I’ve been using the “mosquito” because a midge isn’t easily drawn, on forums since 2003.
It started on Woodwork forums when I discovered I could use an animated gif so I made this one and back then when forums were simple and I was devious, I managed to hack that bit underneath the avatar that says “esteemed member” and all that sort of nonesense to read: "pretend my avatar moves".
I’ve just checked and it’s still there! Twenty years isn’t bad!
On social media once I, hit my sixties, grew up and started using parts of my real name, I decided to use parts of my real head. It used to be a gif too, where one eye winked every twenty seconds or so (for several years I had a muscular paralysis which affected one eye) , just enough to annoy the you know what out of anyone.
The sunglasses appeared by popular request to cover that up and they’ve been there for at least ten years so I don’t think I’ll be taking them off any time soon .
But here the midge stays.
I do have an even more annoying midge footer though which I’ll happily add if anyone thinks that would be a good idea! 
FROM/
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My avatar is Oscar, my Bernadoodle (Bernese Mountain Dog/Poodle mix).
He’s about the happiest and friendliest guy you’ll ever meet. I strive to match his character.
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My avatar is a chibi style portrait of me that my kid drew. It has me in my kendo outfit. It’s a little old now, my hair is more grey and thinner on the top.
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Mine is Mac OSX’s free bsd mascot Hexley. Been using this for close to 20 years now. Oh, it’s been over 20 years.
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A door to door salesman came by that kinda looked like me, I said “hey put this hat on and I’ll make you famous”. He did, he got famous and I still make CNC machines.
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Mine is a picture of Ryan
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I had a notorious print failure with some beta LR4 parts.
I slapped that on as an avatar pic when someone complained about having an avatar, and… well there you go.
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Mine got dragged in from somewhere externally where I’d been using it for work.
It’s me standing in front of the Drayson Racing B12/69 EV that we designed a wireless charging system for. I did the electronic and mechanical design for the vehicle side and then worked with them for a couple of weeks helping to finish off the car and get it through some of the first dyno testing.
The photo was taken with the car on display outside the main Qualcomm headquarters in San Diego. The original work on the system was all done when we were a startup, but the final installation and integration was done after we were acquired by Qualcomm. I don’t know if you can really see it at that size but the Qualcomm Halo logo on the side is what our division became called post acquisition and there’s the ground side of the charging system sitting just beside the car. It was a cool experience to have something like that on display with thousands of other Qualcomm employees wandering past and checking it out, crazy introduction to the scale of that company…
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This is my avatar in real size…. It’s of our former dog Kobus (“abbreviation” of Jacob), just a minute after this photo was taken on a hot summers day:
This was 23 years ago
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Mine is a screen grab from a small video I did while I was using my diy smelter for the first time. Though for some reason it uploaded sideways, so now cannon is it will remain sideways till I do things right the first time more often lol
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I can relate, things go sideways on me all the time.
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Mine is a self portrait
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The funny thing is, that’s absolutely how I imagine you. I hear all your posts in a Nick Offerman voice.
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Ron and I have A LOT in common..
It was a bit of a running joke with a coworker, so he became my profile picture everywhere
It’s a good approximation….carry on…
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Mine was created for an internet challenge that was going around during the pandemic, “Recreate a famous work of art”. I’ve always enjoyed M. C. Escher’s art, so I decided to recreate his Three Spheres II artwork.
I used some camera trickery to get that to come out at the time. Would be a lot easier to create nowadays with AI, but not as satisfying. 
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He knows what he’s about, son.
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Just a photo of me taken back when I taught at the local technical college.
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i created a logo I was going to laser on any projects I did. Yeah, not doing that either, LOL
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My avatar is at a Minnesota state park /ski resort with a big chair at the entrance. A friend and I were biking by, so we stopped for a photo. I’m sitting in a the giant chair holding my bike wearing a Florida gators jersey, where I went to school. The yellow back of the chair is actually shaped like the state of Minnesota, where I live.
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