The Second Christening

When someone installs a Unix based operating system, they are usually asked to give the system a hostname. It has become a bit of a tradition in geek circles to name computers based on a scheme. There is actually an RFC on the topic (RFC1178) that is to be taken half-jokingly but actually provides some common ideas.

For the last few years, I've been using greek gods for no reason other than the fact that I didn't feel like being creative at the time. I've carried on with this scheme because I haven't had any other ideas that felt appropriate until now. Talking with Bedlam, I learned that he uses characters from the book Neuromancer to name his boxes. You just can't beat a name like wintermute. I decided to change my scheme up a bit and am now using characters from Neal Stephenson books. I've started with Snow Crash because it's my favorite of his books that I've read (I'm working through the rest).

As I write this, I'm waiting for my first box under this new scheme to generate a DSA host key for SSH. This first box will be hiro as a reference to Hiro Protagonist, the lead character of Snow Crash. In the following weeks (months?) I'm going to attempt to change all of my boxes to this scheme. I'll try to post here with any changes, mostly as a reminder to myself but you get to see how much fun it can be to creatively name boxes. Sayonara.

# The Second Christening

When someone installs a Unix based operating system, they are usually asked to give the system a hostname. It has become a bit of a tradition in geek circles to name computers based on a scheme. There is actually an RFC on the topic (<a href="http://www.faqs.org/rfc/rfc1178.txt">RFC1178</a>) that is to be taken half-jokingly but actually provides some common ideas.

For the last few years, I've been using greek gods for no reason other than the fact that I didn't feel like being creative at the time. I've carried on with this scheme because I haven't had any other ideas that felt appropriate until now. Talking with Bedlam, I learned that he uses characters from the book Neuromancer to name his boxes. You just can't beat a name like <em>wintermute</em>. I decided to change my scheme up a bit and am now using characters from Neal Stephenson books. I've started with Snow Crash because it's my favorite of his books that I've read (I'm working through the rest).

As I write this, I'm waiting for my first box under this new scheme to generate a DSA host key for SSH. This first box will be <em>hiro</em> as a reference to Hiro Protagonist, the lead character of Snow Crash. In the following weeks (months?) I'm going to attempt to change all of my boxes to this scheme. I'll try to post here with any changes, mostly as a reminder to myself but you get to see how much fun it can be to creatively name boxes. Sayonara.