There is common misunderstanding that mythology depicts the blissful state of man in his original harmony with nature. On the contrary, the lives of ancient people were not romantic and beautiful, but full of hardship, disease, and violence. The Greek myths are remarkable in that they show how far the Greeks, an ancient civilization, had advanced beyond a primitive state of savagery and brutality. By the time Homer wrote his epic, the Iliad, a new way of looking at the world had come into being. This new perspective is critically important, revealing a great deal not only about ancient Greece but about modern Europe as well—as so much of our own culture comes directly from the Greeks.

I saw a poem today hanging in a friend’s office titled “A little fellow follows me” that he received on the birth of his son, it’s message is excellent and I wanted to share it with you. Seeing as I have a daughter, I have adapted it slightly to suit me, though the message is the same. The original can be found here

I was driving home last night and in front of me was a van with a website across both doors, www.companyname.freewebsitehostname.com and the first thing I thought was how horrible it looked. For the cost of a domain and a simple dns record this company could have made a vastly superior first impression, companyname.com, we don’t even need the “www.” anymore, which makes saying it easier too. So now, we’re down letter count, syllable count, and we look more professional, all for just the cost of a domain. Why wouldn’t anyone want one?

Buying domain names is a hobby of mine, I have several, some strange, some useful, far too many great ideas that have started then expired due to my lack of time, so I am only using this one at the moment. I was very lucky to be born with an unusual surname and I believe there’s very few similar names on the internet.

My domain is my last name only, meaning I can easily share it with my wife and daughter when she gets a little older. Even my mum, dad and brother can have a [email protected] email address, and they do! Though i’m convinced none of them are using theirs, my wife just asked if she can carry on using her gmail, so naturally her rumbles.me email just forwards to her gmail address in the event she may start using it.

Another benefit, is you can start taking back your search results from Google, while they may not “be evil” they will still happily display your embarassing photographs on page 1 when people search for your name. By having your own website and domain you can start making your own website appear first when people search for you on Google, and while those embarassing images are still there, at least they’re on page 6, and lets face it, nobody ever goes that far in the search results.

The point I want to make, is that you need a domain name, it will likely cost you less than a tenner. With it you gain a nice personal email address, control over your online presence and it’s so simple. You dont need a website on the end of that domain, you can just point it at your facebook or other social network profile and be on your way. With the way the internet is going these days I wouldn’t want to be the one stuck being unable to buy their name.

Image source http://www.doodledug.com/?p=13

Just learned about sublime snippets, created one with a “newpost” YAML header and one with the path to my raw github images directory, meaning I can save time typing and don’t have to remember more than I need to!

Where would we be without Github these days?