[HN Gopher] After Dark Screensavers in CSS
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After Dark Screensavers in CSS
Author : ohjeez
Score : 282 points
Date : 2023-03-05 17:10 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bryanbraun.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bryanbraun.com)
| user3939382 wrote:
| These guys sell a usable/real one
| https://en.infinisys.co.jp/index.shtml Flying toasters has been
| my default for a while. Love it.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| UnderWare was way better
| https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/underware
| tonymet wrote:
| Looking back I wonder how many megawatts were wasted on screen
| savers and SetiAtHome in the 90s
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Sadly there was (still is?) a mentality that daily turning off
| your computer was somehow bad for it. Considering energy
| consumption it always seemed crazy to me, even with a nominal
| increase in drive wear.
|
| Steve Gibson still advocates never turning of spinning disks in
| this modern era.
| logbiscuitswave wrote:
| It was definitely worse on old hardware, and with the many
| old and unrefurbished computers that are likely inflicted
| with capacitor plague, you're likely to blow something up if
| you power one up that's been sitting idle in someone's
| basement for the past couple decades.
|
| With modern power management there's less of a reason to
| power it off. S3 can power down most peripherals when they
| aren't being used and draw just a few watts.
|
| Even when shut down, the PSU still needs to consume power so
| it can turn on when you press the power button, keep the
| internal clock running, and a few other things. It's minimal
| draw but it's still using electricity. Only way to completely
| turn it off is by switching off the PSU (if you can) or
| unplugging completely.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| A computer undergoes the most electrical stress when turning
| on, and doubly so for any components that also experience
| physical stresses such as HDDs and fans.
|
| One of the quickest ways to kill a HDD or fan is to make it
| spin up its motor from idle frequently as a consequence of
| power saving policies.
|
| Personally, I never turn my computers off unless I know I
| won't be using them for extended periods of time (say a week
| or two). The power bill savings aren't worth the decreased
| hardware life.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| > The power bill savings aren't worth the decreased
| hardware life.
|
| For consumer usage I find this hard to believe. I only use
| my laptop/desktop's spinning disks like 2h a day at most.
| Then there are hybrid disks or systems that are likely
| sleeping the disks when use is infrequent.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Let me put it this way:
|
| I have a ~12 year old (110,651 power on hours), 500GB
| PATA Maxtor/Seagate HDD with 135 power cycles.
|
| It's still alive and kicking ass as we speak.
| IIsi50MHz wrote:
| Hmm, I think we need more evidence to decide which
| tradeoffs we're making. I have four 1990s drives with
| thousands of power cycles, still fully functional. And
| one more from the same time period that failed about 8
| years ago.
|
| (( Why do I have these? Well, because they're SCSI or
| SCSI II, which the hosts support. And because I've not
| bothered to replace the drives with solid-state hacks
| that put SD cards on the same interface. ))
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| In my life life of L1 tech I had replaced too many HDDs
| to count.
|
| Sure, the main problem was the subpar PSUs, but are you
| sure what your PSU is enough?
| Someone wrote:
| I don't see how that addresses the claim "The power bill
| savings aren't worth the decreased hardware life."
|
| It might even be the case that, if you bought a
| replacement six years ago and kept that powered on 24/7,
| you would have ended up paying less in (hardware+power).
| timthorn wrote:
| Given we're talking of After Dark times, don't forget to
| run park before turning the machine off :)
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Ramp load/unload still wears it, it's the basic physics.
|
| And the failure rate of drives with an agressive
| powersaving[0] says there are some truth to it.
|
| [0] WD Green, remembrr them?
| Logans_Run wrote:
| Given the power consumption of the typical 21+ CRT monitors at
| the time it probably saved a whole load of power.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not to mention, most computers at the time didn't implement
| any kind of idle power savings. Running a flashy screensaver
| didn't use any more power than sitting at the desktop.
| tomcam wrote:
| about 350
| bigfoot675 wrote:
| Does anyone know if there is a straightforward way to implement
| logic for showing a screen saver like this in a basic website
| after X number of minutes without user interaction?
| human wrote:
| setTimeout to trigger the screensaver. Restart the timeout on
| mouse move.
| Nition wrote:
| In 1997 our school class computer had three particularly fun
| screensavers:
|
| - The one from Microsoft Dangerous Creatures, which would show
| wild animals and (if you forgot to tell it not to) also play
| their sounds. Fun times when you're all sitting quietly in class
| and suddenly the computer plays a lion roar.
|
| - After Dark. For some reason the flying toasters were endlessly
| fascinating back then.
|
| - One that was a top-down view of a soccer field with an actual
| simulated game being played between little AI players. I think
| occasionally there was even a streaker. I've never managed to
| find this one, does anyone know it?
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| > you're all sitting quietly in class and suddenly the computer
| plays a lion roar
|
| INTERACTIVITY
| samstave wrote:
| You know what would be an interesting detail to add to sites:
|
| The ability to designate a specific background CSS "tab-saver"
| such that the base bkgd css is the animation you wanted, so such
| as this area:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/cZuXEq2.png
|
| The white-space on the sides will play the css saver... but you
| can set each background type based on site (kind of like RES on
| steriods)
|
| So that the borders show this CSS... it will allow for a super
| fast identification of which tab/site your on (if youre anything
| like me and I constantly have multiple windows, with many tabs,
| on multiple monitors.
|
| It would be cool to be able to tack a background to to site
| groups such that the edge based animations you select could be
| genre specific.
|
| Favorite sites could be "starred" and any starred site can have a
| set bkgd.
|
| just to make the navigating between content/thought silos can be
| faster because you will see the border/bkgd in a faster mental
| pattern recognition than reading a URL or even a color. as we can
| identify different motions faster than we can other pattern
| recogs.
| neom wrote:
| CSS Microsoft Bob would be fun.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkU4WWEUj-Y&ab_channel=LGR
| konfusinomicon wrote:
| after dark was the best..second only to hey macaroni. next
| version of this needs to include bungee jumping cows
| FollowingTheDao wrote:
| Oh my this is bringing me back! I was providing desktop support
| for Cisco Systems in North Carolina in 1995 and all anybody
| wanted was After Dark screensavers. Messages was popular (We
| would often walk to a persons desk and know where they were,
| really helpful), as was Rainstorm.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Spotlight shows a System 7.5 desktop with "1.6GB available."
|
| I don't believe you. ;)
| re wrote:
| That's Mac OS 9, not System 7.5! Almost certainly a screenshot
| from an emulator though.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Power Mac 9500 came with 2GB HD
| johnvaluk wrote:
| Why does CSS animation consume so much CPU? I've been trying to
| use it in my own projects, but the fans kick in even with a
| single simple continuous animation. Unfortunately, this
| (awesome!) example is no exception.
| speedgoose wrote:
| It may be an issue with your machine.
| Tade0 wrote:
| It's probably not the CPU, but the integrated GPU. Browsers are
| hardcoded to use that instead of the discrete GPU.
| juddgaddie wrote:
| Are you running Linux or Windows? On Linux some GPU accelerated
| functions are disabled. chrome://gpu/ or firefox -
| about:support
| cesaref wrote:
| I seem to remember you could alter how well done the toast was
| done in the preferences for flying toasters.
|
| I'm also remembering the fish tank slowing down as more fish
| appeared on screen on my rather underpowered Mac IIcx back in the
| day :)
| khazhoux wrote:
| Oh I love trash!
|
| I love it because it's trash.
| ibbtown wrote:
| Ah you made me think of my favourite screensaver. It was
| definitely "Bis ans Ende der Welt" (Until world's end) from the
| German post. Watched it many hours as a youth. But I think I miss
| a after dark screensaver which I really liked but I can't
| remember which one it was
| swayvil wrote:
| On a related note
|
| a collection of free screen savers for X11, macOS, iOS and
| Android
|
| by Jamie Zawinski and many others.
|
| https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
| btown wrote:
| For those who saw the Flying Toasters demo and were disappointed
| that it didn't have the classic song, I've got you:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjlusi_h_XA
|
| ... Gleaming angels of love / On mighty toaster wings!
| dspillett wrote:
| I always liked that they had Ride Of The Valeries as an
| alternative. Complete with lyrics. Da da d-da daaa da...
| meitros wrote:
| This would be fun to add to a personal homepage (can use the
| Visibility API): start showing the screensaver when the user
| switches to another tab, and hide it/show the content again when
| they have a mousemove event on your site.
| ForOldHack wrote:
| The Warp does not have the space bar jump to hyper space, and it
| needs Lunatic Fringe.
|
| Oh! Its now on Google Code...
| https://code.google.com/archive/p/lunatic-fringe/
| ForOldHack wrote:
| Here is the game for the web: http://fringe.jamescarnley.com/
| pmarreck wrote:
| this is... not it. it's a weak replica though
| a-dub wrote:
| berkeley systems!
|
| they had an office in downtown berkeley that featured a twisty
| slide that connected the first and second floors!
| notbeuller wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/19970625091034/http://www.berksy...
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _After Dark (90 's screensavers) in CSS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28806699 - Oct 2021 (26
| comments)
|
| _Berkeley Systems "After Dark" screensavers recreated in CSS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28006679 - July 2021 (149
| comments)
|
| _Aggressively Stupid: The Story Behind After Dark (2007)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22338945 - Feb 2020 (23
| comments)
|
| _After Dark in CSS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14429271 - May 2017 (1
| comment)
|
| _After Dark in CSS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10935432 - Jan 2016 (2
| comments)
|
| _After Dark in CSS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9675287 - June 2015 (2
| comments)
|
| _Aggressively Stupid: The Story Behind After Dark (2007)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7702105 - May 2014 (11
| comments)
|
| _Aggressively Stupid: The Story Behind After Dark_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1338175 - May 2010 (3
| comments)
| nobody_nothing wrote:
| For those on Mac who want to configure these (or any web page) as
| your actual screensaver, you can use WebViewScreenSaver[0].
|
| [0]: https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver
| pmarreck wrote:
| Would love a way to use any of these in Linux, especially Lunatic
| Fringe and Flying Toasters
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| XScreensaver has flying toasters at least.
|
| https://manpages.debian.org/wheezy/xscreensaver-gl/flyingtoa...
| dwighttk wrote:
| I think starry night was my go-to, and I'm surprised to not see
| it here as it seems like it would be easier than a couple they
| did like toasters and fish.
| readingnews wrote:
| What no Lunatic Fringe?
|
| The most awesome screen saver game.
|
| Another one was Johnny Castaway, but it was not a game.
| infl8ed wrote:
| wow that sweet nostalgia, did anyone else also experience the
| psychedlic 'timeless' animation sequence?
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAAziY-KiBQ
| atum47 wrote:
| Do you remember Johnny Castaway? That was fun! Back when I used
| to have some more free time I thought about implementing
| Nostalgic stuff like that.
|
| I have a "partially done" ray cast 2d experiment [1] which was an
| attempt at wolf graphics. You could use it to recreate the "maze"
| one. Not sure it can be done using CSS only though.
|
| 1 - https://github.com/victorqribeiro/myRaycast
| Joeri wrote:
| I spent hours watching that guy, always hoping I would see him
| do something new.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Johnny Castaway was one of the first things to cause young me
| to experience genuine wonder at the vast and unpredictable
| possibilities of computers.
| nu11ptr wrote:
| Every day I'd make sure the screensaver came on just to see
| what he would do that particular day. I still miss that
| screensaver.
| overcast wrote:
| I never understood screensavers, I certainly remember my old CRTs
| in the 90s sleeping. Zero reason for the power draw when not
| using.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Where's Lunatic Fringe?
| morsch wrote:
| I have fond memories of that as well. I think I first played it
| on a holiday on my dad's black and white PowerBook. Those fast
| enemies with the blade-like front were terrifying.
|
| What's the spiritual successor?
| ellisv wrote:
| Also missing Mowin' Man and a bunch of other good ones
| ForOldHack wrote:
| My very first question! I was actually hearing that odd yell
| sound in my head.
| jiveturkey wrote:
| any ability to install these as system (macOS) screensavers?
| jaredsohn wrote:
| Could look into how to show a webpage as the screensaver.
|
| From a Google search: https://osxdaily.com/2016/06/05/web-site-
| as-screen-saver-mac...
| garbagecoder wrote:
| This makes me feel reeeeeeeeally old.
| IIsi50MHz wrote:
| Makes me feel really young! Happy timetravel \\(^_^)/
| VonGuard wrote:
| After Dark now works in the browser thanks to Archive.org. Here
| are some examples:
|
| Disney After Dark: https://archive.org/details/after-dark-disney
|
| After Dark 3.2 for Windows:
| https://archive.org/details/AFTERDARK32_WIN
|
| After Dark Looney Toons: https://archive.org/details/LOONEY_WIN
|
| After Dark for Macintosh 2.0:
| https://archive.org/details/AfterDark_mac
|
| After Dark Simpsons: https://archive.org/details/SIMPSONS_WIN
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(page generated 2023-03-05 23:00 UTC)