Kacper "prefetcher" Staroń created the PinkSea oekaki BBS on top of the AT Protocol. He also made the online multiplayer game MicroWorks with Noam "noam 2000" Rubin. He's currently studying Computer Science at the Lublin University of Technology.

We discuss the appeal of oekaki BBSs, why and how PinkSea was created, web design of the early 2000s, flash animations, and building an application on top of the AT Protocol.

Prefetcher

Bluesky
Github
Personal site
Microworks (Free multiplayer game)

PinkSea and Harbor

Early web design

Web Design Museum
Pixel Art in Web Design
Kaliber10000
Eboy
Assembler
2advanced
epuls.pl (Polish social networking site)
Wipeout 3 aesthetic
Restorativland (Geocities archive)

Flash sites and animations

Geocities style web hosts

AT Protocol / Bluesky

PDS
Relay
AppViews
PLC directory
Decentralized Identifier
lexicon
Jetstream
XRPC
ATProto scraping (List of custom PDS and did:web)

Tools to view PDS data

Posters mentioned

vertigris (Artist that promoted PinkSea)
Mary (AT Protocol enthusiast)
Brian Newbold (Bluesky employee)

Oekaki drawing applets

Group drawing canvas

Transcript

You can help correct transcripts on GitHub.

Intro

[00:00:00] Jeremy: Today I am talking to Kacper Staroń. He created an oekaki BBS called PinkSea built on top of the AT protocol, and he's currently studying computer science at the Lublin University of Technology.

We are gonna discuss the appeal of oekaki BBS, the web design of the early 2000s, flash animations, and building an application on top of the AT protocol.

Kacper, thanks for talking with me today.

[00:00:16] Prefetcher: Hello. Thank you for having me on. I'm Kacper Staroń also probably you know me as Prefetcher online. And as Jeremy's mentioned, PinkSea is an oekaki drawing bulletin board. You log in with your Bluesky account and you can draw and post images. It's styled like a mid to late 2000s website to keep it in the spirit.

What's an oekaki BBS?

[00:00:43] Jeremy: For someone who isn't familiar with oekaki BBSs what is different about them as opposed to say, a photo sharing website?

[00:00:53] Prefetcher: The difference is that a photo sharing website you have the image already premade be it a photo or a drawing made in a separate application. And you basically log in and you upload that image.

For example on Instagram or pixiv for artists even Flickr. But in the case of an oekaki BBS the thing that sets it apart is that oekaki BBSes already have the drawing tools built in. You cannot upload an already pre-made image with there being some caveats. Some different oekaki boards allow you to upload your already pre-made work.

But Pinksea restricts you to a tool called Tegaki. Tegaki being a drawing applet that was built for one of the other BBSes and all of the drawing tools are inside of it. So you draw from within PinkSea and you upload it to the atmosphere. Every image that's on PinkSea is basically drawn right on it by the artists.

No one can technically upload any images from elsewhere.

How PinkSea got started and grew

[00:01:56] Jeremy: You released this to the world. How did people find it and how many people are using it?

[00:02:02] Prefetcher: I'll actually begin with how I've made it 'cause it kind of ties into how PinkSea got semi-popular. One day I was just browsing through Bluesky somewhere in the late 2024s. I was really interested in the AT Protocol and while browsing, one of the artists that I follow vertigris posted a post basically saying they'd really want to see something a drawing canvas like Drawpile or Aggie on AT Protocol or something like an oekaki board. And considering that I was really looking forward to make something on the AT Protocol. I'm like, that sounds fun.

I used to be a member of some oekaki boards. I don't draw well but it's an activity that I was thinking this sounds like a fun thing to do. I'm absolutely down for it. From like, the initial idea to what I'd say was the first time I was proud to let someone else use it. I think it was like two weeks.

I was posting progress on Bluesky and people seemed eager to use it. That kept me motivated. And yeah. Right as I approached the finish I posted about it as a response to vertigris' posts and people seemed to like it.

I sent the early version to a bunch of artists. I basically just made a post calling for them. Got really positive feedback, things to fix, and I released it. And thanks to vertigris ...