Nice looking guy, huh? But I can’t take credit for the photo. It’s a self-portrait.

The story begins last week. I phoned Kevin during work to see if he wanted to do lunch. Things over at Workspace were a little crazy that day, however. Someone had broken into the place the night before, using the keycard of a former member, and stolen two beautiful iMacs (24″ and 20″, respectively), along with a couple of members’ laptops. The dudes who did it were caught on security camera, but the result was too blurry to get all CSI with.

Friday night was Workspace’s first birthday, replete with cake, drinks, mini-putt, and some great tunes. Some friends and I stopped by on our way to a surprise PB&J DJ set at Dicks on Dicks, had some drinks and partied down. It had a Christmas morning in Whoville sort of vibe.

Then, this morning, the above picture, along with another one, appeared on Workspace’s flickr photostream.

If you browse through the rest of the photostream, you’ll notice that it functions like a sort of guestbook. The 24″ iMac at Workspace had a script running on it which, whenever a photo was taken in Photobooth using the computer’s built-in iSight camera, would upload the photo to said flickr stream (after prompting the user to name the photo and confirm).

So the hilarious meathead pictured above got his stolen computer home, busted out Photobooth, took a couple of shirtless photos of himself showing off his very unique tattoos and very dumb-looking face, and actually clicked the OK button twice to upload the photos to the photostream. And, since he didn’t have the password to access the flickr account, he couldn’t take them down.

So he’s at the mercy of the blogosphere. And it’s time for some geeky vigilante justice.

Oh, here’s the second photo:

This shit is already making the rounds on the internet. It started on several blogs run by workspace members, and actually made its way to Boing Boing at some point this morning. The real question is whether someone is eventually going to recognize this fellow’s ugly mug (or maybe his tattoos) and turn him in.

If you do… by all means help turn the question mark in this post’s title into an exclamation mark.

EDIT:

Thanks exclusively to this me (the quarter million flickr hits and television/newspaper coverage helped a bit, too), the unfortunate internet celebrity in the photo turned the computer in this morning, insisting of course that he wasn’t responsible for the crime. Here’s a link to the Vancouver Sun article with the details.

The case is not totally closed of course, as there are still several other computers missing and nobody has been charged with a crime, but if nothing else, Workspace has gotten more attention than they ever could have generated from the cost of an iMac. And that’s kind of cool.