Avatars, comments thereon

Who me? :blush:

Well, @solost shares the opinion, in a past thread on this subject!

I’m a pirate, and possibly poisonous too.

… Add standard username icon and location (southern hemisphere )

Shortly after the switch to Discourse, I opened up my automatically generated “P” pic in an image editor, and I wondered how it would look with a white background, so I did that. And left it that way, because I’m lazy.

Back to John Philip Kemble as Coriolanus

It’s said to be his best role, and he is said to be one of the best ever at playing it. Here depicted banished from Rome and plotting his revenge.

The full picture, painted by Thomas Lawrence in 1798 is at the City of London’s Guildhall Art Gallery,

Even better:

If I may make a humble suggestion, with a request for forgiveness for any perceived criticism, I think that a mistake that many Dopers make is taking a picture that they like and just reducing it down to avatar size. This simply doesn’t work – all you get is an unrecognizable blob.

It’s more appropriate to think of an avatar as a sort of logo, like a corporate logo, rather an actual picture. Mine is not an ideal example, especially since the addition of the Ukraine blue and yellow emblem makes it rather cluttered, but at least it’s recognizable as a representation of my own handsome features! @CairoCarol has a great, simple avatar, very much in the spirit of a logo. If you must have an actual image, @Seanette and @EddyTeddyFreddy provide good examples of how to do it by using a cropped close-up view. @thorny_locust also has a nice recognizable one, although it’s neither thorny nor a locust!

@Northern_Piper has the right idea of using a representational image, but I wonder about the execution, since it’s not clear what the hell it’s supposed to be – I still think of it as the world’s ugliest hummingbird! :wink:

Mine is either the boat I am on, or one very similar, rounding the Fastnet lighthouse halfway through the race (2009 or 2017 can’t remember which).

Hey, no disrespect was intended. I like campfires! Also, when I thought I saw crossed logs in your avatar, I assumed you were making a delightfully subtle ironic counterpoint to your username.

I’m getting bored with my avatar, and the reason why I created it in the first place no longer exists. I’m thinking of changing it soon. Campfire, maybe?

Until now I assumed your handle was “solo-ist”, but apparently is instead “so-lost”. I was about to suggest someone playing a violin or maybe a guitar, but howzabout a shipwreck victim in a life raft?

I was poking fun, and bringing up the prior thread, but I’m in no way hurt by the awesome characterization and thought that went into it.

Better to be talked about (and talked up for that matter!) than not to be talked about at all.

Yeah, I get that a lot. I briefly considered having my signature or description line changed to “Not soloist” at one point.

Hmm, maybe. I originally called myself ‘solost’ because I came out of lurkerdom and subscribed in order to comment in the “Lost” thread in its final season. If we could have done custom avatars then (I don’t think we could, then?), I probably would have chosen the Dharma Initiative logo. But that show is anathema to me now.

Yeah, I figured you were (hoped, anyway :wink:)

I grow strawberries, some years. And that one shows up nice and visibly, with little need for explanation as to what it is, and rapidly findable scrolling through a thread.

The thorny locust I’m thinking of, while it is thorny, isn’t quite that thorny – it’s black locust, not honey locust. Thorny enough to annoy some people; very hard to get rid of once it gets its roots in somewhere; makes fantastic long-lasting fenceposts (to hold up your grapevines while you’re vehemently complaining about trying to weed it out of your vineyard) and also fantastic long-lasting hot-burning firewood. May or may not be a nitrogen fixer depending on who you talk to.

– what on earth is that thing? It has a very goofy looking face. And false eyes, apparently.

A (likely AI generated) thorny locust.

Except for my dumb ass, who admitted (probably in the same ‘Misidentified Avatars’ thread in which I mistook @ParallelLines ‘ avatar for a campfire) that I used to think your avatar was a habanero pepper :blush:

The AI part might indeed explain it. I was wondering if it/they is a character in something I haven’t been reading/watching.

ETA:

Most years I grow those too! – the orange ones, that is; though I’ve seen seed for sale for red habañeros, too.

Site I got it from insisted it was a real species: Thorny Devil Katydid.

Huh. The world is strange. Thanks for info!