Frequently Asked Questions

Wait, what?

This website provides you the ability to create your own Personal Threat Level image, similar to the one the Department of Homeland Security uses. You get to choose all the text that goes on the image and which, if any, level is currently highlighted, and you can download the image and use it however you like.

How do I create my own PersonalThreatLevel?

Enter the text you want displayed for the title (two lines) and each of the threat levels (one header and two lines). You have room for about 22 characters in each field, except for the header fields where you have room for about 10 characters. There are helper links to default and/or copy down values in the form.

Use the drop-down to select which threat level should be highlighted, or choose None, then click the REFRESH button to draw your image. It may take a few seconds to redraw. Once your image is drawn, you can use the appropriate button at the bottom of the form to display one of the three available sizes of the image. The initial image that displays at left is the same as the small-size image, but occasionally the application may tack on additional content. The SMALL button will always get you a clean version of the image, without any program add-ins.

How do I save my PersonalThreatLevel?

The lightbox presentation of the small, medium and large images makes it a little tricky to download them from that window, as your browser will think you are trying to save a link instead of an image. To download any of the images, close the lightbox and right-click on the button for the size you want download, then choose the appropriate Save option (depending on your browser) from the popup menu.

How do I share my PersonalThreatLevel?

The application provides a link that you can copy and use to access your PersonalThreatLevel in the future and share it with friends. Or, you can save the image as described above and send it via email.

How can I put my PersonalThreatLevel in the gallery?

The purpose of the gallery is to display recent good examples of people using the site to create something funny, interesting or useful to others. Whether something is a good example or not depends on me and my mood at the time of review, but in general I'll accept anything that is not overtly vulgar, racist or in any way unsuitable for children. I don't mean to censor your personal creativity, I just don't need the hassle of a bunch of complaints from angry parents.

If you want to submit your image to the gallery, get it just right and then click the GALLERY button and confirm your intent. Note that anyone viewing a PersonalThreatLevel can submit it to the gallery. Keep this in mind if you send a link to someone. Also, I might put your image in the gallery if I happen to look at it and like it.

How can I use the images I create at PersonalThreatLevel.com?

You are welcome to download any PersonalThreatLevel image you see on this site (one you yourself created or one you see in the gallery) and copy it, put it on your own website, or distribute it however you like. Please do not remove the web site address tagline from the image. This is for attribution's sake, of course - after all I worked pretty damned hard on this project - but mainly so that others who see your image will know where to go to make their own. It's the internet - I can't enforce this, I know - I can only rely on your good will and sense of fair play.

Speaking of enforcement, I don't collect any personal information in connection with the images you create, so don't expect to assert any rights over them. If you send me an email saying "that one's MINE!" - well, good for you but I have no way of proving or disproving that fact, for your benefit or mine. An image you create might show up in the gallery, even if you don't put it there, and if it is in the gallery then anyone can download it and use it. In other words, if you have a good idea and want to sell it on a t-shirt or something, don't create it here - just draw it yourself.

One more thing... I politely ask that you do not link directly to the images you create here using <img> tags or by any other means. Too much of this will hoover up my available bandwidth for no good reason. It's not like I really think I'm all that and this site is going to generate mad traffic, but if you post a direct link to a PTLC image on some big, popular forum with 20,000 visitors a day, then my itty-bitty site could easily get hosed indirectly. If you don't have a web site and need somewhere to host an image, there are lots of free image hosting sites on the web. Good will and fair play and all that, once again.

Why'd you do this?

A couple of reasons. Primarily, I wanted a custom graphic like the ones you can create here, and when I couldn't find anything like it on the web, I made my own. Once I was done, I thought maybe it would be kind of cool to set up a site where people could easily do the same thing without having to own or know how to use a bunch of graphics tools. I do some web work on the side, and this was also an opportunity for me to focus on learning how to create and modify images dynamically in Ruby on Rails, something I've been meaning to do for some time.

How'd you do it?

The program has six base images of the background, one for each highlighted level as well as one for no highlight, and it dynamically adds the text you enter to one of those images to create your custom image. Certainly, I could instead have coded it for just two images - the background and the highlight piece - and composite them together appropriately depending on the selected level, but it was late and I went for the easy out.

The site was built using Ruby on Rails (RoR). The dynamic image creation is made possible via the use of the RMagick plug-in for RoR, which itself is just a wrapper for the ImageMagick graphics library. The fancy little AJAX image presentation is called a lightbox, this one is done using Lokesh Dhakar's Lightbox2 script, which itself utilizes the prototype and script.aculo.us libraries that come bundled in RoR.