MSN Emoticons for MSN Messenger are very popular, and people are often tricked into downloading spyware or similar in their effort to get more. However, creating your own emoticons for MSN is easy, and in fact, it is built into MSN Messenger version 7.5. Therefore I have written down how to create your own msn emoticons.

Here is how you do it.

Download an image that you want to use as an emoticon. It can be any image, just remember where you save it. The image you download will resize itself for MSN, however, if you wish to use an animated gif file (for those animated emoticons) you MUST use a file that is smaller than 150 kb, otherwise MSN Messenger will tell you it is too large. (This tutorial shows how to resize animated GIF files for MSN Messenger.)

Start up MSN Messenger 7.5, and double-click on someone in your contact list. The same way you would would do if you were about to send them a message. However, don’t send them a message, not yet anyways. You will see a little happy face next to a large letter A, this is what you normally use to send an emoticon.

Click on this, then select “more” from the menu that pops up.

Click the “Create” Button

Click on the “Find Image” Button.

Now, browse to the image you downloaded, and select it. If you have a good animated gif it will turn out to be larger than a non moving image in most cases as the emoticon feature of MSN was designed mainly for smileys. So, in most cases you will probably prefer the animated gifs. (Note, not all gif’s will turn out well. There are ways around this but that is a tutorial for another time.)

Create a keyboard shortcut for the emoticon. MSN allows a maximum of 7 characters. I strongly suggest you mark your emoticons in some way so you cannot type them by accident. For example:

(funny)
*funny*
{funny}
[funny]

Putting brackets or similar symbols around the name prevents you from having emoticons embedded in the middle of your words.

Now, just click “OK” and you are done! You have now added a new emoticon to MSN

Update: By request, I have written a followup article on how to resize the images that are too large. Check out how to resize animated gif’s for MSN emoticons.

I forgot to post this before - a bunch of my co-workers decided to take an image of me kayaking and photoshop it into various hilarious images. There are multiple pictures and pages on the forum, so not all the pictures show up in the first page: kayaking photoshop mashup.

It gave me a pretty good laugh.

I finished the first Gutbuster of 2006 at Royal Roads University in Victora. I came in on the long course (11.7 km) with a time of 1:29:20. Not bad for my first race of that kind. Kathy came in a little ahead of me with a time of 1:22:44, but I expected her to beat me. As with the Momar, the photographers got no pictures of me, but at least Pete stopped by and managed to take a few excellent shots just as I finished. That makes me feel good as I am actually smiling ear to ear unlike the pictures of me in the Momar I ran last year. Now I have 3 weeks to train for the next gutbuster in Duncan on April 15th. It should be a good run - and it looks to be harder than the latest gutbuster was, while it is the same length, it goes right up mt Tzouhalem, around the summit for a bit, and then right back down. So, apart from a few “flat” sections, it is nothing but a massive hill slog. However, I should do better on this next one as I know what to expect, and what to bring for the race this time. I also know how I want to train for this kind of run. I also can hardly wait to get ready for the Momar on may 13th in Ucluelet. By the time September 30th rolls around with the final Momar of the season, I should be in rocking shape to shatter the abysmal time I had my first time out on that race: 8hrs, 3 min. This time, I want to see if I can’t cut that time in half.

I was up in Whistler last weekend, and Kathy and I got to Skiing Whistler/Blackcomb. I had never been there before, and it was not what I had expected, not bad, just different.

Being on my Tele skis for the first time in 3 years I was pathetic for the first few runs we did. I was using downhill form and not using any telemark turns. Kathy was going way to fast for me to get back into my telemark form, but I did not say anything and just did my best to keep up. However, as the day progressed I got my telemark turn to the right, but still parallel turned on the left. Then, after even more work, by the end of the day I was telemark turning efficiently in both directions.

The runs we did were long though, apart from many shorter runs, we descended the vertical of Whistler twice, and Blackcomb once. Suffice it to say, being out of telemark shape, my legs were on fire, and I had to take frequent breaks. On the last run we did – from the very peak of Whistler to Creekside I forced myself to telemark turn the whole way down (apart from some icy sections) and this was the longest run on whistler. It hurt. But it felt good to get into tele form all the same. Was good to be back on my tele skis. I might just try to get out to Mount Washington for a few runs before the end of the season.

A few friends have been asking me how to find the Firefox Cache. If you don’t know what that is, it is the place where Firefox stores all your temporary internet files. Finding the location of your Firefox Cache is really easy if you are using any version of Firefox over 1.0. Just type “about:cache” into your title bar, and hit enter. You will find out more than you ever wanted to know about your Firefox Cache.

Or, if you don’t know how to do that, click here and your Firefox Cache location will be shown.

If you have any version of Firefox below 1.5, go out and get the new version now! (If you don’t have Firefox, and you are using IE, you really need it… Opera and Safari are still ok.)

To clear your Firefox Cache, from the menu choose: Tools –> Options –> Privacy –> Cache –> Clear Cache Now.