Tuesday 16 February 2016

What's In A Name: Why Timekord?


The middle of the noughties was an exciting time - there was a wind of change blowing through IT  - a whole load of new things seemed to emerge at the same time - Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Netbooks (UMPCs) and a popular availability of desktop Linux like that installed on the Asus Eee PC

I Joined Twitter on the 16th of October 2007 - my first tweet is below ... it sort of sums up the excitement with new tech and the experimentation of the time  - the Vye UMPC was a new thing and so was Twitter - lets have a go and see what happens ... ... lets try them together :)

https://twitter.com/timekord/status/340654482


In choosing a Twitter name I thought I would go for some thing geeky ..  how about Dr Who ... that was taken ....  how about "Timlord" - aha - that was free ... it was still relatively early days!

A week later I found I couldn't log in no matter what I did - I checked and changed my password and tried everything I could .... PANIC .... what was going on. Then I saw it - my username was not what I thought it was - the little keyboard had meant I typed a "k" instead of an "l" when I set up my Twitter account - I was "timekord" and not "timelord" - no wonder I managed to get the name :)

What to do. I decided to just keep the name  - thinking that we don't choose our own real names at birth anyway so it would be like that - what's in a name anyway .... any random name can come to be meaningful  - we construct meaning from context and experience - who even knows or thinks about Samsung meaning tristar in Korean and representing something big numerous and powerful. I even tried to post justify "timekord" as a cool deviation on the spelling of  "timelord" ... just like Korn was I assumed a cool deviation on the spelling of Corn for example 

So there you have it  ..... "timekord" a typo at birth.



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