My name is Chris Baran, but I’m also known as possiblybob. I’m a web developer by trade, though I also enjoy photography, music, and playing rhythm games, like DDR, Guitar Hero, and Rock Band.

Why possiblybob?

Possiblybob is a name I made up for myself, and its an example of my nerdiness. My progression of names began with my introductory C++ class back in college. When my professor would write sample code for problems from the textbook, he would always use variable names like foo and bar, as they’re fairly standard variable names in the industry. Whenever I’d work on problems for homework, I’d always end up using bob instead, since I found it easier to type.

After a few weeks of class, I learned about the principle of negation. In C++, you can negate a value or variable by placing an exclamation point (!) in front of it. Since I used bob quite often, I decided that I would take !bob (Not Bob) as my handle when playing video games in the monthly LAN parties hosted at college.

More often than not, people would misread my name, and they’d call me iBob (like the iPod). I guess it does look rather similar. I decided to spell out the name, and I became not bob or simply notbob when playing. I decided notbob would be my handle, and as such, I attempted to register screen names and accounts on several sites using the name. Since bob is used so much on the internet, I found that this screen name was more often than not already claimed by someone else.

I wanted to keep a name that was somehow related to bob and the first name that came to mind after notbob was possiblybob, since it seems about half-way between bob and notbob. It was available on every site I tried, so I decided to keep it.

To this day, if you search for possiblybob on Google or most other search engines, you’ll find references to me or to my activities.