Have you ever wondered what those strange icons were that appeared next to blog 
posts such as the example on the right? Well it’s called an Identicon and it’s an icon that uniquely identifies the source of a post whilst maintaining the privacy of the user – technically it’s a MD5 hash of the users IP address and converted to a 9-block graphic.
But wait, there’s more. If you’d like a specific icon (a picture of you for example) to follow you around wherever you post then you can sign up for a Gravatar – a globally recognized avatar.
