(answered) Is there any way to retrieve an old avatar?

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

I had one avatar from a few months after I joined in 2003 until sometime in 2010 -- the animated gif of Professor Utonium waving. I no longer own the computer I was using then, and never thought to save my avatar to any of the subsequent machines I owned. Google searches have failed to turn it up -- I have reason to believe the avatar bank I took it from no longer exists.

This is a long shot, but there's no chance that my old avatar is still kicking around somewhere in the back of BL's servers, and could be retrieved, is there?

 

[tambourine-man]

Based on some recent poking around I did in the avatar folder following a post-upgrade glitch, I'm pretty sure they are wiped as soon as you upload a new one.

Will take a look for you.

 

[tambourine-man]

Nope, sorry. Looks like when you upload a new avatar, the avatar filename (also your user ID) is written over then suffixed with the number of avatar uploads you've made (7 in your case).

Previous avatars don't appear to be kept on file. Makes sense. Would be an awful waste of space to keep them, especially if people have no way of utilising them via their User CP.

I also checked our development mirror site that is frozen circa early 2011, but avatars (and large amounts of other content) were mostly stripped out of that to reduce server usage.

Sorry man.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

Thanks for looking, Tambo.

 

[fizzle]

Its a long shot (and would require a lot of searching) but there have been threads in TL and SO that are things like "post your favorite avatars" so if you or anyone posted your avatar in one of those it could still be there. Again, its a long shot and the ones I'm thinking of may very well be from before the upgrade, in which case they are probably gone, but it could be worth a shot if you really want it back.

I actually searched and found one of the threads I was talking about, from SO, and your avatar was indeed mentioned, unfortunately I couldnt find it posted anywhere.

 

[jazz hands]

Here is Professor Utonium waving, at least...

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

^ Wow, thank you jazz hands. My faith in Bluelight has waned at times over the years, but then people here do cool shit like this, and I'm reminded of why I love this community.

 

[axl blaze]

dang... I miss that old avatar, MDAO! it's a classic. I've saved some BL avatars mostly for Lounge threads, and I did a quick search of my computer... and I could find nothing that pertains to your old one sorry