January 13, 2026
Cloudy with a chance of dots
ASCII Clouds
Text-made clouds have everyone squinting, swooning, and begging for music mode
TLDR: A web toy renders moving clouds using simple keyboard characters and customizable presets. The comments split between delight, confusion, and a big push for an audio visualizer, sparking an art‑vs‑screensaver debate—proof that low‑tech creativity can still make the internet feel things.
“ASCII Clouds” is a playful web toy: moving clouds drawn using keyboard characters—dots, dashes, plus signs, O’s, and X’s. Pick presets like “Retro CRT” or “Cosmic Fog” and nudge sliders to change wiggle, speed, and color. The crowd reaction? Split. The cheer squad chimed in with “that’s pretty cool” and “looks pretty good,” while the resident philosopher asked, “What do you see in the clouds?” igniting a round of text-based cloud‑gazing. People started spotting dragons, ships, and weird faces—classic internet pareidolia, the game of finding shapes in random stuff.
Then came the mini‑drama. One voice admitted, “I don’t understand,” and the thread turned into a friendly tussle over is it art, a screensaver, or just vibes. Another pushed for an upgrade: “Would love this as an audio visualizer,” pitching the ultimate party trick—clouds that groove to your playlist. Jokes flew: someone dubbed it the Terminal Weather Channel, others wanted a forecast preset with 100% dots. The hottest take? That it’s retro magic without fancy graphics—just a keyboard and imagination. Whether you’re squinting, swooning, or craving beats, this tiny text sky became a big mood. Dive in and see what you see: link
Key Points
- •Interactive ASCII-art visualization titled “ASCII Clouds.”
- •Preset styles include Default, Terminal, Retro CRT, Cosmic, Fog, and Red.
- •Noise controls: Cell Size 18, Wave Amplitude 0.50, Wave Speed 1.00, Noise Intensity 0.125, Time Speed 1.5, plus Seed.
- •Visual effects include Vignette (Intensity 0.50, Radius 0.50) and color controls (Hue 180, Saturation 0.50, Brightness 0.00, Contrast 1.25).
- •Glyph thresholds map brightness to characters: .(0.25), -(0.30), +(0.40), O(0.50), X(0.65).