The domain "quine.ca" was chosen for the author's interest in quines, which are a type of metaprogram that output their own source code without resorting to input. The creation of a quine is a difficult challenge, requiring an understanding of co-recursion and a love of puzzles. For more information, see the Wikipedia article. Quines are named after philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine (1908-2000).
The following quine examples are found at The Interweb. Here is one in Ruby:
t="t=%c%s%c;printf t,34,t,34";printf t,34,t,34
and one in Java (1.5):
class Q { public static void main(String[] a) { String t = "class Q { \
public static void main(String[] a) { String t = %c%s%c; \
System.out.printf(t, 34, t, 34); } }%n"; System.out.printf(t, 34, t, 34); } }
My personal wiki, which is read-only to the public, is available here.