Kirkman14

5 ms·

1.
by Kirkman14 6mo ago
These are definitely ANSI art. They use the unique PC extended character set (pipes, shaded blocks, etc), the classic PC CGA/EGA 16-color palette, and ANSI escape codes. I don't think this term is exclusively American ... there we
2.
by Kirkman14 6mo ago
Most ANSI art is displayed on the web as PNG because it's lossless and can be indexed to the correct 16 colors. Lossy formats like JPG introduce weird artifacts that screw up the look. So, for a blog post, PNG is the most robust way to
3.
The ANSI art "telecomics" of the 1992 election(breakintochat.com)
77 points by Kirkman14 6mo ago|13 comments
4.
by Kirkman14 6mo ago
At the height of the 1992 presidential election, Don Lokke Jr. began publishing ANSI art political cartoons. He called his digital comic strips "telecomics," and he used them to channel the skepticism and anger felt by everyday Am
5.
by Kirkman14 8mo ago
Thanks so much, and I hope you enjoy the blog series. I'm still working on Part 4, but I'm very happy with how the first three turned out.
6.
by Kirkman14 8mo ago
I don't know if you'd be willing, but I would greatly appreciate it if you would add some of these thoughts as a comment to Part 2 of the blog series!
7.
by Kirkman14 8mo ago
Ah, now this is something that Part 2 of this series gets into -- how do you define a "comic"? ( https://breakintochat.com/blog/2025/12/28/ansi-art-and-webco... ) Will Eisner and Scott McCloud sa
8.
by Kirkman14 8mo ago
There's an extended quote from Eerie at the end of this story where he addresses this (in the context of where/if ANSI comics fit into the history of webcomics).
9.
by Kirkman14 8mo ago
Same here. I was an active BBSer as a teen throughout the 1990s, but was never part of the underground artscene.
10.
"Inspector Dangerfuck", ANSI art comic from 1994(breakintochat.com)
111 points by Kirkman14 9mo ago|24 comments
11.
by Kirkman14 9mo ago
The 2006 book "A History of Webcomics" asserted that "Inspector Dangerfuck" -- created by ANSI artist Eerie -- was "the first known comic on the Internet." The book offered no dates, no details, and no sources.
12.
by Kirkman14 1y ago
You're very welcome! I've been studying his work for many years. It may not have succeeded financially, but you have to admire his passion in each of his projects.
13.
by Kirkman14 1y ago
Yes, the Music Creator has been very tricky to run in emulation on my Mac. Originally, I could not get the installer to work in DOSBox, but it did work in QEMU. After installing the TMC software to a hard disk image, it ran for me in both
14.
Yaakov Kirschen’s other legacy(jns.org)
26 points by Kirkman14 1y ago|6 comments
15.
by Kirkman14 1y ago
Jewish cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen died on April 14 at the age of 87, and he is (rightly) being celebrated for “Dry Bones,” his great life’s work. But I would like to highlight his lesser-known legacy: as a tech innovator who tried to bring
16.
by Kirkman14 2y ago
Last fall, Josh Renaud gave a presentation to the Atlanta Historical Computing Society about rescuing and researching cartoonist Ya'akov Kirschen's unique computer games and software. In the 1980s, Kirschen managed to get splashy
17.
by Kirkman14 2y ago
How do you raise awareness of a cool but obscure graphics format used by BBSes on an overlooked computer platform in the late 1980s and early 1990s? Well, you could start by writing a six-part, 14,000-word in-depth history of it. https:&#x
18.
by Kirkman14 2y ago
* Download pack ZIP: https://mistigris.org/packs/IGNITE01.ZIP * Watch pack as a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS_riObN32o * Read deep-dive series on history of IGS: https://breakint
19.
IGNITE artpack highlights obscure graphics protocol for Atari ST BBSes(pouet.net)
3 points by Kirkman14 2y ago|2 comments
20.
by Kirkman14 2y ago
How do you spread the word about an obscure Atari ST graphics format from the BBSing days? Recruit some folks to help you make an artpack full of images and animations showing it off! That's the idea behind IGNITE, an artpack from Mist
21.
by Kirkman14 2y ago
This is the second part of a new multi-part deep dive into "Instant Graphics and Sound." IGS was a plain-text protocol for displaying vector graphics, animation, music and sound on Atari ST BBSes, which debuted in 1988. This part
22.
Lost Commodore Amiga music software recovered(breakintochat.com)
2 points by Kirkman14 3y ago|1 comments
23.
by Kirkman14 3y ago
Developed in 1986, "Magic Harp" was an early attempt at AI-like autonomous music generation. Israeli cartoonist Ya'akov Kirschen's idea was to extract three sorts of "musical DNA" from existing works, then reco
24.
Pac-Man in a kippah? Lost Jewish educational Apple II games salvaged(breakintochat.com)
4 points by Kirkman14 4y ago|1 comments
25.
by Kirkman14 4y ago
Ever wonder what the Jewish version of Pac-Man might look like? In the early 1980s, the Gesher organization in Israel began developing educational software for Jewish students. They recruited Jerusalem Post cartoonist Yaakov Kirschen, who w
26.
by Kirkman14 4y ago
Before we had Rotten Tomatoes, before we even had the web, a group of diehard Star Trek TNG fans in Usenet's rec.arts.startrek.* newsgroups began submitting weekly episode ratings to Joe Reiss, who would collect them and share the resu
27.
by Kirkman14 4y ago
I've been trying Whisper on my old setup (Mac Pro 2012 running Mojave, with Radeon RX 580), and it's a pretty amazing tool. Unfortunately my system is not ideal for today's AI tools. Whisper runs only on the CPU, and it'
28.
“What were we thinking?”: Creators of Thieves' Guild revisit 1990s BBS game(breakintochat.com)
1 points by Kirkman14 6y ago|0 comments
29.
I completed my 7-year quest to play Thieves' Guild, an Atari ST BBS game(breakintochat.com)
3 points by Kirkman14 6y ago|0 comments
30.
BBS door game programmers bypassed the limits of terminals and text(breakintochat.com)
1 points by Kirkman14 6y ago|0 comments

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