Filed under: Internet , Weird Wednesday If you’ve tried to register a domain name in the last decade or so you’re probably aware of the “cromulent word scarcity syndrome” (yes, I just made that up). In other words, most of the good names are gone. Scratch another off the list with purplemonkeydishwasher.com , a reference to a line in The Simpsons . As is my wont, I typed this random URL into my browser and was pleasantly surprised to see a modicum of functionality (as opposed to a placeholder site with nothing but keyword links). Purplemonkeydishwasher.com is running a fortune-telling application. Not so much a real fortune-teller, actually, but a simple random text fetcher. As the site explains: fortune is a program which displays random messages, quotations, folk sayings, and other verbal fluff. Historically, it dates back to unix systems, and is believed to

have been used by software developers to help break tension, or perhaps it was simply just an early version of a ‘widget’. Because it was originally created by software engineers, some of the older fortunes are programmer’s jokes and make little sense to most people. Since then, however, the fortune database has grown and forked off to numerous differing versions. Some fortunes are well dated or make social comments now out of context, others make no sense whatsoever, but many are gems, offering truly useful advice or food for thought, and many are timeless with origins unknown. What other random URL’s have you found? Weird Wednesday: Purplemonkeydishwasher.com originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Read  |  Permalink  |  Email this  |  Comments

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Weird Wednesday: Purplemonkeydishwasher.com