Along with web services.
I used to have these random name generators on this site; they would produce 100 random character names, or some place names, culling from census data. It was a handy resource when you were writing a story.
Recently I moved to a new server, and the character generator exploded for its own deep-seated technical reasons, and I decided to rewrite a character name generator from scratch, using REST-ian principles and a non-SQL database. Partially I did it to figure a few things out, and partially I did it because some little crybabies just never stop with their bitching and whining.
So what? So now anyone with a homesite on the entire global communications network known as the Inter-net can have a random-generated name in their page. For instance, if I was a PHP user, I can just go:
And now, through the rest of my page, I can just write things like:
Whoo! Instant story! Well, not at all, really.
The script is at: http://www.ftrain.com/cgi-bin/names/; the format for the function call is: (male|female)/(2part|3part)/(integer > 0)/(text|html|xml). So you just go to, say:
http://ftrain.com/cgi-bin/names/ plus:
- male/2part/10/html provides, in html, 10 2-part male names (like “Paul Ford”).
- female/2part/10/html provides, in html, 10 2-part female names (like Rebecca Dravos).
- [nothing] provides, in text, 1 2-part male name. That's the default setting.
- female provides, in text, 1 2-part female name.
- male/2part/10/html provides, in html, 10 2-part male names (like “Paul Ford”).
- female/2part/10/html provides, in html, 10 2-part female names (like Rebecca Dravos).
- [nothing] provides, in text, 1 2-part male name. That's the default setting.
- female provides, in text, 1 2-part female name.