Slashdot Mirror
The Etymology Of NickNames?
not_cub asks: "In the Slashdot FAQ CmdrTaco says he hates when clueless reporters ask where his nickname comes from but also gives an explanation. I for one find this sort of explanation quite interesting. I guess we can all guess where 'CyberBob' got his name from, but I'd love to hear
Slashdotters give their reasons for choosing some of the weird and wacky nicks we see round here (especially that Anonymous Coward guy)."
i got mine from my frat., and it wasn't taken here.
For those that don't know about him (I've always assumed most people here would), he was in a lot of ways the first computer scientist, having designed & built the first computational devices as we know them today (i.e. something more advanced than, say, an abacus). Interestingly now, but fittingly for a Victorian inventor, they operated purely mechanically, without any of the transistors or other electronic components that are now synonymous with computers. Nonetheless, they were designed to do the same basic functions that a modern computer does, and (yes) it may well have been able to run the Linux kernel. :)
I find it fitting that his assistant, Ada Lovelace, was the first programmer. It's nice to know that the field had an even 50-50 gender parity at one point, and hopefully it could again in the future. In the meantime, however, we'll make the most of the sausage party....
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
I'm a scientist-type and as such have had to way too much statistical analysis for a healthy mind to endure. I'm also a fairly average deviant (black clothing, anarchistic political views, loud goth and industrial music, some BDSM mixed in with my otherwise average heterosexual sex life (come on, who hasn't wanted to tie up their (boy|girl)friend and whip the bejezzus out of them? if roleplaying is deviant, why is the phrase "who's yer daddy!?" so common?), etc.). So: standarddeviant (one possessing an average amount of deviation).
Of course, as my .sig said for a while, deviancy depends on how you define the norm. As an example, according to some studies, if you haven't "experimented" with recreational drug use at some point in your life, you're in the minority of Americans.
My current signature is a Cohen v. California-inspired take on the current climate of information control by the Powers That Be.
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Fuck Censorship.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
Dude, that would be a cool hack.
Be kinda hard to download a tar.bz2 full of gears and stuff though... ;-)
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Fuck Censorship.
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
I got my nick from the game "Magic the Gathering".
Lord Crovax was a vampire who fell in love with a dark angel he could not have.
I took the name when I was dating a gothic girl but it has sence lost its meaning.
A friend of mine (not a /.'er) got Kielfang
froma random word generator he coded in high school.
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Spelling by m-w.com.
WhyDNA? -> "Y"DNA -> ydnA -> Andy
kinda like 'WhyNot?' for tony, etc.
-Andy =)
tooth == The Ogre On The Hill (I'm tall and fairly... solid, and our house was on a hill, haha... *groans*)
From ad&d (of course) circa 1990. Also for a joke, I used to write very occasional letters to my friends, writting in crayon, large letters and lots of mis-spellings (not hard for me!) and signed them "tooth". Get a puzzled phone call in a few days... "Is this from you?"
Yes, simple things do amuse simple minds.
Well, my name originally derives from The Tower of Power (one heck of a group, if I do say so), and I've been using the handle for CB/BBS/logins/muds/gaming/etc/etc/etc since ~1993...
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
well, in 5th grade, I did a report on albert einstein, and one of my friends pointed out that my hair behaved very similarly to A. Einstein's. I as had a great interest in physics, and I am a pacifist who can see the need for the use of force in extreme conditions. So, when I started calling BBSes, and some of these same friends were on these BBSes, I just used the name again, and here almost a decade later, I'm still using that great thinkers name. I would have hoped a bit more of his intellect would have rubbed off over the years, but hey, what are ya gonna do.
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I post links to stuff here
People my sophomore year in high school started calling me "Sharkey". It took me a awhile to find out why, a combination of being a swimmer, having a vaguely shark-like look and spending a few weeks perfecting a flat, discomfort-causing stare. Since I'm a LOTR fan, I kind of liked it. Ahhh, memories.
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
When I started at university, user names were assigned via the standard flllllll system.
So I got C(olin) PERCIVA(l), and to this day I explain the spelling as '"C", followed by "PERCIVAL", minus the "L"'.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
I pronounce it 'Zen-ecks'. It's probably meant to be pronounced differently, but too bad :)
Anyone that makes reference to Xenix and my nick in the same sentance gets blows to the head, but that is another story....
In high school, some friends thought that I (supposedly) looked like David Letterman, hence Dave was also a nickname of mine. Now if you remember, Dave was the father of the three chipmunks...
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My nick is an anagram of my real name.
Try out the Internet Anagram Server.
"i'm . . . mouseman!"
I am not named after the capital of Tasmania, nor am I named after an industrial dough mixer brand.
:-P
;-)
I am named after one of the two protagonists from The Adventures of Hobart Floyt and Alacrity Fitzhugh trilogy by Brian Daley, who died on Feb 11, 1996. He wrote the novelization of Tron. He also wrote many Han Solo novels, and Robotech novels under the pseudonym "Jack McKinney". The trilogy is a pretty decent read, it includes:
REQUIEM FOR A RULER OF WORLDS
JINX ON A TERRAN INHERITANCE
FALL OF THE WHITE SHIP AVATAR
Unfortunately I believe all three are out of print. It'd be nice if Del Rey or someone would release never-to-be-reprinted novels on the 'net under some free license
Further history: Upon getting a modem in 1985 at age 11 for my Atari 8-bit, the first handle I used with any regularity was Asmodeus, then The Shadow. When I signed on to DiversiDial #6 (DDials were a 6-line 300 baud multiuser chat system run on Apple IIs with all 6 slots filled with modems! They were networked to each other like some giant realtime Fidonet!) which was "Silly Chat", I ran into "Alacrity" who was already a user (and I think another Atari user). He pretty much said that there were several other "The Shadow"s, and suggested Hobart. The name stuck.
For the record, I've also been using the nick on EFNet since 1990, and I am not the alternative-lifestyled gent from Australia.
o/~ Join us now and share the software
Well, I didn't think that quadong meant anything in real life when I started using it, but I did some fairly exhaustive searches and this is the grand total of what I found that has nothing to do with me, none of the following links mention "quadong" outside a list:
1) It is a fruit bearing Australian tree (referenced here, here and here)
2) It seems to be a game for Amiga (referenced here, here (tried to follow up, no luck), and here) that can be sold in German for 5DM.
In reference to me and without knowledge of the above two meanings, here is an IRC log showing one amusing incorrect interpretation of quadong.
And finally, you may chose between a well written but inaccurate story (free verse psuedo-poem) and a correct, but boring, story (prose) of how I came to use the word.
Not quite sure when I chose Gandalf, but I was the proud sole owner of the appelate for awhile (at least in the 407 area code). I can't quite remember if it was before or after I started my own BBS (later titled The Crystal Wind) in 1983/84. 200k of storage! Wow!
Sometime mid/late 80s, I gave up on trying to retain Gandalf and tired of explaining that "No, I was the first", and switched to the Grey Elf. Later, I found another Grey Elf and switched to the made up name "Xandar", which soon was dubbed by the local community Xandar the Magnificent. I always pictured one of those awful carnival magicians when I pictured the name.
Of course, eventually I ran across another Xandar. In frustration, I mangled the name of a poem I liked (yes, it is *very* intentionally misspelled and interCapped), and produced "JabberWokky". Since then, it's been fairly unique, and I've only run across one other guy who uses it (apparantly he dosen't know how to spell it correctly). Also, I've given up on finding a unique handle... I had to mangle names for a half hour to come up with a AIM nick: Wokky4711 (the number being the tattoo on Frank'n'Furter's leg in the Rocky Horror Picture Show).
I'd be very interested to see InitZero add to this discussion: he was rabidly anti-handles for quite awhile.
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Evan (oh, and I sign my own name now, as the handle is merely a reference tag).
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Or not.
Be ot or bot ne ot, taht is the nestquoi.
I made up my nickname in the sixth grade (I am a junior in college now) whem I discovered all "real"-word names taken on the Internet. Several years later I discovered that the word also represents a Kingdom of viruses, the memetic viruses. You can do a Google search that will turn up several links proving this. Apparently even words I make up had already been thought of in the 19th century!
If you cut a Moebius strip down the middle, trying to cut it in two, you end up with a single Moebius strip that's twice as long and half as wide. Do it again, and it gets twice as long, again. There is a very strong correlation between Moebius strips and infinity.
--Be human.
I used to play basketball. Dino Radja was a basketball player. he was muscled, tall, strong, a good basketball player and made the occasional block.
I just made the occasional block. And Radja kind of resembles my real name. IMO, the best nicknames are the ones given to you by others.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Used to use one at university ('twas my first name translated into another language). By the end of my three-year degree course, I hated it, and decided never to use another nick. Ever since, I've gone by my full name, or just "Stephen".
-Stephen
Ah, yes, artificial languages are very useful for this sort of thing. Thlingan 'Hol is what I use for passwords etc.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
ArthurDent - Nick taken
FordPrefect - Nick taken
ZaphodBeeblebrox - Nick taken
Slartibartfast - Nick taken
Stavro
Stavro was taken on slashdot so I switch o for 0 and there we are.
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Well, I've only had two nicks that stuck for any amount of time.
The first is my old AOL name -- DOOMGuy. I was obsessed with the game at the time, and as everyone knows whether you've used AOL or not, all the good nicks are taken. Took me the better part of a half hour to find this one (I refused to pick a name with numbers tagged onto the end). That stuck with me for at least 2.5-3 years.
Near the end of my AOL years is when I switched to this nick. I picked up "Cray" from a short story I have since lost, with a character in it named Cray that could easily have been me. Since we were so alike, and I was looking for a new nick, I picked up the name.
The "Drygu" half of it comes from my boyfriend (no, the "DOOMGuy" above wasn't lying, I'm male). His online monicker had that last name, and since I was lacking one, I adopted his.
P.S. If any of you knew me as DOOMGuy on AOL, could you reply to this? I'm just curious to see =)
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"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
I live in The Glebe, hence I am glebite...
Strangely enough, glebite was a word bantered about in a response to Ayn Rand's "Who is John Galt?" back in high school. Every once in a while, this guy would say "What's a glebite?"
I am.
I donate all spillover Karma to the charity of my choice... Ada was still a babe despite what people may say...
And on another "tack" - I leeched my nick shamessly from Gary Clail's "Tackhead Sound System".
For those who haven't heard of Tackhead, they were a late-80s industrial group - their musical style is almost impossible to describe - imagine a really weird blend of heavy bass and dub-like riffs, heavily processed, and then overlaid with multiple layers of samples from military/religious/political figures. Probably responsible for the start of the whole "sampling music" genre.
Their influence as individuals was far greater than their influence as a band per se - the names of the four main members (Keith LeBlanc, Skip McDonald, Adrian Sherwood, and Doug Wimbish) seem to crop up just about everywhere in music from about 1980 through 1990 in a range of styles from old-school rap (e.g. Grandmaster Flash), to funk/dub (George Clinton), to jazz (BB King, Miles Davis), to pop/retro/industrial (Annie Lennox, Depeche Mode, NIN).
The mix of solid beats and heavy sampling, plus some seriously geeky artwork served as inspiration for many a late-night assembly-coding run.
I recently paid a bit of homage by doing the obligatory boot logo thing and "rebranded" my hacked I-Opener in the same vein. After all - what would be a more appropriate name than "Tackhead Sound System" for a project that involves hacking a 6.4G MP3 boombox out of spare parts? (As long as I don't have to power up my I-Opener at an airport. My boot logo might be a little more imposing than it should be ;-)
Recommended tracks: Mind at the End of the Tether, and What's My Mission Now?. Y'all know where to find MP3s.
Finally, if you liked those two tracks, the "Power, Inc." series (3 CDs released in the late '90s) is highly recommended. (Feel free to buy the original CDs - I believe Keith LeBlanc released these on his own label, so he might be getting more than the usual $1/CD when you buy 'em. ;-)
Well, I wanted a second handle some time ago, and I had a CD with Chaostrophy as a track title (Coil, the album "Love's Secret Domain"). Then I needed a vanity domain, and it was availible. It's a cool sounding word, and unique. A web search on it pulls up me, band refernces, and a Cal Tech physics prof's paper.
It is not the best track on the album though.
Plato seems wrong to me today
In one of the skits, some happless conservatory judges start judging Performance Art, and call in a "Mr. Ska". I just liked the sound of it, and it's since stuck.
As an aside, it was only about 2 years later that I even realized that there was an entire genre of music called "ska", which I moderately enjoy.
If anyone has any info on the whereabouts of any of the members of Chill and the 4 Brother Fresh, please let me know!
Mr. Ska
I slit a sheet
A sheet I slit
Mr. Ska
I had a friend who wrote a C program back in the DOS days to rename a directory from NAME to "NAME.space-DEL-space". He had a few other hidden utility programs to move in and out of those directories. Perfectly valid as far as any program and the OS was concerned, but truly impossible to type on the command line.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
The Skinny Puppy/FLA continuum had HEAVY use of sampling in the early 80s, but I agree with Tackhead's more probable influence samplingwise outside of pure Industrial.
The members of Tackhead managed to achieve what Bill Leeb of FLA has been trying to - critical acclaim in more than one genre of music.
The weak, anemic, bland pap that "Delerium" is producing now does nothing but shame his accomplishments in industrial music. And on a Canadian government artistic grant no less, the kiss of death for any project and a certification of bush-league status.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
All my user names that aren't variants of my real name are based on RPG characters. Valdrax is the name of my all-time favorite character, even though I only got to play it for 4 sessions, and the character cannot really be replayed outside of that game world. So, I use it as a screen name, in lieu of getting to play the character again.
Most of my passwords are also really obscure RPG references too -- with numbers thrown in because of draconic password requirements. I had to give that up on the public server at my college where they force you to change it every 90 days, they remember the last 5-6 passwords, and they won't let you change it twice in a 24-hr period. You just have to pick a consistent series at that point.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I chose Hermetic long ago becuase of how I view most people's reaction to technology. So many people are simply flabergasted to learn that I didn't go to school to learn computers.
Why are people scared to play with their computers? Or the VCRs? Does your grandma know how the light gun in Duck Hunter(and similar games) worked? Would she care?
Hermetic knowledge is no longer about alchemy and summoning of spirits...
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
I started this account to see how quickly I could karma cap a new account. (About 4 weeks, with pretty contrarian opinions. No whoring here.) I picked the name because I'd been doing some Qt programming the night before and had been calling update() a lot. I've kept posting mostly on this account, to protect Otter from karma erosion* and because if people know one of the names, it's more likely to be the one I've used lately.
* Yes, I know, karma isn't really good for anything. But it feels like a reward I've earned so I'm resisting letting it get eaten up by crack-addled moderators.
"Mr. Slippery" is, of course, from Vernor Vinge's famous and most excellent story "True Names".
Other nicknames I have used, or that have been applied to me, include:
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | http://www.infamous.net/
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Beats me... I just like it.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
I have an award jacket from making regional band in H.S. It says "Mark" on one line, and "Trombone" on the second on the front where there would be a breast pocket. Once college arrived, the name evolved from "trombone" to "trommy" to "tbone" to just "t" because everyone was usually stoned and eating, and "t" took less time to say :) But I took TBone.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
namespan is meant to be an all-encompasing nick.... one that "spans" an entire namespace.
The derivation comes from me trying to get an AIM nick, and EVERYTHING (and I mean EVERYTHING -- even some of the most unusual words or pet phrases I have in English or in SAMOAN for cryin' out loud) was taken already. I thought "Gee, this is a small name space", which really it wasn't (it was just crowded), and so I happened on the intermediate nick "smallnamespace".
Later, when signing up for my second slashdot account, the linear algebra classes I'd had kicked in, and I came up with namespan.
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Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
This might be a little hard for you all to follow (yes, especially you linear algebra freaks or you history buffs), but my parents came up with my nick. It's on my birth certificate. It's... it's...(*gasp*)... my REAL NAME!
Apparently they came up with it sortof on accident. One said "How about 'Winston'? and the other said "'Weston'? How did you come up with that?" and the other said "I didn't, but I like it!" I don't beleive they remember which said what.
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Tweet, tweet.
coz Prosthetic Conscience probably aint gonna fit.
Zetetic
Seeking; proceeding by inquiry.
Elench
A specious but fallacious argument; a sophism.
Gendou :-)
Comes from my favorite character in Shin Seiki: Evangelion. I like the character because he's incredibly focused and determined to accomplish his goals. *shrug* I think there are good qualities here.
the Silicon Dragon :-) To those of you that saw the NY1 H2K Video: that was me. :-) The reason I said that I was one of MANY silicon dragons is because well, how many people pick an animal they like and tack on "silicon"? Pah! I'm cooler though. I got on television and I own the domain. :)
Yes, he was a member of Future Crew, but when I saw his alias, I just could believe how cool it was... so I ripped it. (I actually though the fact that I did was good when I found out he was killed in a car crash. Some people will remember... and the name floats around.) The reason I like this handle is because, well, I love dragons - they're majestic and fantastic creatures. Now, imagine a robotic one. That's this.
Lethyos
Main character from a book I'm writing. He's an underdog with some very impressive skills (much like hackers, yes?) Not very well liked (also a common factor with geeks), but everyone will depend on him to save their asses in the end. Very poetic.
Back in the good ol' days of the Internet, before the advent of the WWW (1990, to be exact), I started using telnet BBSs from school. When the time came to create my very first account on the Mars BBS (Greetings to those who remember T'ruth, Xenia, Lynn and the rest), I was wondering what nickname to use.
Being a teenager, I tried a few names that came to mind. Let's see... "Maverick"! Taken. "TopGun", taken too. "Montana", ditto. (Don't ask me why I wanted to chose those names. Please don't).
So, without any other fresh ideas, I just glanced down and saw that I wearing a Vuarnet t-shirt. So, I tried "Vuarnet", no one had used it, and therefore started using it as a login name in several BBSs, DikuMUDs and IRC.
Most of my friends which I made during college, met me in the computer room. Online, most of the time. So there's still a few friends who cant remember my name, but they dont care since they always greet me by my nickname.
Hell, it could've been worse. I could've been "Fruit of the Loom" or something like that...
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I
Learning to fly, Pink Floyd.