I've made a sketch for ASCII art before too. Never thought to make a video showing it. Probably still won't but the idea is in my brain now. For ASCII art sketches I draw the text characters in place and work out how they fit together smoothly when I work in Notepad.

An application to write about 2 topics for another website. (I never heard from them but when I looked more the site seemed to be shutting down).

ASCII Art

The Forgotten Art Made for the Internet When it was Still New Does ASCII Art Belong, Forgotten, in the Internet Archives? The Internet Art Almost No One Knows About The Art of Making Pictures When You Can't Draw a Straight Line

I still make ASCII art. I've seen it called a few things: keyboard art, type-based illustrations and text art. I think it is the most often stolen, and yet unknown, art form on the Internet. But, that's not what I really want to write about. ASCII art is technically challenging, like putting together a puzzle. It can be pretty, it can even be coloured so it isn't just black and white. Images can be tiny or large, depending on the size of your viewing screen and the patience of the artist. I began making ASCII art because I thought it was amazing and I found a way to draw long after I had given up ever creating images myself. Making an image I feel proud of boosts me up and other days, when I'm down, making something small and simple at least helps me feel I accomplished something creative with the day. I know ASCII art is outdated. Once MS started bringing images into email and game developers discovered pixels, text art began a decline into musty archives. I still love it. Misplaced, ridiculous loyalty possibly, but I still make ASCII art. Not a great focus for a story, but the real story is the art and I'm not short of good images to showcase with a post on Messy Nessy.

https://asciiartist.com/ http://asciiartist.com/ldbasciiart/ - Private link which I don't share on the site. All the ldb art is created by myself so I can use whatever works to illustrate the post. I take screen shots of the art in MS Notepad with the font set to bold. That seems to work best/ easiest.

Rural (Urban) Exploration

Finding Lost Ontario with a Digital Camera and the Wrong Shoes Exploring Abandoned Places While Not Really Believing in Ghosts Exploring Lost Ontario While Saving the Odd Garden Flower Exploring Abandoned Farmhouses in Ontario Photographing Old Ontario Farmhouses

I am 56 and still photographing old, derelict farmhouses here in Ontario. I didn't think that was unusual until younger people told me they were surprised I was so old. (They said it much kinder than that). I guess I am a relic, photographing other relics. But, I love the old buildings, places and the odd bits of this and that I find along the way. Abandoned and forgotten gardens with surviving plants among the wildflowers. A green Pyrex bowl which I found buried in the dirt as I walked through a field after photographing a farm house which was a wreck then and is now demolished. I don't like to call them wrecks. It seems an unkind word. Modern ruins is a little more gentile. I seldom enter the old places. Partly because that crosses some polite Canadian line of courtesy and respect to the house itself. Partly, because I'm middle age and not too skinny. Exploring old places is a bit risky. I can talk my way out of questions from people, it helps being an older woman then. Plus, I really do love the old places and listening to the stories people will tell once they decide I'm no threat. Being caught is not a problem for me. Bigger issues have been animals like birds, bees, and frogs underfoot. Unknown ground when walking around long grass and deep snow can trip you up, literally. Anyway, this is the story I would like to write. Mostly about exploring as an older woman and the places I have found. Photos and imagery are no problem, I have been exploring with a digital camera since 2006.

https://ontarioexploration.com - Not a great link to see the images right now. I have just bought software to add watermarks to my images and I've changed my site from WordPress . A lot was lost along the way. I have all the photos on my hard drive, just not yet on the site again.

Although I believe there is a virus and people are sick with it, I don’t believe in the need for lockdowns, shut ins and etc. Most people who have had the virus recovered from it, just like many other flu viruses. You don’t hear about them. We don’t hear about domestic violence caused by people still having access to abused substances while in close confines with the people they abuse. How many people are living a nightmare and would rather take their chances with a virus? We don’t hear about people committing suicide. Virus tallies include people who had the virus but died from other causes, not always related at all.

We are given endless propaganda about staying home for the good of others/ everyone. So we are guilted into obeying. Meanwhile businesses are closed, many will not reopen, jobs are gone. There is talk of roads being closed – for a virus, really? What are we not supposed to see while living under the roof over our heads?

People are trapped at home, dependent on the Internet with all the various spyware from marketers. I’m sure this is a great time for gathering information. What happens when they start using it? Here we are, herded into our cages, waiting and ready for whatever messages they want to imprint in our brains. Marketing has been preying on people for generations, now it’s just gotten so much easier. Being pushed into the lemming mentality makes us all fish in buckets for them.

This extreme panic is for some other reason. This is not the first virus to make its way around the world. Does that qualify it as a pandemic? I wonder if some people just wanted to live in a zombie/ apocalypse movie. Others are making money from it and other still are using it for their own ends. These are the people that worry me. What is all the hysteria hiding? Why are businesses shut down and people trapped in their homes (hoping or assuming everyone has a home) for an endless time but the quarantine is just 2 weeks. Why are schools shut down but children from split homes are still shuttled back and forth several times a week from family to family. There are many things which don’t make sense.

This is why I created the coronavirus ASCII art. It’s a protest. I hope it gets people thinking, for themselves, rather than listening to the bottomless propaganda flooding the media. I think Con19 is the right terminology.

I knew Joan from the newsgroup but I have not found her online since she left the ASCII art newsgroup/ community. I think of her often, at least as often as I still see her ASCII art ripped off online. She has a style I can almost always spot, even if someone has removed or changed the artist initials with her art.

Her kids will be grown up now and she won’t be fighting for computer time. I hope life has gone along well for her, where ever she is.

Joan G. Stark’s Original ASCII

Believe it or not, I “discovered” ASCII art in winter of 1995. I think I saw a tiny bicycle made in ascii characters and was totally amazed by it. I joked that someone must have had too much time on their hands! But still I was in awe of it… I didn’t even know what it was called. After e-mailing several friends, I found out that it was called “ASCII art”. It was then that I found the USENET newsgroup alt.ascii-art and started lurking to find more of these computer pictures.

I then started collecting as much of the ASCII art as I could. I began wandering through the internet and realized that there was way too much to save. I would forget my idea of having a huge collection… I know where to find the pictures if I want something.

Being a “crafty” type person, I decided that I would try to make the ASCII pictures myself. I’ve always like to doodle on paper, so I figured it couldn’t be that much different. My first project was to make a signature for me to use. I started diddling around with the keyboard in May/June of 1996 by doing lettering. Someone then told me about “FIGLET”. For those of you who don’t know, FIGLET is a computer program that creates fancy lettering from text. Hearing about figlet took the thrill away from making the fonts- I could spend an hour creating an alphabet by hand and someone else could just press a computer key and have the letters pop up “pre-made”.

And so I went on to the pictures… I know that there are programs available to create ASCII art — (I don’t know that much about them…) — but the programs usually create solid-type ASCII art. Even then, the pictures still are pretty rough and need touch-ups to make them aesthetically correct. I have collected some conversion software information from alt.ascii-art and offer them to you– no guarantees– .

I make the line-style ASCII pictures and I don’t believe that there are programs for this style. Basically I sit down at the keyboard and start typing.

OK– so I can’t consider myself a “newbie” at ASCII art any more. The honeymoon is over! I’ve been making the pics since 1996. Some people are anticipating my “burn-out”– but I continue to make the ASCII art pictures and I still look forward to improving. I’d like to be able to look at each of my creations and say “wow!”– there are some that I like a lot and there are some that I consider “ok”. Most of the crummy ones have met their demise at the hands of the delete button. Despite this, I’ve included some of my early works in this gallery so you can see how my artwork has evolved. Perhaps I may inspire other budding ascii artists…

I am just amazed at all ASCII artwork. There are a limited number of characters available on the keyboard and they are all fixed. Considering this fact, it is truly remarkable that there are so many different ASCII art pictures.

I don’t know how long ASCII art has been around. I’ve been told that it dates back at least to the 1960s when computers consisted only of large main frames. There were no PCs and no monitors. Transmissions were done through terminals that were very much like electric typewriters. Games and pictures were done in ASCII. (Remember the original “Zork”?) Some of the pictures passed around then are still being passed around today. See History of ASCII Art.

For me, the ASCII art is still pretty new … although I remember as a kid, my father would take me to work with him on an occasional Saturday. While there, I would play on the secretary’s typewriter and make pictures on a sheet of paper using commas and lines– my “first” ASCII drawings!. (I would also link all of her paper clips together– shhh, don’t tell my dad!). I had a lot of fun those weekend mornings… I guess you could say that I’ve been making text art — even before computers! :)

But times have changed! Gone are the typewriters, papers, and carbon copies. I doodle as I did as a child… but now I don’t need a new sheet of paper or white-out when I make a mistake. Sigh… and my children have already connected my paper clips together! :( But that’s OK, I don’t need them! :) I just have to fight the kids for computer time!

Source: About Joan Stark