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Does the word “insulter” exist in a standard dictionary? I don’t know and I’m too bored to search. But the name Walrus Insulter definitely does, in my dictionary. Obviously for those who know him, Walrus Insulter refers to none other than the supreme overlard [sic] of puns, my cartoon character Punning Walrus. If you haven’t met him yet, just click the “Free Walrus” link on the top menu. Or here’s the direct link for the lazy ones among you…

The whole thing, as they usually do, began on a boring cloudy afternoon. I was playing with my home network, trying to find new ways to annoy my neighbors (more of this in a while), when I realized that the best… walrus for the job is of course Punning Walrus.

Creative Ways of Trolling Your Neighbors

I live in an apartment building, and as a result there is a vast number of wifi channels in close range. On my home network alone there are 4 channels and over a dozen clients. I also have the – cough, cough – bad habit of naming my wifi channels in a rather creative manner. I mean, who doesn’t, right?

In any case, I recently toyed with the idea of trolling my neighbors this way: What if I made an insecure, open wifi channel, essentially inviting people to connect to it? Only, there would be a catch (mwahahaha).

I set up a local DNS server, redirecting each and every address from anyone connecting to the insecure network to the local machine running the local server. And what that local server would run?

The overlard!

Walrus Insulter, overloaded (pun intended)

So, you thought you could browse the net on someone else’s wifi, huh? Nope, wise-ass: Punning Walrus has a message for you:

The quotations are generated with the help of ChatGPT, though edited by yours truly. The simple animations I made myself with Krita, the same excellent program I use to draw Punning Walrus.

Looking for the code? Check it out on my GitHub. You’re free to reuse the code (it’s ludicrously simple anyway) and the AI-generated quotations. However, you cannot reuse the Punning Walrus images and animations, as they are my intellectual property. If you have something specific in mind that would require you to do so, feel free to email me and tell me about it.

Deviousness Can Be Creative!

In the end I didn’t keep the wifi channel open to my neighbors for more than an afternoon, while testing it. I respect others’ privacy, but don’t want to think (even temporarily) they can disrespect mine. The Walrus Insulter remains within the confines of my home network. Though I might change my mind, as I have very annoying neighbors.

Case in point:

But creativity is what matters. The motivation I got from the possibility of being devious was enough to make this very simple little project!