Don Park's Daily Habit - Wordpress Identicon

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Wordpress Identicon

by Don Park at 2007/02/07 12:23:15

Scott Sherrill-Mix has written WP_Identicon, a 9-block implementation of identicon for Wordpress. He even added extra shapes. It's also listed at Wordpress Plugin Database site.

Get it for your Wordpress (roundhouse link-kick to Matt ;-p) blog!

Tags: tech, security, identity, identicon

Comments

ScottS-M at 2007/02/07 12:57:18 PM

Thanks for the great idea. I hope it keeps spreading. Really great to be able to skim through a bunch of data and recognize individuals easily.

Jeff Atwood at 2007/02/07 01:04:59 PM

I'm sorry to be critical, but every other implementation I've seen is inferior to Don's original formula. This one, for example, is way too busy IMHO. Why do we need New Coke when the original formula was plenty good? Must we change everything just for the sake of.. changing everything?

Also, not showing the identicon in the comment preview is a recipe for comment-spam disaster. This is a must unless you want a dozen "WHAT DOES MINE LOOK LIKE??!!" comments cluttering up your blog..

Devon Young at 2007/02/07 01:44:48 PM

YES! It took long enough ;)

Don Park at 2007/02/07 01:51:27 PM

Relax, Jeff. :-) Variety is good IMHO and natural selection process kicks in when things get confusing. Unless the speed of permutation get too high, that is, since even nature has limits. Re Scott's implementation, I think adding a flag to select patch set could address the problem. How about calling my set Identicon Classic? ;-p

BTW, my identicon looks different because I am posting from Socialtext's office (Wikithon).

AkUzZeR at 2007/02/07 03:41:22 PM

Congratulations for your proyect

ScottS-M at 2007/02/07 05:05:24 PM

@Jeff
Good point. Actually I've been thinking some of the shapes might end up with portions a bit too small. For example, the ones where a small triangle runs along a side. But I figured might as well throw them in and see what people say about them. (I'll take that as one vote nay :) If you were wanting to use the plugin you could edit the shapes array directly. Just delete all the shapes after 16. As for the "what does mine look like?" crowd, I'm figuring that'll die down as more blogs implement it. From scanning blogs that have implemented the plugin, it looks like most of them post a "Look at this plugin, it makes Identicons" post and their commenters can get all the "What does mine look like" out on that post.

@Don
An option to switch to Classic is a good idea. I'll put that in the next version.

In general, my guess why everyone tries to improve on Coke is that most people like a challenge. I have to admit that if I was going to make my own Coke I would certainly experiment with the recipe. Also since Don's set can be achieved with my plugin I figured it certainly wasn't hurting anything. I was also messing around to see if I could try to avoid swatiskas (or at least make them rarer). Not sure if it's working though.