The story of alchar.org

Why alchar.org?

Our domain name may seem quite non-obvious, but there are very good reasons for it being like that. First of all, the pronunciation is unusual for native english speakers. The 'al' part is as in 'alchemist', the 'ch' as in 'Bach', and 'ar' as in 'car'. Is that confusing enough? In summary, it's easy enough if you are able to pronounce 'ch' like the scots, germans or flemish do.

The domain was registered in April 1997, as a realm to represent software development projects, centered around a new object oriented programming language. Possible names were vanhees.org (rather silly), caseyd.org (named after the runtime environment for the language - equally silly), and alpc.org (named after the project name for the as-yet unnamed language).

Yet another alternative actually made it. Alchar.org comes from an area Kris designed for a mud. The area was never finished, but the name stuck with him for various other things.

What is alchar.org?

The domain is hosted on a collection of (rather ancient) x86 based systems, connected to the outside world with an SDSL link through SpeakEasy.net. It is protected from power outages by means of 2 UPS units (CyberPower 1000AVR and Belkin 1100VA). We used to get those quite often, so some form of battery backup was important. Of course, now that we installed UPS units, power outages hardly every happen. Somehow, things like that always tend to happen.

Anything else?

If there is anything else you'd like to know about alchar.org, please email us. We're constantly striving to improve our web pages.