My Paintshop Pro-fu is weak, but I whipped up a Grammaton Cleric clock icon thingie. Yay.

Gatac

I'll get around to it. "Soon."

It's not a requirement. I dread the day when every avatar on this ship agrees with mine. </Janeway>

Well, I'll just play Zuke's advocate, then.

That day will never come, Zeke - whatever else happens, you can trust my laziness to prevent a full house:D

XD? Buwha?

I think it's supposed to be an indication of amusement.

But, the majority of the world knows this as a type of flash memory.

Or a deuterated halide written the wrong way round.

You know, it's really a very common emoticon. No need to make Ginga feel like she's speaking Chinese. If you need it explained, XD represents laughing so hard your eyes close.

If you want weird, try those face-on/manga emoticons like ^_^.

Being pedantic, neither of them is really an emoticon - an emoticon being the image that they're used as shortcuts for - they're much closer to being traditional ASCII art.

And the XD one is particularly annoying because I've been using them (the memory cards) for about 2 years now... it still rankles that everytime I talk to someone about photography online they think I'm making fun of them :(

Of course, the correct response when someone uses '^_^' on you is to ask what happened to their nose... :wink:

No, *this* is weird:

*(B||
___\\

A guy wearing a toque, ski goggles, and a scarf (although in this particular font the goggles look a little misshapen).
(also, ignore the grey line - it's to make things line up and I don't know what the background colour is.)
(I'm putting way too much effort into this.)

Or a Pokémon game, actually...

Nobody's ever seen an XD before? Well, at least Zeke has. Sillies. :lol:

I've seen XD before.

Things I've learned from FFXI:

^-^ <---happy
;_; <----sad

>;_;< <----bat

orz <---hitting head on the floor, see the o is the head, the r is the body and arm, and the z is the legs.

>_< <---- angry-unbelieving

-_- <---"whut?"

~_^ <--- wink

~_~ <--- sleepy

o.o<--- "Oh My God!"

¬_¬ <----shifty eyes

>.> <---easily made shifty eyes

<(^-^<)
(>^-^)> <-----happy dancers

(x.x)O=(.-O) <---punching someone

There's more, but I can't remember them ^^; <--- Silly mistake sweatdrop face.

Funny thing, I thought it was Intel's Execute Disable Bit! ;)

*applauds Hotaru's post*

Don't forget the kitties... and other things, too.

:3 - Cat
X3 - Happy cat
>:3 - evil cat
3:< - angry fanged thing
>:[ - angry face
DX - Ack! face
D:< - Angry shocked face
D: - Shocked face
._. - looking down, ashamed

Oh, and also, there's Lexy's ;D - winking happy face.

While we're at it, what is "ttyl"?

Talk To You Later.

NetLingo is really really useful for looking this stuff up, if you're interested.

Following up on a comment from e of pi... arrrrgh. You're right. The different heights of those new banners are driving me nuts. When I get home I'll rework them -- they're pretty quick to make with my current program.

Speaking of which, those who, like me, have struggled to find a good freeware image editor would be well advised to try Ultimate Paint, the one I'm using now. It takes getting used to, but far less than a monstrosity like The GIMP; it's powerful enough for my needs, and best of all, it doesn't nag. Check it out.

I didn't find the GIMP all that hard to get used to...

Admittedly, I came to it off the back of 3 or 4 years on Paint Shop Pro 6, 7 amd 8 - a suite that has the same manic love of hiding options menus in the damdest places...