Saturday, August 27, 2005

Iconic Images

CarliTonight I was going to regale you with stories of my troubled relationship with Honda scooters, a subject I alluded to briefly last night.  In order to illustrate it, I was going to photograph both some current Honda models and my old, sun-damaged bikes with broken plastic parts. 

Mages coverBut when I stopped by the local Honda dealership after work, it turned out that they aren't allowed to sell Honda scooters any more.  Only dealers who sell Honda exclusively get to carry them.  So I came home, got online, and forgot to go photograph my Hondas until after it was dark outside.  Oh, well.  I'll do that entry for you on Sunday.

Better be nice to me, or my Dalek will exterminate! Instead I got all distracted with catching up on my alerts.  For one comment, I wanted to check the word count on a bad poem I wrote 31 years ago, which I posted on my LiveJournal earlier this year, as an example of how bad my writing sometimes was back in high school.  The comment was about the $6.74 I would have made on that poem at two cents a word, had Ed Ferman taken leave of his senses and bought it for F&SF back in 1974.

Cathma Anyway, it took me hours to find the LiveJournal entry with the Epli poem, during which time I watched SG-1 and added "tags" to a bunch of old LJ entries.  These are basically "metatags," one-word subjects attached to a LiveJournal entry to make it easier to find the entries about penguins - or, in my case, to sort the memes, language, personal and humor entries from the ones about jw, mavarin, serials and so on. Most of my LJ entries are either memes or about how my writing is going.

What are the chances? At one point I did a Google search for "mavarin + honda," to see what I've posted in the past about the scooters.  One of the results was so surprising that I blogged about it in LJ.  That led me back to reading my Friends page in Live Journal.  Sara hasn't posted the result of her cat's operation, but Julie finished a draft of her script, and Shelly's been messing around with icons for LJ.  The service recently expanded the number of icons each member can use (particularly for paid members and permanent accounts), and Shelly's taking advantage of this to design a 100x100 pixel avatar for every mood.

me as Cathma Icons, huh?  Well, I had the old paid account maximum of 9 userpics, and I was happy with them.  But, well, I succumbed.

Here's some of what I came up with, both in the tiny icon size and one larger image for more general use.  Hope you like 'em!


Mages notesNow I've got to decide which ones to actually use.  Shelly's account allows 100.  I only get 15. I think I'll skip  most of the sleepy ones and alternative Cathmas and covers.  But I will keep the rejects on my hard drive and online, just in case I have use for them later.

with or without the glasses.I had 3.5 hours of sleep Thursday night, and it's 2:45 AM now.  Methinks I'm going to  bed soon.  But I've been wrong about that before.

Karen


 Cathma  Not using this one.
  Brainy alien.   more mages notes.
the icon version.   another version Heirs notebook.  Pages of Mages.   
Red Devil shot.  My main sleepy shot.  Another tired Karen.  one eye says it all.  


Not an icon, obviously.
Mages cover
 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

lol cute icons (and some are scary). I've heard ones this size called avatars before too. :-)

Anonymous said...

Some clarifications.

I'm making mood icons, also of the 100 x 100 px for my Blogger blog, Cyber Chocolate, because Marc Lutz of Unky Moods decided to give up that site and Unky Moods are no more. Since I love the mood thingies LJ has and no one else has done anything close to Unky in size and style (according to my Google searches) that can easily be used on non-LJs, I decided to make my own. I made an entry/post template and just swap out the file name for the graphic.

On LJ, non-paying members get 3 user pics, max of 100 x 100 px. I don't recall ever having a max of 9 pics. Paid members got 15 and I reached that rather quickly after paying for my account in March. LJ recently, as in a couple of weeks ago, went nuts and upped that to 100. Previously, only permanent (paid) members and early adopters got that many. If you're paying for your LJ, Karen, you should check your account info for user pics. They also put in an automatic renewal feature. If you opt for that by the deadline (Oct, I think), you get 2-3 free months and they'll pro-rate your payment if you do it, as I did, before your year is up. Non-paying members still have the same icon restrictions as far as I know.

I've been making user pics or icons for LJ, too. I have 63 of the things now. Most recently, I've been playing with quotation ones. Next, I want to learn how to really do blends. This has been a practical way to practice with Photoshop for me. And I want to do some themes. The quotations are one theme. I'm thinking of doing a set of science fiction ones next.

Cool looking icons you made, Karen. Do check your account again. You shouldn't have to choose which to use if you have a paid account.

Anonymous said...

Karen
Avatars?  LiveJournal?  100X100?  I guess I'm not in Kansas anymore.  I'll have to learn all about this stuff one day!
Sam

Anonymous said...

I wonder what icon I would use for myself.  I like yours.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I love the photos of you in the glasses!  They look so, well, real, and artistic!  
$6.74???  Two cents a word???  And what is the going rate now???  The same???  I think Scalzi said freelance writers who write for mags get about $1.00 per word.  You all are ROBBED.  

Krissy
http://journals.aol.com/fisherkristina/SometimesIThink