Check against current date (day)

I'm using the top items block to display some article titles.

In the corresponding pubtype I use the 'notes' field to let users add a 
date stamp via the dd calendar property.

Now I'm running into problems since in the top items block I want to 
show only articles where the date provided via the calendar property 
'notes' is equal to the current *day*.

I know that the following snippet won't work (because of the unix time 
stamps including seconds) - not sure if this is possible at all, but I 
really would appreciate any help formating the date.

<xar:if condition="!empty($items)">
<ul>
<xar:foreach in="$items" value="$item">
<xar:set name="time">time</xar:set>
<xar:set 
name="articleCall">xarModAPIFunc('articles','user','get',array('aid' => 
$item['aid']))</xar:set>
<xar:if condition="$articleCall['notes'] eq $time">
<li>
<a href="#$item['link']#">#$item['title']#</a>
</li>
</xar:if>
</xar:foreach>
</ul>
</xar:if>


Karsten