Push cx » handle

Twitter

Peter Harkins — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 16:58:02 +0000

I’ve starting using Twitter as @pushcx. I’ve been reading a few people for a while, but not really contributing.

Any longtime readers will know I’ve been thinking about usernames. A little while ago I realized that, while it doesn’t include my name, ‘pushcx’ is a decent enough handle that can be dereferenced uniquely.

Twitter users, please leave your username in a comment with a tip for getting the most out of Twitter. I’d like to avoid as many newbie mistakes as I can. :)

Username Showdown

Peter Harkins — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:41:57 +0000

I was reminded in conversation this morning that I’ve been meaning for months to pick a username that’s unique and ties to my legal name. One of the ideas suggested (off-blog) was to play with prefixes/affixes on my last name, so let’s meet the final contenders:

disharkins: Chicagoese for ‘this Harkins’, contrariness in that ‘dis’ means ‘not’. Amusing anagrams like ‘radish sink’ and ‘I risk hands’.
malharkins / harkinsprop: Riffs on my old usage of ‘malaprop’ as a handle.
preterharkins: Preter- echos the hyper- prefix that used to be faddishly applied to everything Internet. Only a letter away from my name, which is good and bad.
yharkins: Aweomsely archaic y-, now really only known in the Scrabble-valuable ‘yclept’, meaning ‘to name’ (you could choke on all the meta in this post). Also looks like a question. A little potential for collision, though there aren’t many first names starting with Y.
harkinsant / harkinsarian: Means ‘a person who’, as in servant or librarian.

They’re all Googlenopes except yharkins, which got one use a few years ago on a soon-offline fan forum.

Barring any last-minute wildcards (feel free to suggest), I’m going to go with one of these handles. Please post a comment to let me know which you like or dislike.

Picking a Username

Peter Harkins — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:42:57 +0000

I used the handle malaprop as my username on sites when I started doing stuff on the web, and it worked decently. Short, memorable, and almost always available. I got involved in Chicago programming communities and found a shortcoming: it often took weeks or months before someone connected my name and my handle. There weren’t any wacky sitcom hijinks, but it was confusing.

I switched to “Harkins”, which is what I’m still using today. It’s DRY (rather than two names for the same person), short, easy-to-spell, but it’s available less and less regularly as more people get online.

I’m trying to pick a new username. I’d like it to be based off my real name, but I’d also like to balance that with brevity. “Peter_Harkins” is plain too long, I don’t want to use more than 10 characters. “PHarkins” is right out, I don’t need to be conflated with phone phreaks and other creative spellers. I’ve been assigned “harkinsp” at too many schools and workplaces to enjoy it, and it’s not very unique.

I’m tempted to get a bit playful and do something like “hark_ins”. I’d have some hassle with the various underscore/hyphen rules of different sites, but it’d always be available.

Any suggestions? What handle have you based on your name?