The other day, during the purchasing of hosting for a client, I was offered a free .com domain name. Nothing much sprang to mind and the phrases that did spring to mind, like theendoftheworldasweknowit.com were already taken. Fact is, I don’t really know what I would do with another website, so it was almost as if I were getting the domain to define what I was going to do with it. I thought about having something with the word design in it, but all the good ones are taken.
I eventually plumped for the shortest, most inspiring domain name I could think of: f91w.com. The Casio F-91W is famed as the best watch ever made — it is a classic of functional design and it is difficult to imagine how it will ever be surpassed. It is also known as the watch which helped keep Muslims in Guantanamo. Apparently, merely having an F-91W is enough to keep you locked up. So buying the domain allows me to associate with functional design and terrorism, two of my favourite things. I’m not sure what this will translate as in terms of actual content, but I am still quite enthused.
My immediate reaction was to have a blog of design excess — or ugly design — but I’m already beginning to tire of that genre. So what should I put on there? Any ideas? The more ludicrous the better.
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
• Stupid design mistakes in terrorist attacks.
• A showcase of websites whose misguided aesthetics or usability ‘principles’ effectively set them apart as acts of user terrorism.
• As a search-rank experiment, a PHP-built replica of neil-scott.com, randomly interspersed with the words ‘America’, ‘bomb’, ‘freedom’, ‘president’, ‘dogs’, ‘augmentation’.
Cheers. By the way, I do like those frames in your portfolio, Barney.
I’ve been thinking about setting up a website called endofdays.com (or whatever gTLD is actually available for that).
It would be a microblog (via twitter) at which a team of apocalypticians (to steal your neologism) could report signs of the coming societal collapse: the petri-dish cast of the new ABBA musical for example, daytime hen parties or criminally repugnant reality TV shows.
That’s a good idea, Rob, so much so that I might actually use it. I wouldn’t use twitter itself but do you want posting access to it? I can see it now, a countdown to midnight on a casio f91w.
Aha, that’s where the traffic is coming from. By now you must be aware that these comments have little to do with genuine responses and serve only to increase spectatorship for my entropic foetus of a sales site
Don’t take it down every 5 minutes, Barney!
Haha. “a countdown to midnight on a casio f91w”. Fantastic.
Go for it. Set up the site and I’ll be a dedicated poster.
When you say you wouldn’t use Twitter is that a railing specifically against Twitter in favour of another platform or would you rather do something more substantial than a microblog?
The appeal of a microblog is that (a) it’s not a huge commitment on top of our other blogs and (b) we could blog ‘in the field’ via SMS when we encounter something worth reporting.
Thoughts etc!
It’s just a lack of commitment to web 3.6b78, innit?
As regards MY .com, Neil, how would I keep my userbase (your dear self) stimulated? Hehehe. Getting serious now though. Look for a fully-fledged professional in Hammersmith this weekend :).
But as concerns f91w, I’d really love to see you manage some free-floating loose intellectual aggregation site again. You can’t forget I found you through mind’s construction, and that stuff was absolutely fantastic. A more tangential focussed side-project coming from these parts’d be great stuff for us all.
Rob: Setting up a multiperson twitter account is slightly annoying at the moment, but it is worth thinking about. Of course, the trouble with such a blog is that it would force you to focus on those negative things in life.
Barney
I’m not sure I have enough time for anything tangential, intellectual or focussed, what with working full-time. So we’ll all have to put up with these dubious mindsplurges.
“Of course, the trouble with such a blog is that it would force you to focus on those negative things in life.”
Yes, I see what you mean. I think my idea was that this would be funny in an absurd kind of way: like intelligent people are struggling to maintain purchase on a sharp slope into ‘the collapse’ so all we can really do is laugh at the inevitability of it. But you’re right: maybe it’ll just be depressing to wonder around Glasgow spotting death harbingers. Hmm. I’m not sure.
Potential name for the site: doomdoomdoom.com