Historically, we’ve let anyone post their stuff to the Hall of Fame, which was really cool when we started out. We vividly recall the day the Willy Name Generator struck a chord with an Irish Rugby forum and we received 1,600 submissions within an hour or two. However, we’ve begun getting a lot of spam through the submission form lately and we’re not big fans of imposing captchas on our users every time they want to submit something.
So we’ve decided to make the Hall of Fame a “member’s only” feature in the near future. You’ll just have to take a moment to sign up the first time and then you’ll be free to create and submit to your heart’s content. Everyone will still be able to view the Hall of Fame, but only members will be able to add new stuff to it.
Since being a member is free and requires nothing more than a username and password, we don’t expect the number of submissions to drop much. We love those submissions and personally approve/disapprove each one. And if you know any spammers personally, tell them we hate them.
GL friend, Dan, had the great suggestion for a Nun Name Generator which is now in production. The idea immediately conjured images of “Sister Mary Elephant” of Cheech & Chong fame. We will draw on our vast experience in catholic grade schools to derive words that evoke the part-matriarchal/part-Godzilla nature of the parochial school nun.
We’re also planning to add a dessert item to the Froo Froo Menu Generator. Beef Gelato Puffs anyone? This was suggested by Kit a while back and we’re finally getting around to it. Sorry for the delay, Kit.
Finally, we’re thinking about a Drink Name Generator. A quick look at any bar tending site will reveal the random generator possibilities inherent. If you have ideas for any of these post a comment or go to submit an idea.
We’ve added screenshots of all the generators to their respective ratings/overview pages, something we’d been meaning to do for a while but seemed to keep forgetting. It’s nothing earth-shattering but it looks nice. Here’s an example:
This has just a little to do with Generator Land, but we want to put it out there. We are adding large thumbnails (if that’s not a paradox) to our generator description pages and our effort is being greatly aided by a Firefox extension developed by Evgeny Suslikov called “Fireshot.” Fireshot sticks a slightly garish button on the toolbar that gives you the option of screencapping the visible page or the entire page (all the way down offscreen). You can then edit the screen capture right there in Firefox including cropping, adding callouts, etc. The feature set of the editor is way more than you’d expect.
If you do Web work you do a lot of screen caps. Download Fireshot and send Evgeny some scratch.
Since the inception of Generator Land, we’ve wanted to build a community of like-minded people who relish the opportunity to waste a crapload of time creating random and ludicrous things. We wanted them to be able to share both their creations and their opinions. While we’ve always given people the opportunity to comment on the generators we’ve featured (both our own and others) and we’ve let everyone contribute to the ever-expanding Hall of Fame, we’ve never let people have their own little plot of land on the site.
Now we do. Or you do, rather. Well I guess technically we both do. Anyway, the point is that by joining Generator Land as a member, you get your own page on the site where you can save all the wonderful and ludicrous things you create using our Generators. You now have your own slice of our pizza. Your own beer in our fridge. Your own..well you get the idea.
To get your own Personal Generator Land page, all you have to do is register. Then go out and play with our generators. If you generate something really funny, just click “Add to My Page.” Now it’s yours forever. Once you’ve added a bunch of Grade A comic material to your page, why not share it with a friend or loved one? If you didn’t select “Share my page with others” when you registered, just click on “Edit Page/Preferences” and check it. You’ll then get a link that you can send to Uncle Ted or Aunt Lou.
You can also add your page to the Generator Land Member Pages, where people you hardly know can marvel over your brilliance. Your ears will burn with the knowledge that someone else is laughing at your handiwork. Or you might have some sort of rash. Either way, what fun!
So now Generator Land has a blog. “Why you ask?” Well, it’s for a variety of reasons. Mostly we had previously been trying to tuck site news and information into this little area at the top of the home page and it really forced us to pare down our blathering. Room to blather, that’s all we wanted. Plus it was a pain to update, since it meant editing code, which we like to leave to our programmers as much as possible. They like editing code–we’re not sure why. But God bless them and their Diet Cokes and pizza and remote control helicopters.
Now we get to use WordPress, which is nice, and it’s much easier for us to talk about what’s going on with the site–and there’s been a lot going on lately, not even counting our server downtime the other night. We’re pretty sure a remote control helicopter crashed into a fairly important server, but we’re not pointing fingers, Ed.
Upcoming posts will feature the changes and new stuff we’ve added to Generator Land and why we added it. We’re big on soft launches apparently. Also we’ll talk about some new generators we’re working on.
We hope you’ll feel free to comment on all this and tell us when we’re being stupid or unoriginal as well as when we do something funny and milk is shooting out of your nose. It’s all good.
Generator Land is devoted to wasting a lot of your time in the best and most random way possible. The Generator Land blog does the same except there’s more text. Our goal here on the blog is to give you a peek at what’s shaking at Generator Land now and what’s coming in the future (when and if we sober up). We’ll also spout off randomly about other things as we’re wont to do. Feel free to leave comments attacking our character, suggesting brilliant generator ideas, or, hell just letting us know how your day was today. We’re here for you.