Musa Tariq – Author
Founder and editor, RandomGens
support@randomgens.com
I build and run RandomGens. Every generator on the site, the data behind it and the writing around it comes from me. That is unusual for a tools site, and it is the reason each page names its sources and carries a date.
Why I built this
In 2025 I was trying to name a project and spent an afternoon on generator sites. They all did the same thing: throw a word at you and stop there. No meaning, no origin, nothing to help you decide. I wanted a picker that told you something about what it had picked, so I built one.
The fruit generator came first, because I kept looking up calorie numbers by hand. The rest followed the same way. A decision I was making badly, then a small tool to make it faster.
What I do here
- Build the tools. They run in your browser, so nothing you generate is sent to a server.
- Put the lists together by hand, entry by entry, rather than pulling them from a dataset.
- Check the numbers against published sources and date every page.
- Write the pages.
- Read and answer every email that comes in.
What a generator has to earn
A picker that returns a bare word is not much use. If it says pitanga and stops there, you still have to go and look it up, so the tool has saved you nothing. My rule from the start was that every result has to arrive with enough attached to act on: a number, an origin, a use, a caveat.
That rule is what decides which tools get built. If a subject has no reliable data behind it, I do not ship the tool, however much traffic it would bring. There is no gemstone value picker here and no calorie burn calculator, because I would have to invent the numbers.
How a tool gets built
The order is always the same, and the writing comes last. First I collect the data by hand, entry by entry, and drop anything I cannot trace to a published source. Then I build the interface and use it myself for a week, which is where most of the bad ideas die.
Only after that do I write the page, and I write it from what the tool actually does rather than from a keyword list. If a section exists only to hold a phrase, it comes out.
How I check the data
Food and nutrition figures come from USDA FoodData Central. Animal data comes from the IUCN Red List and Animal Diversity Web. Password guidance follows NIST SP 800-63B. Barcode specifications come from GS1. Each page lists what it used and when it was last checked.
If you spot something wrong, tell me. I fix it and update the date on that page, and that email is genuinely welcome.
What I get wrong
The fruit generator shipped with calorie figures for cooked weights on three entries, which a reader caught within a fortnight. The barcode tool let you generate a UPC without warning that retail numbers have to come from GS1, so people printed labels that shops rejected. Both are fixed, and both were my mistake rather than a data problem.
That is the honest picture of a one person site. Things get through. What I can promise is that corrections go in quickly and the page date changes when they do.
Background
I work in web development and content strategy, and RandomGens started as a side project that got out of hand. The site runs on WordPress with the tools written in plain JavaScript, which is why nothing you generate is ever sent to a server. That was a deliberate choice, not a technical limitation.
Where to find me
The best way to reach me is support@randomgens.com. I usually reply within a day or two. My personal site, themusatariq.com, has my wider work and writing outside RandomGens. You can also read about the site itself or send a note through the contact page.