I received an overwhelming response to this, on both Mastodon and Twitter.
I hastily posted the (messy) SVG I made and printed out, with some
haphazard instructions on how to make use of it. Additionally, PNGs of
earlier versions (my in-progress screenshots in the thread) have been
circulating, and some people have even printed that (with the blanked-out
phone number, transparency checkers, and all!) without changing any of
the info. So I decided I should make a tool to generate them. That's
this tool.
OBLIGATORY DISCLAIMER
I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF THIS STICKER GETS YOU IN TROUBLE IN AIRPORT
SECURITY, HAS SOMEONE TRY TO EXORCISE YOUR LAPTOP, OR CAUSES OTHER KINDS
OF ISSUES.
I made this for fun because I thought it would look cool on my project
laptop — a laptop I keep at home and do not take places. The laptop I
take with me (a Pinebook Pro) does not have a matching sticker.
More power to you if you put this on a laptop you carry around.
First off, a couple notes:
Liberation Sans is used as it's metric-compatible with Arial and gives
off that "bureaucracy" feeling, just like Arial. I suggest against
subbing it out for another font, like Calibri, Roboto, Fira Sans,
etc, as they all are much more "natural" looking fonts. Liberation
Sans is exactly the right level of stuffy.
SCREAMING YELLOW is used to ensure
your printer uses whatever the brightest yellow it can produce is;
in practice, on consumer inkjet printers, it becomes a more
dandelion shade of yellow.
For laser printers, it may in fact be a nearly nuclear shade of
yellow. You may want to change the colors, under the Extras section.
The two sticker-looking things have a fake shadow on them to make
them look like they are actual separate stickers from a generic
sticker sheet, haphazardly plastered on the main sticker template.
The effect is surprisingly convincing in real life.
You really do have to handwrite the stuff on the upper sticker. I
suggest an ultra-fine point Sharpie. Further detail at the bottom
of the page.
The sticker is roughly 4x2 inches.
The laptop I used this for is an enterprise laptop with BIOS features
allowing you to do
global drive encryption and show an asset tag on screen; I set the
asset tag to "INTELLIGENT MALICIOUS COMPUTER PROGRAMS
IMPROPER USAGE MAY ENDANGER YOUR LIFE" to help sell it, as it appears
on the POST screen. The global encryption also delivers on the passcode
promise made in the sticker.
I, at best, orbit the SCP community. I don't spend entire days reading
SCPs, have never written an SCP, and have only read a handful of
SCPs — most of which relating to qntm's excellent Antimemetics series.
However, I enjoy the concept, and was inspired by Twi's boot screen.
A previous version of this generator used a spiral galaxy image from an
unknown source, and that some people felt had an uncomfortable resemblance
to a swastika. I had selected this image while the project was still in the
"personal one-off" phase. I've replaced it with a five-armed design that is
entirely my original work.
Paper Size
SCP Identifier
Twi's uses 5257,
mine uses 3775.
We chose these as they are SCP slots that are not populated and cannot be
populated due to a Wikidot bug; the SCP community refers to this
phenomenon as the "slot goblin". The SCP wiki admins may eventually
fix these slots and open them again for editing. (Some people have
been talking about trying to get articles in these slots that relate to
the sticker/bootscreen, but there's no guarantee that will happen.)
These slots have now been populated, and none of them have anything to do
with computers. 3775 is something about a house, and 5257 is a drawn-out
poop joke. It was fun while it lasted.
Others have suggested using 1900,
an SCP actually talking about an anomalous computer virus. One of these
three was selected for you at random.
It's worth noting I later learned 3775 used to have something in it, and
some unofficial collations of the SCP database still have it. It was a
(apparently not very good, hence its deletion) entry relating to the
Anafabula, a metafictional entity that eats fictional realities. Fitting.
This is included in the "IDENT TAG" barcode. It's prefilled with
some random hex numbers.
Your Job Title
Your job at the SCP Foundation. Defaults to "Researcher".
This whole thing is pre-wrapped, so be careful what you put here.
If it's too short or too long it will mess up the text wrapping.
Your First Initial
This is used to identify you in the barcode along with the job
title. On my sticker, I set this to "U" as my name is Una. This
results in the sticker asking readers to request "Researcher U" when
calling. If this is longer than one glyph wide it may exceed the
bounds of the sticker, depending on how you format your phone number.
"Redact" will replace it with a black censor bar. I feel this is
bad, as it's unrealistic (why would you redact the way people can
contact you to return the laptop?) but it's provided as some people
like it.
Your Phone Number
This is used to identify you in the barcode. It suggests readers
call this number and ask for you as described above.
If you're putting this on a laptop you expect to lose, you should
be prepared to answer calls asking for you in this way and adopt
an SCP-style diction and do a lot of bureaucratic nonsense if you
want to really sell it.
This entire generator runs in your browser. I can't see your phone
number.
"Redact" will replace it with a black censor bar. I feel this is
bad, as it's unrealistic (why would you redact the way people can
contact you to return the laptop?) but it's provided as some people
like it. Won't work if you change the job title or use a long
"initial".
Extras
Sticker Rotations
Prefilled with a random value. Makes the fake stickers more
convincing. Extreme values may cause the stickers to overlap.
Corner Stamp
A meaningless number in the corner of the main stamp to make it appear
more "official". Theoretically represents the individual sticker
template that was printed. Defaults to "23".
Triangle Stamp
Some meaningless text in the inverted triangle to the right of the
WARNING text. I copied this from Twi's bootscreen, and don't know
what it means, if anything. Defaults to "KM".
Colors
Base
Mask
Text
Warning
Sticker
Sticker Text
Make sure to disable margins when printing and set the scaling to 100%!
Firefox's SVG renderer prioritizes legibility over geometric correctness;
I've done all I can do to try to make it behave, but it still produces
jittery stairsteppy messes for the rotated stickers. I recommend
downloading the SVG and rendering it in Inkscape, if you can't use
Chrome. (I'm a Firefox user myself — this is just the sad reality.)
If you download the SVG, you need to install the fonts it uses:
You do not need to install the fonts if you print direct from the browser;
these fonts are included in the page as webfonts.
I recommend printing on matte sticker paper. You should do proofs on
normal paper first to make sure it looks how you want. You will then want
to trim the sticker to the 4x2 inch size using a guillotine cutter. If
you don't have one, scissors will do in a pinch.
There's some extra bleed on the sticker, which gives you an error margin
when cutting and avoids having white visible on the edges. You can use
the black separator bars as a guide.
The handwriting part
With your marker or pen in hand, here's what you need to do to finish up
your sticker:
Make up an operation ID and write it under "APPR FND OP".
How about ?
Write the SCP number () under SCP PTR IDENT.
Circle Sf, Ec, or Kr under PTR CLS EN depending on if the object is
Safe, Euclid, or Keter.
Cross out VS if you want. I don't know what it being crossed out is
meant to mean.
Make up an authorization ID and put it under AUTH SPEC PID.
How about ?
Circle "cntn" under RSTRC BOUND HWND if this laptop is a containment
device for the SCP in question. (and only cntn, n and x have other
meanings)
Write four lowercase letters under SUP RSR. I don't know what this
stands for.
How about ?
Don't worry too much about your handwriting legibility; in-universe
these would be being written haphazardly by researchers who are very
busy doing other things, just to comply with O5 policies.