# Wanderer: A Visual Hash Generator #hash #project #visualisation Have you ever wondered how the 'randomart' you see when creating an SSH key is generated? Turns out it uses the brilliantly named [drunken bishop algorithm](https://www.dirk-loss.de/sshvis/drunken_bishop.pdf). Seeing this inspired me to create my own version: "Wanderer". Wanderer works by converting each character of the given string into octal (0-7), then mapping each octal character into a step in a direction. Each of these steps is then followed in order, leaving behind a coloured trail/heatmap of visited cells. Enter some text, update the direction-map (hint: you can leave blanks) and click Generate: ```html Wanderer
``` If you're curious about how exactly the image is generated and streamed to the browser, you can take a peek at the [source code](https://github.com/moebrowne/mountainofcode.co.uk/blob/master/public/images/wanderer.php) and have a read of [this post](/php-jpeg-stream).