Author Archives: Doug Moore
Holiday 2011 Hackathon
We here at Sixteen Colors can tend to have a motivation problem. For this holiday season we have a solution! We are inviting anyone to join us on December 28, 2011 to put our heads together and make some improvements … Continue reading
The Triumphant Return
Sadly, the Sixteen Colors ANSI Art and ASCII Art Archive has been down since the end of September, 2010. Changes were made to our shared hosting environment and I never got around to making changes to accommodating them. Sometime in … Continue reading
YouTube does ASCII
Personally, I think this is the worst day on the Internet. However, YouTube has thrown a bone to us old school users -- today there is a TEXTp mode available for all videos.
Decide Where Sixteen Colors Should Go
We here at Sixteen Colors have a lot of ideas about the direction of the site. However, we don't know what you, the users would like to see. We would love to hear your opinions. Over at Codaset we have … Continue reading
Comments on Artworks
During creation of the latest version of Sixteen Colors, we were able to slip in one piece of new functionality: commenting. Using Disqus you are now able to leave comments on any individual piece of artwork. If you would like … Continue reading
The End of an Era (of Unreliability)
I am all too aware of the problems that have plagued Sixteen Colors over the past year. Thankfully, that time should be over. I am constantly looking to recreate a bigger and better of Sixteen Colors. This has been the case since the first version went live many years ago. During this process I have waffled between many technologies to accomplish the task. Today is the time to make a big change in that regard, and I think it was a long time coming.
Sixteen Colors has run under the .NET Framework for the last five years or so. It has been good when reliable, and offered the best engine for converting ANSIs, ASCIIs, Amiga images, RIP files, XBins, etc. However, with the great work by Brian Cassidy on Image::Textmode and Cleaner on Ansilove, the landscape has changed. I have decided to switch over to a php version of the site for two particular reasons. First, it opens up a lot of options for hosting. Second, it hopefully opens the window for more contributors to the development of the site than just myself.
While I have been laying the foundation for this change for a while, my hand was forced recently. For the last month (two months? more?) the site has been completely useless. No images appear. Due to that limitation, I have rushed together a new version of the site that is very stripped down. I merely wanted a site that would allow you to view every image in every pack. That has mostly been accomplish with this current version. Unfortunately for the moment there is no search functionality, no favoriting, and a lack of metadata (such as artist and group lists). I hope to bring those back before long.
Please let me know what you think of the new site, how it can be improved, and any problems you run into.
- It may take a few hours for the new site to propogate for some people; if you're seeing the old site, that is probably why Continue reading
Evoke 2009
Here at Sixteen Colors we have not done a great job of covering events occurring in the scene. We covered the 20 goto 10 gallery in 2007, but have ignored everything else. This is an attempt to remedy that problem.
Evoke 2009 was this past weekend, July 31 to August 2. Evoke is a demoparty held in Cologne, Germany and is one of the few demo parties that continues to support the ANSI and ASCII communities. Evoke was created in 1997 by members of Black Maiden and has run an ANSI and ASCII art competition at each party since it's inception (there was no Evoke in 2001). Evoke is also the only demo party that allows ANSI and ASCII artists the option to submit their entries remotely. Keep that in mind for next year!
This year the competition saw a resurgence in the textmode medium. It is the first time in several years that ANSI/ASCII and Amiga were split into two separate categories. The ANSI and ASCII category had nine entries and the Amiga category had seven entries. The entries were primarily European artists, as is typical of the Evoke competition. Unfortunately I am not familiar with most of the artists, but everyone put in a great effort. Evoke attendees are all given an opportunity to rate their top three images. From those rankings, the final list is created. The results were revealed during the demo party and seemed to get an enthusiastic response. It would be fantastic if in following years we can increase the exposure of the ANSI and ASCII mediums by contributing more to the competition. Continue reading
Editing ANSI Online and Continuing Development
Over the past year I have talked with several people about editing ANSI online. It seems to be a great way to extend the lifetime of the art medium. Perhaps it could even bring in some new artists. As I … Continue reading
Significant Downtime
The site has had significant downtime for, well, over a month now. I have no idea what's going on. I believe I have at least gotten the server to reset itself when there is a problem, which is better than … Continue reading
1994-1996 Pack Goodness!
Thanks to Prizm Sixteen Colors has added 68 packs to its collection! I have more packs from him to add as well, but they require a little more sorting through. 1994 AIC1194.ZIP 1994 AIC1294.ZIP 1994 FTL-1294.ZIP 1994 IMP45B94.ZIP 1994 JUS-0994.ZIP … Continue reading