First, some history: When I created the sol4 domain in the early 2000s, I intended to use it to share information and other stuff with the internet in general. Yes, some people would call this a plaything, but in recent iterations, it's fast becoming a blog.

Initially, the domain was self-hosted using a nasty and less-than-stable DSL-type internet connection. It ran for many years with no real issues other than performance and the odd period of downtime. Everything just worked, but eventually, the time needed to keep it running things like firewall upkeep and general maintenance got too much, so I closed it down.

That was in the past; now, things have changed, and it's possible to get things hosted without breaking the bank, so I decided to bring the site back from the dead and use a commercial hosting provider this time.

So after much research, filtering out the marketing snake oil, and checking with multiple hosters, usually based in the US, the final decision was to move to the Swiss-based hostpoint.ch. That Swiss reputation for quality and privacy was the deciding factor; if you want a good hosting provider, try them; you will not be disappointed.

The most commonly asked question from the old days was, what does sol4 mean?

Put very simply, sol is another name for the sun, and the number 4 means the fourth planet, in other words, the 4th planet from the sun, "Mars." And yes, I am one of the many supporters of the work Elon Musk is doing down in Boca Chica to put humans on the red planet.

If you want to keep up to date on the happenings at Boca Chica, just like I do, check out the following well-established YouTube channels, which cover what's happening and, as far as I can tell, are not biased, fake or have some agenda.

• Marcus House
• What about it
• Scott Manley

• Most of the photos on this site are original and belong to the owners of these domains. In contrast, everything else is labelled with the owner's details.
• Some of the icons used are from the general internet and licensed for personal and commercial use. The source for most would be flaticon.com
• This site is hand-coded in good old-fashioned static HTML and styled with CSS, with all content checked with grammerly.com
• All of the reviews on this site are for products and services I liked; none have been requested, nor have any discounts been given or any free products supplied. Should that change it will always be fully disclosed as part of the review.
• There are no email addresses on this site, so do not bother to scan for them. You may be able to talk to me at the martian engineer at gmail dot com .
• The opinions expressed on any page on this site are those of the creator and may or may not be something I agree with.
• If there is anything on this site you do not like, agree with, etc., you are recommended to go to another site.