Alot of people have asked me how I made my .signature file, which looks like this:

chris marrin      Silicon      http://www.sgi.com/Products/WebFORCE/WebSpace
(415) 390-5367    Graphics  ," http://reality.sgi.com/employees/cmarrin/
cmarrin@sgi.com   Inc.    b`    ,                             ,,.
                        mP     b"                            , 1$'
        ,.`           ,b`    ,`                              :$$' 
     ,|`             mP    ,`                                             ,mm
   ,b"              b"   ,`                ,mm      m$$    ,m          ,,`P$$
  m$`             ,b`  .` ,mm          ,.`'|$P   ,|"1$`  ,b$P       ,,`   :$1
 b$`             ,$: :,`` |$$       ,:`    $$` ,|` ,$$,,`"$$      .`      :$|
b$|            _m$`,:`    :$1    ,:`      ,$Pm|`    `    :$$,..;"'        |$:
P$b,      _;b$$b$1"       |$$ ,,``       ,$$"             ``'             $$
 ```"```'"    `"`         `""`           ""`                             ,P`
"As a general rule, don't solve puzzles that open portals to Hell."-...-'
                   - excerpt from "A Horror Movie Character's Survival Guide"

If you own an SGI machine then you have a program called toascii. Give it an SGI rgb image and it will display it on the console in characters that look like the image. For the above, I scrawled my name with dynadraw then cleaned it up with some other tools (use photoshop or something), then made it 75 pixels wide with izoom, then ran toascii on it and hand edited it a bit.

In case you don't know what all this means, a .signature file is something found on a Unix system which gets appended to every mail message you send. The old timers recommend you keep your signature to 4 lines or less, so as not to annoy those running on slow terminals or something. Whatever.

I do not recommend violating this rule, even though I do it myself. Be forewarned, I get about as much hate mail for my signature as I do praises. I describe its construction only because I believe that information should be in the hands of everyone. Use it at you own risk. And don't forget...

Have fun!!!