Month: January 2023

Aesthetics Wiki

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This wiki features various aesthetics (perhaps we could call them art styles?), such as classic Roman and pirate aesthetics, as well as some that may be hard to name, such as:

Weirdcore

Weirdcore (Weirdcore), low-resolution, strange contrast of text (optional), not-so-refined special effects (optional), overall highlighting an unsettling feeling.

Dreamcore

Dreamcore (Dreamcore), similar to Weirdcore, but overall giving a sense of security.

Liminal Space

Liminal Space (Liminal Space), is the main aesthetic of the Backrooms, Liminal Space aesthetics are mainly large and empty building interiors, the atmosphere is strange and unsettling.

Y2K

Y2K (Y2K), this is the futurism aesthetic of the 1990s, smooth, reflective, light blue (the color of the internet?), these are roughly the characteristics, influencing some wallpapers and UI designs.

A cool wiki, it let me know about some software UIs of that era, why did they become irregular…

Making the Web Fun Again

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Once upon a time, the internet was filled with countless personal websites. For example, the well-known online space GeoCities was once the third most visited website. Everyone could create their own website there (free users were limited to 2 MB). However, for various reasons, GeoCities ultimately failed to turn a profit and was shut down in 2009.

Neocities is the successor to GeoCities. Many of its designs are similar to GeoCities, such as being an online space (only static websites can be created) and using the 88×31 reciprocal link feature.
In the about page, Neocities subtly criticizes those social websites with identical interfaces and lack of personality. Neocities, on the other hand, provides a canvas for anyone to create personalized pages.

Neocities’s advantage is also its static nature. Ten years ago, for just $150, it could host 2 million NeoCities sites for a month, offering exceptional value for money. It also provided tutorials for website creation. Now, it hosts over 460,000 sites.

Integer Multiple Zoom with Hardware and Software Support

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Common game emulators generally have integer scaling functions, allowing for various scaling multiples. However, this is a software solution requiring developers to add the corresponding functionality. Many older games lack this feature, leading to the development of external scaling software.

IntegerScaler is free Windows software that performs integer scaling of windows, addressing some issues. Earlier, Lossless Scaling was a paid software with more scaling algorithms, later even updating with the FSR algorithm. (However, the open-source Magpie is arguably better.)

The drawback of external software is performance loss due to the extra work involved, and potential compatibility issues. Fortunately, in 2019, Intel, Nvidia, and AMD introduced integer scaling features: Retro Scaling (I) and Integer Scaling (N, A), although these only support newer products…

For more information, see the IntegerScaler author’s article Pixel-perfect integer-ratio scaling with no blur

Game Scaling

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SMBFlurry's twitter share
Source: twitter.com，New Super Mario Bros. running on a New 2DS

Imagine it is 2010. You launch an old game on a 1080P computer. The fullscreen video signal will cause the screen to briefly go black, then a blurry title screen appears. The image is also flattened because the old game doesn’t support widescreen.

This is because the game outputs a signal of 800×600 or 1024×768 resolution. The display then scales it to 1080P resolution. Back then, the most popular method was nearest-neighbor interpolation. Its advantage is smoothness, but the downside is a lack of sharpness. For pixel art games, nearest-neighbor interpolation is a disaster. However, because nearest-neighbor is common in scaling, you might easily see “blurry pixel art”.

One solution is to not scale at all. For example, if the game resolution is only slightly lower than the display resolution, you can leave some black borders. This method was used on the 3DS (holding Start or Select before launching the game).

Another method is integer scaling. For example, the original resolution of an NES game is 256×224. By replacing each pixel with a 4×4 larger pixel, the resolution becomes 1024×896, which fits nicely into a 1920×1080 resolution. Using a window or fullscreen with borders is suitable.

Making Hashes Human-Readable

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randomArt
Source: etherarp.net，Etherarp screenshot of randomart
Telegram
Telegram screenshot
element
Source: github.com，BillCarsonFr screenshot of element
Signal
Signal screenshot
Tor
Tor browser bridge screenshot

Many hashes are seen in daily life, such as magnet links when downloading with Bittorrent, SHA series hashes used to verify file integrity, or the Bitcoin wallet addresses created in the past.

But hashes have a drawback: they are often long, and users usually do not memorize them. As a result, there is often malware such as “clipboard hijacking”, which replaces your own wallet address with the attacker’s, and when you make a transaction, you will send money to the attacker…

Software may design some graphical operations to allow users to remember the hashes they generate, such as the OpenSSH software, which displays a randomart character image (ASCII Art) after generating a new key.

End-to-end encryption verification of instant messaging software usually also has graphical hashes. Telegram uses a 4-color pixel image, the Matrix element client uses Emoji, but Signal only has a QR code…

We Still Don’t Know the Name of the 88 × 31 We Saw That Day

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88 × 31 collection
Source: neonaut.neocities.org，Neonauticon’s “88×31 Archive” website

This banner, resembling a badge or button, provides a quick visual indication of the technologies and web standards used on a webpage,
for example, indicating FLASH, PHP, W3C – XHTML 1.0, etc., or contact information such as phone numbers, email addresses, RSS, MSN, and so on.

Perhaps plain text links weren’t engaging enough for users, so colorful, and even animated GIF badges and buttons became popular after 1996,
some banners even reached the level of sophistication of promotional videos.

But after this size of image suddenly became popular, it still didn’t have a specific name, so sometimes it can only be referred to as 88×31……

A more detailed history is in the blog post with the same name, “We Still Don’t Know The Name of the 88 × 31 We Saw That Day“.