I need a new .sig

January 23, 2006 11:54 PM

I need a new .sig

My ASCII art email signature is past its use-by date. I'd like to replace it with something that's not ASCII art or a pity quote, but instead highly compressed or encoded information like a geek code, but most definately not an actual geek code. I'd like people to wonder what the heck it is, but for there to still be some relatively simple way of decoding it (but not quite as simple as ROT-13). I'm a compression nut, so anything that manages to use compression would be great. Encryption and digital signatures both good, but it needs to be a small sig and not something that's wrapped around the whole message.

It has to fit in four or five lines of plain text, around 70-76 columns wide and it must be safe for work. Does anyone have any suggestions?

posted by krisjohn to computers & internet (17 comments total)

Huffman encoded source code to a Huffman encoder.
posted by orthogonality at 11:58 PM on January 23, 2006

Well, there is always the classic:

I am a .sig virus. Please reproduce me in your .sig block.
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:10 AM on January 24, 2006

Welcome to the world of JAPH!
posted by nicwolff at 12:14 AM on January 24, 2006

I am a .sig antivirus. Use me to remove .sig virus infections.
posted by borkencode at 12:59 AM on January 24, 2006

eschewing signatures such as this one since October 3, 1988.
posted by Izzmeister at 1:06 AM on January 24, 2006

Not a sig, and not compressed (so why am I replying?), but I used to "sign" graphics I'd created/edited in morse code by inverting pixels on the last line.

One pixel for a dot, 3 for a dash, 1 pixel space between parts of the same letter, 3 pixel space between letters, 7 pixel space between words.

I've occasionally thought of doing something similar in ASCII text, by creating a coherent sentence that decodes to morse when you read the top pixels of each character. For example (without the coherent sentence!):

LH TFR W decodes to dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dah dot-dot-dot, "SOS" in morse.
posted by Pinback at 1:36 AM on January 24, 2006

Parametric equations that trace out your real signature? It would just take two interpolating polynomials, and if you wanted to be especially cryptic, you could list only the coefficients.
posted by Wolfdog at 3:17 AM on January 24, 2006

If it were me, I'd take the sig of the immortal Kibo and find the densest way to compress it. Can it be done in five lines?

(I just realized I'd been mispronouncing his name for over a decade.)
posted by kimota at 3:39 AM on January 24, 2006

Perhaps this isn't helpful, but I use my contact info as a sig file. It isn't geeky, but it also isn't obnoxious to the people who see it every day. The ASCII art, long, drawn-out files, and (even worse) images that people drop in the sig block are really distracting to me, and if it's something you also use at work I think it's a bit unprofessional.

I know there's a history dating back to the good old days of BBS and Usenet in which sig = your personality, but... time to move on?
posted by caution live frogs at 6:14 AM on January 24, 2006

SSBhbSBhIC5zaWcgdmlydXMuIFBsZWFzZSByZXByb2R1Y2UgbWUgaW4geW91ciAuc2lnIGJsb2Nr
Lg==

posted by yeoz at 11:31 AM on January 24, 2006

-- [for old time's sake]
Name [for that first time you email them]
Email Addy [for those idiots that can't find it otherwise]
Phone1 [Work/Home/Whatever]
Phone2... [Cell/Mobile/Pager, as many as needed]
Website [Optional,blog,commerical site,tech sup. etc.]
, although it's not automatically out).
Pity Quote [*]

*I'm big on the quote as .sig because I see it done badly so often I think having a good one must be worth while. Here's my suggested guidelines for picking a quote.

Should be something someone said. A real person. Not a TV character or made up figure. Song lyrics are right out.
Should have been said more than 100 years ago. (Just to ensure the above is true).
Should not be offensive (careful with religious stuff)
Should not be dull or lack luster motivational crap in the style of "You can do anything you put your mind to").
Should not be an 'in' joke. You use compression, some other guy writes his in Perl, I'll toss in a lame PoliSci reference to my favourite theortical voting system and whamo, no one gets anything at all out of each other's .sigs.

The way I like to think about a .sig is that it's closer to letterhead than to a CounterStrike tag. Email is become offical communications for a lot of buisnesses and for important messages. I think it's important to have a .sig that can relfect a serious mood. More and more it'll be a part of the first impression you make on people.
posted by tiamat at 11:37 AM on January 24, 2006

, although it's not automatically out).

was supposed to be written in the brackets after (careful with religious stuff.

Thumb, meet overly sensitive touchpad...
posted by tiamat at 11:39 AM on January 24, 2006

What you want is obfuscated perl.

If you're majorly hardcore, you'll do obfuscated C.
posted by devilsbrigade at 11:48 AM on January 24, 2006

This has the advantage, btw, of being incomprehensible on first sight. Anyone can easily figure out what you were trying to say as soon as they run it through an interpreter though. Its a win/win.
posted by devilsbrigade at 11:51 AM on January 24, 2006

I was always impressed by this pieces of obfuscated C:

main(k){float i,j,r,x,y=-16;while(puts(""),y++<15)for(x
=0;x++<84;putchar(" .:-;!/>)|&IH%*#"[k&15]))for(i=k=r=0;
j=r*r-i*i-2+x/25,i=2*r*i+y/10,j*j+i*i<11&&k++<111;r=j);}

Courtesy of Perlin.
posted by chrismear at 1:01 PM on January 24, 2006

Please keep in mind that netiquette suggests that .sigs be prefaced by two dashes followed by a space and a carriage return, and then be no more than four lines (of 80 characters) long. (The McQuary limit, discussed here).
posted by aberrant at 1:21 PM on January 24, 2006

Thanks everyone. I can't program in perl or C, but I can do some Javascript or php. I think I'll try some code and see if the email scanner lets it through.
posted by krisjohn at 3:17 PM on January 24, 2006