Get a gravatar
If you’ve been perusing the somewhat… strange… comments on this blog, you might have noticed that my comments have my (freshman year of high school) photo next to them. You might’ve called such a picture an avatar, buddy icon, buddy picture, buddy pic, display icon, or mugshot (I just made that up). For our purposes, let’s just call these handsome images “gravatars.” So you’re wondering how you can be cool like me and have your own gravatar, eh?
It’s simple. Get an account with Gravatar, upload an image, wait for them to give it a rating, and you’re good to go. Now when you leave a comment here, using the same e-mail address you used for your Gravatar account, your gravatar will show up next to the comment (only PG photos are accepted here, sorry). The same gravatar will work on thousands of blogs that support this feature, such as… my blog.
Now, because the gravatar that shows up depends on the e-mail address you fill in, you can’t use a fake e-mail address like David’s classic “123@IwantSpam.com.” But now everyone will recognize you as that weirdo who used a Dancing Elmo gravatar, without having to squint to see your name at the bottom.