Identicons [via]: using a visual representation of your hashed IP address to make an avatar. Of course it’s not as pretty — or personal — as a Gravatar, but it doesn’t rely on external servers and everybody has one.

And here are two nice derivative ideas: replacing random geometric shapes with a MonsterID, and using that as a replacement avatar for people who haven’t signed up on Gravatar.

I’m totally going to do this (at first using the geometric algorithm, and later on making some kind of creature — that one requires some Photoshop work, so it’ll take longer). Here’s how it’ll go when I do it:

• if you’ve got a Gravatar and the servers are up, your avatar is shown

• elseif you’ve supplied an email address, the same hash that’s sent to Gravatar is used to make a custom avatar-y thing

• else a hash of your IP is used instead

I think the way I’ll do it is that email-based avatars will be creatures (like MonsterIDs) while IP-based ones will be geometric logos. So, if you want to have an interesting avatar associated to your comments on any of the blogs I maintain (and/or if you have a dynamic IP address and want your avatar to stick), get used to providing your email address (it’ll never be used for anything else).

Or I could simply use your name (or URL) instead. But the advantage of the IP and email addresses is that they’re not published, so trolls can hardly impersonate you and get your avatar on their comments.