TexTalk News Podcast

TexTalk News Podcast - The New Effort

Several years back there was a Podcast run by “warmfuzzy” which dealt with textmode computing, particularly the BBS aspect of textmode computing.  It was left alone for those several years, but is now going to be continued.  This Podcast is known as TexTalk News.  It deals with communications technology of the textmode nature, such as BBSes, Packet Radio, Dialup Chats, FAX machines, and other such tech that is transmitted as text.  We have interviewed several people on that Podcast, including “calcmandan” and “cr1mson.”  It is a news formatted show bringing you the latest and greatest news from The Scene.  A link to the Podcast will be posted here when the shows are migrated to phatstar.net.  It is our sincere desire that you get quality news about the text-based computer comms scene from this service.  We want to keep this service alive and well, this BBS service, that animates us all and brings to remembrance just how lucky we are to have all sorts of great people around us who can make our lives better by our vintage social networking adventures… back in the day when these things were actually rewarding chats and not just tweeting out our passing thoughts or trying to be that person who has their whole life together as shown in pictures and videos.  Here we don’t do multi-media, its just text, a wonderful world of communications without the emojis, without the rubbish.  Please check back here now and then for this to have its link to TexTalk News’ web page once it is complete.  Thank you and best regards! -warmfuzzy

TexTalk News

TitleDescriptionSizeHitsDate addedDate modifiedDownload
TT004-2023-07-07-TexTalk-NEWS-Origins-192kbps41.65 MB2709-06-202509-06-2025 DownloadPreview
TT003R-2021-10-24-TexTalk-NEWS-EchomailNets-192kbps41.65 MB2109-06-202509-06-2025 DownloadPreview
TT002-2021-01-24-TexTalk-NEWS-FileDistroNets-192kbps41.65 MB2009-06-202509-06-2025 DownloadPreview
TT001R-2020-12-24-TexTalk-NEWS-IntroductionToBBSing-192kbps41.65 MB1709-06-202509-06-2025 DownloadPreview

ansilove ANSI Graphics to PNG Image Files

There aren’t many things that I am so excited about as the find of this software. I’m currently working on a book called “Textmode Magazine’s Echomail Networks,” and it has several ANSI graphics converted into PNG files. I used PabloDraw to convert the ANSIs to PNG format and it had some sort of limit of about 1500 pixels across. This software allows you to get a much better result than that. ansilove allows for the upscaling of any ANSI graphics file up to an arbitrarily large size, and you can get results of 10,000 across the screen. In actual fact I haven’t tested if it can go to 30,000 pixels across the screen or not but it sure looks like you can. For my purposes I only need 4250×5500 end result files, as that is the size of an 8.5″ x 11″ page. It does the upscaling perfectly. There is nothing wrong with this software and it does not need a new version released as it does everything you’d like it to do as is. My rating of this software is a spectacular ten out of ten. It is also very easy to install:


sudo apt-get install ansilove


That is all that’s required and you’re good to go. It is a command line utility and works for the major Linux Distros right after install. This “just works.” I will say once more, this software is exceptionally good at doing what it does. This stuff is so cool. I no longer need to rely on the lesser quality conversions experienced with ANSI Design Editor software. The command I use to get this thing done follows:

./ansilove -R 7 ./InputANSI.ans

The ./ means to run a file in the local directory. The -R 7 is a custom scale factor of seven. The ./InputANSI.ans represents the ANSI graphic to convert that is found in the current directory.

Fun times!

w00t!

To download it check out the following:

https://github.com/ansilove/ansilove
https://www.ansilove.org

warmfuzzy Enters The Scene

The PHATstar Society is sponsoring BBS Day and offering prizes to people who sign up for the BBS Day Prize Draw. Warmfuzzy is coordinating the prize draw aspect of the day. There will be several big prizes and several serial numbers for quality anti-virus software as the lesser gifts. It will be a fun day that rewards people who participate in the BBS Scnne. Winners will be selected using pseudo random number generation with the winners selected randomly from the full list of poeple who have signed up for this thing. We will be rewarding winners with about $150 USD worth of computer kit. It will be a good time for all involved. We are giving back to all of those in The Scene with rewards for those who are seriously into this wonderful hobby. Fun times for sure.