New smilies uploaded

[Forest]

Hi, all.... I've been feeling really techie recently and have been having a lot of fun upgrading the forum. I can't tell you how much I've learned about our forum software in the last several weeks. I thought it might be fun to upload some new sets of smilies.... I suppose I could have been doing something more productive, but you've got to keep it fun, right?

To access them in your own posts, just click on the smiley button when you are writing your post. Here's what it looks like:

My favorites are:
Bag,
Cigar, :cigar:
Bang Head,
and, of course, borg :borg:

To see a smiley's name, just hover over the smiley in the panel that pops up after you press the smiley button that I showed you above.

As always, when it comes to questions, ask 'em if you've got 'em!

 

[Forest]

I'm wondering if some animated smilies might add to our community. Like, perhaps some of these:
http://www.en.kolobok.us/content_plugins/gallery/gallery.php?smiles.2
I wouldn't want too many, but perhaps a few might be nice.

Bang Head, captures how I feel about the medical establishment. is how I would feel about a new book from Dr. Sarno. is what I want to post when someone finally accepts the diagnosis. Finally, I might want to use the following to greet someone: , , or .

Some people might find the animations distracting, but others might find that they add to the fun and social interaction of the site. My tendency is that, in moderation, the fun and social interaction affect is stronger, but I'd love to hear your thoughts. In addition, I'd love to hear a different perspective, perhaps female on which smileys might add to the site.

For the truly wonkish (like me) I found a rather in-depth article about the importance and appropriate use of smilies/emoticons in online media where body language is not visible:
http://www.theadminzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23294

 

[Ellen]

Now I feel challenged to try to write an entire post in smilies--like a new type of hieroglyphics :clown:

 

[North Star]

Thank you, Sir! I LOVE these, Forest! One of the limitations of forums are the lack of body language and it's so easy to misconstrue one's meaning if you're in a funk. (Or the writer's not communicating clearly for what ever reason.)

I also like the word, "wonkish". I'm a word geek so that one's going into my toolbox.

 

[BruceMC]

All discursive logic reduced to icons and symbols? If all the kids are doing it, why can't we follow them down the same greasy slope to over-simplified instant gratification?

"That's the way the world ends,
Not with a bang but a whimper!"

- T.S. Eliot

 

[North Star]

Yes, yes, Bruce! I think we should start using text wrting 2. KWIM?

LOL

 

[Forest]

Don't encourage me, or I might keep going and install the Zombie pack: (this could actually take a while for technical reasons)

It was actually @G.R. 's post in the Holiday theme thread that got me excited about these types of fun customizations. I'm really incredibly proud of how good we are at keeping things positive and upbeat.

 

[Forest]

I hereby judge smiley satisfaction in this community to be: ___high____. However, should the level of smiley satisfaction ever drop, let it hereby be known that anyone may post in this thread and they will find a willing partner for smiley exploration.

Some starting points:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/anyone-have-a-good-source-for-animated-smilies.47638/

 

[Forest]

Incidentally, some time within the next six months, a new version of our software will be ready, and it allow us to divide our smilies into sections, which will make it easier to manage the smilies, especially when the collection is large. As the administrator, I have to do my best to keep the website uncluttered, and the tabs should help with that.

 

[North Star]

You're a rock star, Forest!

 

[Forest]

Oh, that's kind, North Star, but the hard work for the new version is done by the full time programmers at the company that we buy our forum software from. My job is just to integrate it with our other software and customizations, making sure to not lose any data along the way. Now that I've figured out how to do that, it shouldn't be much easier. Probably only about 5-10 hours of work. That may seem like a lot, but it takes the work of many people to make a site as feature laden as ours. It takes even more work to make it simple to use!

 

[North Star]

It's all wizardry to me, Forest. And if you put me on a task that required 5-10 hours of any sort of tech work, my squirrel brain would implode. (Is there a smilie of that? Oh never mind...there I go again...)

 

[Forest]

LOL, I think most people are like you, but I just eat up the tech stuff. I'm seriously considering signing up for some courses to maybe become a professional programmer so I can better support my wiki habit.

my squirrel brain would implode. (Is there a smilie of that?)

<heads off to Google "squirrel brain exploding emoticon"....>

 

[North Star]

That would be too funny - if you find that squirrel, I'll make it my new avatar. The NorthStar Squirrel...seeking true direction...but for very short periods of time.

Check out udemy for programming courses. I know there's other websites too that act as hubs for some seriously fantastic educational resources. My 16-year-old will be taking free coding courses via Google. I've occasionally indulged my curious mind with medical school lectures from Hah-vard even. (My inner geek likes science....not of the computer variety.)