Ive been using the username alias
flurdy since probably about 1994-95, when at
university I had to start picking a username for different sites in the early years of the internet.
Flurdy, came naturally as I had to pick something unique, and being a Norwegian lost in England, some friends called me flurdy-gurdy, with some references to the Bork-Bork Swedish chef in the Muppets show. (Actually it was the nickname "Fjords!" that stuck, and some friends from uni still call me by that today!)
Flurdy has been a good username as I haven't needed to use flurdy-012 or some random extension to use popular services. So I dont have to remember what username is used for what and where. ( Hackers be aware, there is something called
PwdHash, so these are not the accounts you are looking for... I dont use it but hopefully that will disinterest them...)
I become so attached to the username, that it is the alias I use for all my development work, and
flurdy.com is my main web site, even though
ivar.co.uk would be more natural. So it has become my identity, so much that I even now
sell t-shirts with the logo. If I start a business (again) I would probably use flurdy brand more than the
eray one I had planned.
However flurdy is not 100% unique, and does not always mean it is me. On some websites, the flurdy user is not actually me. I dont think I have fans, especially not copycat ones. :) But I found some people actually named Flurdy, mostly irish, and there are probably a few that also use that username for some reason or another.
So for instance on
del.icio.us,
flurdy is not
me! Nor is it in
Yahoo,
eBay,
Digg or
Stumbleupon.
In del.icio.us I am flurder instead. Actually on Digg and Yahoo, it might be me, I just cant get the password reset!( I never put in my real birthdate and similar, as I dont think they need to know. And never the same spammable email address either...) But definetly in delicious and stumbleupon it is someone else!
I just wonder if people mistakenly assume all flurdys are me, and presume it is my links in del.icio.us for instance. As is turns out that person has similar links to me, so probably doesn't cause any problems! Been weird if it was some tree-hugging artist living in the pacific, but then he probably wouldn't use del.icio.us.
But I shouldn't complain, a
google search on flurdy is mostly me for pages, especially if you remove
gurdy. But the odd non-me are still on each page...