Master of my domains

On inspiration, joke websites, and Franz Ferdinand.

Inspiration is fleeting, so you need to act when it strikes. In these moments, tasks that might take a month can be completed in a couple of days. For instance, I built Visit Glasgow on a whim over a weekend and it is still there, virtually unchanged, twelve years later.¹

Look at the people who buy novelty domain names after being inspired to make a topical joke. Recent examples include lettuce.wtf, which helped meme Liz Truss out of office, and eloncodereview.com, which makes a dig at Elon Musk’s management style. In 2008, Jason Kottke collated some of these sites, including the ones that simply display a yes or no answer. In Glasgow, we have a site that tells us whether to get our ‘taps aff’. As long as you're not doing anything with databases and don't mind editing text files, hosting is basically free at this point. So why not make a novelty site?

One reason is that domains are always rented and never bought in perpetuity.² Every year, you have to ask yourself: is this joke worth another £10? Around half the sites on Kottke’s list no longer exist or point to random gambling sites. I’ve bought domains in a moment of inspiration, but the inspiration didn’t last long enough to get the project off the ground. Turns out, you need perspiration as well. Examples of domains I bought and abandoned include possiblesolution.com³ and neilism.com, the latter can apparently be yours for $2,795, though I’m not sure why you’d want it.

We are living in an age of domain name abundance. In the past, you would be scrambling for rare .coms⁴ but might end up settling for a .me.uk.⁵ Since, the domain extension market was opened up, we have everything from .fit to .xyz to .monster all at wildly different prices. You can get creative with your catchy name and no one can buy them all up. For example, I suggested to a client that a simple .tips domain might work better than an unwieldy .org.uk for their advice website.

As long as a domain is useful and productive, keep it. Otherwise, don’t stress about digital preservation. I currently own around five or six domain names, but am considering letting most of them go and redirect all the links to sub-domains. One that I probably won’t renew is tmcq.co.uk, which hasn’t been updated in 17 years, although it has been good to reread my interview with Franz Ferdinand after watching them play live on Thursday.

Sam Kriss wrote recently that the internet is already over:

In the future—not the distant future, but ten years, five—people will remember the internet as a brief dumb enthusiasm, like phrenology or the dirigible. They might still use computer networks to send an email or manage their bank accounts, but those networks will not be where culture or politics happens.

Kriss’s prediction is borne out by the lack of interest in the metaverse, the collapse of interest in NFTs, and the reaction to Elon Musk's recent takeover of Twitter that led to a half-hearted exodus to Mastodon. It feels like the accepted narrative of where technology is going is up for grabs.

Who is feeling inspired to make a new one?

Live Review: Franz Ferdinand

I was thinking about inspiration whilst watching Franz Ferdinand play the Hydro on Thursday. They are on a greatest hits tour and it is striking how much their aesthetic, their artwork, and their music are all based on the template established by their inspired debut album.

One definition of hell is that you get what you most desire constantly and forever until it disgusts you. When Franz Ferdinand burst on the scene in 2003 they did it with so much drive and élan that their success seemed assured. Alex Kapranos was slightly older than the average pop star and there was a sense that this was his last chance to make it. I'm not saying that he definitely signed a Faustian pact to become a star, but twenty years later it feels like he might as well have.

The most poignant moment of the night came before they played Jacqueline:

"I was speaking to the person this song is about,” said Kapranos during the introduction. “She was going to come tonight … but she has an early meeting with the council in Lanarkshire."

By sticking to their manifesto of music for girls to dance to, Franz Ferdinand's songs ignore the fact that girls become women and women have meetings. It is sad that the band didn't evolve to be able to tell the story of what Jacqueline is doing now.⁶ Maybe she still feels most alive on the dance floor, reliving her youth, and doesn’t want to think about meetings. No one inspired by meetings, are they?

To get a sense of how inspired Franz Ferdinand were, check out this interview I did with them after their show at the ICA back in September 2003.

Interview: Franz Ferdinand

Some more photos after Alex Kapranos did a stage dive.

Neil Scott @MrNeilScott

This was the moment @B0bHardy and @miaouxmiaoux were wondering if @alkapranos had accidentally committed manslaughter after an ill-advised stage dive at the end of the @Franz_Ferdinand gig last night.

1. I do have vague plans to do something with this site, but mainly just use the Twitter account to promote good things in Glasgow. This week I hit upon an unexpected viral tweet of a man with a cone on his head that got over 320,000 views.

Visit Glasgow @visit_glasgow

Welcome to Glasgow

2. Part of the reason Urbit and Ethereum exist and are popular is because they offer the potential for permanent namespaces on a communal network. Urbit, as far as I can work out, is based on a philosophy of digital land rights. For digital preservationists, like Jeremy Keith, who aren’t interested in the blockchain, archive.org has become domain name of last resort.

3. I bought Possible Solution because I wanted to write about web design, like CSS tricks or something. I even had a potential collaborator with Barney but inspiration faded away.

4. The first time I went to Rookie Oven, I got chatting to a guy who had made his money as a domain squatter. He would buy attractive, scarce domains — I think channelfour.com was one of his — and then sell them to the company at a vastly inflated price. It hardly seemed like the basis for a vibrant tech scene.

5. I toyed with getting neilsco.tt but my vanity didn’t stretch as far as sending $500 to an office in Trinidad and Tobago in the hope of getting a .tt domain.

6. On the last album, Always Ascending, there is a song called Lois Lane that almost does this, describing a woman "At the over-thirties single disco — it's bleak, it's bleak, see you next week."