the blob

Ah yes. This is something that will probably go down in history. I had been thinking about registering a domain for Trinity Methodist Church, the church that I go to. But late one night, I decided it would be good to register a domain for myself, too. One that adequately described me.

Using my real name for the domain was out of the question. I didn't really want to have any personal connection in the name, even though it would improve the site ranking if it came to that. Besides, all the good ones that I could have had with my name were gone already. So I started thinking.

I wanted something with the word "blob" in it. Don't ask me why; it was a late night and the word "blob" appealed at that time. Of course, blob.com, blob.org and blob.net had already gone. But to my surprise, even blob.biz and blob.info had gone! There's obviously a whole load of blobs out there... :)

So I was out of luck with using just "blob" for the name. But it didn't really bother me - I then started looking with "theblob". It turned out that .org, .biz and .info were available for that name. I didn't really want to pay any higher rates for .biz or .info (and besides, they were new and relatively unknown), so I registered "theblob.org" at joker.com, a service which one of my online friends uses for his website, and which seemed to be quite good.

And to cut a long story short, that's how I ended up with this site. There were several more complicated factors, but I can't really be bothered typing them out, and I'd probably bore you to death if I did so anyway. If you really want the gory details, drop me a line at tech@theblob.org and I'll give you the full story. (You can also use that address for any other things you want to ask about technical stuff on this site.)

Update: Recently I saw an amusing (well, to me anyway) description of what a domain name can do for you. Apparently:

It identifies you (or your business) and says what your site is all about, and also that you take doing business on the Web seriously!

Well, of course, my domain name does absolutely none of these. It doesn't identify me, doesn't say what the site is about, and certainly doesn't say that I take doing business on the Web seriously. In fact, it probably implies just the opposite. :D