Random Toon

From Homestar Runner Wiki

Revision as of 22:38, 24 January 2021

"Random" redirects here. For a random wiki page, see Special:Random.

'Round and 'round it goes...where it stops nobody knows...

Random Toon Button

The Random Toon Button was added to the Main Pages alongside Quote of the Week, Weekly Fanstuff, and Sketchbook on September 12, 2005 and could be accessed by clicking the button labeled R. It would load a random toon from the XML file. Clicking the "again" button on the left side of the box before being redirected would restart the selection process. The "close" button on the right of the box would abort the selection.

After the December 31, 2020 site update, the random button is not functional.

random.bat/go rando!

A similar button was also added to the top right of the Strong Bad Email menu on September 12, 2005, along with a Scroll Button Song referencing it. Originally labeled "random.bat", the button appears in the top-right corner of the computer screen. Pressing it causes the menu to select several random emails in sequence. Prior to the December 31, 2020 update, it would then load the last random email it picked, though now it opens the selected email's description, allowing the user to pick between YouTube and onsite versions, if available. 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: How 'bout this one? Donk.
  • This would originally select an email without the roulette, but this was changed when the menu was updated to HTML5.
• STRONG BAD: Broooodagadagadaga..da..ga..da...ga... Dooj.

The random.bat button was removed from the menu after Strong Bad destroyed the Lappy 486 in hremail3184, and then was put back as "go rando!" on August 31, 2009, with the introduction of the Compé Scroll Button Song.

Navigation Bar

In August 2005, the random toon button was added to the navigation bar at the bottom of every page, reading "rando". It doesn't show the roulette box, simply jumping straight to another toon. This was not added to the special navbars of Main Page 22 or virus, since the navbar is part of the Flash file. This link was removed from the navbar when it was updated to HTML for the December 31, 2020 update.

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.

• The Random Toon button also resulted in the Brothers Chaps formatting most of the Puppet Stuff to HTML format.

Remarks

• When the rando link in the navigation bar loads a Puppet Stuff, it is placed on a light blue background. This is because a Puppet Stuff is layered over another page, but the rando link doesn't work with this. The Random Toon button on the Main Pages does allow an external Flash link to be layered over them, so a Puppet Stuff is layered over them.
• ".bat" is the filename extension for batch files, which are text files with a series of commands intended to be executed by the MS-DOS or Windows command interpreters.
• While "random.bat" is running, the names of the various Strong Bad Emails can still be clicked as they flash on the screen.
• Shortly after being released, a number of minor changes were made to the randomizer. The following issues were resolved:
  • Homestar and the Nice Present 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 the R button on the Main Page was clicked more than once (either after closing the randomizer box or while it was 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 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 clicking the R again caused it to 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!!!, which itself is not in the XML list).
  • The Random Toon machine didn't have the "&" or "_" symbols embedded, so lures & jigs was shown as "SBEMAIL: LURES  JIGS" and sb_email 22 was displayed as "SBEMAIL: SBEMAIL 22".
• In the XML code, the newest email has the code: new="yup" after it.
• The XML document is not valid as there is no root element in the document.

Goofs

• Sbemail 169 Deleted Scene links to An Important Rap Song.
• Date Nite links to Strongest Man in the World.
• Many cartoons are omitted from the XML list, and therefore will not be selected randomly. Currently, these are:
  • Commandos in the Classroom
  • Homestar vs. Other Little Girl
  • Strong Bad is a Bad Guy
  • Marshie vs. Little Girl
  • Dangeresque: Puppet Squad
  • All Hremails, with the exception of Hremail 3184
  • Kick-A-Ball
  • April Fool 09
  • Any of the previously New Stuff-exclusive toons

Fixed Goofs

• On Monday, January 9, 2006, when the Scroll Button Song was updated, a new bug was introduced to random.bat: the screen would not automatically scroll to the emails as they are selected by the roulette. This was later fixed.
• Strongest Man in the World used to appear as "Strongest Man in the Worldk" in the randomizer. This has since been fixed.
• The Next Epi-Snowed was originally listed in the XML file as ccd06.html instead of ccdo6.html. This was later fixed.

Inside References

• One of the 'random.bat' raps ends with "Dooj".

Real-World References

• "Rando" is a possible reference to "Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie", in which "The Amazing Rando" is a recurring joke throughout the end credits sequence.

External Links

• Click on the R on the Flash version of any Template:oldhr to see the Random Toon Button in action.
• Template:oldhr
• Template:oldhr
• view the Strong Bad Email menu with "go rando!"
• Template:oldhr
• forum thread re: Random Toon
• forum thread re: random.bat