Why fizzychicken?

While it wasn’t the first ‘online’ username I ever chose, I picked fizzychicken as my online gaming name some time around 1999 after hearing it used by a friend to argue about all the food at McDonalds tasting the same. While I chose the name sim,ply because I found it funny at the time, what was actually handy was that, at least at the time, the term was what later became known as a Googlewhack - a search query that returns only a single result. My search engine of choice back in the pre-google era was AltaVista. That single search result was an online scoreboard of the same game I had been playing earlier that same day. As someone that shares a name with arguably one of the most successful Movie directors of all time, any searching for me online is lost in a bottomless sea of information about someone else, so finding a unique username really stuck with me. Eventually, as the world embraced the internet, the search results for the same term were flooded with bizarre recipes and other people using it as an online name, so I decided to claim the domain name before someone else did so that I could capture ownership of something that was once unique to me. The name is kept all lower case to match exactly how I would enter it in the games I would play online

I’ve often said to others that it seems strange how the internet contains an amazing amount of information yet people more-often-than-not browse the same small selection of websites everyday. So maybe you can gain a small insight into the kind of person I am by taking a look at my own frequently accessed sites. Ive ordered these by how I access them during the day:

Wake up, turn off alarms, check the calendar on my work phone, then check
BBC News for the world news and the Manchester United results at the same time.
RNZ News for the latest NZ News.
NFL to check the scores and hope the mighty Seahawks are on the right track.

During coffee time, mindless entertainment
Youtube subscriptions I try and avoid the Youtube home page where years of selecting ‘do not recommend channel’ and ‘Im not interested’ has led the algorithm to populate the feed with annoying Shorts or reaction videos, instead I look at the subscriptions only.
Reddit As with youtube Ive tailored this feed to be only subscribed sub-reddits. Im am trying to minimise my interaction with this site.

Sit at my desk and get ready for the working day
Hacker News Even if I didn’t work in IT, this would still be one of the first websites I read. I also access this via also via Glider when I’m on the move.
Krebs on Security I find the articles both entertaining and informative, though not to be used as a source of truth.

When I have time to kill or I’m waiting for a process that has locked up my resources
Cheapies So i can have someone else hunt for bargains.
Geekzone A New Zealand forum for the ‘technology community’.
RedCafe The Manchester United Fan Forum, so that I can see conversations of like-minded disappointed fans.

For in the background
Adam Buxton Podcast
Off Menu Podcast
Spotify Playlist

Most Importantly

The Child Tumor Foundation as ending NF matters to me more than anything I can think of. I would give up everything I have now and everything I ever will have in the future for a cure.