8 ms·
Recreating sci-fi terminals using VHS
- walrus01 4y ago"VHS" as the name of a software project seems like it'll be doomed to obscurity, because it's effectively impossible to find in a search engine unless you include other very specific keywords.
- naikrovek 4y ago“vhs charmbracelet” “vhs commandline” “vhs script” “vhs golang” we’ll figure out how to find it. you stop thinking about SEO. take a break. SEO rots your mind.
- walrus01 4y agoI don't care about seo, I care about naming things accurately... Or at least uniquely. If I search for gimp or inkscape I can at least find it easily.
- layer8 4y agoShould have called it Betamax.
- naet 4y agoOne my biggest pet peeves is people reusing existing names like this for random software libraries. If you're thinking about it please just don't, it's not cute and it makes things worse for everyone. I love real VHS tapes and still have a collection, so of course I checked out the post... naturally it has nothing to do with an actual VHS whatsoever. Libraries with well established preexisting names like Zine, Hegel, etc. bug me to no end. Now many natural search terms will be polluted by each other eg "VHS not recording".
- aumerle 4y agoYou mean like vhs terminal does not seem very specific to me.
- joshspankit 4y agoBravo. These pass the “sniff test” and that’s impressive
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThat's cool.
- jmbwell 4y agocw: ranting, old man shakes fist at cloud First, "Datassette" has nothing to do with tape-based storage for the C64, and now "VHS" has nothing to do with tape-based storage for video. This is a nice project with cool results, but we're not out of names for things. Is nothing sacred?
- classichasclass 4y agoI was kind of hoping we were using analysis of VHS movie frames to accurately reconstruct those movie terminal interfaces. But it's still interesting work.
- skyyler 4y agoIt seems too obvious to state but... No, nothing is sacred. Burn your idols.
- bee_rider 4y agoSimilarly, nowadays tar is only very rarely used to archive to tapes. Actually it is not really that similar because I think this VHS command is pretty recent and was never used to record to actual VHS, but it is still a funny contrast.
- switchbak 4y agoIt took me far too long to understand what you were saying. I actually thought he was recording and playing back his terminal via an actual VHS and thought ... jeesh these kids really pine for the 80's! Nope ... more overlaying different words in different contexts. We need a commune for old neckbeards that want out of this crazyness.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- alias_neo 4y agoI feel like the blog post is at fault for not introducing VHS, more so than the tool itself for calling itself that. Of course, for something as ubiquitously known as VHS it needs no introduction...except it's not actually talking about the magnetic storage format, it's a "tool" named VHS[0]. All of that aside, it seems like a poor alternative to asciinema[1] [0] https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs https://github.com/charmbracelet/vhs [1] https://asciinema.org/ https://asciinema.org/
- tunnuz 4y agoI literally just finished rewatching WarGames! Synchronicity!
- ldodds 4y agoI hadn't noticed the "Sometimes people make mistak" line on the console before until I put the script together.
- LesZedCB 4y agoI used to use cool retro term just for the vibes https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term https://github.com/Swordfish90/cool-retro-term
- _carbyau_ 4y agoNever used it but the pics look a lot more authentic than the article!
- LesZedCB 4y agoI guess they solve different purposes but I think the aesthetic is timelessly attention grabbing!
- gtirloni 4y agoIt's pretty awesome and I've tried to use it as my main terminal many times. Unfortunately for my teenager memories, the modern terminal fonts are just more efficient for me these days.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoI wish the font could be reduced - it's too large and not adjustable. Otherwise, i love it.
- llllIIIIllll 4y agoIt can
- LoganDark 4y agoI loved CRT back when I had the privilege of using macOS as my daily driver. Now, I'm stuck with Windows, and since CRT relies on a huge mess of Qt bullshit, it doesn't build for Windows.
- 31337Logic 4y agoThanks! Using it now. Awesome!!
- f0e4c2f7 4y agoWell these are just delightful. Will likely wind up using one or two of them somewhere. Thanks for sharing.
- castratikron 4y agoFrom the beep man page, a one-liner for " a cheesy 1970's style beep-as-you-type-each-letter effect" cat file | beep -c -f 400 -D 50 -l 10
- jagged-chisel 4y agohttps://asciinema.org/ https://asciinema.org/ If you want to record and playback actual terminal activity instead of writing a script that’s somewhat more likely to become out of date.
- naikrovek 4y agoi think you’ve got it backwards. recordings go out of date. vhs forces you to keep the script up to date, if you rerun it periodically. asciinema always plays, even after it is wrong. also, for some reason which is completely lost to me, most people seem to link asciinema recordings to the asciinema website, meaning you can’t watch them offline. Hard deal-breaker for me.
- jagged-chisel 4y agovhs forces nothing. Seems to me direct interaction with the tool that changed is far less trouble than editing a script in an attempt to match the I/O involved with a command.
- naikrovek 4y agoi forgot to mention that i was thinking of the vhs tool being used in a ci/cd pipeline, where it can be automated. a broken vhs script will be obvious to any viewer of the resulting movie. asciinema doesn’t let you do this, to my knowledge; you have to manually update the movie if you want to update the movie. editing the script which generates the movie is reproduceable and defining another thing in code, which can be checked in and reviewed. manual steps can take a hike; i’m getting things done via automation, here. computers work for me, not the other way around.
- dole 4y agoNice font footwork (half the battle sometimes) and subsequently great demos for VHS.
- nier 4y agoI miss Cathode. It was a Mac application that allowed to mimic bad CRTs (cathode ray tubes). Effects included jitter, scan lines, and flicker. https://youtu.be/Q7uXxiRhpbE https://youtu.be/Q7uXxiRhpbE
- ppljudge 4y agoWow that’s nice. Wonder what happened to this app
- kragen 4y agothe xscreensaver apple2 hack does this if invoked with -text. beware, without -fast it also simulates the apple ]['s slow text output, and it always simulates the apple ]['s lack of lowercase /usr/lib/xscreensaver/apple2 -program bash -text -fast
- andelink 4y agoCool little use of VHS! I particularly enjoyed the Jurassic Park one. Made me realize I could always have my terminal like that, I don’t have to use black at 25% transparency like I have without question for years. So thanks for that. And for those who missed it, and were perhaps a bit confused about VHS, here’s its recent release announcement on HN (12 days ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33357956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33357956
- davidzweig 4y agoWe got a little terminal effect on our homepage (CSS with 3d transformation). It'll be too small on mobile. https://www.languagereactor.com/ https://www.languagereactor.com/ I mean to get around to hooking it up to a real-time healthcheck of our backend servers. Could do something more interactive but lack time.
- davidpfarrell 4y agoSo great, thanks for sharing !
- Daub 4y agoI actually needed some scrolling terminal text for an animation project I completed recently. It is more difficult than you might think: getting the glow and grain right, getting the typewriter effect (one character after another) etc. Wish I knew of VHS then.