I've used some plain text on a white background as my avatar here since I joined in September. I got the idea to try and make it more "mine". So I took a screenshot of my profile page (because I didn't know if I'd be sticking around so I didn't bother to save the original image), added a white background in Inkscape, and pulled out my camera.
The resolution of the gb camera is 128x112, it's 90s tech, so 300x300 image size limits were never going to be an issue. Also it's black and white but you can apply various colour filters, the default one is black and green, which feels right to me, don't know why. I took a handful of pictures at different angles, some straight on, some diagonal (like the one I ended up using).
Once I have the picture on my camera I have to get it on my computer so it's usable. I'll spare you the details, but it basically involves taking the camera cartridge out, carefully plugging it into a circuit board, "dumping" (copying) parts of the cartridge to my PC, then extracting the image files... it's a nightmare, but if I do everything right, it works. Most of the time.*
And... I forgot to save the photos I took.
Last night while I was kinda angry at myself, I wondered if I could be bothered to copy the cartridge over again. I decided it was too late and I'd take care of it in the morning.
Then I came across a webapp that lets you use a smartphone's camera as a GB camera. Instant previews, no messing around with dumping the cartridge, it just works. Most of the time.**
I snapped the photo you now see as my avatar and I called it a night.
* It's decades-old tech, it can be finnicky in surprising ways.
** For some reason if I swap from my phone's front camera to its back camera, and then back again, my entire phone crashes and reboots itself! Yay for new and exciting problems with finnicky technology!
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