Where did your /nick come from?

[shrdlu]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Interesting question. In the early days of Unix, you were trapped at an 8 character limit for usernames, and shorter was better. I've always thought the naming of things was important (try reading Vernor Vinge's "True Names"). I took it specifically because it was the name of an early artificial intelligence program, and that it had other significance as well. I've used it for so long that I'd consider it a legal alias at this point.

[BonzoESC]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Interesting question. In the early days of Unix, you were trapped at an 8 character limit for usernames, and shorter was better. I've always thought the naming of things was important (try reading Vernor Vinge's "True Names"). I took it specifically because it was the name of an early artificial intelligence program, and that it had other significance as well. I've used it for so long that I'd consider it a legal alias at this point.

Those are the 7th-12th most common characters in English text, right? (after 'etaoin')

[shrdlu]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Those are the 7th-12th most common characters in English text, right? (after 'etaoin')

Sure, but a little google, and you'd have found even more info. It's not English text, btw. It's American English, and was used in the design of the Linotype (among other things). I've been using it since 1979 (Unix was young, then). There are multiple pix of linotypes on Flickr, among others.

There was also a great SF story in the fifties called Etaoin Shrdlu, by Frederic Brown, about an intelligent computer. Blocks world, and Terry Winograd's master's thesis, were also fascinating.

http://hci.stanford.edu/~winograd/shrdlu/name.html

Most of the links in there are outdated, but the information is still interesting.

[mfreeck]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Cot is low profile, single sylable, easy to forget, and carries little meaning or judgement by those that see it for the first time. It doesn't really say anything about me, except what can be extracted as listed above. :-)

Oh I dunno. I think about finger cots every time.

[Gadsden]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I'm a firm believer in staying with the name that you choose or are given in this community. Those that change every other week tend to have something to hide. It's a name that everyone knows me by, so I might as well stick with it no matter how unapplicable it is now.

This is actually why I still have my nick..
I chose mine b/c I was actually needing a nick to sign up for the forums. I was reading a book on Che Guevara at the time, so I used it fully intending on throwing it away. Well... who knew that I would get hooked on the dc-forum and Defcon; since that is what people know me as it stuck. I have actually tried to change it before, but everyone knows me by Che so I am now branded with the namesake of everyone's favorite communist guerrilla. Outside of Defcon I have been known as other handles, but for the most part the nick Che has stuck with me to those areas too.
:)

[AcidicA]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

OMGZ 1 ch00ze U1tr4 14z0r cuz I'm s000 13337!!!!!!


Ok seriously. this is a rather boring story so go brew some tea and when you get back you will be at the conclusion.
In about 98 I was in an industrial band called Discarded Playthings. We broke up right after I entered culinary arts school. I spent about 3 weeks toiling over new names for my solo project I would inevitably get signed and rich with.
While making bread I came across a biscuit/crumpet like object another student had made. The teacher asked us taste it and explain what was wrong. It was apparent the second it hit my tongue, it was extremely acidic. The soon to be chef that created this added 2 tablespoons of tartaric acid (creme of tarter) instead of teaspoons. Then the name hit me, Acidic. Its perfect. Sharp, easy to remember, looked good on paper....But wait!
I added an A at the end and I had a perfect palindrome that was even better. I suddenly made it my email address, my yahoo log in name and such. After years on-line and off being refereed to as AcidicA, Acidic or Acid its now my permanent on-line name, the name of my band and one of the most mispronounced names on Xbox live.

Later I learned that AcidicA is the latin word for Acid.
Though I am always taken back when a random hot goth girl at the club talks to me a minute then goes "Oh your AcidicA!" and then never calls me by my real name ever again.



As for my BBS name it was Hypo-Luxa in like 95. Which is again latin, this time for Low Energy, though i stole it from Al Jourgenson and Paul barkers production group, Luxa-pan productions.

[latras]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

it's rather simple. I was trying to come up with something unique and original...

this just popped out on the keyboard when I typed something...

sounds good, so I kept it.

not really that exciting

[mfreeck]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

The story for this nick is pretty boring... I was struggling to come up with a nick for the forums so I could post (I'd been lurking for months) and my former obsession had been music. My net at the time was named musicfreeck, so I settled on mfreeck. Like theprez98, capitalization matters to me. Mfreeck strikes me as terribly wrong... the m shouldn't stand out.

My major bbs name/theme was Gender Neutral. When I had to shorten it for linux/internet, I went to genderles, then genderful (a better description).

One of my 'fun' temporary accounts was Hydrocephalic Turtle.

Trivia: When a new owner took over the bbs I was a cosys on, he decided everyone should meet. I needed to create a new handle, since obviously Gender Neutral's cover would be blown. The handle I created I later adopted as my legal name.

[AlxRogan]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

My real name _is_ Alex Rogan, but the whole 8 character thing defined me. Go figure.








---
Nah...not really, I'm just the lame guy who used a movie character as a temporary nick...several years later, just don't care enough to make a new one.

[_multithreading]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

Well, from the short story (and the geeky "cookie" thing), that would lead me to believe that you are effugas a.k.a. Dan Kaminski ... mainly due to the connection to scanrand. However, scanrand uses only two threads and I can't believe the real Dan would lose his password. So I'm guessing I don't get the cookie.

Actually, the one I made had a for loop which looped through the port numbers, and launched individual threads to scan each port, and then paused after 20 threads and started again after enough of them were terminated.

No one gets a cookie. /me eats cookie

ps. I'll leave it at this: When I first came here, I was a skiddie who wanted to h4x0r bess. It was shortly therafter that I realized I was full-of-the-shit, and became a hermit who lived under a rock and ate grass.

[jur1st]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I am a self proclaimed expert in the law...and all recent surveys agree that I am #1.

[Deviant Ollam]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

When I first came here, I was a skiddie who wanted to h4x0r bess.

that leads me to believe you were either Pandacannon or Mr.Skittles.

[_multithreading]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

that leads me to believe you were either Pandacannon or Mr.Skittles.

Ah, closer, but still no dice-- err, cookie that is.

Ah well. I doubt anyone will ever get it.

[BonzoESC]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

I am a self proclaimed expert in the law...and all recent surveys agree that I am #1.

If you were the worst on those surveys you could just change your name to jur1@st.

HONK HONK

[Gobniu]

Re: Where did your /nick come from?

A boring story, I was joining this board and wanted a name that reflected my heritage (Born in Detroit, however my family all immigrated to Canada from England, Ireland, and Scotland before coming here.) anywho I thought why not a Celtic god and began researching it thats when I stumbled on a site that says that Gobniu is the Celtic god of "skill" so I grabbed that. Note: In high school I used to be called either Big Daddy or Ell but I didn't think either of those was all that good.