By Alec Meer on October 30th, 2007 at 4:50 pm.
Possibly. I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing. But you’ll notice most guys in comments now have a mysterious silhouette next to their message, while the clever ones have a clever picture up. If their picture is of boobies, it won’t be for long, trust me.
Anyhoo, either click on one of those or click here and you’ll be taken to Gravatar, where you can upload your pic. First you’ll need to create an account using the email address you enter when you leave a comment here, but it’s very quick and non-intrusive. The email address must be all lower-case, so you may need to switch to another address for commenting here if you currently use a sIlLy l33T handle or something.
Images should be 50×50 max (though Gravatar seems to explode images of that size into 80×80, so I’m a bit confused at the moment), and safe for innocent eyes – you’ll be asked to age-rate it when you upload, and when you do select ‘PG.’ If you upload a picture of a distended rectum and still label it PG so that it shows up here, you can rest assured we’ll keep deleting your comments until you grow up.
In some cases there’s a wait before your avatar shows up, so patience, laddie. If you just want to check that your avatar’s working, you can always simply look at a previous comment you’ve posted, rather than adding a ‘testing…’ one to the boring mountain of ‘em already in this thread, though it’s understandable if you’re not sure where you last commented. Definitely don’t follow up a test comment with another one if the first doesn’t work though, because that’s just annoying and makes it harder for us to check for real problems – just hit refresh once you’ve made your Gravatar change. The avatars work retrospectively too, y’see.
Other than that, go get ‘em. Mine’s working, look: 
(testing)
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lets see shall we
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Testing 1-2-3.
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Mine seems to work.
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Hmm. I wonder if my old gravatar account still works…
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holy huge formatting batlady
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(also testing)
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It was working..
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baaaam, then everyone suddenly notices this man is damn hot
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You had an an image a moment ago, Alec. Now you don’t.
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Let’s see…
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testing for case sensitivity.
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Aha! The MD5 hash generating routine you’re using isn’t case insensitive, by the looks of things. If I change my email addy to all lowercase, it works.
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Erk, grey background.
*fixes*
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*Testing the new shiny*
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I vonder… test!
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Bwahahah! I thought I would get sent somewhere to create an account but Gravatar remembered me. :) How nice!
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Bah, it no worky.
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It’s not actually 80 x 80 is it?
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is this thing working?
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Hmm, is my current one on?
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The site’s set to default to 50×50 images, but Gravatar.com itself seems to resize everything to 80. I’m pretty confused.
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One final test. Then I’ll shut up, I swear. Unless it works. If it works, I shall reply saying ‘woot’
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hmm… I think now I’ve got everything right. let’s try…
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Hurray, I still have my Gravatar account from when I was a poster on Grumpy Gamer (luckily, I was also able to guess my password from back then, too), and my, hasn’t it changed its accessibility.
Anyway, now Murray can live on.
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Well, mine’s from posting on Cobbert’s blog. So I’d already setup from back then.
Although the irony will make me giggle if he comes on now and it breaks.
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I’ve uploaded mine, but am I not allowed to select ‘G’ rating? Not working at a glance :(
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Is it down to case-sensitivity? All my previous comments were made using an email address that started with a capital “M”. I copied and pasted this email address when I registered at Gravatar, but it looks like they converted it to lowercase. All my old comments don’t show the avatar, but since I’ve just started using an all-lowercase email address, it seems to be working fine.
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Gravatars are great, if a bit too much Web-2.0-run-on-happiness-and-good-wishes rather than sound engineering.
The system will occasionally randomly forget to display your gravatar, or spend months trying to load. Adding width=”x” height=”y” gubbins to the img tag should at least give browsers a chance to lay out the page properly, before fruitlessly demanding images from the overloaded happy-sunbeams-and-buttercups Gravatar servers.
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It’s a nice idea… but wouldn’t it be better if once requested the sites in question took over from the main server?…
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I don’t believe it’s working for me. Luckily, I don’t really care that much. I’m sure it’ll sort itself out.
KG
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The plugin I’ve used is supposed to cache the avatars locally here, but as we saw during the initial hoopla, that just seems to result in a big ? for all comers.
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Oooh! it is!
KG
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What a pink robot you have there, Kieron.
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does it really work? dman why doesn’t it?
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Hurrah… now we can go back to doing whatever it was we were doing.
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Testing…
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This space intentionally left blank
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Hopefully this will work.
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Yay, it works
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Eventually.
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Apparently it’s gone again for me.
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I wonder if it’s just an issue with lots of people doing avatars at once, and that it might sort itself out once demand has died down?
That or the internet is being run by GLaDOS again.
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Testing…
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It seems to take a while to apply once you’ve set them up.
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Aye, I think it’s mainly people creating first time accounts with Gravatar that’s doing it more than anything.
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Is mine working yet?
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Yes.
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It should work as i had made one a while ago testing
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I gotcher Dee-falt Gravytar RAYT HEYAR.
//\Oo/\\
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Testing…
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Testing ;)
May I suggest that the default image for ‘folk without avatars’ be a Rorschach inkblot image…
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Oops, accidental post, nothing whatsoever to do with testing.
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Testing.
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Blast.
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Heh, in a fit of genius I managed not to select my avatar after uploading. I are clever.
(last post, promise)
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Okay, so one ‘testing’ is fair enough if you can’t find a recent comment you made elsewhere on the site. But one person posting multiple tests in this thread is just a bit inconsiderate, given they can simply press refresh on this page and their last comment will reflect their avatar changes.
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Also, I’ve a) found a better default avatar icon (with thanks to those who made/started making an alternative) and b) added a comments preview thingy, so you can check your URLs and whatnot work before you post.
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Oo-eer Alec, with all these WordPress plugins you may break the internets!
(Despite the fact I have a habit of installing a fair amount of shiny plugins on my own blog ¬_¬)
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Testing!
…
For those of you not knowing how Gravatars work: the blog takes your otherwise hidden email address, runs the one-way MD5 mangling algorithm on it, and gets a big long hexadecimal ‘key’ unique to that email address. It then puts an appropriate image link in the page, which makes your browser ask the Gravatar servers* for an image corresponding to that key string. It’s equivalent to putting your email address in that image link, except spammers would need a ridiculous amount of computing power to reverse that MD5 mangling.
So basically, if you have a Gravatar associated with an email address, every single comment you’ve posted with that email address will now have your Gravatar next to it. Even if it was a long time ago.
Clever!
* Assuming there’s no caching being done on the blog…
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Death’s head?
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Yes, yes?
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Heh, great character been years since I thought of him.
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Does it work? Does it? It does.
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Testing?
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Is I is or is I ain’t visible?
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Test!
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That Death’s Head avatar is possibly the best I have yet encountered on the internet.
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The inevitable sig-test-me-do.
Oh look, a preview window. What’s the countdown to it becoming self aware and pre-empting our comments before unleashing global thermo-nuclear war?
Or should I lay off the Czech beer?
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Obligatory testing post.
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@MPK:
Czech beer is the bestest. Apart from perhaps the Oktoberfest beer that Sainsburys are going to stop selling in a couple of days because it’s no longer October… Ah, well. Only another 11 months to wait.
Oh, and test.
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This is a bit like the moment during a party, when all the lights go on and sudenly you see, who you’ve been spending the last few hours with.
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You really should have used “Avatars, Yes?” as the topic title!
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testing – inside out teddy bears make me cry
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A fine point, Alex. Obscure 80s comicbook references FTW.
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@Iain
The only problem I have with Czech beers – and eastern european beers in general – is that they think 5%abv is weak.
Zywiec is a fine Polish lager that can also be used to aneasthetise cows.
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There’s a handy WordPress plugin that lets you cache gravatars locally. Away from FTP access I forget what it’s called…
Also, my gravatar rocks.
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Tried it. Didn’t work. Or at least it didn’t work easily and quickly enough for me not to lose the motivation to keep faffing around with it.
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Test.
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..
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@MPK
My liver is intimately acquainted with Zywiec. My local supermarket stocks Lech and Tyskie, as well. They’re both equally good for anesthetising cows (and Glaswegians).
The latter is especially good, if only because it’s an onomatopoeia for the sound my girlfriend makes whenever I get a bottle of it out of the fridge…
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Can you see me? Huh? Huh?
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I’m afraid I have to post a “testing” comment, since I don’t remember if/where I’ve commented on RPS before. I chose ‘G’-rated now, so let’s see if it works.
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Yes!
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Hopefully working.
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Testes..1..2…3?
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one more try
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wooo twin bee!
it has to be g rated people :)
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Testing, testing.
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testing, one two three
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i am testing this NOW
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Great resource. I really enjoyed your site!
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testing, indeed
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Testing
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Testing
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It dosn´t work for me :(
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Testing…
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test
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