💾 Archived View for bbs.geminispace.org › u › Addison › 18830 captured on 2024-08-19 at 00:53:18. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I'm changing my surname soon, so I've been making an effort to start the switch to domains and online presence that don't use my last name. It's a daunting task, since I've been using my first initial and/or last name for lots of my online presence over the years.
Stuff like my
all feature my last name in some way. My plan is to stop using my name altogether for these kinds of things, both for privacy as well as a means of creative expression.
I considered using my amateur radio callsign like all the cool old men do, but that's not very much my style. I would get tired of having to explain what this random-looking string of text is to the non-hams in my life (which is everyone).
Furthermore I might decide to try another vanity call one day.
I still own the ".com" TLD for my callsign, but at the moment I have no plans to use it.
Rather than make a new GitHub account, I've decided I'm going to make a hard switch to SourceHut and start taking advantage of their static site hosting (in addition to source control, CI). Happily enough this also includes Gemini hosting built-in.
I've got the email situation under control (I think). Each time I try to set up a new email domain I'm reminded how much of a pain email-related DNS stuff is. Lots of acronyms I have to re-learn just to use once and promptly forget again.
Having email set up solves the PGP issue. I don't care to reuse my current key since I've almost never used it for anything. Revoking it and starting over (with a nice, small ECC key this time) is trivial.
What remains is work-related stuff, Google (which I use for my cellular plan), and other utilities. I might use something more formal for those; I haven't decided yet.
Aug 03 · 2 weeks ago · 👍 sugar
Name changes can be such a pain in the ass! I changed my entire name a few years ago and it took a hot minute before I had sorted out all the emails and domains and digital stuff. Somehow all the legal stuff was personally a lot easier!
🐝 Addison [OP] · Aug 03 at 18:47:
@sugar I bet it was a pain! It's funny how that works - the legal stuff is what I'm *least* worried about!
📡 Queen_City_Nerd · Aug 04 at 14:53:
@addison "cool old men..." so yeah, I've had my call for 31 years and it's really just an alternate name at this point for me! But I hear you with the considerations. I've got a Yahoo address that's 20 something and not professional, I've got a Gmail that's better, I've got an Outlook Mail and Proton Mail that are 100% business. Then the work addresses that are first Initial last name but they don't do anything after hours. Sort of reminds me of train names. On the fingerlakes trail and AT people go by trail names. I used to go by Black Rabbit, but that was a long time ago.