Nope. Turns out I'm using GD's imageCreate function -> http://php.net/manual/en/function.imagecreate.php
My normal advice to you nifty niche App'ers is to look at long standing apps to see what they did right for revenue. Namely http://www.network-science.de/ascii/
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[1] GD still has its own problems, but it seems like subscribing to secunia for GD would catch most, like this recent one :: http://secunia.com/advisories/38055/