Out of curiousity, how did people choose their avatars and signitures?

I chose an Ashigaru with a gun partly out of sympathy for the underdog (having a gun maybe gives him a chance against a samurai) and partly because I find the arrival of guns one of the interesting parts of STW.

I chose my quote from Arthur Conan Doyle as a reminder that we cannot understand history unless we bear in mind how different things look in different time periods and cultures. For instance, sometimes we judge the actions of others by standards that would not even make sense in their culture, and miss the whole point of what they did. Besides, history is more interesting when it opens your mind to a whole new way (or perhaps I should say old way) of seeing things.