 |
Not Yet Asked Question List
(updated Apr. 13, 2012)- What is Inventing Situations?
It's a captioning site. We present you with an image, you enter your name and a hopefully funny joke to go with the picture, and it gets displayed in the gallery along with the other recent entries. The kids call this "capping" and the images "grabs". - Do I have to register to caption?
Nope. That's why the password field is labeled as optional. If you don't feel like registering, you can just put in your name and leave the password blank. Unless your name's already been registered at Inventing Situations or Wasting Precious Time. Then you'll need your password - you can retrieve it here. - What if I can't think of a caption for the picture?
You have several options. You can:- Wait until the countdown to the left of the image reaches zero, then a new thumbnail should appear next to the countdown clock. Click the new thumbnail to see a larger version and cap it. If our javacript's blocked or not working for you, you may have to wait the number of sceondsnext to the image and hit the latest picture link or refresh.
- Click any image in the gallery or the favorites page to cap it.
- Curse your writer's block and descend into chemical dependence (not recommended).
- What are all those icons appearing around the captions?
Here's a quick run-down of all our iconography. If you're still confused, they all have floatover text that will appear when you hold your mouse over them in most browsers and that tell you even less than this list does:
: Lets you e-mail a copy of the caption below to a friend.
: Lets you vote for the caption as one of your favorites.
You must be registered and logged on to vote. Voting is anonymous and you can vote for
your own captions, although doing so is considered gauche by some. Favorited captions
appear on the favorites page for up to two days after they're capped.
Once you've voted for a caption, you'll see a medal -
-
in place of the thumb for that caption.
: A link to the profile of the capper who made the caption.
The profiles are hosted at the Capper Wiki. If you'd like a profile link of your
own, create a
profile at the wiki and register at Inveting Situations, then you can set up a
link on your preferences page (also linked from the greeting in the upper
left hand corner). You can choose between having it show up on any caption you make while logged in, or just the
ones for your regular handle.
: Edit a
caption you made a typo on. Appears next to any captions you've made while you're
logged in, even if you changed handles like a sneak.
: Saves your
edits.
: Cancels any unsaved edits to a caption.
:
The logo of the Autoccappomatic 4500.
In the gallery, this icon denotes a caption written with the AC's help. In the links, clicking it will ask the
AC4.5K to write a caption for an image it picks, and share the credit with you. Note: the Cappomatic does
not become available until after you've written a caption and taken our cookie.
200: Shows how many cappers have favorited the caption below. - Where can I keep up to date on Inventing Situations?
The steadisest stream of info can be had by liking IS on Facebook. I've also got an occasionally updated blog, a less frequently used mailing list, and a personal twitter feed - @GersonK. - Where are these images coming from?
They're coming from whatever reasonably copyright free material I can get my hands on. These days that mainly consists of thee types of items:- Most of the programming still comes from so called "ephemeral" films. Mostly from the The Prelinger Archives, but aslo from AV Geeks collection, both at archive.org.
- The grabs also come from an assortment of feature films (mostly from archive.org's collection), along with a healthy mix of film trailers, theatrical shorts, the occasional old TV show, drive-in movie ads, and dollar bin DVDs.
- Finally, there's some assorted still images mainly taken from The Library of Congress and a few other government agencies, mixed in between the ephemeral shorts.
- Where can I learn more about capping or share my copious knowledge on the subject?
Your local library has many books on captioning screen grabs, but if the librarians insist they have no clue what you're talking about and that you should please put on some clothes, you can just visit the capper wiki instead. - What happened to HCT and Wasting Precious Time?
The award winning HCT was reborn as Inventing Situations, but for assorted reasons, we've abandoned using live television as our source of images. WPT slowly faded away into the recesses of human memory. Or maybe it just wasn't worth trying to find new material for it any more. - Can I link to the site?
Yes - you can even get fancy buttons to link with! - Can I contribute images?
Yes, so long as there are enough of them to make it worth my effort in resizing and uploading them, they meet my admittedly arbitrary editorial standards, and you can supply reasonable proof that they're copyright free (or that you're the copyright holder). Contact me if you have or know of images you'd like to share. - Who's responsible for this site?
I watch the place while the master is away. However, more people than I can remember have made contributions in one shape or another. To name a few that I can remember (in no particular order): KINGDINOSAUR, MrAtomik, Mr_Grant, ReptilianSamurai, snard, teambanzai, UpSky2, Xigeous, and 144b.
GersonK
Bert "144b" Tilley, December 21, 1963 to February 20, 2006.
Shorts, trailers and most features supplied by the Internet Moving Images Archive (at www.archive.org) in association with Prelinger, A/V Geeks and Sabucat Archives.
Most mini-icons by FAMFAMFAM.
Shorts, trailers and most features supplied by the Internet Moving Images Archive (at www.archive.org) in association with Prelinger, A/V Geeks and Sabucat Archives.
Most mini-icons by FAMFAMFAM.