I have been on the internet for about thirteen years now and quite early on I’ve realised the importance to ‘managing’ my online identity and keeping it in sync and recognisable. Googling ‘carocat’ in most cases leads to an online profile of me somewhere and I tend to use the same avatar in most places including as a favicon on most of my online blogs.

There are some exceptions, of course. My Twitter avatar has been a changing picture of myself since Summer last year and I use changing avatars on some of the forums I’m on.

I try to keep my Xbox Live avatar consistent, too, but didn’t realise quite how consistent until the other day. Whilst looking at my 360Voice profile I discovered a link to 360vui [360 voice user info] which provides a ton of stats. And I do love stats!

Gamertag: Fear the CAT (is the ninja cat)
Gamerscore: 21517
Achievements: 998
GS Increase from yesterday: 0 (Best: 1085 on 6/29/2009)
Achievements gained yesterday: 0 (Best: 31 on 7/6/2009)

Date joined 360voice: 7/23/2006
Days a member of 360voice: 1092 days
Gamerscore first recorded by 360v: 895
Average daily gamerscore since joining 360voice: 18.88

It also gives a breakdown on the gamerpictures used and, more importantly, how long each gamerpicture was used for.

This is a list of all the gamerpictures I’ve used to date:

I bought my 360 sometime in March 2006 and this was the first gamerpicture I used. It’s one of the default ones available. Used for ~100 days.

I remember dismissing the idea of ever paying for trivial things, such as gamerpictures or themes [I’ve purchased four themes so far, all to show support to BioWare/Bethesda/NinjaBee/Ctrl+Alt+Del], however, I still had MS points left over after buying the Lego Star Wars characters set for ‘Lego Star Wars’ and how could I resist Yoda!? Used for 276 days.

This was an unlockable in NinjaBee‘s brilliant ‘Band of Bugs’ and how can I not use a ‘NinjaBee’ as an avatar. Of course I also changed my motto to ‘is the ninja cat’ which it still is today. Used for 142 days.

There was a time I religiously read the Ctrl+Alt+Del webcomic until, well, I guess I just moved on. I do still like Lilah as a character though and, just like the NinjaBee avatar, it was a quite rare one on Xbox Live which appealed to me. After all, who doesn’t like to stand out of the crowd?! This avatar was also active in the last year when I didn’t have a 360, but I already used it before I sold my 360 for ~150 days. Used for 565 days.

Of course once I got another 360 I fell in love with the avatar options available, even though they are quite limited, especially relating to hairstyles and none of them looks remotely like me which is why I chose to take a close up picture of my avatar. So far used for 44 days.

And to show what I don’t really look like, this is my avatar. I was quite content with the similarity based on the limitations until a friend asked me the other day who that was meant to be.. Guess not then!

What gamerpictures have you used?