aafire: You knew this was coming

Don’t take this as some sort of sign that I’m running out of cool toys and gimmicks for the console. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

But you had to suppose that if I throw out a screenshot of aafire, part of the venerable aalib suite, that I was working toward a short list of text-only goodies.

No, I have to put this out there, because when it comes to terminal screensavers (i.e., screen-vs‘s idle and blankerprg options), not much can surpass turning your entire screen into a black-and-white fireplace.

It’s just a bit hackneyed, and to that I will admit guilt. After all, the home page for aalib confesses it hasn’t seen an update since 2001 … making it quite possibly the longest-standing un-updated package I keep in regular use on my machine. 😐

Regardless, it’s good fun. I must warn you though: If you use this on a machine without some sort of accelerated video, and if you allow it to run in a very large space, you’re likely to get some wicked slowdowns.

Even at 500Mhz (Ha! I said, “even at 500Mhz”! 😆 ) and with a fairly decent ATI Rage Mobility P/M card, 1024×768 against the framebuffer sucks the life from the Solo.

I doubt you could ever cause an explosion or trigger a gravitational singularity in your living room with aafire, but it’s painful to watch the machine spike with this on screen.