The sys admin’s daily grind – GIF animations
Trees and Clouds
Beyond flashing web emoticons, animated gif images can present trends that catch your eye in system monitoring.
I recently started experimenting with building animated GIFs. Not because I wanted to add more kitty content to the web (our 16-year-old cat [1] is allergic to exercise, so a still – or prone image – would have done that job perfectly), but because I wanted to visualize cloud movements on the web. The idea came to me from a hurricane warning. By pointing a webcam at the treetops and clouds, I could assess from anywhere in the world whether my home was threatened.