Albino Blacksheep

Black Popcorn?

I finally gave Tirrel his own author page.

There used to be an app called Zoobe where you could voice different cartoon characters in different settings. The bunny was their main one. The app closed in 2017, but I think it's Kylee Henke's fault.

Jackbliss made a music video set to the music of his mentor Stephen Hardy Palmer.

I had no idea how inaccurate I swipe until I played Swipe Basketball.

Here's what I'm working on every day.

Since June 1st, I processed 466 Flash files into HTML5 Video at 1080p. 243 of those files where only available in Flash before.

51 (of 70) Flash authors now have a video playlist so you can watch each author's Flash video library on their page. This does not include their interactive Flash files or games.

Due to demand in the Back to the Future on VHS comments, my email inbox over the last 2 years, and on Twitter, the SWFs on this site must never die. I agree! Each page that has an SWF now has a toggle (below the Random Flash area) where you can choose between loading HTML5 Video or SWF throughout the site. SWF will load using the Ruffle Flash emulator, still in development, and compatible with most, but not all Flash files so far. If you have no idea what any of that means or what an SWF is, just stick to the default setting.

I'm still adjusting the layout. I've had no feedback on the retro social media icons in the footer when you hover, so those may have to change. I thought it was funny at the time to be way "out-of-date".

I'd like to make this site as fun and easy to use as possible. If you have any requests, see any issues, or have any comments, contact me.

Rain

Yotam has now passed the half-way point of his life's birthdays being documented in his original birthday songs.

Modernize

This silly cats video is trending on Twitter, but it's actually a sped up segment of Joe Hawley's Break It Down. Maybe animal videos are more viral than human videos.

In Summer 2020, I remade the audio player from scratch in Vanilla JavaScript to replace the jQuery audio player (I don't like needing code dependencies, so I don't like needing jQuery). I always intended to expand the audio player into a video player, since much of the code would be identical. Simply load and play a file, and when it reaches the file's end, play the next one on the list.

In June 2022 I got around to the video player. It makes ADD-style browsing much easier. I remember when people would say they waited 5 minutes for an animation to load on dailup, and that it was worth it. People don't have that attention span today. I've added a player to every featured series and starting to add them to the Flash author pages as I reconvert their files to HTML5 in HD. This will take a few months. Some of the first conversions here were made for non-retina iPhones. Bandwidth and pixel density has improved greatly.

I added the player to the main page. If I have a meme I want to share, it should go there. Maybe I could become a memelord. The possibilities are endless, but my obligation is to promote animators and archive animations for future generations.

Oh, yeah. I had time between clients, so I redesigned the site (in progress) based on a wishlist of features.

  1. Cleaner

    I had everything semi-transparent previously and then other effects like embossing were on top of that transparency - a weird style combination. Basically, eveything was made out of glass. I overused transparency. I kept some glass effect in the new design, but most text sits on a solid colour. With the glass that I did keep, I added a backdrop-filter to blur whatever is behind it. I can never seem to leave behind parts of the previous design. They find their way over. The calendar dates are now embossed. See? I can't let go.

    Additionally I like to keep things minimal. I am removing extra links and might go out and delete old sections.

  2. Theme switcher

    I had a theme switcher since at least the early 2000s. The first one I had was JavaScript-based. It worked by switching between multiple link rel tags in the head tag. It included a Windows 98 theme, as was the style at the time. The second used the backend to change the CSS filename, but required a page reload. People were able to submit themes too. However, between 2011 and 2023 there was no theme switcher. I really wanted to bring it back. I also burned everyone's eyes in 2011 by switching this site from being dark by default to always being light.

    The current themes are mainly colour palette swaps, but different layouts and fonts are possible. The colours aren't perfect and most are just for show. I think people are actually using the ABS 2004 theme, but it's just there for nostalgia purposes. I have an idea to churn out 100 themes.

  3. 100/100

    100/100 Accessibility, 100/100 Performance, 100/100 SEO, etc. I was actually pretty close before. Even some things that don't show in the scores have improved performance like the Mario Bros. hidden somewhere on the page. Design on the Web is always a compromise between style and performance. A completely plain site with no effects would perform the best, but would look boring.

  4. Click sounds

    Web pages can have sound. The Internet sould be fun.

  5. A sticky header

    I actually don't like these, but I figured if I could make the new header extra thin the header won't take up much space.

  6. Readability

    Slighlty bigger paragraph text in the system font. Incase I want to actually write more than just animation titles. I also like that links in a paragraph immediately underline when hovered instead of some suble colour change or hover animation. Links are important. I usually just add text-decoration: none to all links, but I'll stop doing that.