"? (HHGttG)
Impossible to tell until they reach the ground and we see whether they miss it or not.
When someone says, "Any fool can see
Did the same thing myself the moment I saw the comment. Didn't combine them into a single image, but got every bit of detail within a 100x100 panel square. Nothing was found further than 25 panels from the center, though.
Here's the python script I threw together. It's crude, but gets the job done. (Note that it needs wget on the path or in the same directory, didn't feel like tinkering with binary writes.)
import os, urllib
baseUrl="http://imgs.xkcd.com/clickdrag/"
def convert(coords):
st = ''
if coords[0]>0:
st+=str(coords[0])+'n'
else:
st+=str(abs(coords[0]))+'s'
if coords[1]>0:
st+=str(coords[1])+'e'
else:
st+=str(abs(coords[1]))+'w'
st+='.png'
return st
x=1
y=1
flipX = 1
flipY = 1
while True:
coords = (x*flipX, y*flipY)
print coords
u = urllib.urlopen(baseUrl+convert(coords))
firstLine = True
img = False
for line in u:
if firstLine:
firstLine = False
if line == '\x89PNG\r\n':
print 'Found Image!'
os.spawnl(os.P_WAIT, "wget"," -nc ",baseUrl+convert(coords))
elif line == '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>\n':
pass
else:
print line
u.close()
if flipY==-1:
flipY = 1
y+=1
if y>x:
y=1
if flipX==-1:
flipX=1
x+=1
else:
flipX=-1
else:
flipY = -1
Soooo... Glass half empty kind of guy, huh?
Oblig: http://what-if.xkcd.com/6/
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
No life? Drawing XKCD is his job.
Dilbert RSS feed
You must be one of those persons who read tomorrow's comic on their dilbert calendar.
lucm, indeed.
Maybe the whales are a reference to "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home".
It's so big. Yet so really, really small when you compare it to the real world. More size comparisons:
Based on the Burj Khalifa being 829 meters, each image (cell) is about 100 meters.
The full image is 81 cells wide, 32 cells high. The highest point where the whales are at is 13 cells high (including the initial ground level), while the lowest point is around 19 cells deep (not including the initial ground level).
Mt. Everest is slightly higher than the image is wide (88.5 cells).
The deepest mine in the world is about twice the depth of the caves from ground level (39 cells).
In fact, the deepest hole ever drilled is about six times as deep (122 cells).
If the jumbo jets' cruise altitude were drawn to scale, they would be close to ten times the height of the whale from ground level (124 cells).
If this was a map of Manhattan starting at the tip of Battery Park, it would end near the southern parts of Central Park, specifically the whereabouts of the skating rink (according to Google Maps anyway).
Also, apparently, some forum-goers have found the images at the four 11x11 corners to be blank (present but blank, whereas the rest of the empty space is not an actual image). The theory is that this one, 1110, will be either the last or the penultimate comic (with 1111 being the last comic, or just blank). The last comic theory comes from the obvious reference to Calvin and Hobbes, and a reference to the very first comic at the eastern-most cell. There are more blank images at 1n4e, 1n5e, 2n1w, 2n3w, 8n1w, but its meaning has not been cracked yet.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."