An Avalanche of Avatar Afficionados

YOU WILL NOTICE I HAVE BECOME A BIG RED QUESTION MARK.

That's because a great majority of my 9.8 regular visitors, I believe originally led by Homo Escapeons, decided that my new avatar (below) made me look like Public Enemy No. 1.

It is only a passport photo, but I opted to use it after using this other one for months on end. I was becoming a bad blogger, not visiting others much, so decided I should look the part.

However, and you all know who you are, witness your own cruelty to me below (for the most part; Laurie and, I believe, Awaiting were the only supporters of my new avatar -- sob!)

Stace said...
Your profile pic looks like a police mugshot.

ziggi said...
Hey WW! Half way through a comment telling you to change your picture (I'm with Stace on this one) because I've seen you looking sexy (but not in the current one)and my pc crashes - it's telling me it has an exception error and now my DLL (WTF?) is in the wrong place! What Have You Done?

ziggi said...Oh is that a question mark? I thought it was your nose.:o)Well done the Canadian Girls for winning whatever it was.Are you going to give us a line up of pictures to choose from then? And like when? Come on, get a move on, lying around and snoozing is not an option when you have avatars to fill.


Homo Escapeons said...
Hey Technoboy,if you're such a hotshot how come you still have your penal colony inmate (#12345666) photo for an avatar?

MJ said...
I would like an avatar of you wearing a dress, please.

Shelley said...
if you're such a hotshot how come you still have your penal colony inmate (#12345666) photo for an avatar?HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Laurie said...
And I’d like to suggest you use your press pass photo as an avatar. (*Runs away to hide and wait for the inevitable onslaught of comments about your current photo*)

Aidan said...
At least the press card doesnt look like the police mug shot you have been using on your blog... Else they would have let you in the door:)

lee said...
Haha. I had the same thought as aidan - at least that photo doesn't make you look like a criminal. That is always a bonus. Especially when you want to be let in somewhere :).

Now of course I could simply ignore these mostly vile comments. And I might simply return to my former avatar.

But over the next several days, I'm going to post a variety of new avatar possibilities.

I invite everyone and anyone to offer their opinions on the pix I post, or to suggest other options. HE has already emailed several candidates to me, which I will also post.

This will be a thorough process and will take some time. All options will be considered and public input will be part of that process, but in the end I will choose the winning submission.

Pictoral submissions are welcomed at ccariou@mts.net.

Thank you for your attention.

The Question Mark.

FINALLY, IT'S OVER.

UGH.

CANADA 5 U.S.A. 1

CANADA WINS GOLD

For those bloggers in the single digits who have been following my "coverage" of the 2007 World Women's World Hockey Championship, it was a long road to Tuesday's gold medal final.

The leadup to an event like this is staggering. Countless hours spent researching on the Web, interviewing on the phone, in meetings planning coverage strategies...

Then compiling all that information as you go and writing, endless writing.

Writing for supplements, covering press conferences for months before the first puck is dropped or football is kicked or homerun is hit or three-point shot is made.

Joining the Canadian team in a small town a few hours away and getting to know them, letting them get to know you, doing features on them, a week before they even start competing.

Then another whole week of reporting on the games themselves, leading up to Tuesday night's predictable final between the Canadians and Americans and yet another Canuck victory.



And now, it's over.

Aside from sleeping and just trying to come down from the forced adrenaline rush that covering these kinds of big events always requires, there's some reflection about it all.


There's a final look at the media accreditation pass, a thing that's been virtually stapled around my neck for the past week, that will make you completely persona non grata if you don't have it...

And then the filing away of it, along with the other credentials for past Olympic Games, World Cup qualifiers, NHL Stanley Cup finals, Canadian Football League Grey Cup championships, etc.

Then a couple of days off, then it's back into something else.

See you in a day or two. Hopefully spring will have actually arrived by then. I wouldn't know.

Canada vs. the U.S....again

UPDATED April 9, 11:41 p.m. CDT

THE STAGE IS ALL SET.

They're all ready to give it 110 per cent (and other sports cliches).

On Tuesday night, it will be Canada and the U.S. -- as it always has been -- in the gold medal final of the World Women's Hockey Championship.

The picture above was from Saturday night at Winnipeg's MTS Centre, with the Canadians on the right and the Americans on the left.

The Americans probably deserved to win, but Canada stormed back to tie the game and they won the game 5-4 in an overtime shootout.

But it was a playoff round pool game that didn't mean much.

As expected, the U.S. beat Finland 4-0 Sunday night, guaranteeing themselves a spot in Tuesday night's championship game.

Canada beat Finland 5-0 Monday night and will now face the Americans Tuesday night for all the marbles.

Canada has never lost to Finland and now has a record of 40 wins, 0 losses and 1 tie against them.

The Americans won the last world championship in Sweden in 2005 when they beat Canada for the gold medal for the first time ever, winning an overtime shootout in Sweden.

Canada had won every other world championship before that and, last year at the Olympic Games in Turin, Italy, Canada won the gold medal while the Americans finished fourth.

An important side note is that the game on Saturday night featured in those pictures above attracted 15,003 fans to the arena here, the largest crowd ever to witness a women's hockey game in history.

The gold medal game Tuesday night is also a sellout. It should be a dandy...

ALL HAIL GOOGLE

OK, I submit.

I surrender.

I apologize (well, no, I don't apologize).

Google is an amazing company...I think there's little disputing that.

When Google took over Blogger and made a mess of trying to force us all to make the transition to its new way of doing things, I was among the frustrated whiners, and there was good reason to complain.

And, like some others, I considered giving up blogging altogether or going somewhere else.

When I finally relented to the pressure to switch over to the new Gloogler (Google Blogger), almost nothing worked, you had to sign on to do every little thing, and those who didn't switch over became alienated from those who did.

Blogging became a bore. It became a chore.

But eventually, it started getting better.

And the company that made every other Web search engine obsolete finally made the necessary changes to actually improve blogging rather than make it more difficult.

So after slagging Google in some earlier posts, I now feel it's only fair to salute Google for making blogging quicker, more user-friendly and, potentially, more entertaining and open to the imagination.

You might see I've added some of these new features to my blog on a trial basis.

They're called widgets and if you haven't made the switchover yet to the newer layout system from the old template system, I urge you to try it. You can always go back to your original blog because they save it.

It makes adding new elements to your sidebar or to the bottom of your blog possible more than ever before, at least for a computer imbecile like me, and it also makes it super easy to do, once you get the hang of it.

Follow the directions on your dashboard to change from template to layout. I'm convinced you'll be glad you did, even if you don't use the YouTube bar or the newsreel bar.

Adding pictures is a snap and so is adding other elements.

On a bit of a different track, however, as a journalist and as a consumer of information, I have to say that this line in little type at the bottom of my Google News homepage is a little disconcerting:

"The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program."

Eek. When a computer starts choosing which news stories I should and shouldn't see, I start to become a little redundant...