My sig banner lineup (updated July 28, 2009)

[Darth Wong]

Trying out my fancy new rotating sig! It's a lot like the one I made up for the phpbb.com boards a while ago. Here's the lineup:

































































EDIT: Three more "Join the Sith" versions added. Also note that all of these images are 16kB or less.

EDIT 2: Hair club and GAR banners added.

EDIT 3: "Seize the Moment" banner added.

EDIT 4: "Middle Eastern Infantry" banner added.

EDIT 5: "Price Gouging" and "Meet Pat Robertson" added.

EDIT 5: "WWRJD" added.

EDIT 6: NHL banner removed, "Intelligent Design" banner added.

EDIT 7: Saxenfelt banner added.

EDIT 8: Heinlein quote added. It may not be very original to simply make a banner out of a quote, but it's a great quote.

EDIT 9: Xenu added.

EDIT 10: Halliburton added.

EDIT 11: Blood Sport added.

EDIT 12: Stop Smoker Marriage added.

EDIT 13: Hot Porno for Republicans added.

EDIT 14: Pickett's Charge added.

EDIT 15: Sci-Fi Debating added.

EDIT 16: Panties added.

EDIT 17: Added a message of support for our local public sector union.

[Darth Raptor]

(I couldn't resist.)

[Tasoth]

Wow... I love them all. Which one do I get to take home?

[Quadlok]

Ah! you spell color with a U!

Oh, right, we're the only ones who don't do that because we're so damned lazy and subliterate...

[Noble Ire]

Ah! you spell color with a U!

Oh, right, we're the only ones who don't do that because we're so damned lazy and subliterate...

European spellings? Why, that's unpatriotic! You're a terrorist!

[DarkSilver]

European spellings? Why, that's unpatriotic! You're a terrorist!

No, he's a Canadian, which is almost as bad (obviously, I'm meaning this to be a joke....no offense to Micheal Wong was intended)

[Zor]

Kickass, Bloodly Fucking Kickass!

Zor

[Crown]

Well this explains a lot, I nearly fell of my chair when the sodomy one popped up!

[The Grim Squeaker]

On the day Wong retires i'm taking the Megalomania and Vader banners over your geriatric corpses
Awesome sigs

[Durandal]

On the day Wong retires i'm taking the Megalomania and Vader banners over your geriatric corpses
Awesome sigs

On the day Mike retires, this board will shut down.

[The Grim Squeaker]

On the day Wong retires i'm taking the Megalomania and Vader banners over your geriatric corpses
Awesome sigs

On the day Mike retires, this board will shut down.

So, Il'l take it to another board, raised by the refugees from this one, anyway who knows? this may become a family board for mike till a long time passes and his descendant mike-723 uses it for history studies

[The Wookiee]

So, Il'l take it to another board, raised by the refugees from this one, anyway who knows? this may become a family board for mike till a long time passes and his descendant mike-723 uses it for history studies

Jesus, barely even a month in and already you're acting like you're one of the big boys.

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Fucking Awesome, Mike! I love the GBA and Honour Thy Tool ones the best.

So, Il'l take it to another board, raised by the refugees from this one, anyway who knows? this may become a family board for mike till a long time passes and his descendant mike-723 uses it for history studies

Jesus, barely even a month in and already you're acting like you're one of the big boys.

Ain't it sad? I keep having flashbacks to Mike_6002.

[The Grim Squeaker]

So, Il'l take it to another board, raised by the refugees from this one, anyway who knows? this may become a family board for mike till a long time passes and his descendant mike-723 uses it for history studies

Jesus, barely even a month in and already you're acting like you're one of the big boys.

I'm not suffering from delusions of grandeur- I was joking, and I do know that in the grand food chain I rank only two steps above the border list banning trolls. That is just above the 0-10 post newbies

Also how exactly was I being 'uppity' I merely said that if Wong stops the board and someone continues it either by taking over the management or by starting a new board with the same community then I would go to that board using these sig banners.

[VF5SS]

Also note that all of these images are 16kB or less.

I'm amazed. Jpeg compression seems to be the best deal.

[Darth Wong]

Also note that all of these images are 16kB or less.

I'm amazed. Jpeg compression seems to be the best deal.

It is; JPEG files will generally be much smaller than PNG or GIF files for most images (as an example, the CreationTheory banner was roughly 100kB when I tried it with PNG), particularly with photographs, because JPEG was designed for photographs. But where they tend to fall down is solid-block colour images, where they tend to produce obvious visible compression artifacts. That's why I used JPEG for all of the sig banners except for the Soviet Canuckistan one, which is text in block colours. The Soviet Canuckistan one is PNG.

In general:

GIF = lossless and supports transparency, but only good for 8-bit images

JPG = the best compression by far, but no transparency support and noticeable artifacts with solid-block text

PNG = 24-bit transparency and superior image quality to JPG, but poor support in IE6 and much larger filesizes than JPG

[Durandal]

So, Il'l take it to another board, raised by the refugees from this one, anyway who knows? this may become a family board for mike till a long time passes and his descendant mike-723 uses it for history studies

Jesus, barely even a month in and already you're acting like you're one of the big boys.

I'm not suffering from delusions of grandeur- I was joking, and I do know that in the grand food chain I rank only two steps above the border list banning trolls. That is just above the 0-10 post newbies

Also how exactly was I being 'uppity' I merely said that if Wong stops the board and someone continues it either by taking over the management or by starting a new board with the same community then I would go to that board using these sig banners.

Ugh, would you just shut up?

[VF5SS]

Thanks for the information, Darth Wong. I kinda got turned away from Jpegs for a bit, since most of the stuff I take images of has a lot of solid colors. Oh and you forgot to mention the best thing about gifs. Animated gifs are just so fun =D

[Ace Pace]

GIF = lossless and supports transparency, but only good for 8-bit images

JPG = the best compression by far, but no transparency support and noticeable artifacts with solid-block text

PNG = 24-bit transparency and superior image quality to JPG, but poor support in IE6 and much larger filesizes than JPG

Looking at those banners, the Canuckistan one(PNG) is actully smaller then most of the other banners, part of that is from the blockiness, but what were the results for other files such as Join the Sith?

[Darth Wong]

GIF = lossless and supports transparency, but only good for 8-bit images

JPG = the best compression by far, but no transparency support and noticeable artifacts with solid-block text

PNG = 24-bit transparency and superior image quality to JPG, but poor support in IE6 and much larger filesizes than JPG

Looking at those banners, the Canuckistan one(PNG) is actully smaller then most of the other banners, part of that is from the blockiness, but what were the results for other files such as Join the Sith?

The Soviet Canuckistan one compresses very well because it only has two colours. All of the others were far bigger with PNG. IIRC, the Sith one was roughly 45kB.

[Ace Pace]

Thanks, so JPG goes for complex web images and PNG for blocks.

[Darth Wong]

Thanks, so JPG goes for complex web images and PNG for blocks.

The trick with JPG is to use a program like GIMP that allows you to preview the size and picture quality at any given quality setting before saving your file. JPG's biggest asset is the huge range of image qualities and filesizes that it offers with a simple adjustment of the "quality" slider. In the case of these banners, I used quality=85% by default and then, if necessary, lowered the quality until I hit my 16kB filesize target.

[Ace Pace]

By the way, they load quick on my connection, what kind of internet connection are you hosting those files on?

[Darth Wong]

Ace: They are hosted on the main www.stardestroyer.net site, which is in turn hosted by Pair Networks, using their connection.

Destructionator: yes, there's a PHP script which randomly selects an image from its current working directory every time someone accesses it. The BBS doesn't allow you to put a PHP script inside IMG tags, so I have an Apache RewriteRule to transparently map a JPG file onto the PHP file (in other words, www.stardestroyer.net/BoardPics/Avatars/500.jpg is transparently mapped to http://www.stardestroyer.net/BoardPics/ ... rotate.php ).

[Ace Pace]

Ace: They are hosted on the main www.stardestroyer.net site, which is in turn hosted by Pair Networks, using their connection.

Fast connection. By the way a more general question: In terms of hours put in it, how much is this website costing? An hour a week of maintanence?