ASCII Clouds • Hacker News Board

ksymph wrote: post #12

This is cool... But I feel like having different color/brightness for each symbol kinda defeats the purpose of it being ASCII when the symbols only correspond to different intensities anyway.

Yes, but it is "ascii art" and hence artistic freedom.

Re: ASCII Clouds

#55

Post by intrasight » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 4:38 PM UTC

Now I want this on a digital artframe in my livingroom.

Re: ASCII Clouds

#56

Post by onde » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 5:09 PM UTC

NSPG911 wrote: post #29

i would kill to have something like this in wallpaper engine

On macOS there is Plash to use webpages as wallpapers. Works great

Re: ASCII Clouds

#57

Post by tracker1 » Wed, Jan 14, 2026, 7:01 PM UTC

block_dagger wrote: post #28

Given the name, I expected more actual ASCII characters/options and selectable text. Visually appealing and fun to play with, however.

Was experimenting with something similar... working on a modern QWK reader, and this is kind of a core thing to deal with, rendering ansi in messages as html. (synchronet color codes don't work right and renegade color codes untested).

Was an initial experiment with Claude Code, but kind of a cool result that's pretty close to what I want.

https://github.com/bbs-land/bbs-ansi-to-html

Re: ASCII Clouds

#58

Post by sang459 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 4:49 AM UTC

https://caidan.dev/portfolio/ascii_clouds/?cs=6&wa=0.1&ws=0....

Re: ASCII Clouds

#59

Post by haritha-j » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 8:26 AM UTC

ZpJuUuNaQ5 wrote: post #38

haritha-j wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First time I came across this, why does a github account get flaggged?

No idea. I submitted a reinstatement request, but I haven't received any response in the past 4 months.

new fear unlocked.

Re: ASCII Clouds

#60

Post by mildmelon » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 7:08 PM UTC

Hey, I'm the author here. Can't believe this got so much attention! I appreciate all of the kind words and feedback. I recently updated the tool to more easily share what you create through the url or you can export a PNG/WEBM. Would love to see what you make with it, please tag me c:

If you're interested in seeing more of what I work on, follow me on my socials where I post everyday.

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/caidan.dev Twitter: https://x.com/caidanwilliams Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ancientsunshine