Monthly Archives: June 2017

A Woman of Letters …

“ASCII Tina,” animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

So The Daily Create for today, #tdc1971, said to “make an ASCII selfie just like @mhawksey and @felixadog did,” and it even told you how to do it with a website and your webcam.

In case you don’t know what ASCII is, it is like when you make a picture of yourself out of letters. The big letters make a darker part of the picture, and the smaller letters or the dots make a brighter part of the picture. Cool, eh?

I decided that I would use the time to do some investigations into a different way, so I found a way from manytools.org where they had things called Hacker Tools, and so I used one of my iconic pictures called “True Friends”  (I’m thinking it is time to make some more new iconic pictures of me) to make my face out of letters using the Convert Images to Ascii Art, but then did three different versions that it had called:

  • black and white
  • use retro phosphor colours (green/black)
  • invert (black background)

Those three different ways gave me three different pictures, and so I made them into the GIF that you saw up there at the top.

But ManyTools had some more different ways under Hacker Tools called Image to Byte array and ANSI Art Converter that I tried. The first one needed a special printer, but the antsy one was okay to look at although the two different settings gave two different versions even though I used a black and white image even for the colour one.

“ANSI Tina,” animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

But the ANSI one didn’t seem to be making me into a woman of letters, so I looked for another way.

THEN, I found a really interesting one on called Steganography. What it gave me is in the picture below, although to see how it is so special, you will need to do some research on a site called MobileFish.com. I will leave that to the reader as a very valuable exercise. Don’t tell!

Steganography Tina, image by @iamTalkyTina

Because the Steganography one was so interesting, I went into another rabbit hole on Mobilefish.com. They had lots of different cools tech things, although I didn’t see an ASCII one, but it did have a cool one called Hieroglyphs Generator, which is another way to put a message into a picture, and so I made this:

“Hieroglyphics1,” message by @iamTalkyTina

You will need to uncover the secret letters of these hieroglyphics in order to read the messages. But they are good ones. Plus, not hard to do if you follow the links.

Because that was fun, I made two more:

“Hieroglyphics2,” message by @iamTalkyTina

“Hieroglyphics3,” message by @iamTalkyTina

Because the Hieroglyphics were so much fun, I added them to The Daily Create for folks to do some day when their turn comes around.

So all of those were neat ways to use letters to make different things, like:

  • pictures from letters,
  • pictures with letters,
  • pictures of letters that are letters made with pictures.

All of these things make me a real Woman of Letters.

Get Your @iamTalkyTina Certification

Well, opportunities don’t come along every day. Plus, when you can demonstrate your special skills and get a badge for them, then you need to take advantage of that chance.

For a limited time only (it started yesterday, so you had better not already be behind), the Alan Levine (that’s my StillTrueFriend @cogdog, on Twitter) June 2017 30-Day Challenge for The Daily Create allows you to be in the window for getting your @iamTalkyTina Certification.

All you need to do to qualify for the @iamTalkyTina Certification is complete the June 2017 30-Day Challenge by doing all 30 days worth of The Daily Create in June 2017. It’s that simple.  For those of you needing the details, that means all of the ones from #tdc1970 to #tdc1999. Those are all of them.

You can sign up for the @iamTalkyTina Certification process by putting your name in the comments below including your twitter and you will be entered into the watchful gaze. Only peoples who participate within this @iamTalkyTina Certification window remain eligible. I will let you catch up for missed days if you let me know by June 4th.

To help you with this process (and to help ensure you enjoy The Daily Create on a daily basis during June 2017), I have prepared this special printable Do Your The Daily Create Every Day! PDF calendar to print out and put on your bathroom mirror. It will help you remember. Or, if you are good with your cell phone and not just dismissing alerts when you get them, you can subscribe to my special June 2017 30-Day Challenge calendar on Google Calendar.

It even has built-in notifications to remind you twice a day at 9 am and 9 pm, which should still work if you are in a different time zone if you don’t mind getting it a bit later or earlier so just get up earlier or whatever and don’t just forget the notification. (Note: I am not responsible if you don’t charge your phone or if Google breaks, it’s still your responsibility to do The Daily Create, I’m just giving you options to make sure you don’t forget and then be sad later if you don’t get your badge.)

There will be a special @iamTalkyTina Certification page on my website at the end with all of the badges for the people who are certified. Only those badges mean you are #TrueCertified for the @iamTalkyTina Certification. Do not accept fake ones.

Clarification: #TrueCertified is not the same as #TrueFriends, and just because you are a #TrueFriend does not grant you the #TrueCertified.  #TrueFriends is not a prerequisite for #TrueCertified, nor does #TrueCertified grant you #TrueFriends. But if you got #TrueCertified, wouldn’t you want to be a #TrueFriends, too?