[Bas]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Raphael', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Bas', 'I') keep thinking there's something wrong with my connection seeing so many people with red crosses as avatars. How about no avatar? Or are you all members of some secret "red cross" society I'm not aware of?

[Zardoz]

When people attempt to put an avatar in their profile, but the link is bad, you get a little red cross.

You have to use a "direct link" from your image-hosting service (I use Imageshack). Direct link code starts with "http". Code that begins with "[url=" or "[IMG]" (or anything else) does not work:



In the Avatar control panel in your profile, paste the direct link code into "Link to off-site Avatar", like this:



This is the only way to make avatars work consistently on PeakOil.com. Using the other two methods on this site works sometimes, but not others. It appears to be some sort of bug unique to the site.

(BTW, the image you post as an avatar can be no more than 97 pixels high and 145 pixels wide.)

[Schweinshaxe]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'A')lright, schwein, I'll bite. Funny, ha ha! Looks like I got to you, buddy. I've seeped into your consciousness and now you are showing us all that you are fascinated by PMS. You have dressed me up as Kurt Godel and declared your location to be in "Godel's anus". Heh, heh. BTW, did you know what happened to the English King Longshank's son Edward II, the gay one? Look it up.

[eastbay]

How nice!

[PenultimateManStanding]

Did you look it up, swinestacks?

[dinopello]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'D')id you look it up, swinestacks?

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dinopello', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'D')id you look it up, swinestacks?

[Gazzatrone]

Almost everyone has one, but never seem to be explained. Just for kicks and sh*ts whats yours about?

Mine, well two reasons
1: being a Star Trek fan
2: being a Star Trek fan, the U.S.S Enterprise always represented for me, an achievable future, something to aspire to. I always saw it as a symbol of hope. Now all it is, is a stark reminder that Humanity is crap. What we could have had is nothing more than an aspiration.

[gnm]

Bring on the zombies baby!

-G

[uncarve_db_lock]

I like bikes and i like burgers...its my tribute to both

[basil_hayden]

A toy I waited 20 years for and got just in time to not be able to enjoy because I'm too busy preparing for the mess to come.

[Twilight]

The half-lit world of corporate drones.

[aldente]

The current developments are in a sense pre-determined and unavoidable. Novelty theory by Terrence McKenna gives good account of this. The future and the answers lay in an expanded consciousness.

link

[Tanada]

Mine is a retouched picture of a painting of an imaginary planet created by Larry Niven. Gazzatrone should like that, he wrote The Slaver Weapon for the Animated Star Trek and a comic strip based on Star Trek called The Wristwatch Plantation.

In any case the planet in my avatar was colonized by accident, a probe sent back data indicating it was Earthlike but when the colonists arrived on a one way colony slowboat named the Lazy Eight they discovered that the planet has a gravity field 1.78 times that of Earth. Having no other choice they landed and founded what became a very successful colony, but they named their planet Jinx.

[Jack]

Mine is HK-47, an assassination robot from the game "Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic".

HK-47 refers to living beings as "meatbags" and likes nothing better than fulfilling his design function.

So I suppose I had no particular reason to chose him.

[Gazzatrone]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'M')ine is a retouched picture of a painting of an imaginary planet created by Larry Niven. Gazzatrone should like that, he wrote The Slaver Weapon for the Animated Star Trek and a comic strip based on Star Trek called The Wristwatch Plantation.

In any case the planet in my avatar was colonized by accident, a probe sent back data indicating it was Earthlike but when the colonists arrived on a one way colony slowboat named the Lazy Eight they discovered that the planet has a gravity field 1.78 times that of Earth. Having no other choice they landed and founded what became a very successful colony, but they named their planet Jinx.

[Micki]

My first one;
"Bush doing a heil" avatar was an expression of frustration of the mess we got ourselves into and my belief that US is turning into a fascist state and that there is an agenda to introduce NWO.

Next one
is both a wish that someone would intervene as well as hope that things will change (hopefully for the better).

The Crabwood alien is actually a crop circle that looks like a photo and it came with a binary message (my footer text). This one is so fascinating in that it is so complex that it can hardly be a hoax. Yet the binary message contains silly typos etc and with that Spielberg styled face, one would assume it is a hoax. And why a message in binary ascii translating into english!?


The Bernanke avatar is a pic from the day they were "saving" the economy by lowring interest with .5%. A picture however tells a thousand words and they are a lot less BS than what comes from the Fed Reserves mouth.


As the mess was a reality and we start getting signals that real panic is days to months away, I thought it was time to update the avatar. (And some other forum posters for some reasons didn't seem to like my Bernanke)



I didn't stay with the Southpark one for very long.
Someone posted the intro to Bowie's Dimond Dogs and I got inspired. Thought of somthing like a hellhound set in a suburban environment. The text from Pet Shop Boys Suburbia suited quite well as signature;
Lets take a ride, and run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia
You cant hide, run with the dogs tonight
In suburbia

There are a lot of cool dogs out there. I will probably rotate a few different ones;

[topcat]

Mine is an old farm photo that I cropped to fit here. Like the fella with his jug in one hand and potato fork in the other, and son? by the tree.

Days gone bye, that are in our future???

[Dvanharn]

I was drawn to the "southern end" of the north coast of California as soon as I discovered it while a U.S. Navy Corpsman stationed at Oakland Naval Hospital in Oakland California in 1962. (I came out here froi Chicago.) I bought an old car in 1962 and soon thereafter set out to drive over to the Marin County Coast. Taking Sir Francis Drake Blvd. out to the Pt. Reyes Peninsula, I remember seeing a sign advertising a new community development that would be built out on this desolate peninsula about 40 miles from San Francisco. In September of 1962, President John Kennedy would sign into law the act that created the Point Reyes National Seashore, and the developers were stopped in their tracks.

Alfred Hitchcock's film "The Birds" was released in 1963. Having read Daphne Du Maurier's short story on which the movie was based, I looked forward to Hitchcock's Movie of the same name which was loosely based on the Du Maurier story. Soon after seeing the Hitchcock film, I went to the tiny town of Bodega and say the schoolhouse and the teacher's house next to it. I then drove on a few miles to the fishing town of Bodega Bay and stopped for lunch at "The Tides," the restaurant and bar in the movie. The bartender and waitresses were extras in the movie and told wonderful stories about that time in Bodega's history. The old Tides Restaurant burned down, as did its replacement, and the current iteration is a big corporate, impersonal tourist restaurant with fish docks. The town of Bodega Bay is now a tiny tourist town and bedroom exurban community for Santa Rosa.

My travels through Marin and Sonoma County and their wild and desolate beaches in the 1960's made me fall in love with this region which lies right on the San Andreas fault, whose rupture caused the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

For the next forty years, as I finished my Navy enlistment, worked, went back to college (U.C. Berkeley for a degree in Conservation of Natural Resources), worked some more, and endured two marriages that ended in divorce, I continued my love affair with the Marin and Sonoma County coastal area. In 1996, I fell in love wth, and moved in to become a partner to a wonderful woman who became my partner for the next 9 years. In 2003, we moved to a house on two acres just south of Sebastopol in West Sonoma County, a year before she was diagnosed with a fast growing, untreatable and deadly cancer. She died four months later and I moved to an apartment in town. At the same time my retirement investments collapsed and after only one year, I went back to work at the age of 63.

I love the area, and the people of west Sonoma County. I have been privileged to meet peak oil author and activist Richard Heinberg (on Earth Day, 2004, and several times since) as well as Matt Savinar (www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net) who lives in nearby Santa Rosa, and Julian Darley of the Postcarbon Institute, who recently moved to Sebastopol from Vancouver.

Sebastopol is a very green and progressive community, yet there are only 7,800 people living within in the city limits and 42,000 on plots from about 1/4 to five or more acres scattered all over the western part of Sonoma County.

Apples were the primary crop in the Sebastopol are ow West Sonoma County the early 20th century, but post WWII irrigation in other regions of California produced massive increases of yields in apples, and destroyed Sebastopol apples as a profitable crop. Before WWII, farmers could make a decent living and raise a family on 10 acres of apples, but that is no longer possible, since there is not enough water from wells to irrigate the apple orchards to bring them up to a competitive level of yield per acre.

History of Apple growing in Sonoma County, California.

These days, premium wine grapes, which can thrive on on about half the water required by apples, are the foundation of agriculture in Sonoma County.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', ' ')Winemaking—both the growing of the grapes and their vinting—is an important part of the economic and cultural life of Sonoma County. In 2004, growers harvested 165,783 tons of wine grapes worth US$310 million. In 2006 the Sonoma County grape harvest amounted to over 185,000 tons, exceeding Napa County's harvest by over 30 percent.[11] About 80 percent of non-pasture agricultural land in the county is for growing wine grapes—59,973 acres (242.70 km²) of vineyards, with over 1100 growers. The most common varieties planted are Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Pinot Noir, though the area is also known for its Merlot and Zinfandel.

Sonoma County is home to more than 250 wineries with eleven distinct and two shared American Viticultural Areas, including the Sonoma Valley, Russian River Valley, Alexander Valley, Bennett Valley and Dry Creek Valley, the last of which is known for the production of high-quality zinfandels.