Flying toasters FTW!
Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
41–50 of 153 posts
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#42Beautiful. The nostalgia hit me very hard with this. I remember in the original version you had all sorts of options, and could even combine screensavers. For people who may not remember: screensavers used to be a neccessity as old CRT tubes would 'burn in' an image if they held it static for too long - leaving a shadow of the static image permanently. Screensavers kicked in after a few minutes and displayed somethin…
Screensavers are a thing again on modern TV because OLEDs have a pretty serious burn-in problem apparently. Not much creativity there, probably because it should not be annoying, so it's stuff like art galleries or subtle fireworks effects that also 'train' the pixels. Best screensaver I used to have was the BSOD one from xscreensaver, so many people fell for it. Second best is the nyan cat screensaver. Currently hav…
I used to change my screensaver every week or so. These days, I’m really happy with a slightly customised Flurry on macOS, or an clone on Linux.
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#43Beautiful. The nostalgia hit me very hard with this. I remember in the original version you had all sorts of options, and could even combine screensavers. For people who may not remember: screensavers used to be a neccessity as old CRT tubes would 'burn in' an image if they held it static for too long - leaving a shadow of the static image permanently. Screensavers kicked in after a few minutes and displayed somethin…
> screensavers used to be a neccessity as old CRT tubes would 'burn in' an image if they held it static for too long Why didn't we just show a black image?
Could be a UI thing. When the screen is black you expect the monitor to be off and press the on-off switch.
Same thing with switching monitors off after work.
Though same screensavers would run for a while and then switch the monitor to power saving mode, effectively turning it off.
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screensavers are a thing again on modern TV because OLEDs have a pretty serious burn-in problem apparently. Not much creativity there, probably because it should not be annoying, so it's stuff like art galleries or subtle fireworks effects that also 'train' the pixels. Best screensaver I used to have was the BSOD one from xscreensaver, so many people fell for it. Second best is the nyan cat screensaver. Currently hav…
The new nintendo switch has an oled screen. Is that likely to be vulnerable to burn in due to game ui staying constant?
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/worried-about-nintendo-s...
> We've designed the OLED screen to aim for longevity as much as possible, but OLED displays can experience image retention if subjected to static visuals over a long period of time. However, users can take preventative measures to preserve the screen [by] utilizing features included in the Nintendo Switch systems by default, such as auto-brightness function to prevent the screen from getting too bright, and the auto-sleep function to go into 'auto sleep' mode after short periods of time.
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not just CRTs - I had an LCD around 2006 that I left on a browser window for hours and I had the browser's window & menu bar slightly burned in for a good few months after that.
I had this happen a couple times to my iMac. The worst time I went on a week long vacation and my screen never went to sleep. I used to use this program that flashed the screen white and black rapidly and it would clear it up in about an hour. Haven’t seen any trouble in a few years, is this a solved problem now?
Can’t recall any burn-in with recent LED displays. AFAIK it is an issue with OLED ones still.
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#46My favorites were the "Totally Twisted" screen savers from Berkeley Systems - particularly the "Voyer" screen saver where you saw the silhouettes of all the people in their apartments doing crazy things at night.
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#47Last year I went down a long rabbit hole of trying to get the original After Dark screen saver to run on macOS. I got pretty close; following a guide and using a Wine wrapper I was able to create a stand alone application that when launched runs After Dark full screen. Wiggling the mouse would exit full screen and close the app. The only part I am missing is getting macOS to launch an app instead of a traditional screen saver.
A link to the original guide and the modified steps I used: https://gist.github.com/atommclain/863e5cd47ab714c1e4e966606...
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#48Always loved the Flying Toasters... the XScreensaver version of it stinks in comparison. I seem to remember there being a city skyline screensaver as well, was there an After Dark 2?
Was it the Starry Night screensaver in After Dark? I remember staring in awe at my parents’ Mac Plus showing this thing, when I was a kid.
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
You mean this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLYatZdABrs
Yes, that's the one. I totally forgot that there were other options too. It's sad that such cultural artifacts are more ephemeral than a mesopotamian clay tablet. Humans four thousand years from now may wonder what happened that made us culturally unproductive, unaware that almost everything we made didn't even exist.
This reminds me of recently learning more about ancient Rome. Since most stuff except for some monuments was built with wood, it's all gone now.
Most people lived in 3 or 4 IIRC story rowhouses. The richest were at the bottom nearest the latrine, and had their own kitchen and servants to work the kitchen. The middle class were in the middle, with some kitchen facilities they operated themselves. The poorest were at the top with no way to cook and relied on street carts.
I was kinda shocked to read this description and how similar it was to a modern city. But since all that is wood, it's all gone. We only know even this because Rome was such a powerful and rich culture that there was a lot of writing, and a comparatively lot got saved for centuries. (Although the vast majority has still been lost, just from estimating based on works cited by ancient works that we don't have copies of)
Writing wasn't cheap, and preserving and transmitting writing isn't cheap. Writing about obvious everyday stuff everyone knows in such an environment has a much smaller chance of making it through the many historical hoops it needed to make its way to us.
Many other more prehistorical places could well have had significant buildup that we would recognize as modern in all but industrialization, but except when someone went to the trouble to build with stone instead of the more common random natural materials like wood.... all gone.
Who knows what went on that we just will never know about because it didn't get written down enough or the culture that wrote it wasn't powerful enough or long lived enough to preserve enough of those writings?
(IANA historian and might be a bit or a lot off. Biggest sources are "Rome: A history in seven sackings" and "Against the grain" Not trying to make strong claims here, just a general sense of wonder at how big the gap between what we assume about the past and what actually was could be. As a layman just dipping my toe into learning more about early history / prehistory, it's shocking and fascinating)
Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Screensavers are a thing again on modern TV because OLEDs have a pretty serious burn-in problem apparently. Not much creativity there, probably because it should not be annoying, so it's stuff like art galleries or subtle fireworks effects that also 'train' the pixels. Best screensaver I used to have was the BSOD one from xscreensaver, so many people fell for it. Second best is the nyan cat screensaver. Currently hav…
In high school in the very early 2000s my friends and I thought it was hilarious to add bluescreen slides to our PowerPoint presentations. Most of the computers ran Windows 98 and it was a common sight, we’d get gasps in class. It was dumb harmless fun.
I was always fond of this one.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/blue...