The ATASCII Mystery

A curious Easter egg found in the mass:werk vaults. Last Sunday, something quite astonishing happened at the mass:werk office: I found a tiny app, named “img2atascci”, or more verbosely, “Image to ATASCII Parser”, on my server, dating from 2020. What makes this a curious case, or in any way remarkable, or a find, at all, is that I had no recollection of doing it, while it was, no question about it, indeed written by me. It’s a tiny app that accepts images of Atari 8-bit screens and parses the input to ATASCII codes in hex. I still don’t know what the context may have been, or what purpose this may/should have served. I can’t even claim to know my way around the Atari 8-bits that came after the VCS. Maybe this was answering some kind of request? This is even more remarkable, since I’ve usually a rather good memory. But there’s no broader context, no project, nothing this would link to or which may provide some meaning to this that might transcend it’s rather restricted scope. — So,…