A custom domain

“I did a tech thing!”

After lots of head scratching, I bought a custom domain for this Substack. Why? Because if I shared links which had the dreaded S—s—ck word on Twitter, the platform severely limited the extent to which any of my Tweets were seen, particularly the ones which had that word in the link. It only cost A$18 per annum to buy a custom domain. I missed my law nerd buddies on Twitter!

This phenomenon has its genesis in a stoush between Musk and Substack some months back, when Substack set up a rival platform to Twitter called ‘Notes’. Then Musk said he was going to set up a rival blogging platform.

I just want things to work. Competence and functionality are what I care about. If the things don’t work, I’ll stop using them. And I’m certainly not paying for the use of a service, if it strangles the reach of my personal blog! Hence it seemed to me to be a self-defeating strategy on Musk’s part.

Photo by Merakist on Unsplash

Technology should be a tool, not a master, whatever the Zuckerbergs and Musks of this world may think.

I didn’t even bother signing up to Zuckerberg’s ‘Threads’ app. I have enough social media already. Moreover, I had no control over what happened to my data, in a similar way to Facebook. My decision not to sign up to Threads was confirmed by the experience of others of the platform. Since Facebook stopped Australians sharing Australian news links in February 2021, I’ve used it less.¹

Everything is moving to online or automatic “self-service.” The risks of a badly designed “self-service” system are that people can’t use it, but I don’t suppose those who impose it care. They’ll just get a chatbot to respond, I suppose; or, as in this example, fine the person for their inability to work the dysfunctional online parking ticket system.

Certainly, in academia, things which would previously have been done by a person are now “self-service”. I confess, I’m not very good with online forms, and I have huge issues with scheduling and dates. I get myself into a mess reasonably frequently. I sometimes wonder how much of my time is wasted by trying to sort out these things, when it could better be spent elsewhere, teaching, researching or writing.

If I won the lottery, I would hire someone to help me with administrative demands. As I have said often enough before, my skills are in teaching and research, not administration.

Still, I’m very proud of myself for doing a tech thing, and setting up this domain. Yay me!

As an aside, I believe Musk is intending to change the Twitter logo to “X”. I like the letter X as much as anyone, as students who have to face my hypothetical legal problems might gather (with characters called Xenia, Xander, Xenophon and so forth) but I have to say, I don’t think this is a good rebrand.

My first thought was the famous Monty Python dead parrot sketch:

Screenshot from Monty Python’s ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch

My second thought, as a result of the Monty Python sketch, was this potential logo. Well, it’s got an X and it gets rid of the bird, but it doesn’t look very auspicious. I won’t give up my day job.

My rather inauspicious Twitter X logo design.

1. Okay, okay, I’ll admit I used to live on Facebook. These days - I sometimes forget to check in, and when I do, it’s usually just to wish people a happy birthday and like a few posts.