What's in a name

I've had quite a few people ask me about "xmakina" so I reckon it warrants it's own post.

1) How do you say it?
xmakina is phonetic - ex-mak (as in Apple Mac)-in-a.

2) Where does it come from?
I've had xmakina as my alias for about 7 years now. It originally came from needing to think of an alias after my old one (corrupt_uk_2000) began to show it's age as well as being too connected with me being 13. The actual inspiration came from Red Alert: Aftermath which contained a mission titled "Deus Ex Machina" which I thought sounded cool so condensed it into xmakina, because all good online names start with an x.

I was not aware of what Deus Ex Machina actually meant until quite a bit later, when I found out it meant "God From The Machine" which is pretty awesome for a software developer so I continued using it. It was even later than that that I found it's also the term for when a seemingly hopeless situation is resolved through a completely unexpected (and usually outside) event, e.g. War Of The Worlds where the aliens died because of germs. Which was rubbish.

So there we are. That's my name and why I use it. If anyone feels like it, I'd love to hear why you chose the name you use on LJ...