Emoticon Talent Search

[Meryl]

Hey, Tremblayans

I just started a thread over on the Open Forum about revamping our current emoticons.  Are you a techie who can help me out?  Do you have some ideas to throw in?  Check it out and offer your input. 

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=649.0

[RouxB]

I feel identity-less without my afro. Sad face.

[YaadPyar]

Hey, Tremblayans

I just started a thread over on the Open Forum about revamping our current emoticons.  Are you a techie who can help me out?  Do you have some ideas to throw in?  Check it out and offer your input. 

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=649.0

So sorry - can't help, but I think we need some cowboys, or cowboy hats, and sheep...lots of sheep!   

[YaadPyar]

I feel identity-less without my afro. Sad face.

RouxB - look at this one!

[RouxB]

<gasp>!! Me want that!

[YaadPyar]

Hey, Tremblayans

I just started a thread over on the Open Forum about revamping our current emoticons.  Are you a techie who can help me out?  Do you have some ideas to throw in?  Check it out and offer your input. 

http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=649.0

Meryl - check out this site!!!

http://www.penthesilea.ch/yabb-smiley-sets/

               

[YaadPyar]

<gasp>!! Me want that!

Does this work - right-click on either and use the 'save pciture as' feature.  Once you save it on your computer, you can use it as your avatar, or however else you want!

[RouxB]

Thanks Celeste! Let's hope I can get this to work...

[YaadPyar]

Thanks Celeste! Let's hope I can get this to work...

You can - I know you can.  I included the little dreadlocks one in case you like that, but it's hard to tell it's dreads.  PM me if you have problems.

[Nicole]

Celeste, that is an awesome site!  Look at my new signature!!!!!

[YaadPyar]

Celeste, that is an awesome site!  Look at my new signature!!!!!

OMG - I think I have to go back there and steal a few myself!  Did you see all the cowboy smileys - there's a whole section of them.  I really want a sheep smiley myself!

[Nicole]

I downloaded the entire cowboy section - are you kidding??!! lol...

[Nicole]

Celeste: 

[TheStudDuck]

I think we should drop the regular emotions that we currently have for the cowboy versions that were linked to us... so that way we could have our standard emotions that we could display... but they would be Brokeback style:



These would be seventeen core emoticons... which could allow us to find nine other ones to add to it -- I am personally pushing for the cute sheep ones that people are finding.  Hell, there's a lot of things that we could find.  But the cowboy ones seem like they should be staples... maybe it's just me.  But that's my vote.

But seriously, folks... we need to at least get the one that is titled "huh" ... I kid you not, one of the cowboy emoticons they have is actually:  "huh.gif" !!!!!  You think I'm kidding!?!  I can't make this stuff up!!!

[cmr107]

Ooooh, yes, I want the ones with the hats! The normal ones look so boring right now after seeing Studly's little row! We need the cowboy smileys and sheep!

[YaadPyar]

Oooo - David, I love that you pasted them all.  But I can't figure out how to get them in my sig line - I've copied and formatted every way I can think, but cannot paste!

Nicole - HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!

[TheStudDuck]

Check your mail, Celeste.  We'll get that signature taken care of.

[YaadPyar]

Check your mail, Celeste.  We'll get that signature taken care of.

Awwww, Studly - thanks so much.  I have to run out, but will get this done upon my return. 

[vkm91941]

Those Cowboy and Sheep emoticons are great...they'd be perfect for this site. Who's working on that project with Phillip, Celeste do you know?

[YaadPyar]

Hey, Tremblayans

I just started a thread over on the Open Forum about revamping our current emoticons.  Are you a techie who can help me out?  Do you have some ideas to throw in?  Check it out and offer your input.  http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=649.0

Hey Vic - Meryl's working in it, but looking for techie help.  I'm great a researching the web, but don't know more...anyone you can suggest?

[j.U.d.E.]

What about this one..



~ j U d E

[vkm91941]

Hey, Tremblayans

I just started a thread over on the Open Forum about revamping our current emoticons.  Are you a techie who can help me out?  Do you have some ideas to throw in?  Check it out and offer your input.  http://bettermost.net/forum/index.php?topic=649.0

Hey Vic - Meryl's working in it, but looking for techie help.  I'm great a researching the web, but don't know more...anyone you can suggest?

Not me, I'm not techy at all...I can drive software with the best of them, can even write fully functioning data basess with Microsoft Access but beyond that it all might as well be greek.  No one here springs to mind other than Phillip himself and his partner.

ANYONE out there know enough about the technical side of all this cyber/computer stuff to be of assistance in this endeavor?  PM Celeste and Meryl and Phil!

[YaadPyar]

Jude - Those sheep are GREAT!

I'm stickying this for a little while to see if we can find the right tech support for the job.  Thanks.

[Meryl]

Meryl - check out this site!!!

http://www.penthesilea.ch/yabb-smiley-sets/

Thanks, Celeste!  It looks like the links provided on that site include a lot of smileys that IMDb uses, plus some more really nice ones, like the cowboy smilies.

What I'd like to do is mix and match some of the best ones and put them into a package that Phillip can load up to BetterMost.  But I need my techie!  Where and who can he/she be?  

[j.U.d.E.]

Testing

[YaadPyar]

Testing

Hey Jude (not intended as a pun on the Beatles son!) -

The flock of sheep work, but the rest of the message is just a red X.

[j.U.d.E.]

Testing

Hey Jude (not intended as a pun on the Beatles son!) -

The flock of sheep work, but the rest of the message is just a red X.

Strange! I can see the 'group - hug' emoticon..

And this?

[Nicole]

I see it in the second post Jude, but not the first one - the first one just says "testing" and nothing else on my screen.

[j.U.d.E.]

Thank you Nicole. What I did different the second time is to save the link on "http://tinypic.com/"' first and then inserted it as [image]..

~ j U d E

[cmr107]

Where are the sheep? Are they in that website Celeste posted? I can't find them!

[Phillip Dampier]

Be careful with using images already on tinyurl.  I recall on another forum some little darlings thought it would be cute to upload virus-infected JPEGs and it caused chaos.  Granted this was last year and Microsoft has patched that issue (assuming people keep their systems up to date), but make take some care with those things.  Sometimes you don't know where they've been and having loose emoticons would be bad. 

The other problem with off-site hosted images in sig lines is when the site goes down, temporarily or otherwise, every post you will have on here will have red boxes in it unless/until you change it.  My personal (not administrative/moderator) view about them is that they can quickly get garish in signature lines, especially when the signature line gets bigger than the message itself.  The Cullen people eventually had to make this a rule:

No garish signature blocks: We want the focus on the content. Please keep signature blocks to 10 pt max--which will match the page--and free of large pictures.

I like people having fun so I'm not going to be Mr. Meanie and cut people off, but think people should execise some care with these things. 

However, this whole thing does give me an idea about the story-telling with emoticon issue.  While I can't possibly offer every variation on the editor, if we wanted to have a thread of story telling with these, perhaps I could build a web page with a huge variety of these things that would be hosted here on site, and then in that section, people could insert the URLs for an endless number of these.  Since each file would be pre-checked, no worries about "where has this file been," etc.

[Phillip Dampier]

I think we should drop the regular emotions that we currently have for the cowboy versions that were linked to us... so that way we could have our standard emotions that we could display... but they would be Brokeback style:



These would be seventeen core emoticons... which could allow us to find nine other ones to add to it -- I am personally pushing for the cute sheep ones that people are finding.  Hell, there's a lot of things that we could find.  But the cowboy ones seem like they should be staples... maybe it's just me.  But that's my vote.

But seriously, folks... we need to at least get the one that is titled "huh" ... I kid you not, one of the cowboy emoticons they have is actually:  "huh.gif" !!!!!  You think I'm kidding!?!  I can't make this stuff up!!!

Hmmm... this is a very good idea.  I like the cowboy hat theme for the default core emoticons, and there would be room for some sheep too and a few other things.  Can you check on the copyright status of these?  Often emoticons are just released for public use, but sometimes they are copyrighted and require purchase to use.  There are some emoticon image editors out there too where huh (often expressed as ) could be edited to say "Hunh?" instead.

Let me know what you discover. 

[Meryl]

However, this whole thing does give me an idea about the story-telling with emoticon issue.  While I can't possibly offer every variation on the editor, if we wanted to have a thread of story telling with these, perhaps I could build a web page with a huge variety of these things that would be hosted here on site, and then in that section, people could insert the URLs for an endless number of these.  Since each file would be pre-checked, no worries about "where has this file been," etc.

Wow, Phillip, that sounds like a perfect solution to reviving our beloved Rebus thread.  I'm sure everyone would have a ball with that!  You certainly have my vote to go ahead with it. 

Would we be able to use all those smileys in our regular posts, or just in one area?

I agree with you also about keeping the images in sig lines to a reasonable size.  In this case, bigger is not necessarily better, since they can get distracting when seen in post after post.

The Cowboy emoticons are perfect for our Brokeback site, so I would vote along with David for installing them in place of the ones we have now.  However, if it turns out we can't use the extra smileys you mentioned above in our posts, it might be worth approaching the author of the Cowboy smilies, Andrea Hubacher, with ideas for more of them, like angel, devil, crazy, hearts-for-eyes, smoking, etc.

Here is what it says on Andrea Hubacher's site (the link Celeste posted) regarding copyright:

Please be aware that the smiley sets on this web site are under the copyright protection by the author. You are allowed to use the smiley set as permanent or seasonal standard smiley set in your own YaBB board. You are not allowed to re-distribute or modify the smileys without written permission by the author. Using the smileys obliges you to give credit to the author and provide a back link to the YaBB Board Smiley Sets website (f.e. announcement thread or credits page). Only use on non profit sites is permitted. Furthermore it is not allowed to use these smiley sets on any site containing vulgar, racist, sexistic, obscene or adult material. Do not download or use these smileys if you do not agree to these conditions.

There is no mention on the site of paying to use the smileys, so I think they are free as long as we meet the copyright terms.

[YaadPyar]

YAY Phillip & Meryl - this is so fun!!  I't still a big fan of the below suggestion as well.  I'm unstickying this now as we seem to have a great start here.

 While I can't possibly offer every variation on the editor, if we wanted to have a thread of story telling with these, perhaps I could build a web page with a huge variety of these things that would be hosted here on site, and then in that section, people could insert the URLs for an endless number of these.  Since each file would be pre-checked, no worries about "where has this file been," etc.

[Meryl]

Yay, I'm so glad we have the Cowboy smilies now!    I get a kick out of seeing RouxB's 'fro at the end of the line when I hit "reply".      Maybe Ray could draw a little cowboy hat on her. 

There are plenty of others I'd love to add, some of which are below.  I'd still like sheep, drinking, smoking, devil, angel, sun, moon, hug, crazy, praying, heart, dancing, and Mexican smilies, too.  Ah well, all in good time. 

[j.U.d.E.]

Cool cool cool! I like the cowboy-hat smileys!

Where are the sheep? Are they in that website Celeste posted? I can't find them!

Courtney, where you asking about the sheep in my signature? I did them myself. No virus infection possible there, I guess, Philip. 

~ j U d E

Update: Sheep are gone now! I made a new one...