Not Yet Asked Question List

(updated 12/17/7)

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.
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 the number of seconds listed under the image and then click "Latest Image" to get another choice (or use the "Reload when new image is available" checkbox to save you from all that clicking).
- Look in the main gallery or the today's hits gallery and click on one of the images that do inspire you.
- 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, the thumb becomes a medal - - to indicate your choice.
: A link to the profile of the capper who made the caption. The profiles are hosted at the Capper Wiki. Actually, there's no guarantee it belongs to the same user, but if I catch people linking to other people's profiles, I won't be happy. Once you've created a profile there and registered here, 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 (which is useful for holiday handles).
: 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 links, clicking it will ask the AC4.5K to write a caption for an image it picks, and share the credit with you. In the gallery, it denotes a caption written with the AC's help. 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.
What is Wasting Precious Time ?
Inventing Situations' companion site where you can write long form stories with selected pictures.

Where can I keep up to date on these sites?
By joining the mailing list (you're email address won't be shared) and following my blog.

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:

In most hours, the programming still comes from so called "ephemeral" films from the The Prelinger Archives and AV Geeks collection at archive.org.
For five hours a day, the grabs 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, and drive-in movie ads - our so-called "IS Playhouse".
Finally, there's some assorted still images mainly taken from The Library of Congress and a few other government agencies, which I'm experimenting with mixing in between the ephemeral shorts.

The scheduling of these different types of items is as follows:

AM		PM
12	IS Playhouse	Ephemeral Films	12
1	Ephemeral Films	IS Playhouse	1
2		Ephemeral Films	2
3			3
4			4
5		IS Playhouse	5
6		Ephemeral Films	6
7			7
8	IS Playhouse		8
9	Ephemeral Films	IS Playhouse	9
10	Ephemeral Films	Ephemeral Films	10
11	IS Playhouse	Ephemeral Films	11

Note: if an movie or other program's not over at the top of the hour when we switch between content types, it will be stopped, then started up again the next time we switch to its type.
Users can also request special showings of any item in the catalog. To see upcoming requests and special events, check the schedule.

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?
The award winning HCT is gone due to technical complications. Inventing Situations is a close relative, but for assorted reasons, we've abandoned television as our source of images
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.

Have fun and play nice,
GersonK

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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.