I’ll volunteer my services as well.
I just saw FIVE Hitler avatars!!! And two tubgirls!
[sub]Not really[/sub]
For anyone interested in trying it out I put up a test link to a one-click installer for the SDMB Avatar Script.
If you already have Greasemonkey installed in Firefox (Greasemonkey – Get this Extension for 🦊 Firefox (en-US)) you can just click “install” at that link and automatically have the script added and enabled. Chrome has built-in support for user scripts but I don’t know if the one-click installer supports Chrome. If not you can just download the script and drop the file onto any Chrome window to install it.
This release also includes a simple way to change the default size of avatars to something other than the 50x50 pixel default.
If you already have an older version of the script it is recommended that you delete it before installing the new one to prevent any conflicts.
To add your own avatar, just put a line in your SDMB profile beginning with "SDMB Avatar: " and then the URL to an image you want to use. See my profile for an example.
The script is commented in all areas that can be customized by the user, such as assigning custom avatars to individual posters or changing the default size of displayed avatars.
Avatars are working flawlessly since **Crazyhorse **PMd the latest script to me. I can’t thank you and ntucker enough! I would shower you with nickels if you were before me right now.
If the animation is too much, let me know.
It’s been working great for me, too, in both Firefox and Chrome. Thank you Crazyhorse, ntucker, and Polerius!
I’m wondering, what’s the lag time between changing an avatar and it updating on the server side? I wanted to upload a new avatar. So I changed my user image on the Profile screen, changed my Bio link, and even added a custom line into my script with the new picture. Then I deleted the old one. But my avatar is still showing a 403: forbidden because it’s trying to link to the old one.
Other than what I presume is a minor amount of lag time in updates, it’s flawless. Although it’s a little strange that I updated my user script client-side with my new link and it isn’t taking precedence over the old one.
I remember reading in the notes ntucker put in his post about the CGI in the other avatar thread that it only checks the same profile a second time after an hour has passed. So it will keep returning a cached version of the original URL for anywhere from 1 to 59 minutes after you change it, just depending on how long it happens to have been at the time you make the change. I changed mine today too and noticed it start to appear after maybe 10 or 15 minutes.
Ah I didn’t notice this detail, but if you added the new link to your custom avatars directly in the script, then that should have displayed for you right away, even if other users didn’t catch up to the change in your profile for up to an hour. I’m not sure what might have caused that if you’re sure the custom one was entered exactly right.
Thank you for that info! It’s updated now. And that’s a totally reasonable lag time, given that it’s someone else’s own server.
This is your gold star. There are many gold stars, but this one is yours.
It’s possible that I messed it up. I did a copy and paste on someone else’s line and just replaced it with my own username and image URL. But I’m not worried about that.
Thank you. I may have to make that my avatar. 
You’ve been keeping us posted like a champ, you deserve it. 
I’ve never been anything more than passable at writing code for school assignments (never anything practical), so I’m super jealous. Although I’m fairly good at breaking things.
This project has given me the opportunity to do both! 
One thing peeps – you should probably get your avatar loaded to an image service like Photobucket or tinypic. Because one thing that IS being a jackass is bandwidth theft. Don’t link it from an outside source; save it and upload it to your own space.
FYI, for those of you who want to get their ‘avatar fix’ even on mobile devices, you can add the following bookmarklet* to your mobile web browser (e.g. on the iPhone)
javascript:(function()%20{var%20customavatars={'TubaDiva':'http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/image.php?u=32&dateline=1270212833&type=profile',};function%20loadImage(header,imgurl){var%20img=document.createElement('img');img.addEventListener('load',function(evt){var%20img=evt.target;if(img.width>1){img.style.cssFloat="left";img.style.marginRight="5px";img.style.borderWidth="0";img.style.maxWidth="50px";img.style.maxHeight="50px";header.insertBefore(img,header.firstChild);}});img.src=imgurl;}%20var%20allNameHeaders=document.getElementsByClassName('bigusername');for(var%20i=0;i<allNameHeaders.length;i++)%20{var%20username=allNameHeaders*.innerHTML;var%20userhref=allNameHeaders*.href;var%20SplitID=userhref.split("u=");var%20userid1=SplitID[1];var%20imageurl="http://splitter.august20th.com/sdmbav.rb?userid="+userid1;if(username%20in%20customavatars){imageurl=customavatars[username ];}%20loadImage(allNameHeaders*,imageurl);}})();void%200;
It doesn’t run automatically (you have to click the bookmarklet after the page has loaded), but it’s the only way to see SDMB avatars when you are mobile browsing. So, not meant to be used all the time, but just in case you want to look at some avatars someone mentioned in the thread.
*You can google ‘bookmarklet’ to find out what they are and how to use them, and also find the best ones out there (On my iPhone I use bookmarklets for stuff that Safari doesn’t have, like ‘Find on Page’ and ‘Scroll to bottom of page’, or ‘Increase font size’)
Getting better all the time. Crazyhorse’ script runs parallel with Reiconizer with no problems as far as I can see, which means that I’m now getting both avatars that people have chosen for themselves plus the ones I had already assigned to people before the present effort. A few posters have therefore displayed with two images beside their names, which is kind of amusing but I guess I’ll drop mine in those cases and let y’all choose your own faces. Though I suppose I could use it to “gold star” the cool people… 
Could somebody with some spare time write a script to make it so we can call people cunts in the pit? The comment could be hosted on a different site, and visible to anyone running a particular greasemonkey script.
Maybe now that some of the mods have avatars, they might see that they’re not so bad, people aren’t using goatse all the time, and it isn’t such a horrible thing?
We’ve been doing that for a while now. You just never knew it because you don’t have the script.
HEY! I’m seeing avatars! Wow, way cool. embarrassingly, I have no idea how I stumbled upon the solution even with Crazyhorse’s guidance and patience.
Now if I could figure out how to upload one of my own…
Welcome to the avatar world
To add your own just host an image you want to use somewhere (you can for free at lots of sites like photobucket, flickr, etc.), then add a line to your SDMB profile that says “SDMB Avatar: <URL to image>” you can see an example in my profile. Then you and other users of the script will see that avatar by your posts.