About Sol4

Some history first: back in the early 2000s, when I created the sol4 domain, I intended to use it as something where I could share information and other stuff with the internet in general, and yes, some people would call this a plaything.

Initially, the domain was self-hosted using a nasty and less-than-stable DSL-type internet connection, where 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 the 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.

From the old days, the most commonly asked question was, what does sol4 actually 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.

As for the content, initially, I wrote all the content, but in the new iteration, this is no longer the case, with contributions from various other people.

• The majority of the photos on this site are original and belong to the owners of these domains. In contrast, everything else is labeled with the owner's details.
• This site is hand coded in good old-fashioned static HTML and styled with CSS, with all content checked with grammerly.com
• 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.