What’s in a name?
schpydurx
Once upon a time, I was new to the internet. I happen to like film scores–that is to say, the underscore of a film, i.e. music that is composed for the film, not the needle drop music.
I found a website called SchpydurX¹ written by a guy who went by the handle of DJ Thresher. The site streamed random tracks from movie scores 24/7. As a user, you could request 2 tracks every 30 minutes.
One day, typing in the web address didn’t resolve the website anymore. I was devastated at the loss of “my” community!
I went on the hunt for the site I loved. What happened? Why did it go away? Was there anything I could do to bring it back to life?
To make my declaration of dedication to the world known, I started going by schpydurx or schpydurx_loyalist everywhere on the web and internet. In fact,
Winding up on a competitor’s site (streamed film scores, could request, but the wait time was longer, etc.) I joined their chat and started asking around.
One of the mods–it might have been the site’s owner–told me that that SchpydurX came back online as The Score Station. Sure enough, there was the site I knew and loved but with new branding.
There was a chat on the homepage² through which I met a core group of fine folks. As one might expect, the site owner tended to hang out in the chat.
One day, someone claiming to be Jeff Bridges joined the chat. I thought it was one of the regulars who was faking because that regular kept mentioning Starman–a film that I have never seen–and so did the alleged JB.
I moved on with my life and, when I started earning money, I bought my own copies of scores, first on CD and later through iTunes³.
ProfessorTom
Growing up, my best friend’s dad called me a walking dictionary. That got upgraded to encyclopedia followed by professor–all before I graduated High Screwl…and it’s been downhill ever since.
When I started publishing a community newsletter, I chose ProfessorTom as my moniker. Apart from a mistake on LiveJournal and AIM and Yahoo Chat (which have both since bitten the dust) I’ve pretty consistently branded myself as ProfessorTom or professortom.
[1]: The site said the correct pronunciation was to imagine Sean Connery saying “spider”
[2]: I can’t remember if SchpydurX had a chat or not.
[3]: I became a Mac user in 2007 when OS X 20.5 “Leopard” came out. That meant switching away from Winamp and using iTunes. If there is enough interest, I could tell the story of that transition.
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