The whole .sig story

Part one:  Genesis

A egotistical look at one man, his .sig and the ASCII letter that was to dominate his life ......

In the Beginning there was ASCII...

Finally after getting server IP address's, gateways and Dhcp's together and managing to get a list of news servers, I embarked into the the wonderful world known as Usenet. After lurking a while in alt.ascii-art, I decided that I needed what all this kewl guyz had:

A signature.

I had some experience in Ansi pictures from my Amiga 500 (The character set being designed to be able to some pretty cool stuff). I laboured late into the night using the ascii code table, lightning and a chisel until eventually a gutteral cry of "IT'S AAAALIVE!!!" was heard echoing about the laboratory.

My first .sig. No version and large disclaimer. The quotes changed frequently (ie they weren't all that bad). To be fair the only way I could get a decent representation of my smiley was with a depth of 9 lines. But I was quite proud of it.

I managed to salvage it from: Anti JN's Archives..high quality stoopidity guaranteed!

Something was wrong however. It lurked heavily at the bottom of my posts, the V seemed to be watching me and it took ages to post anything. After trying to do a smiley in about 4 lines and ending up with various mutant strange things I gave up and just copied the VAMP part into a new .sig and tidied it up a little:

Note the way it floats just above the page.

Flairs were back en vogue in those days...

...and then they weren't. The version number came in which turned out to be handy (Also as an reference to THHGTTG) The e-mail address never worked and the quote was a drunkified way of saying "Insane in the Membrane" by Cypress Hill.

Warlorded

Then I was warlorded in AFW - Alt.fan.warlord for being a line over the McQ limit (4 lines x 80 characters):

Subject:      Re: Tell me...
From:         mfare@crypto2.uwaterloo.ca (Michael Farebrother)
Date:         1996/02/19
Message-Id:   
Sender:       news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
References:   <3124CEED.6523@mts.dbo.dec.com>
Organization: University of Waterloo
Newsgroups:   alt.fan.warlord

In article <3124CEED.6523@mts.dbo.dec.com> in rec.humor.oracle.d,
Vamp    wrote:
>..why? and more to the point how?
>And if so where?
>
>Vamp - the vampire newbie
> __  ______  ____  __ _____ @
> | || |\   \ \   \/  \\ __ \New Sig currently in beta
> | \/ |/ /\ \/ /\  /\ \\  _|Stdrd disclaimer applies   @
>  \  / | || || ||  || || |adam.jewell@mts.dbo.dec.com @
>   \/  |_||_||_||__||_||_|Chief Designer of the ANY key

[SWSSFWP]

OK, so it's only barely technically warlordable.  But it's also 3 times the
length of the post, twice the width, and manually inserted*.  I was going to
try to avoid the obvious warlord, but...

-------------------------Reflect-o-line [TM]-------------------------------

BX, fb vg'f bayl oneryl grpuavpnyyl jneybeqnoyr.  Ohg vg'f nyfb 3 gvzrf gur
yratgu bs gur cbfg, gjvpr gur jvqgu, naq znahnyyl vafregrq.  V jnf tbvat gb
gel gb nibvq gur boivbhf jneybeq, ohg...

[FJFFSLC]

>                   Puvrs Qrfvtare bs gur NAL xrl|-||-||--||-||-||-|  /\
>                     nqnz.wrjryy@zgf.qob.qrp.pbz| || ||  || || || | /  \
>                      Fgqeq qvfpynvzre nccyvrf|-  \\ \/  \/ /\ \/ /| /\ |
>                     Arj Fvt pheeragyl va orgn\ -- \\  /\   \ \   \| || |
>                                               ----- --  ----  ------  --

Damn!  Almost...got to get that line fixed...


>               Puvrs Qrfvtare bs gur NAL xrl|-||--||-||-||-|  /\  |-||-/
>                 nqnz.wrjryy@zgf.qob.qrp.pbz| ||  || || || | /  \ | |//
>                  Fgqeq qvfpynvzre nccyvrf  \ \/  \/ /\ \/ /| /\ || |\\
>                 Arj Fvt pheeragyl va orgn   \  /\   \ \   \| || || || \
>                                              --  ----  ------  -- -  --

That's better.  Looking forward to seeing your "New Sig".  Suggestion for
Beta testing:  It's not like shaving - don't look at it in the mirror.

Michael "Because you can.  If you need help, see a doctor.
         Preferably in private, thanks.  HTH."

* Actually I use to delete the "-- "

Since then I've been lurking in AFW, enjoying the humour and wit. For more info on AFW and other terms relating to .sigs click me

I was consoled by fellow stupiditarian Chester Karma after I hastly chopped off the top line:

Subject: Re: Tell me... 
Date: Mon, 26 Feb 1996 03:51:08 GMT 
From: fts@cris.com (Chester Karma)
Organization: FtS / iLP Productions 
Newsgroups: alt.fan.warlord, alt.stupidity

In article <3130B7A2.5599@mts.dbo.dec.com>, Vamp@mts.dbo.dec.com 
wrote:

>*shrugs sadly* It's just not the same with out the top line
>Back to the drawing board

I once flirted with the idea:

---
/~~~\|~|_|~||~~~~||~~~~~| .sig '95 - Build 591
| |--|     ||  __||__ __| fts@cris.com
| |__|  _  ||  _|   | |   I forgot what I do for a living
\___/|_| |_||____|  |_|   "Priends of F"

The boys in marketing killed the idea before it could be a major embarassment.

>--
>
>|~||~| /\  \~~\/~~/|~~~\Pre-release .sig v1.42
>\ \/ //  \ | \  / || __|adam.jewell@mts.dbo.dec.com
> \  // /\ \| |\/| || |Chief Designer of the ANY key
>  \/ |/  \|\_|  |_/\_|"Inbrane in the memsain"


Chester - who's anxiously awaiting the final release of .sig v1.42
---
 "Backing out of his driveway, Mr. Peabody suddenly brought his car to a
  stop. He had already heard a peculiar 'thump', and now those flattened
  but familiar looking glasses intrigued him..."
        Chester Karma ... fts@cris.com ... http://www.cris.com/~fts

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