The Creator

I'll admit that Swordgleam as an alias seems a bit silly now, but I've been going by it online for over a decade, so why change it now? My actual name is Hannah.

I'm currently living the dream in sunny California, having run away from the land of ice and snow. I enjoy sailing, programming, reading, writing, digital art, LARPing, crafts of various types, and long naps on the beach. I am also fond of action movies and cheese pizza, especially in combination.

If you're on this page, you probably think I sound cool (or my site does) and you want to hear more from me. Why not go ahead and sign up for the newsletter? You'll get sneak peeks, explanations of why I build gens a certain way, and the chance to give me suggestions on what to make next.


  FAQs

There's a couple questions I get often enough that it's worth answering them here.

Can I use material from the generators in personal projects? What about commercial projects?
Absolutely! In either case, attribution is appreciated but isn't required. If you become a best-selling novelist or famous D&D podcaster and you used my generators to help you get there, I'd love to hear about it.

What is the copyright notice there for, then?
The generators themselves are what I don't want people copying. The code and the data are both things I spent a long time on.

  The Site

This is the third incarnation of a site formerly known as Warped Inspirations, built to host my many and varied generators. That was back before I knew PHP, and as a result was much less full of win and much more difficult to maintain and update. This site was started 17/1/07, the afternoon that I first learned PHP. And no, the design hasn't been updated much since then.

It is called "Chaotic Shiny" in part as an homage to Seventh Sanctum's Realistic Alignment Generator. Seventh Sanctum was the site that first got me interested in making generators, and has been a source of much hilarity throughout the past few years. More importantly, chaos and shiny things are two important elements in my life. They also describe the generators: chaotic, because they're random, and shiny, because they're (hopefully) awesome. And finally, it's just a cool name.

All the generators here are coded from scratch. I make gens whenever I get an idea for one, or, about as often, whenever a friend of mine requests one. I always have a few half-finished ones lying around, and I never really consider any gen to be finished.

Most of the older gens have very sloppy coding, but I leave it that way both so I can look back and see my progress, and because I'd rather be working on new things. Generally, the ones in javascript that are in table format are the older ones - the gens written in PHP are either new gens, or old gens recoded into PHP. If you view source on a lot of the older gens, you can see comments with some of my favourite generator results.


  The Technology

I looked for a long time to find a good way to set up a website. Because of my widespread searches, I found a great way, and I now pass that wisdom on to you. You're welcome.

I use AwardSpace as a webhost.
Their free hosting is good, their paid hosting is even better. And if you click that link and sign up for it, they'll kick a few dollars back to me. But don't go paying on my account; I used the free plan for years, and it's fantastic.

My domain name is hosted on NameCheap. They don't give me any money if you click that link, but you should do it anyway, because they're cheap and highly reliable.

The newsletter is run with Aweber which is not free, but when it comes to newsletters, it pays to go with someone reliable. As far as I can tell, everyone cool on the internet uses Aweber.

I get all my tracking data from StatCounter which is helpful, reliable, and you guessed it - free. So like I said; you're welcome.