Kinda fascinated by this one. My experience at 10 would have been 12 years earlier, a few years before the Commodore VIC-20 became available to homes and there were no computers in schools, especially not my little country elementary school. It wasn't until high school (1985 or so) that we had access to Commodore PET and CBM computers that were extremely limited with basically no networking and no access to BBSes. So I'm a bit jealous of the experience you had, even though it's a far cry from the world(s) my own children could access when they were 10.
Very thought provoking piece: ASCII art is a great example of how creative thinking and hard work can take limited tools and make something amazing. In a way it feels to me that something like Minecraft took a simple toolset but then made it big and flexible enough that you could do some pretty amazing stuff with it. Minecraft blocks look crude up close but if you use enough detail and pull the camera lens back far enough you can generate some amazing stuff.
Lovely nostalgia-inducing post. I'd forgotten all about that way of sharing images!
Kinda fascinated by this one. My experience at 10 would have been 12 years earlier, a few years before the Commodore VIC-20 became available to homes and there were no computers in schools, especially not my little country elementary school. It wasn't until high school (1985 or so) that we had access to Commodore PET and CBM computers that were extremely limited with basically no networking and no access to BBSes. So I'm a bit jealous of the experience you had, even though it's a far cry from the world(s) my own children could access when they were 10.
Very thought provoking piece: ASCII art is a great example of how creative thinking and hard work can take limited tools and make something amazing. In a way it feels to me that something like Minecraft took a simple toolset but then made it big and flexible enough that you could do some pretty amazing stuff with it. Minecraft blocks look crude up close but if you use enough detail and pull the camera lens back far enough you can generate some amazing stuff.
Wow I had no idea the work done on MS Paint!
What a treat of a post! Thanks!
We had a dot matrix printer into the mid-2000s, and I literally hear that picture being printed!
Awesome post, Bryn - despite it making me feel SO OLD....!!!!!! You've taken me right back! 🤣