Frequently asked questions
Unlike most FAQs, I intend to only list answers to questions I'm actually frequently asked.
Why "hober?"
I spent a fair amount of time on BBSes when I was a kid. My original handle was Garth of Izar, named for a pretty random character from an episode of Star Trek. I'm not even sure if I had seen the episode in question at that time--I just thought it sounded cool.
While BBSing I frequented door games, and my favorite by far was TradeWars 2002. Players had the option of choosing an alternate, in-game handle, and this was about when I was reading Issac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy for the first time. I enjoyed reading of the exploits of Hober Mallow, a proto-Han Solo merchant prince in that series, so adopted his name for playing TradeWars.
Over time I stopped using Garth of Izar, instead using Hober Mallow everywhere, and this eventually became simply hober.
What's the .cx stand for in edward.oconnor.cx?
.cx is the TLD of Christmas Island, a territory of Australia (in the way Puerto Rico is a territory of the United States). For some time, .cx domains were free, so I picked up several of them, including oconnor.cx. They're no longer free, but edward.oconnor.cx is so well established as my home page that I expect to pay pretty much whatever they want to charge me for the foreseeable future. Such is the way of domains, I guess.
Copyright © 2008, 2009 Edward O’Connor. CC BY-SA 3.0.