Gizmodo: ascii

I

Jesus Diaz — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:20:00 EST

You want ASCII paintings? We got ASCII paintings! You want ASCII furniture? We got ASCII furniture! You want ASCII jewelry? Becky Stern got it for you: The I <3 You necklace.

Pretty. I dig. [ASCII Heart Necklace]

ASCII Art, Circa 1934

John Herrman — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST

And so a timeless truth is revealed: If you put enough nerds in front of a set of lettered keys, one of them will produce awkward art, eventually.

Strictly speaking, this should be called typewriter art, since the ASCII acronym didn't come into use until 1963, and this piece, but a young gentleman named Bob, apparently, wasn't created until the mid-thirties. And unlike the thousands of lovingly pecked-out Simpsons characters and ironic meme conversions you're used to seeing in rendered in type, "The Dream Ship" sails with purpose. It's part of an apology, to a fair young maiden!:

Dearest Hazel,
I wanted to apologize for the way I treated you yesterday. I really am ashamed of myself. I don't know what is the matter with me but I guess I just don't know how to treat a lady.

There's a carefully lineated ship up there that begs to differ, Bob. Full letter at [SquareAmerica via BoingBoing]

Awesome 1980s Computer Pop-Up Book: A Floppy What Now?

Dan Nosowitz — Sat, 09 May 2009 16:00:00 EDT

Now this is one amazing Goodwill find: A vintage pop-up book designed to teach burgeoning nerds about the wonders of the modern computer. Floppy disks, ASCII, and the dot-matrix printer. Oh my.

Some of this stuff is amazing, like an ASCII and binary decoder, and the hilarious message on the dot-matrix printer:

Now that we've met, I'm ready to work—and play—with you. See you soon! Goodbye.

Computers used to be so adorable (and polite!). [JonathanRyan]

ASCII Art, Since 1948

John Mahoney — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:10:00 EST

Before there were ASCII portraits of Dwight [PDF], there was this: "Keyboard Art," from Popular Mechanics, October 1948.

Custom-Made Ascii Carpet

Travis Hudson — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 17:00:17 EST

This project, named carpet/?s, allows personalized ascii carpet to be purchased. All that is needed is a single click and the program will generate a unique ascii output.

It is based on the time when the surfer goes to a web site. The time in a form of hh:mm:ss is then used as a keyword for the results taken from a search engine. The program downloads the contents of a second given result, rejects html tags and white spaces and puts all textual content into a carpet-like form.

Better start saving, these carpets will cost a pretty penny. A finished, 6.5 by 8 foot carpet is going to cost upwards of $2,500 shipped within Europe.

Ascii carpet [We-make-money]