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Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

bryanbraun.com

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Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#81

Post by tablespoon »

willis936 wrote: post #73
donatj wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for inspiring me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for the next person who uses my current workstation.

> It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for inspiring me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for the next person who uses my current workstation.

What company won't wipe and reimage it before redeployment?

Hell, I usually wipe my own work PCs before surrendering them after an upgrade, to make sure it's done properly.

Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#82

Post by chrisseaton »

dylan604 wrote: post #79
chrisseaton wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how CRT physics works. The screen is charged. That charge causes burn in. The best way to not burn in, short of turning the screen off, is to charge the screen as little as possible. The least charge you can give it is a black signal, which means least burn in.

>The least charge you can give it is a black signal The point is that you could not give it no signal without it being off. LEDs can do this. The closest to black from a CRT I saw was from Sony's Professional Studio reference monitors that were $32K for a 32" screen. When Sony brought out their OLED reference monitors, they did a side-by-side comparisson of their best CRT, an LCD and the new OLED. All 3 were receivin…

I think you've got the wrong end of the discussion, there.

If you can't or don't want to turn you CRT off... then what's the next best thing for avoiding burn-in?

Send it a black signal, or send it a bright signal?

It's the black signal, because it charges the screen less. Charging the screen is what causes burn in. If you charge it less you get less burn in.

> Arguing that CRTs could display true black

Nobody argued this. Where did you think you read this? I said 'show a black image'. Send it a black signal. It's the minimum signal you can send it without turning it off.

Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#83

Post by jagged-chisel »

atommclain wrote: post #47

Last 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 scr…

Given a standalone application, you might just be able to stick the executable in a .saver in the right place with the right Info.plist entries.

Perhaps you need to adapt your work to actually render on an NSView first ...

Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#84

Post by willis936 »

tablespoon wrote: post #81
willis936 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for inspiring me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for the next person who uses my current workstation.

> It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for inspiring me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for the next person who uses my current workstation. What company won't wipe and reimage it before redeployment? Hell, I usually wipe my own work PCs before surrendering them after an upgrade, to make sure it's done properly.

It's a relatively small lab in a university and part of my job is keeping the computers running.

I could wipe, but I want to make as little work for my replacement as possible. Well, maybe a few minutes of extra work to get rid of a screensaver.

Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#86

Post by moftz »

tablespoon wrote: post #81
willis936 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for inspiring me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for the next person who uses my current workstation.

> It's my last day at my current job. Thank you for inspiring me to set up a 1 minute BSOD screensaver for the next person who uses my current workstation. What company won't wipe and reimage it before redeployment? Hell, I usually wipe my own work PCs before surrendering them after an upgrade, to make sure it's done properly.

If it's a desktop workstation with lots of expensive development tools installed or a delicate toolchain (especially one in a lab), why spend the time and effort wiping the thing just to reinstall all of the same stuff over again? It might even be a shared computer. I remember my help desk summer job, I worked at a hot desk that was staffed 24/7 so the same computers were used by first, second, and third shift. There were a lot of things that had to be logged into (mainframes, customer email accounts, etc) and not all of the desktops covered the same customers so it would have been a nightmare to handle all of the images and configurations. Whenever a configuration had to change, they would make a new backup to cover that specific desktop in case it died.

Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#88

Post by moftz »

fredley wrote: post #24
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The same goes for mesopotamia. We know a bit from the clay tablets, but we don't know anything about the ephemoral memes of the time.

Occasionally we find clay tablets like the one where the guy is bitching about quality of copper ingots he was supposed to buy for his boss. It's kind of a fun look into normal, everyday life that almost never made it past the recycle bin of history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complaint_tablet_to_Ea-nasir

Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#89

Post by nsxwolf »

donatj wrote: post #16
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #6

Earlier 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.

My favorite trick was to take a screenshot of the desktop, hide all the icons and the task bar, then set the screenshot as the wallpaper. It gets even the most advanced users every time.

Re: Berkeley Systems “After Dark” screensavers recreated in CSS

#90

Post by rainbowzootsuit »

Solstinox wrote: post #25

The Star Trek TOS and TNG After Dark Screensavers took things to another level. Tribbles filling your screen. Worf phasering away your desktop.

I had this as well. It also included sound effects so you stumble to bed late late at night after a long session of _Pathways into Darkness_, or maybe after meeting Achanar for the first time in _Myst_ and just as you're drifting into sleep you're jolted awake by the sound of a communicator establishing a connection, a red alert claxon, or more gently roused by tribbles cooing. You have to stumble back to the computer to turn off the power to your beige Yamaha powered computer speakers.
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