It’s Friday, so I’m going to indulge myself.
Yesterdays’ Startup spawned a little bit of serious discussion which was quickly derailed by deliberate trolling. At least we’re not 4chan where the discussion itself starts with trolling. Somewhere in there, I noticed a debate regarding pj134′s avatar and the theories surrounding what it could be. A mouse? A weasel? A girl being held in the bottom of a pit in my basement? Turns out it was a thumbnail of the RadioHead bear from their Kid A album. That was a bit anticlimactic – I thought we would get an avatar with a story behind it – so here’s mine.
Years ago, I bought a domain name and ran my own vanity site. I didn’t have that much to say, but I could code HTML and PHP and mostly needed a place to dump my personal ramblings and musings, with a few contributions from friends (maybe one day Deartháir will re-run “Stickers Make Me Go Faster”). Then someone else who could code HTML and PHP came along, invented social networking, and gave that ability to everyone. The old web site is now defunct, but when Deartháir blackmailed me and threatened physical violence asked me to help start Atomic Toasters, I brought the name and the old logo with me. I created it in Adobe Illustrator, and it’s supposed to be a computer possessed by the devil (or if you prefer a less redundant description: it’s a computer) in the style of the old Apple][ with CRT. His name is HellOS.
I think if we ever get all 5 or 6 of us Atomic Toasterers and Hoonitarians together, we need to wear something that resembles our avatar.
Mostly because Dearthair will have to wear a shirt made from real poo.
Looks like I'm going to have to get a 924 shirt made.
But I sold the 67 Imperial a few years ago.
I'm game. I just need to get me some green chicks.
This is easy, I'll just wear a CP hoody.
I'm cool with that.
Since I use the default avatar here, does that mean I would have to go naked?
http://www.greenmanfactory.com/order-solid-color-…
White or black.
Rather than wear my avatar, can I just show up in one?
Sure! It might be a bit fiscally prohibitive though…
Not if I "borrow" one.
Sure, as long as you don't mind getting a zillion fingerprints all over it, and giving lots of rides.
Now I'm glad I got rid of my former avatar of an absurdly fat tractor tire. At least I could drive my car there.
Idea for a cross-platform t-shirt:
Hooniverse down one sleeve, Atomic Toasters down
the other, "First Church of the Atomic Hoonitarian"
(or some such) across the back, with a mash-up
logo below that.
Little Elves, set thee forth to work!
I think we had decided behind-the-scenes that we were still Hoonitarian Hooniversalists, but the commenters over on this side of the fence were the "Toasterian Monks"
Hobbes came from an icon pack that came with our first computer (a 486), probably bootlegged by my grandfather. It may have been Microsoft, but there was also a Ferrari that had no business being in there.
Bill Watterson is absolutely opposed to licensing his characters, so your Hobbes is definitely a bootleg and more than likely didn't come from Microsoft.
Those are brave words from someone clearly using a ripoff from yet another episode of Bandwidth Theatre:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/135633
An avatar, eh? I shall have to look into that.
Heck, I don't even remember what mine is supposed to be.
Looks like a goiter.
Oh, swell. Something's missing from that. I, I think.
It's a French toaster, I believe. Mostly likely broken.
Mmmm…. French toast. That's what I had for breakfast. With bacon.
And tea. Not coffee. Ha!
My avatar is a Ford GT. Not too terribly exciting for many, but my naughty bits go all tingly every time I see one.
It does have a story, though. Back when I read and commented on [Redacted] I went through a series of avatars until I settled on the silver GT. Once I had worked my way into the good graces of the rest of the commentariat several comments were made about the link between me and the silver GT, so it sort of stuck. When I opened my Intense Debate account to comment on Hooniverse, the silver GT was the obvious choice.
$kaycog has a red GT so that people don't confuse which lover of the GT is speaking.
i also love the Ford GT so i find it exciting. do you know Camilo Pardo? he has one with Gulf livery that i lust after. the only time i really want to look like a fashion model is so i can get a ride in that thing.
I've never out right met him, though I've partied at his house. It wasn't until it was too late that I realized I was standing next to him at the bar.
I lust after his Gulf-liveried GT, as well.
similar experience for me the first few times i was at the same event as him. many years ago, when i eventually realized it was his place that i've been going since the mid 90s, i almost fell over. he's always been very friendly, and i'll admit it's a bit of a thrill when he says hello.
I don't know about wearing my avatar, but I wouldn't mind driving behind it – a hood ornament for an early to mid 1960s Lincoln. Like engineered, I started using my avatar on J*******.
The psychology of choosing online nicks would also be a topic worthy of discussion.
The shrunken version looks like a U-2 flying overhead.
This is the closest angle I could find, you get the idea:
<img src="http://www.zdnet.co.uk/i/z5/illo/nw/story_graphics/11feb/spy-planes/spy-plane-u2-sgt-brian-ferguson-5.jpg">
Re nicks: Mine is a variation on my college nickname, and it's pronounced "P. Chet" – my first initial, and the first syllable of my last name. (I used the actual spelling of that syllable, which explains the nearly complete lack of vowels.) Its been my home computer login for 8 years and also was my computer login at a previous job where usernames were 1st initial – 1st 7 letters of last name.
I assumed that was actually your name somehow, but I like to imagine it's onomatopoeia for a blow off valve.
I've used "tonyola" as a stage name and online name for over 20 years now. The nick was given to me a long time ago in college by a prime instigator of our circle's hijinks – Big Al gave every one of us unusual nicknames. I think the name was a variation of the Johnny Ola character in the Godfather movie.
"…usernames were 1st initial – 1st 7 letters of last name."
That's precisely how I ended up using mharrell for everything, ah, several years ago. A particularly convenient practice for those of us with seven-letter surnames, I must say. When I found to my dismay that it had already been taken on IntenseDebate, I added my middle initial in a willful act of utter betrayal of the eight-character standard.
Oh my, such a flagrant flouting of the rules, for shame! If you were in my group, I'd have your office moved to the Culinary Arts building, next to the Violent and Abusive Cooking labs. With the other tea drinkers!
Hey, even I haven't fallen so low as to put a whitespace character in my name. That's just asking for trouble.
They used a similar rule at my college: First initial, middle initial, first six letters of last name. I was mzsliczn, ha! So after a while someone complained and they gave me a better alias: First initial, full last name, -7. Seriously. Anyway it was no easier to spell for whoever it was, so they then gave me mzs. Then I learned it was my English professor that had been having a lot of trouble emailing me. That's okay he introduced me to P.K. Dick with "The Man in the High Castle", and I got a neat 3 letter email address that was quick to type!
My college was an almost random alphanumeric sequence. It was the school initials followed by four numbers and a letter. Mine was gt8891a. That's sort of how I ended up the online handle P161911. I wanted something that looked like a random alpha-numeric, which wasn't uncommon in the late 1990s when I picked it, but wasn't really random. At the time I was very active in IPSC/USPSA action pistol shooting. My primary gun was a Para-Ordnance P16 in .40 S&W, this was a variant of the 1911 pistol. So P161911. For prospective employers and what-not it looked like some sort of random alpha-numeric, if you knew what it was it was sort of cool. When I started getting more active online 6 or 7 years ago I just stuck with it as a user-name. It was always available.
This…
<img src="http://www.tanshanomi.com/temp/avatar-mercurio.jpg">
…is an condensed version of this…
<img src="http://www.prestoimages.net/store/graphics02/2006_pd986677_1.JPG" height="540">
Over on [REDACTED], I had a photo of Matchbox's Old #3, because I happen to keep one on the shelf over my desk at work.
<img src="http://www.tanshanomi.com/temp/Old%233_300x300.jpg">
And frankly, an old-timey racer like that with wide modern tires seems like a massively cool idea.
For some reason, that always reminds me of Mexican food.
I wonder why.
<img src="http://www.localwally.com/img/bull-taco-polaroid.jpg">
<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R0KKkYqzxtQ/TYi9jI9fEUI/AAAAAAAAHtI/Iunkx0FLE40/s1600/bull%2Btaco.jpg">
The name sounds like a bad movie that would only be legal in El Presidente Harrell's corner of the US.
Poland has some funny road signs, I left there when I was four, so I picked one of a car on it's side back at jalopnik, cause I was sort of a screw-up. A couple of times people told me they thought it was of a coffee mug. Anyway so I try and make an acount here and I screw-up like usual and can't get mzs like before because I messed-up my email address. So I think of a better name, oh zsm, that's perfect. The reason, because even is BZR rearranges his letters, I'll come after him alphabetically! Okay so that's a stupid reason. But I needed a different icon, since my name was slightly different, I picked another silly one. I think the original size said something like, "Caution Car Thieves!" but it sort of looks like a dead spider warning to me in small scale, close and good enough.
I screwed up when I tried to bring over mine from [REDACTED] while trying to make a Gravatar or whatever. ID somehow really didn't like the way I spelled my name, insisting that the "C" be capitalized. I should have just left it at that, but after repeated efforts to get them to spell it correctly, I fell into some sort of black hole. Now, when I try to change my avatar, it tells me that there already is a CoupeZ600, and "You can't access that account!". And when I try from a different computer, it will only show me "coupeZ600" because he's got 80 pts, and that jackass "CoupeZ600" couldn't have bothered posting even a single comment. I figured if I ever get close to 100 I'll put a little more effort into it…….
Back in the days when I was a youngster, and arcades were abundant, I used the call sign NEO. Don't know how I came up with it, but it was 3 letters, the max number of characters a person could use when entering their name on the High Score board, and nobody at least not in my local arcades used it. Unfortunately, in the nineties a movie called the Matrix, you may have heard of it, came out and ruined everything. So I needed a new call sign, johnnymac was a nickname, and 9 was my basketball jersey number.
As for my picture of Hotrod, Transformers is my favourite childhood cartoon, and Hotrod was my favourite character.
I change mine every now and again. Does that make me fickle?
The current one came about after reading the Jim's Pancakes blog where I learned how to make pictures and words in the pancakes for the kids' entertainment on weekends. I don't get any more elaborate than that, but he certainly shows some creative stuff. In fact his current lead item should be near and dear to many a Tostadero's heart:
<img src="http://www.jimspancakes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/millenium-falcon-pancake.jpg" width="500">
NoSaNoOs, the logo of a totalitarian AI government created by a very odd Australian gentleman who's site has long since disappeared. Which is fine by me, because I have the whole thing archived and it gives me a huge bonus to my obscurity stat.
The name is the email address I signed up to redactnik with (@yahoo. It probably doesn't work anymore and I don't check it). I think it's really juvenile and I don't like it anymore, I kept it here for a sense of continuity, even though I didn't really make any personal connections there. I value my ID points too highly and irrationally to change it at this point. BlackIce just sounds rad and awesome, GTS is the top trim level of A60 Supras in Canada (the US trim levels didn't have names).
I honestly never made the Supra connection. "GTS" usually makes me think of either a rare version of the early SN-95 Mustang or a certain Chrysler.
GTS? Green Tomato Soup? A rather odd choice…
Mine is the helicopter I learned to fly helicopters in, painted in honor of the centennial of Naval Aviation. I lurked (as is still my tendency) on here long before I got an ID account (since day one of Hooniverse, actually!), and the Bell 206 was pretty much consuming my life when whatever article it was convinced me to actually jump on board. My handle has absolutely nothing to do with it; I was just looking for something that described me (no matter how remotely) without using numbers or special characters. It's also a holdover from long ago, when I wasn't 100% up to speed on how to properly use "token."
I never bother with avatars- too much bother.
As for my name, it succinctly outlines where
I'm from/at and what I look like.
Got that from a pair of Russian hobbits and
their statuesque daughter in a bar in front of
a group of my friends…..
My username is intentionally short because I don't want to type a lot every time I log in, and cryptic because I tired of my login on Redacted and figured if I chose something relatively meaningless I'd be less likely to get sick of it.
My avatar is missing because I'm lazy.
B72? Isn't that some sort of vitamin?
If it is, I wouldn't have wanted to be the lab rat that got the 71 failed versions that came before!
<img src="http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs42/f/2009/162/e/9/Mutant_Rat_Front_by_ClaytonBarton.jpg" width="300" border="2" style="border:2px solid black;" alt=" " />
Congratulations, you have pushed me over the edge. I hope it makes you happy. And doesn't piss off Mr. Barton.
Edit: apparently it takes a while to take effect. Hmm that sounds familiar. I think that's what they said about the first 71 versions too.
See, you just needed a bit of inspiration. Well done!
/Happy? I suppose I'm as close as I can be, given the lack of large electrical arcs, the smell of ozone and hot insulation in the air.
//Barton should be proud.
Before I created an IntenseDebate profile, I contributed as BPR. This stood for “Black Plastic Rat”, the animal that serves as the dashboard on my motorcycle (When I go too fast it squeaks). Unfortunately BPR was taken on IntenseDebate, so B72 it is.So it seems you struck a chord with your suggestion. Thanks!
Mine is a long exposure photo of the gauges firing up on a Subaru Legacy (friend took photo).
SSurfer321 is old handle from first days on interwebz. I wanted IronMan as he was my fav comic character but settled for a shortened Silver Surfer. The 321 is just random.
Nothing fancy about mine. "Tiller" became my nickname in high school (nothing to do with sailing — my first name's Tyler, and for reasons I forget now the pronunciation got changed around into a nickname), and the "188" was originally added because, when I signed up for an instant messaging program, "Tiller" by itself was already taken. The "88" came from a love of the Back to the Future movies, and the general coolness of that number; the extra 1 was just random. I've kept using that handle for lack of creativity (that and I don't generally participate in any forums, so I never felt the need to come up with a more interesting handle — I lurked for a long time on [redacted], moved over to Hooniverse when it started up, and eventually saw an article that I couldn't resist commenting on).
And no avatar image, because I'm lazy.