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Comment by disillusioned | Hacker News Reader

Can someone "fix" XKCD 1335 ("Now") so that the current time is at the 12 o'clock position?

Since the image is actually rebuilt server-side to reflect the current rotation of the earth, it's simple to just rotate it with CSS based on the current time:

http://jsfiddle.net/4taWt/1/

That would be very difficult without the server-side code.

Maybe someone can think of a clever way though.

Here is a way to get any time you want from it: http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/now/20h30m.png

You inspired me :) http://meandavejustice.github.io/xkcd-now/

Heya! You inspired me! http://rodesp.github.io/xkcd-now-clock/

Only one problem - both of these (rather cool) implementations show the incorrect time.

Mine should show the correct time (it uses your system time), what makes you say it doesn't?

As of 15:36 UTC, the xkcd version has noon pointing at the S in "Canadian Maritimes", while yours has noon pointing at the U in "US East Coast". My browser timezone is currently GMT, and system time is accurate.

Well, I'm not sure how the XKCD version does it but if you draw a straight line from the middle of the map to your location and continue to the hour on mine it should match your system time pretty closely. The XKCD version doesn't create such a match for my time (even with daylight saving factored in).

Please let me know if that's not true for you on mine though. I'd like to fix it if it's wrong.

Your version is about two hours fast for the UK. XKCD version is about spot on. Meandave's version is six hours slow.

Hmm, yes I see... my version is about spot on for the US (Indiana) while the XKCD version is about an hour and a half behind. I'm not sure what to do about it other than re-draw the map but thanks for pointing that out!

Any suggestions? For now I just rotated the map so that the time will be based on the Greenwich Meridian instead of my local meridian.

six hours slow? I'll have to fix that up, I'm basically just matching MIDNIGHT to America/Los_Angeles timezone and rotating based on the offset. I'll have to rethink that it looks like, thanks for pointing that out.

There's a few Android widgets you can get that'll do it

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