Random Toon
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Random Toon Button
This button was added to the main page alongside Quote of the Week, Weekly Fanstuff, and Sketchbook on September 12, 2005. It loads a random Toon, Strong Bad Email, Marzipan's Answering Machine, or Teen Girl Squad. If you don't like the selection it comes up with, you can press the "again" button on the left side of the box before you are redirected, which will restart the selection process. You can also press the "close" button on the right of the box to abort the selection.
random.bat
A similar button was also added to the top right of the Strong Bad Email menu on September 9, 2005, along with a Strong Bad Email Rap referencing it. It is labeled "random.bat" and appears in the top-right corner of the computer screen. Pressing it causes the menu to select several random emails in sequence. When it is done, it loads the last random email it picked. Strong Bad says one of several things when it's activated:
- STRONG BAD: Brrrrrrakatakatakataka...ta..ka...tick...tick... Brring!
- STRONG BAD: {higher pitched and louder} Lakalakalakalaka... tuck... tuck... tuck... tuck... {low pitched} Bong.
- STRONG BAD: Brooootakatakataka..ta..ka..ta...ka... Doosh.
- STRONG BAD: How 'bout this one? Donk. {a random email is then picked without a roulette of emails}
If you click the random.bat button again before you get redirected, he will not say the same thing twice in a row.
Navigation Bar
The random toon button was also added to the navigation bar at the bottom of every page. It reads "rando". It doesn't show the roulette box, simply jumping straight to another toon. Thus far, this has not been added to the special navbars of Main Page 22 or virus.
Fun Facts
Trivia
- Some of the names of toons were too long for the Main Page random box, leaving the last few letters cut off. They were soon renamed to fit.
Old Title | Letters Left Out | Solution |
---|---|---|
Homestar Presents: Present | s | H*R Presents: Presents |
HomestarRunner.com: PAY PL | US | HomestarRunner.com: PAY+ |
Peasant's Quest Movie Trail | er | Peasant's Quest Trailer |
Puppet Jam: Bad Jokes | Bad Jokes | |
Puppet Jam: Mission Control | Mission Control | |
Puppet Jam: Tropical Lazor | Beams | Tropical Lazor Beams |
Puppet Jam: Vitamins/Celebr | ities | Vitamins/Celebrities |
Strong Bad is in Jail Cartoo | n | Strong Bad is in Jail |
Sweet Cuppin Cakes December | ween | Sweet Cuppin Cakes Dween |
Teen Girl Squad Decemberwe | en | Teen Girl Squad Dween |
The House That Gave Sucky T | reats | House ... Sucky Treats |
Remarks
- ".bat" is the filename extention for batch files, which are text files with a series of commands intended to be executed by the MS-DOS or Windows command interpreters.
- Shortly after being released, a number of minor changes were made to the randomiser. The following issues were resolved:
- Decemberween Puppet Style and Homestar vs. Little Girl (the two Decemberween In July puppet toons) were not originally included in the random list. There was just a comment in the XML file reading "<!--note to add puppet dween!-->", reminding The Brothers Chaps to add them.
- Labor Dabor didn't originally work, as the urls for the html and swf files were reversed in the XML.
- If you clicked the R button on the main page more than once (either after closing the randomiser box or while it is up), and it picked a Strong Bad Email, the email number in the URL would be larger than the correct number by the number of Strong Bad Emails (it would redirect you to something like sbemail405.html). This was because it kept a counter of the emails as it read the email names from the XML file, and when you clicked the R again it re-read the list without resetting the counter.
- flashback was immune to this problem, as it has a different url from the others (to distinguish it from Not the 100th Email!!!)
- The Random Toon machine didn't have the "_" symbol embedded, so sb_email 22 was displayed as "SBEMAIL: SBEMAIL 22".
Inside References
- One of the 'random.bat' raps ends with 'Doosh', a reference to techno and the subsequent Strong Bad CD.
Real-World References
- Strong Bad's sound effect is an obvious reference to Wheel of Fortune's signature wheel-spinning noise.