I have started a collection, however since I am in Germany now I had to leave all the guns at home.  Yes, I do have a shotgun (16 ga), a rifle (.22), and plan on gettin a pistol (prob a 44).

I also had a chance to tour the factory at F&N in Columbia, SC.  They manufactur the M16, M249 and M240B machine guns for the US Army.

Nice sig, I love the light and how it centers on your render.  The text is a little lost though, but maybe that is how you roll (or the effect you wanted).

The others are ok, I liked color better, but the image seemed squashed.

although the MP5 and UMP are capable of full auto, they were only shot on two round burst for this competition.  Since these weapons were supplied by the Polezi (German Police) and military they are exempt from any laws of personal ownership either US or German.

Both the MP5 and UMP were very difficult to shoot accurately since they are vey light.  The SL8 was deadly accurate even at 300meters, but not what you would want to equip a squad moving through an urban fight with (save that for the M4)

I am glad to be back home, but I had quite a busy weekend.

I was off running an international shooting competition in Messel Range, Germany.

Basically a marksmanship range competition among civilians and military that drew in over 300 shooting teams from over 12 countries.

The following weapons were shot:

The UMP (German Sub-machine gun)

The Belgian Pistol (no pic)

The MP5 (submachine gun)

Of course the American M16 & M4 rifles (M4 pictured) with day optics/scopes

The SL8 (German Rifle)

I was the officer in charge of the SL8 (quite a nice rifle) competition range.  A 4 man team had 20 rounds per team member to shoot at a 300 meter target.  The faster the team performed the more points they got.

Quite an experience trying to communicate with Italian, German, French, Dutch, Swiss, Belgian, Czech, and Polish to name a few.

A total of over 30,000 rounds were fired on my range alone.  The only injuries were a tick bite and sunburn!

A total of 130,000 rounds were shot over the whole range!

So, Guten Nacht, I am tired after a three hour drive home on A3!

Quite a few nice sigs here.  Feel free to butcher mine, but I will warn you I like it and will not change it.  The car is perfect, I love to display my status on the ONLY games worth playing and other that artistic suggestions

I AINT CHANGING IT

Now that that is off my chest, what do most of you use, PS? or GIMP?

The Gamespace's Banner Union union limits the "overflow" of shoddy images (they make recommendations to Alex), besides they could break out the contest like they do for banners.  Avatars that have a game represented and avatars that do not (game is not listed on GS hosted images).  That way GS would not have hundreds of avatars for say the popular games.

Sam - I agree about the avatar category (music/TV), it would also fit well with the CNET community concept

I would also volunteer the GIMP union to assist in opening threads/judging and submitting to a GS mod/Admin if needed.  Not that I want to take away what the Gamspace Banner Union is doing, I was just offering help.

BTW I do not think this thread is open about missing the emblem but improving GS as a whole right?

Thanks Sam for keeping the idea alive!

How is DQ VIII, financeranger? I've been interested in picking it up. It's on my list, along with the original KH (I got the second one and played it right away) and Valkyrie Pofile 2. [QUOTE="crushgoil"]hey effkay.. I know a very tiny bit of Latin from university..effkay

I like DQ, it is like Dark Cloud (animation wise), it is simple straight forward and not overly complicated or too in-depth.  I like to think of it as a coffee break RPG, not quite like WOW or FF, but a nice simple refreshing break.  I am only into the second village and on level 8 character wise.  It is not as addictive as FF is that is for sure, but it is fun.