Aaarrrhhhhhh Matey! Pirates Are Still Cool
Posted on | May 1, 2013 | No Comments
Most pirates probably weren’t this effeminate.
Let’s put aside the doings of actual pirates for a moment and focus on the romanticized version of pirates that Hollywood loves. Those pirates are actually cool. Most of them swill booze, tell bawdy jokes and only plunder from people who probably deserve to be plundered. Like pancake-makeup-wearing British dandies.
Anyway, in the spirit of that kind of lovable pirate, we created the Pirate Name Generator. As always, we ask very little of you to actually use it. Just click the button until you find one you like. The first ever Pirate Name generated was:
Cap’n Bart Hellscurvy
We kind of like that one. Happy pirating!
Low-Carb Genius in Pizza Form
Posted on | March 26, 2013 | No Comments
Gino’s East Pizza in Chicago has a cure for pizza lovers on low-carb diets. A deep dish pizza with a crust made from, that’s right, sausage. Might as well look up the nearest hospital before diving in.
A Business by Any Other Name
Posted on | March 24, 2013 | No Comments
We’ve had a lot of requests for a Business Name Generator and we’ve had a few users build their own. We decided to buckle down and build one. Actually we re-purposed the Domain Name Generator because these days it’s essentially the same thing. Most companies trying to think up a new company name alternate between ideas and a site like Network Solutions or GoDaddy to see if the domain is available. No point naming your company BlueSpark if BlueSpark.com is already taken (it is).
Also, we’re fairly lazy, so this turned out to be the optimal solution. We did add some additional words to the generator array list, but it’s still awfully similar. Hopefully it’s also awfully helpful to anyone trying to come up with a company name that rolls of the tongue and sticks in people’s melons.
Let us know what y’all think.
How Do I Blog?
Posted on | March 16, 2013 | No Comments
Blogging is hard work.
So, Seriously. How Do I Blog?
A lot of people have said to me, “Hey, how do I blog?” Either they want to start a blog and see if they can make any money or they just have an urge to hold forth on a certain topic. Usually they’re not so much asking “How do I blog” as much as “How do I get online and set up a site and do all that technical voodoo.” Which is a shame, because all that technical stuff has been rendered fairly simple at this point. Blogging is easy to set up, the hard part is posting really good content over and over again in a sustainable way.
I’ve helped a lot of people set up blogs and seen them abandoned within a few weeks. Maybe the question people should be asking is “How do I keep blogging once I start?” The answer to that is “hard work and creative thinking.”
Hard Work
Once you get your thoughts public, two things will happen fairly quickly: 1) No one will pay attention and 2) You will get discouraged. You’ll post again and once again, no one will pay attention. This will repeat for a while and you’ll start to think that all this work you’re doing now will be wasted even if you do eventually get noticed because people will only see the latest stuff. But more importantly, you’re getting frustrated and even bored with this blog thing now. That’s usually the point where the blog gets abandoned. That’s also where, if you’re serious about this, you need to start working harder. Keep writing, absolutely, but beyond that, get out and start reading other people’s blogs, especially in your own niche. What are THEY talking about? Get more ideas there. More importantly, start commenting on their blogs. Comment thoughtfully, comment kindly, comment conversationally. Ask the author back a few questions. Hopefully you’ll get their attention and not only will they answer, but they might go look at your little blog.
Great, I got one visitor from that you may think, but here’s the thing. If you’re creating quality content on your blog and that author sees it, there’s a chance they may link over to your blog at some point. They may reference you in their next article (e.g. “A colleague of mine actually wrote a great post about X,Y,Z…”) with a link to that very post. Now that author’s readers may click on over and check you out. Now we’re getting somewhere!
Creative Thinking
To keep writing you need to keep coming up with creative ideas. Sure you could use something like Generator Land’s Blog Post Idea Generator to come up with blog post ideas, but you can also:
- Read a lot of blogs, news sites, online magazines, etc. that are built around your topic.
- Set up Google Alerts about your chosen topic.
- Use a tool like the wondrous Topsy to come up with ideas from tweets, posts, news and a wide variety of other sources about your topic.
- Ask questions on LinkedIn.
- Keep a waterproof notepad in the shower when ideas always seem to hit (check out Aquanotes, which I use and love.)
So before you start that blog, think hard about how much you’re willing to put into it to keep it going and if your topic has legs for the long haul. If you’re willing to work and think creatively, you can be heard.
YouTube Channel Hub: New Side Project
Posted on | March 3, 2013 | No Comments
This morning I was trying to find some YouTube channels worth subscribing to and realized that there’s no easy way to find them. Sure, it’s easy to find VIDEOS on YouTube, but there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to find channels you might be interested in. So I did a few Google searches for things like “best YouTube channels” and “find YouTube channels” and all I found were a bunch of good, but random blog posts with lists of channels.
So, feeling inspired to make the world a better place, I registered the domain youtubechannelhub.com and put up a WordPress site to manage the content. This turned out to be a good idea because now I can just post a channel as a blog entry, categories it and boom, you now have a nice listing of YouTube channels by category. To spice up each entry, I dropped an embedded video example from each channel.
So if you’re a YouTube fan and want to find good channels to subscribe to, you’ll now be able to find the best YouTube channels at youtubechannelhub.com
A Name Generator for Lonely Boys
Posted on | January 26, 2013 | No Comments
When we started Generatorland.com several years ago, it was more about finding a project for my buddy Joe (a developer) and me (a writer) to work on together more than anything else. We certainly didn’t set out to be one of the most popular name generator sites on the Web. In fact the only reason that I even became aware of the popularity of name generators was because I’d noticed that the most visited post I’d had on my (now-defunct) blog “Technogeekboy” was one that mentioned a name generator. I think it had to do with super heroes. Or food. But I digress.
Since then the site has grown and name generators have become commonplace in pop culture. In fact it seems most (non-lethal) current events wind up with their own name generators now. You may remember such examples as:
- The Jersey Shore Nickname Generator (http://www.unlikelywords.com/2009/12/08/jersey-shore-nickname-generator/)
- The Sarah Palin Baby Name Generator (now defunct)
- The Ikea Furniture Name Generator (http://www.blogadilla.com/swedishFurniture/swedishFurniture.html)
- The Star Wars Name Generator (http://starwars.namegeneratorfun.com/)
- The Hobbit Name Generator (http://chriswetherell.com/hobbit/) We’re also working on one of our own.
- The Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator (http://www.mess.be/inickgenwuname.php)
- The Emo Band Name Generator (http://emobandname.com/)
The latest foray into pop culture name generators is one of our own. Inspired by one of the most bizarre news stories in recent memory, we’ve created the “Fake Girlfriend Name Generator.” Based not so loosely on the story of Manti Te’o and the girlfriend that wasn’t, anyone can now generate their own phony lady love to share with friends and social media.
Please use this generator responsibly.
Geeky English Major Stuff Added
Posted on | December 31, 2012 | No Comments
Part of the reason I love Generator Land is because I love language. Trying to figure out how to randomly throw together words and phrases and have them come out sounding like something fairly understandable isn’t easy but it’s a lot of fun.
Today we added something geeky to our word lists—suffixes, prefixes and roots. If you don’t remember high school English, here’s a quick primer.
Prefix: A prefix is placed before the root of a word, altering the meaning of the root word. For instance, “happy” could become “unhappy” or “symmetrical” could become “asymmetrical.”
Suffix: Similarly, a suffix is placed at the end of a root of a word and can alter its meaning. For instance “dunk” could become “dunking,” “dunked,” “dunks,” etc.
Root: Also known as a “morpheme,” this is the part of a word that carries the primary meaning. For instance, the root of “running” is “run.” The root of “unlucky” is “luck.”
SO if you’re still awake, next time you build a generator, see if you have a use for suffixes, prefixes and root words. They’re available from the Create a Generator dropdown word lists. One note, you’ll likely need to use the “No Space After Word” checkbox when using them to keep them butt-up against the next or previous word
Naturally, the first thing I built with them was a “Really Long Word Generator.”
New Name — No Explanation Necessary
Posted on | December 29, 2012 | No Comments
You don’t have to be an undercover agent to need a fake name. Maybe you just need a new name for the bar tonight. Or perhaps you’ve won the lottery and want to move away to a remote tropical island to wait until the fuss dies down. We won’t judge. We will, however provide you with a fancy new moniker via our new Fake Name Generator.
Keep clicking until you get a name that sounds suitable. I’m now Albert Steger. Can’t wait to use it tonight.
Things I Still Find Funny Even Though They’re Totally Played
Posted on | June 28, 2012 | No Comments
Farts
Let’s just get this one out of the way. Farts are funny. Not too long ago, I sat around the dinner table with my entire family and we all played various fart machine apps on our phones. Several of us laughed hard enough to evoke the real thing. I don’t know why farts are so funny, they just are.
“Shut the front door!”
I know it’s lame — I’ve heard this a thousand times now — I still smile when it’s used correctly. You tell someone something shocking and as they begin to reply, in the back of your mind your expecting to hear the F-bomb, but it never comes. Instead it’s replaced with something your mom probably said a hundred times with equal passion.
The commercial where the guy pretends he’s not looking at his phone while on a date.
I think this is just some great editing. In addition, the actor uses just the right combination of earnestness and guilt.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Cats falling off things
Like most people I believe that cats think very highly of themselves and seeing them at their worst moments is just plain funny. While I don’t want to spend hours talking about how adorable your cat is or all the funny things he/she does, I do want to see video of cats falling into aquariums, off counter tops and, of course, off window sills. By the way, my understanding is that the cat in this particular video was OK.
Horrible puns
My wife calls them “Grandpa Jokes.” That’s fine. I can’t always help what comes out of my mouth. For me I think puns take the fast train through my brain and circumvent any filters. This unfortunately means I might make the world’s lamest pun just as readily as the most clever. I’m in it for quantity over quality I guess. Besides, Alfred Hitchcock once said that “Puns are the highest form of literature.”
One of Those Days
Posted on | June 18, 2012 | No Comments
Ever have one of those days where it seems like it’s been predetermined that things are just going to keep going wrong until you give up and go back to bed? Like maybe you accidentally hit yourself in the jewels while spiking a football and then someone knocks you unconscious?
Worst end zone celebration ever.
I think we need to begin recognizing that while we have a limited supply of days in our lives we also need to accept that a share of them are just not going to be worth the effort. Let’s say you wake up early to chat with your girlfriend in Australia. What could go wrong?
Thank God he had pants on.
But you soldier on and decide to go golfing with your buddies.
I think he just added a handicap.
Undaunted, you stop at the grocery store on the way home to pick up milk and the next thing you know…
No use suing over spilled milk.
You stop at the gym to work off the stress you’ve built up and…
Her face got quite a workout.
To lighten things you decide to play a prank on your friend and jump out of a recycling bin with a scary mask on. Won’t he be surprised?
We interrupt this interview for some breaking nose.
Maybe it’s time to just go to bed.
Or maybe not…
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