A number of years ago, I brought a foo.bar.name domain - otherwise known as a third-level domain. The .name domain is bit unusual as it is meant for personal use. Because lots of people share the same last time, it’s pretty common that second-level domains like bar.name to be reserved. In many cases, you can only register third-level domains.

Sometime in 2023 my registrar, Gandi, got acquired and they raised their prices. Annoyed, I’ve been trying to transfer my .name out (along with my other domains), but this was turning into a giant headache!

Many registrars do not support .name domains. Of those that do, almost none of them support third-level .name domains. Not Namecheap (confirmed via support), not dynadot, not… ughhh, GoDaddy.

webnames does support third-level domains, but at a more expensive price than Gandi 🤷 and at roughly 3x the cost of Namecheap 💰

In the process, I learned that Namecheap competes with itself, but Spaceship doesn’t even support .name domains.

Ultimately I decided to just ditch the .name domain. Thankfully I don’t use it for many things (even though it’s my favourite domain)

As an aside, one option I did consider was registering foobar.name instead. But I really like the foo.bar.name format.

The group of patients assembled for this early experiment in musical therapy included catatonics and severe schizophrenics, but Sunny approached the job like any other, making no concessions in his music. While he was playing, a woman who it was said had not moved or spoken for years got up from the floor, walked directly to his piano, and cried out, ‘Do you call that music?’ Sunny was delighted with her response and told the story for years afterwards as evidence of the healing powers of music.

- From the Sun Ra album Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy

After two years of lockdowns and travel restrictions, I’m taking my first trip out of the country in a few days. In addition, I am planning to travel to Lebanon later this year, which is the furthest west I’ve ever been!

While this is exciting, it has also been pretty stressful. For 2 years there wasn’t much I could do or go. I couldn’t travel, and for a while I couldn’t go inside a bar, I couldn’t even visit friends. The days all seemed the same. There is something calming about that. Every day is familiar, predictable. Every week is predictable, and that was somehow… reassuring? and boring

Staying home, I don’t have to worry about catching Covid, or getting Monkeypox (or rather, it’s a lot less scary when you’re not travelling). I don’t have to worry about catching a flight, or whether my bags make it. Or struggling to read French while trying to catch a train. Or whether there will be a strike keeping me at an airport. etc.

As the day of the trip gets closer, and as I think about the Lebanon trip, I have been getting more uneasy, uncomfortable. I’ve been in this awful state of ‘worry’. I forgot what adventure (to me) is - not being 100% in control of your environment.

I hope this trip turns out great. I can really use the vacation.