(This post's content expired, but its husk remains here as a historical curiosity).
It's About Damn Time
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It most certainly is!
Huzzah! You're not dead!
First comment, even though I may be categorized as a sociopath... it was worth it.
Righteous!!
Hurrah!
Its life Jim, but not as we know it....
Egad! There's life in the old boy yet!
It's a bomb, no doubt, but even bombs have timer.
My heart leapt when I saw the email from DamnInteresting....back? your back? Please tell me I can look forward to more fascinating articles (and comments) from this awesome site. I have so missed munching on toast and vegemite while reading a DamnInteresting article before work.
Welcome back, Alan :) Lookin forward to reading some more of your fantastic work soon!
Alright! I knew sooner or later you would be back, just took a little longer than I expected. Welcome back!
So, whats happening on Tuesday September 13 at 1400 GMT ?
What time zone are you posting from Mr Bellows?
Ahhh, welcome back! Looking forward to in 18 days and a couple of hours :-)
It's alive!!
Welcome back. Really, I've missed DI. Bought the book as a replacement, but after finishing that there was still a void left. Glad to see you will be back to fill the emptyness in my life :)
Perpetually behind schedule!
Good things come to those who wait :-)
hmmm, interesting,
Two years, all but to the day. Man I missed you guys! Welcome back!
Alan was never behind schedule, whoever gave him a time limit to put his articles down?
Just very happy this morning about this sign of life have a great day Alan.
I hoped keeping the RSS active was a good idea...
Welcome back :)
Good to see you Alan, I see your sense of humor is intact...
If I had know you were gonna make a post just HOURS after I made an account on your site I would have done that MUCH sooner!
Welcome back!
Man, I wish I had me some Vegemite.
Whoooooooo!
YAY!!!! DI is back!!!
I believe that is a single tear of joy rolling down my cheeck
Hooray!!!
and now I'm glad that I left this rotting on my RSS feed. Hooray for DI!
Countdown finishes on 9 AM CDT, Monday, September 12?
Welcome back XD Been waiting all this time. Still got the book. =P
Superthanks everybody! Exclamation point!
I reside in (and post from) US Mountain Time. I have no comment regarding any specific dates, events, or surprises at this time. I wouldn't want to be a bean-spiller or a cat-out-of-the-bag-letter.
By the way, all credit for the exceedingly apt post title goes to Jason Bellows. He's a clever chap.
Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet. Welcome back!
I think you'll find that Tuesday, September 13 is off by a day. My calculations indicate Monday the 12th, at 1400 GMT (10am EDT, or 8am in Alan's timezone)...
Have you ever gotten so excited you wanted to throw up?
I can happily say - I want to throw up.
What....is that the droid bionic release date?
...and just when I was getting used to all the banana jokes as well.
Welcome back Sir!
Mr. Bellows:
I agree. Everything that we perceive concerns time ... and how little of it each of us has left.
Some less than others, of course.
Here's hoping that I will have a chance to buy a new Damn Interesting book.
Things haven't been all that damn interesting for the past two years.
They haven't even been darn interesting.
Would have been sweet if you put the binary countdown clock up two years ago...It's quite mesmerizing to watch. lol
I am just so excited to see something other then the banana on the front page. A warm bowl of milk and some string would probably keep me entertained at this point. I am sure that you have much greater things in store. I look forward to it!
I missed you. I've been waiting patiently for about a decade now. Welcome back!
Miss Cellania:
I have never posted a comment such as this before on any blog:
You are a beautiful woman.
I am a long time lurker at this site, I have not read all the posts, but I have read most, and I have browsed this site many times over, allways discovering something new.
Awesome to see some new light in this blog.
A lot of things have happend since the last post, I have been unemployed, begun studying Linux/networks, moved from my parents, moved back to my parents, finished said studies, been an intern at the IT departement of the funfair Gröna Lund in Stockholm, and now finaly gotten a job at the IT department of a retail chain specalizing in home constructions products and materials.
Lastly I want to say, that my hope for this blog have always been there, this blog has always had a special place in my google reader. Thank you for sparking new life in the blog!
/Stoy
I think I speak for many of us when I say: HURRAH!!!
Yay for the end to the banana! It's weird to open a page which has the words "sex" and "banana" in the title when you're at work. And finally this will be no more!
Awesome!!! Welcome back, Alan!
Hurray!!! Finally....
Welcome back!
BTW / OT:
DI was credited in yesterday's 2nd article of a two-parter on D. Blum's "Speakeasy Science" blog:
blogs.plos.org/speakeasyscience/2011/08/25/of-dead-bodies-and-dirty-streets/
The credited image was found in the 2007 DI article "The Ethyl-Poisoned Earth",
and a link to that article can be found in the text beside the image.
Periodically, we need to stand still in order to provide ourselves with opportunities to catch up. Hope your hiatus has left you refreshed, revitalized, and your arsenal of insight refurbished.
I never gave up, the wait was long but hope stayed. Your audience is waiting.
Yeah!!! So happy to see you back, Alan & Jason. Can hardly wait to see what marvelous surprises you have in store for us. MUAH!
"I sense a disturbance in my RSS feeds.... Wait, that's the Damn Interesting feed!! Holy crap we've got a pulse!"
Fantastic!
Yes it is! =D
Such an awesome way to reappear mysteriously!
and I'm always up for an impromptu binary conversion session...
1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 at 28 august 4:18 gmt +5
262144-65536------1024---128-32-8--1
328873=91.35hrs=3.806 (3 days, 19.34 hours)
=31 august 22:40 gmt +6
I am giddy with anticipation! Welcome back! I hope all is well!!!
Squee!
It's alive!
I knew it was worth keeping the bookmark. Welcome back, you have been missed.
Do we get pie????
Happy to be here, I just found this site today which I guess makes me a lucky SOB,
NICE!!!!! i was expecting to just see that damn unfortunate sex life of the banana article again....
I've been reading this site for years and never bothered to post anything, but I had to say something. Excited as hell for some new articles. I checked every month for something new. This has happened a couple times before so I wasn't to worried about the writers disappearing, I knew they'd be back eventually.
If this is some sort of prank - and the next article comes out in two years... I am going to snap.
Also if somehow- someone incorporates a joke with Pie... i am also going to snap.
Yeah for real- if this is some kind of sick joke and damn interesting takes another hiatus, then I'm making preparations for my own killdozer... Watch out Bellows!
Meanwhile, if you wait until the counter shows 000110010010000111110, you'll get a taste of pi. Put a decimal point after the first two 1's, then convert it to base 10....
I'm not going to lie. I gave up on you recently. You were the best site i ever came across, bit it had been so long... I stumbled here once more and just had to check the front page again, just in case. I have never been more pleasantly surprised. Can not wait until something new happens!
I am excited.
Gosh, I'm excited.
The countdown has passed 011101010011000000000 = 960000 seconds =
11.1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111... days.
According to Alan he was, and is, perpetually behind schedule. Read from the top.
Thanks, sid :-)
Can we have an article on the wonderfull sex live of the prickly pear now?
I'm so jazzed!
This is a very good thing.
Only 6 and a half days until the counter resets back to 111111111111111111111...
By my calculations, I think it points to Sept. 6, 5pm EST.
I've started a reddit to try and solve it conclusively!
http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/k5zbp/damninterestingcom_is_coming_back_lets_solve_the/
Since the function in question is named "EasilyReverseEngineered", I hope Alan won't mind if we reverse engineer it. This seems obvious enough:
now = this.getNow();
diff = Math.floor(this.target - now);
Though the calculation of the "target" value is obfuscated for amusement purposes, presumably it must indicate the planned release time for the new article, so the "diff" value is the number of seconds remaining, which has (a few minutes before the time of this post) passed 540000 seconds, i.e. 150 hours remaining.
Am I right?
Redid my extrapolation and got a new answer of Sept 11th at 10pm, which matches with the comments.
http://easycalculation.com/binary-converter.php
001111000111111100011 to dec 495587
/ 60 = 8259 (Mins)
/ 60 = 137 (hours)
/ 24 = 5.73 (days)
I kept you near the top of my bookmarks and never lost hope.
And in two years, never got around to actually *reading* the banana article...
Must stop watching countdown...
Must stop...
Can't stop.
Sounds like we need a Bettin' pool here...
I say it's - 12th Sept 2011 19:00 Mountain Standard Time
Not that this is just when the counter is due to end, not when any updates are due to arrive,,,
after all Alan is known to be .... peretually late... Good on ya' Alan, good to have ya back...
I say - 12th Sept 2011 19:00 Mountain Standard Time
bserra says - Sept 11th at 10pm,
Agent 000 - 31 august 22:40 gmt +6
DCSOHL - Monday the 12th, at 1400 GMT (10am EDT, or 8am in Alan’s timezone)
poringo - 9 AM CDT, Monday, September 12?
Criggie - Tuesday September 13 at 1400 GMT ?
Any others?
My calcs concur with Sept 12, 9:00 am Central.
I make it about 12th Sept 2011 16:00 GMT, which makes it around 10am Alan's time
I hope "waterproofing authors" is reasonably easy to accomplish and not resisted!
I currently calculate that there are approx 66.5 hours left until the timer reaches 0. Assuming that each tick of the clock is 1 second. That is 2 days and 18.5 hours from now.
My current Time is approx 3:30pm on 9/9.
2 days from now is 3:30pm on 9/11
2 Days 12 hours from now is 3:30am on 9/12
Then 2 days 18.5 hours is 10am on 9/12
I am currently in Eastern Daylight Time
10am on 9/12 is my Answer
i get it as Monday, September 12, 2011 at 8:56:28 AM EST
Plus or minus a week. I am thrilled!!!!
I love watching the 1's slowly disappear
this makes me happy.
... 5 hours to go ...
So very happy to have you back. I'm letting everyone know. Yes, everyone, even that girl from 2nd grade who broke your little toe.
LOL@the binary counters..! Hi Tink, really good to see you here even tho you dont know me :D I read your comments with interest and its good to see you hangin' in there too!
Frank G.. keep trollin' buddy, Father Of Trolls :p DI wouldnt be the same without you!
Damn Nice to see the old damn names here :)
IT'S ALIIIIIIIVE!!!
Hooray! :) I have been wondering if you were ever coming back! I am glad to see you are! Best of luck to all that you do!
God Bless! and THANK YOU!
What a wonderful suprise!
While doing a bit of irregularly scheduled data maintainence, I decided to click on my old friend "DI" one last time before relegating her to the trash bin of history. I am very glad I did!
WELCOME BACK!!
Glad to have you back Alan. I've missed DI greatly.
Glad to see DI back in action.
Can someone please tell me what the content of this post was? The curiosity is overwhelming.
I have to admit I had given up all hope to ever see a new article here again.
I'm glad I was wrong!
Now off to read all those shiny new articles...
Although I never consciously gave up hope... I must admit I was surprised to see several new articles when I came back here to look for something I might not have read yet. Damn glad to have action here again!
Wow it lives! I de-listed the bookmark maybe 4-6mo ago after going so long as it just bothered me. Happy to see this place seems to be moving along again finally. I've enjoyed the book, and the site even more over the years as I discovered when I first started working where I still am now and it appears I can read it once again.