Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Krystals by Email?
| Many many years ago (1993-94) I actually worked online for AOL as a chat room host. Way back when there was such a thing. Back then it was fairly standard for room hosts to have a huge collection of "Emoticons." In fact we had a set of tools called "gHost Tools" that allowed us to send various emoticons to the screen, though most of us were quick enough on the draw to type them manually. (Today, gHost Tools would be called a "Macro" program.) Back when I was hosting we came up with thousands of these. I still have gHost Tools and my macro collections somewhere around here. Just in case there was any doubt, I was, am, and always will be a geek. While these days, people don't use the term "Emoticons" that much, almost everyone who has used a computer knows what they are. These days they are usually called "Smileys." Just in case you have been under a rock, here is how they work. The original Emoticon was this: One evening long, long ago, Courtney and I came up with a new one. Combining the smile and the kissy face we created :*) The other evening I was typing an email and wanted some way to put a "Krystal" in my email. A big selling point of emoticons is that they are (normally) one liners with only a few keystrokes. An email subject only allows one line and usually has limited space. Perfect for emoticons! A little tinkering and suddenly, I had it! So here, for the first time ever, I present: The EmotiKrystal! (Ok so maybe I need a better name.) First lets go with the super fancy Web-enabled Krystal:
It is important that the HTML code is all one line, with no added spaces or enters, as these will only "spread out" your Krystal. (Double ick!) I also set the font to Times New Roman which is likely the default if you're on a Windows machine. Macintoshes are a crapshoot at best. Also I put everything in bold to make the symbols and colors stand out more. I am fairly certain you can find the correct symbols on your keyboard. (Hint: They're all "right hand" keys.) Sadly, it appears Blogger may not let me increase my font size so you'll have to settle for tiny Krystal, however the code above with make a big beautiful Krystal on a web page, I promise! So deliciously beautiful you might start trying to eat your monitor, so be careful!! So with that out of the way, we revisit the original idea: a one line, true emoticon for a Krystal. And here it is--> (|] Depending on your font, you may get slightly skewed Krystals, but the idea is still quite clear. Yum yum! I also decided it would be wise to scour the internet for this emoticon as well and from what I can tell this particular set up has never been used before. I have seen a few websites that try to make a hamburger emoticon, but they do strange things like using O (oh) or 0 (zero) for the top and bottom bun and even X and # for condiments. (Search this page for "Hamburger" and you'll see.) I must admit I have had McD hamburgers that I swear were assembled from across the room, and perhaps they looked like that. So I feel it is fairly safe for me to claim, at this point in time, that I created both the Eskimo Kiss emoticon as well as the delicious Krystal emoticon. So now, go forth and spread Krystal via email! Put them on web pages. Heck they'll even fit in text messages on your cell phones! It's a brave new world, my friends; we can now share Krystals with everyone at any time, anywhere. Oh what a wonderful world!  |
