2019-10-15 - The black screen
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Here i am again, in my room, in front of my computer. A cup of tea
on the left of me, along with a couple of pieces of chocolate. It
is already dark outside. You can notice the end of the year is
coming close, as it gets dark earlier and earlier in the evening.
I am enjoying this view on my computer. Living in textmode. Quitely
typing these little white characters on a black screen. No
distractions. Nothing shouting for attention. Just the humble
monospace characters that appear on my screen after a gentle key
press. I wonder if all those GUI users know what they are missing?
While i am quite a visual oriented person, i do appreciate the
simplicity of textmode very much. During the day i am already
bombarded with all kinds of visual messages. Bombarded beyond the
point of saturation to be precise...
When i am sitting here in front of my computer at the end of the
day, i don't need more visuals. I don't need more of these stupid
billboards, advertisements, pop-ups, corporate branding and slogans
pushed in my face. I just want peace and quiet. A black screen with
some characters on them. That's all i want.
From when i was younger, i remember these CRT monitors, with either
green or amber text on a black background. Or if you were really
cool, you would have a single monitor that could switch between
these two colours. I remember messing about in BASIC, trying to
make silly animations of little men, running across the screen.
Perhaps, this is where the love for textmode started. However, i do
not think my current appreciation stems solely from melancholy. It
is also caused by finding a dissatisfaction with the current way of
computering. Everything is happening on the internet. Everything is
graphical. Everything is animated. Everything is portrayed as
fabulous and sleek and fancy. And it seems it is mostly done by
visuals. Fancy pictures of beautiful happy people eating a
sandwich.
It is not difficult to imagine the love for textmode started to
grow while the internet slowly grew to this insane commercial
narcissistic shitshow of (personal) branding happening inside
walled gardens owned by three or four big coorporations.
"Have a look at this bowl of soup i ate today".
Oops... I flew off at a tangent for a moment there. Apparently
there is some deep surpressed anger with the state of the internet
residing still inside me. And i started off so well... What was i
talking about again... Oh yeah... i was talking about how text mode
gives me a much better focus...
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co/op __
|uuu| \'\l
\ / \{3
>o< / /
/ | \ / /
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"I am Mike, and today we are going to unbox this great new phone
nobody needs. The great thing about this phone is that it has an
awesome app which allows you to connect to somebody far away and
when connected you can hear live audio streams of eachother. In
real time! And all thanks to cloud computing, blockchain and
artificial intelligence!"
