Short but quick post. I made myself a self-updating signature image which updates my stats every 2 minutes. Basically just takes a photo of the stats page and crops and resizes it. The I used PHP to output the image. Take a look below at my signature and wait ~ 3 minutes (Round must end before stats update) and watch them update! Oh, and an ugly update log. Need to update soon (Even I like my private stuff looking nice) Spoiler: Old Logger Edit: New Dashboard:
I always wanted to have a dynamic signature that's shows my playtime and other meaningful information. One way you could do this is by scraping the data from !stats page and using the data to create the image with PHP. Therefore, minimizing bandwidth and there's no need to pay for a VPS when you could use a free webhost. Plus, you can even make your own design and show it off. This is pretty cool, good one!
I already need a VPS for my portfolio anyway. But from what I am getting from you is that I retrieve the html code via SQL and print it out as JSON (Using Yahoo API) then create my own custom image instead of screenshotting the whole stats page?