I thought people might be interested in why I’ve decided to start a blog, and I need a few posts so I can test out the features of the site, so here goes.

I wanted to somewhere to record my thoughts about various things, mostly programming projects and what I’ve been reading/watching/playing. And because I’m a child of the 21st century, my first reaction to that kind of thought is “stick it up on the public internet for anyone to read”.

Because I’m a programmer, I decided to write my own website rather than using a site builder or blogging platform. That said, using a static site generator is hardly a strenuous way to write a simple website. I should be able to extend it to do anything I want though, as long as it doesn’t need anything going on behind the scenes (on the server). More on the technical details of how I did it in another post.

Maybe I’m just going to be shouting into the void, but I thinking writing down my thoughts will be therapeutic. Plus some of my friends and family may be interested in what goes on in my head all the time.

In the future I may also use the site as a portfolio for any projects I do that I can stick up on the web. And it’s nice to have a little corner of the internet to call my own.

Why MechToast?

I’m anticipating everyone asking me this question, because no one’s heard the name before. Story time: back at university I used to host a minecraft server, with accompanying website, for a group of friends (mostly housemates). That site and server are long gone, but while I was running it I saw that the hosting company we used had a special offer on domain names and hosting, and I decided to give it a try. I bought up MechToast.biz and… did nothing with it until my hosting expired.

But that doesn’t actually explain where you got the name, I hear you cry. Actually the name came from… nowhere really. The random firings of my brain in the form of word association. I thought of it, liked it, and decided to run with it. The image you should think of is a giant 60 ft tall walking toaster that fires weaponised bread products. It may have been influenced in part by some combination of Battlestar Galactica’s “toasters” (i.e. a racial slur for androids) and the Talkie Toaster from Red Dwarf. But I may be attaching those associations after the fact.

Anyway, cut to now, I’ve been meaning to start up a blog for a while and I remembered my old unused name and ran with it. And that’s why you’re reading this on MechToast.com.

Final note: .com domains are timeless and classic and superior to all this modern .io/.xyz/.ninja nonsense. And yes I’m that much of a geek that I have strong opinions about TLDs.