Since itās pretty obvious where this is headed, I went to pre-register a few TLDs as a precautionary measure. This did not go as planned. I had been periodically checking on elsewhere.*, and it looked like there were several available, but it seems that the control panel I was using doesnāt actually check for availability until I attempt to add to my cart, which I hadnāt done until this evening. I did not test them all, but I wasnāt happy with the remaining TLDs.
This leaves us with a few options:
Settle on one of the actually available TLDs
Choose some variation of elsewhere with more availability.
Iāve already registered one variant that I think is a good fit, but it doesnāt have to be the only option.
Me, personally?
I donāt really much care what TLD is used. I think thatās less of a problem than it used to be. Heck, even the other place is a .net (which has always felt weird).
7th of Undetriginta. Long wait.
This post brought you by the ISO Date Format Mafia.
Edit - I donāt really have anything against US date format, but there is this. In the good old days when you got things on paper (younger generation - explanation will have to wait -)* it was easy; if it was USL or US legal then it would be month-day-year; if it was A4 or A5 it would be day-month-year. But the Internet removed context, at which point there were often grounds for confusion.
I also collect odd number formats. It amuses me that the French count to 60 in tens and then start counting in twenties to 100, whereas the Belgians donāt. The Romans had the less-1 format e.g. IX for 9, also in written Latin (hence undetriginta). The Russians had the situation that 40 and 90 would be virtually unpronounceable and so introduced the word sorok for 40 (apparently means 40 fur skins originally) and, on the Roman principle, devyatnosto - āten before 100ā. These and date formats are things to save up for when someone tells you that date and number handling are easy.
*2nd edit. OK. In the distant past instead of information being stored on spinning rust or silicon oxide insulators, it was often stored on a substrate made out of cotton or cellulose fibres made smooth with a coating of clay and glue. Information was stored in a non-binary symbol system using deposits of carbon on the substrates. Like hard drives they came in different formats, called e.g. USL or A4. Data transmission involved placing the substrate in a sort of bag made from a similar material, and marking it with the destination address in symbolic form. The data then entered a complex network which was entirely human-operated, though mechanical vehicles played a part, and eventually reached the destination.
Later when a technological solution to the transmission and storage was discovered, the same non-binary symbolic marking was used for presentation to human users as they had in the interim learned to decode the symbols optically.
