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Sunday, June 15, 2003
I'm once again hunting for a domain name for my web site. I started searching around for unused domains yesterday, and I have some to the following conclusion: people are weird.
I was looking for words that aren't widely used but are easy to spell. Naturally, they were all taken. After a while it turned into a game to find the most obscure word that someone actually took the time to register. What I found was a crossword fanatic's dream. I ended up focusing on words that mean "bad" or "meaningless" or "useless". Here are some of my favorites:
misled.com
tedium.com
misinformed.com
paltry.com
trifle.com and trifling.com
drivel.com
residuum.com and residuum.net
specious.com
detritus.com
slag.com
lassitude.com
oddment.com
mobocracy.com
olio.com
vainglorious.com
dross.com
rejectamenta.com
ataxia.com
magniloquent.com
dolor.com
otiose.com
jejune.com
Unsurprisingly, most of these domain names are parked. Of the 11 that aren't, several are outdated personal web sites, a couple are outdated company sites, and one is an outdated site dedicated to the manufacture of iron aggregate. (Remarkably, only one is a porn site. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which one.)
From the limited data gathered in this experiment, it appears to me that the web is populated by four kinds of people: 1) those who are cynical, 2) those who think it is hip, funny and/or post-modern to act cynical, 3) those who, recognizing that the cynical and the faux-cynical often choose to express themselves with crappy web sites, run around snapping up cynical-sounding domain names, and 4) those who are in the business of producing iron aggregate.
It is group #3 that interests me the most. I'm fascinated by the idea of some budding Internet entrepreneur circa 1999 going through the dictionary and parking every obscure vocabulary word he could find, dreaming of the day when a venture capitalist would knock on the door of his dorm room and offer him a suitcase full of money for "mobocracy.com". ("Hello there, young man, the name's Aston Q. Winnington III. I'm taking Mobocracy.com all the way to the top, and I can't get there without that address. So what'll it be - $100,000? $500,000? How's about I pay you with stock? This mobocracy thing is going to be big, Big, BIG!")
All of this brilliant analysis didn't put me much closer to picking a domain for myself, however. The only available vocabulary word that I liked was "soporose.com", which means "to cause sleepiness". Although this word very accurately describes my web site, I'm not sure I want to take on the task of teaching the world (and myself) to spell "soporose".
After the dictionary let me down, I turned my imagination loose on the problem. After much deliberation, all it managed to come up with was "fishsuit.com" and "sortingdemon.com", thus leaving me no choice but to place a last-minute ad in the Sunday paper for a new imagination. ("No experience necessary. Will train. Part-time only.") Sortingdemon.com refers to a principle of information theory and is an allusion to "The Crying of Lot 49", one of my favorite novels (and one of the most over-referenced books on the Net - thank you very much, post-modern cynics). Fishsuit.com is a near-meaningless combination of words that sound funny together. Both will require explaining, but at least they're relatively easy to spell. I would love it if someone would give me their opinion on this issue.
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My Summer of Photography received a boost this week with my somewhat insane decision to purchase a digital SLR. I have to tell you that I am very excited. Instead of shooting on film, I can now do my serious photography digitally. This will allow me to create crappy photos more quickly and with higher resolution than ever before. Here is a sampling of my first two hours with the new camera.
I was looking for words that aren't widely used but are easy to spell. Naturally, they were all taken. After a while it turned into a game to find the most obscure word that someone actually took the time to register. What I found was a crossword fanatic's dream. I ended up focusing on words that mean "bad" or "meaningless" or "useless". Here are some of my favorites:
misled.com
tedium.com
misinformed.com
paltry.com
trifle.com and trifling.com
drivel.com
residuum.com and residuum.net
specious.com
detritus.com
slag.com
lassitude.com
oddment.com
mobocracy.com
olio.com
vainglorious.com
dross.com
rejectamenta.com
ataxia.com
magniloquent.com
dolor.com
otiose.com
jejune.com
Unsurprisingly, most of these domain names are parked. Of the 11 that aren't, several are outdated personal web sites, a couple are outdated company sites, and one is an outdated site dedicated to the manufacture of iron aggregate. (Remarkably, only one is a porn site. I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out which one.)
From the limited data gathered in this experiment, it appears to me that the web is populated by four kinds of people: 1) those who are cynical, 2) those who think it is hip, funny and/or post-modern to act cynical, 3) those who, recognizing that the cynical and the faux-cynical often choose to express themselves with crappy web sites, run around snapping up cynical-sounding domain names, and 4) those who are in the business of producing iron aggregate.
It is group #3 that interests me the most. I'm fascinated by the idea of some budding Internet entrepreneur circa 1999 going through the dictionary and parking every obscure vocabulary word he could find, dreaming of the day when a venture capitalist would knock on the door of his dorm room and offer him a suitcase full of money for "mobocracy.com". ("Hello there, young man, the name's Aston Q. Winnington III. I'm taking Mobocracy.com all the way to the top, and I can't get there without that address. So what'll it be - $100,000? $500,000? How's about I pay you with stock? This mobocracy thing is going to be big, Big, BIG!"
All of this brilliant analysis didn't put me much closer to picking a domain for myself, however. The only available vocabulary word that I liked was "soporose.com", which means "to cause sleepiness". Although this word very accurately describes my web site, I'm not sure I want to take on the task of teaching the world (and myself) to spell "soporose".
After the dictionary let me down, I turned my imagination loose on the problem. After much deliberation, all it managed to come up with was "fishsuit.com" and "sortingdemon.com", thus leaving me no choice but to place a last-minute ad in the Sunday paper for a new imagination. ("No experience necessary. Will train. Part-time only.") Sortingdemon.com refers to a principle of information theory and is an allusion to "The Crying of Lot 49", one of my favorite novels (and one of the most over-referenced books on the Net - thank you very much, post-modern cynics). Fishsuit.com is a near-meaningless combination of words that sound funny together. Both will require explaining, but at least they're relatively easy to spell. I would love it if someone would give me their opinion on this issue.
My Summer of Photography received a boost this week with my somewhat insane decision to purchase a digital SLR. I have to tell you that I am very excited. Instead of shooting on film, I can now do my serious photography digitally. This will allow me to create crappy photos more quickly and with higher resolution than ever before. Here is a sampling of my first two hours with the new camera.