ASCII Animals: The Perfect Loading Indicator

I love the terminal, and I bet you do too. Don’t take this advice often, but go ahead and run this command:

curl -s http://animals.ivolo.me/?index=8

Bear with me here. How about a random animal that moves?

curl -s https://raw.github.com/ivolo/animals/master/examples/loading.sh | sh

       (`.
         ) )
        ( (
          \ \
        .-'  `-.
       /        `.
      (      )    `-._ ,    _
       )   ,'         (.\--'(
       \  (         ) /      \
        \  \_(     / (    <6 (6
         \_)))\   (    ._  .:Y)__
          '''  \   `-._.  ---^_)))
                `-._ )))       ```

Check out the Github repo to start using it yourself. If you require maximum availability on your ASCII animal web services, you can even run your own server.

At Segment.io, waiting for a brand new cluster to spin up can take up to twenty minutes. This can be a very lonely time. Good thing we’ve got these lovable ASCII animals to keep us company.

Want to see what it looks like to have a fuzzy bear as your loading indicator? You saw the shell example above, and here’s a python one:

pip install requests
curl -s https://raw.github.com/ivolo/animals/master/examples/loading.py | python

Cuteness subject to change.