Flying Toasters Screensaver After Dark in CSS | Hacker News Reader

Flying Toasters Screensaver After Dark in CSS

bryanbraun.com

154 pointsohjeez37 comments

Missing one feature of the original screensaver: the faster-moving toasters would change "lanes" to avoid crashing into the slower ones.

Probably hard to implement with pure CSS, though.

Avoid crashing into or avoid clipping? ;-)

Crashing, because then you’d be toast.

This one has that and the chrome task manager shows this one uses around 1/3 of the CPU and GPU power to run it compared to the CSS only one:

https://www.masswerk.at/flyer/

All these years later, I still wonder why the toasters need wings, yet the bread has magical levitation powers.

edit: you know, I wonder why a movie was never made.

Looks like it runs at a much slower framerate though

Feels more like the original to me, honestly

> around 1/3 of the CPU and GPU power

And yet, probably still orders of magnitude more than the original, which could run on an 8 MHz 68000. :)

Anyone remember an extension for System 7 that put Oscar the Grouch in your trash can?

“I love it because it’s trash!”

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/the-grouch

Here's a video of it in action on 7.5 in color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lTk0xxmNtQ

Yes, and was it just me that had “106 miles to Chicago..” as a system sound?

Thank you for bringing that memory back.

That never ending line of Inits running across the screen at boot-time.

My 4 year old daughter knew when the system was not going to boot or not because she recognized the icons. If it got hung on one, she'd let me know she needed help.

Do you remember when we used to have to pay for the next OS version upgrade, and for a program that would put your screen to sleep? Which, after you bought it, would be on floppy disks?

And now we just blast as much personal data at the screen as possible while everything is easy, free, or subsidized by arcane bits of highly advanced financial fraud.

Which, ok, works great for most people most of the time.

I remember being able to pay once for a piece of software, and then just use it - without having to know or care about the vendor, much less maintain an ongoing relationship with them.

There's only so many ongoing relationships I can keep up with at the same time, and the last thing I want is to establish a new one with another fly-by-night vendor of barely-MVP software toy. Especially the kind of abusive relationship as typical with businesses these days, where they either keep upselling me garbage non-stop, or ghost me in hopes I'll forget I have an automated recurring payment set up with them.

This is nice, but personally, I'm a sucker for the Windows 3.1 starfield.

Johnny Castaway was great too.

And then later on Folding@Home was an interesting screensaver.

Or SETI@Home

SETI@Home was fun, but it was kind of a trash screen saver because of how many fixed elements it had. Definitely ended up burning in a monitor with the yellow afterimage of its purple section divider bars.

Later versions tried to counteract that by making it more a moving 3d thing of the original, LCARS-inspired interface. Incidentally that also was when I got sick of it.

There’s a modern one that is quite nice.

Like tonight's Perseid Meteor Shower

Never gets old, always thought I was with captain Kirk on the enterprise. 3D tubes was awesome too, especially playing with the speed settings. As a kid I thought they were going to pop off the screen. Made great PBJ breaks while taking a break from monster bash or duke nukem.

Sadly this seems to be missing the midi rendition of ride of the Valkyries and the flying toaster theme

Plus subtitles: Dum dum da da daaa dum, …

I wonder why screensavers are not used by default for mobile devices? There are so many used phones on ebay that have burn in. I thought LCDs were not susceptible to burn in?

> I thought LCDs were not susceptible to burn in?

LCDs aren't, but a lot of phones use OLED displays which are.

Some LCD panels can develop image retention however, which while not being the same as burn-in is a similar effect.

The revisions of the IPS panels used in 27” iMacs from 2009 through 2016 or 2017 for example had a tendency to start exhibiting retention after a few years, I think probably due to the extra heat coming from the computer components behind the panel.

I’ve read some reports of VA panels developing retention too.

Because who wants to waste battery to render a screen saver on a device while it's shoved in someone's pocket or buried at the bottom of a purse? Even if it was sitting on my desktop next to my keyboard would I want the screen doing anything. Also, that for a lot of people, if the phone is not in their hands, it's probably in the hands of a kid playing games.

And it’s flap, flap, flap!

Salvation from above!

A precious gift they bring:

Gleaming angels of love

On mighty toaster wings!

https://youtu.be/mjlusi_h_XA

Is there a random positioning of the toasters or they loop? I can only tell the transitions from CSS and positioning, but it seems that the elements randomize...?

I remember this, such a dumb screen saver but really fun to watch. It was all the rage at work in the old days.

Is there a way to make this your actual screensaver?

This one works well on macOS 13 https://github.com/robertventurini/FlyingToasters

Yes: https://github.com/liquidx/webviewscreensaver (at least on Mac OS)

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