I am adding my entry to identicon third party implementations. I followed more or less Don’s algorithm, and, using the PIL, I have now a functioning identicon lib in Python. The results are not as good as the originals, but it should give you an idea. If you perfect it, I’ll welcome back changes.

Download the source code.

identicon Python

#701644

<coolbreze> heres a better qustion; what is the qucikest way to set up and FTP Server?
<speedevil> coolbreze: post your root password in a warez group.

Note the artful spelling too. Sigh…

Where were you five years ago, when planes crashed in the Twin Towers, the Pentagon and some innocent farmland?

I was in Thailand, attending an APMEA meeting of my new employer. I wasn’t even an employee of that company yet – I joined officially on October 1, 2001; but it so happened that the meeting had been scheduled then, and I was asked to join in.

As I didn’t know anyone from the group – except my boss, who’d interviewed me a coupla times, and spoke French reasonably well – so I spent that evening, which was the first [or second?] of that meeting, on my own. I did know people in BKK, my colleague and former colleague of the job I was then holding, but they were unavailable that night I met both separately later in the week.

I don’t remember what I did really, prolly had dinner in one of the few places I knew from a previous biz trip there, and had a beer or two and went to bed. I didn’t watch TV, that’s for sure And prolly didn’t connect long to the Net, or I’d have seen that. If it was the first night, it’s highly possible I’d have been tired by the flight anyway. And the weather.

But I distinctly remember the next morning. We spent the first hour or so of the meeting speaking about it. It so happens that my boss’s wife, and investment exec of some sorts, had a scheduled meeting somewhere inside the Twin Towers at 9am, NYC time. The guy was livid. He hadn’t slept much I guess. When the brown stuff hit the fan, he was having a beer with some colleagues in a bar. Someone mentioned the “accident” and even showed him a printout of a web page – geeks even infest Patpong it seems… He thought it was a hoax or something, but tried to call his wife nonetheless. No result – I guess the phones lines weren’t working too well anyway.

To make a long [and he did make the most out of it. He rather enjoyed any limelight that could come his way] story short, his wife’s meeting had been cancelled the day before, and she was in bed when it happened. Although I doubt a little bit the in bed part, she being a *Dutch*, and this particular strain of the human genus tend to get up at ungodly hours…

The rest of the meeting went well enough, even if he was a bit distracted. But that, I learned, was normal with that dude anyway.

I built a functioning UM in around four hours, plus some debugging and tweaking to help me understand more what the code does. Step by step debugger and all the trimmings. Nifty.

But… I can’t get past the decryption level. I am doomed. Oh well, just saved my week-end I guess!