"A hackergotchi is a picture of a person's head that's used as an avatar for identification on a blog. Any region below the neck is cut out, as are any portions of the picture that don't include the head. You can create a hackergotchi easily with a digital camera and the GIMP.
"Since you're focusing only on the head, you don't need a very high-quality image to work with. The picture I used was taken with a 1.3-megapixel camera phone. Besides, a hackergotchi is typically 80x80 or at most 100x100 pixels, so many fine details and even defects like red-eye won't be noticeable..."