Pioneer on the Internet – Sean Gursky

What is in a name? When it comes to marketing a brand or an identity the consensus is to come up with something and stick with it. Over the last few months I have been struggling with my online identity, but it has recently come to a head. Ask someone what my Last.fm profile name is, chances are three suggestions will come back. That is not how you stay brand consistent.

In 2005 I registered seagurs.com and used that as my online profile, however the use of the name was very limited. Besides the website it was only used as my Gamertag on Xbox360 and, most recently, on the Playstation PSN network. Could I really be identified as ‘seagurs’ elsewhere? Would it be a more appropriate and identifiable online identity than I realized?

For almost every other site or account I would go with ‘gursky’. It is an obvious nickname, usually unused when I register it on other sites. When Facebook launched vanity URL’s for user profile pages I began to wonder how I should be identified online. Would I go with ‘seagurs’, ‘gursky’ or something else? In the end I decided to go for something generic, but accurate name and claimed ‘seangursky‘.

The purpose of this post, and the reason behind this whole identity crisis, began when I was looking to create my custom URL on Flickr. Instead of being identified by numbers and letters I could use a name. I have been a member of Flickr for as long as I had a domain name but never knew they released custom URL’s. I was late to the gold rush but I had the intentions of registering ‘gursky‘. However, someone with a screen name not of gursky beat me to it.

What was I to do? This is Facebook all over again, do I go with ‘seagurs’ or ‘seangursky’ or something else? Ultimately I went with ‘seangursky‘ and began to wonder if I made the right choice.

I can change my Flickr screen name to reflect my custom URL, but that feels like I am giving up on an identity battle, however it is confusing to have a screen name different from the custom URL. Facebook, Flickr and Last.fm all have usernames that cannot be changed; but only last.fm is without my given name and just stands as ‘gursky’.

Only a few sites will allow me to change my name (like Twitter), but I guess the question is this: If the site allows it, should I move my identity over to ‘seangursky’? Or should there be a conscience split where social networking sites have one name but the rest don’t? Is it easy to define what is a social networking site and what isn’t?

I am at a crossroad. No matter which direction I go there will be old left overs (Xbox 360 and PSN under ‘seagurs’ and Facebook, Flickr and Last.fm under variations of my name) but which path is the right one to take?

I do not have an attachment to ‘seagurs’. It is a convenient combination of my first and last name, but is that enough to making it more prominent? Is the full name necessary? I have come to grips that I will never be the only ‘gursky’ online so perhaps this is how I can separate myself from them?

The Heritage Festival is a wonderful yearly event where you can experience other cultures through dance, food and history. With all of these cultural pavilions around me and $20 worth of tickets at my disposal to try something new, I could have eaten new food for the whole day. But I go and have a lefse dog from the Scandinavian tent.

It tasted like a normal hot dog, not the BBQ or flame roasted style I am familiar with. However, I can now say that my Tube Steak Challenge has expanded me as a person and cultured me a little more on how snouts and entrails are presented in other countries.

Heritage Festival: A great place to try a different type of hot dog.

The second edition of the Tube Steak Challenge is well under way. Our trip to Lac La Biche last weekend saw my second annual Challenge go from zero to eight in a matter of days. At this rate I will destroy my previous years record, but I know the winter months will see a drought of snouts and entrails so I will enjoy this gluttony for now.

It has been fifty two days since my eye surgery and things have been fairly consistent for the last few weeks. I am at a point now where my vision is strong enough that I do not have ‘functional fuzzy’, I can do my job without issue and do not have problems reading most text. The changes to my eyes have been subtle, and if there are improvements I may not notice it right away.

I was in a world of blur for several weeks and I thought I would notice the day where everything came into focus but it was so gradual that I barely noticed a change. It was like I woke up one morning and I realized that the problems I had from a week ago were gone. Things came into focus. I could see the building across the road, the font on my computer screen and the fine print text from a poster at work.

I have noticed that in low light situations reading is a little difficult, but that is the exception. I have not done night driving in a few weeks so I do not know if I will have halo’s, shadowing, or difficulty reading street signs. My distance vision is strong during daylight so I would hope that would help during darkness.

I was dependent on glasses for so many years I am surprised that I have not instinctively reached for the glasses in the morning to put them on. To that, I have never caught myself moving my index finger up to my nose to adjust the position of my frames, it is almost like I forgot all muscle memory related to when I wore glasses.

My one month follow up with the surgeon was the beginning of July and my next appointment is in October. I was told to decrease the frequency of the drops every month. For July I am use Flarex and Systane Ultra three times a day and then August would be two drops and then September is one. I have not noticed a problem going from four drops a day to three. The lack of the fourth drop does not lead to dry or blurry eyes and I can only hope that the same can be said for subsequent months.

However, the last few days I have noticed a bit more ‘gunk’ in my left eye, which is not the usual type of hard ‘crusties’ you get in the morning. The few theories I have are is that the eye is getting dried out with fans on in the bedroom, it is build up from my round of drops before bed or something else is going on, in any case it is only the left eye that experiences this and it does not happen every night.

It has been a fast fifty two days but not without its frustrations. For those who are recovering from PRK eye surgery my biggest recommendation is to have patience. It really is several months of recovery because not every eye will heal the same or as fast as you want. My recovery process has been longer than someone I know who had the surgery around the same time, and eventually it does get better.

Let me sweep the dust away from the WordPress admin. Do some moderation on a few comments, update some plugins, upgrade WordPress to its latest release and there we are. Everything is back in order. Where has July gone? Seriously, my last post was July 8th and I do not even know what I have been doing since now and then. My little calendar to the right looks so sad with only one date in blue, but that is about to change.

Left Over

A few weeks ago I came across this brilliant video about a photographer who was photographing people on the street. I love photos like this, and while I am still not comfortable with people photography this really encouraged me to get over that awkwardness.

Ice Dragons

I have been playing a fair bit of hockey in the last few weeks. Sometimes the schedule would have us playing three games in eight days. I saw a lot of ice in the last few months and it has been great. Sadly, the season has come to a disappointing end.

Our Ice Dragons season started in May. The conditions in which the team came together was an eleventh hour situation. We did not know if we had enough players to meet the quota for having our own team and the final days of registration were hectic enough, and I was just a spectator as Gord organized it all.

Our team was born, we had custom jerseys made and we started the season off strong with two wins. Over the next month we were brought down a level with a series of losses.

By late June our team played stronger and started to play as a team. We started to learn our strengths and weaknesses and went on a six game winning streak to close out the season. The team was bumped down a division halfway through the season and we made the most of it by climbing from a sub .500 record to the top of our four team division.

After playing in several leagues this was my first time actually getting points on the board and it felt great to contribute to the team. I felt we were in a good position to advance in the playoffs and battle for the division championship. However, a 2-12-0 team (where one of their victories came against us) was our Kryptonite.

We always had close and tight games against The Flyers and on Wednesday night our incredibly short bench and exhausted team was no match for them. We gave up three goals and finally countered with one of our own before going into the final intermission. In the late stages of the third we made it 3-2, setting up for a fierce finish. We pulled the goalie and applied incredible pressure, but came up short. Playoffs are referred to as the other season and your season history means nothing. This is something we now know all too well as the lowest rank seed knocked us off.

It was a great few months of hockey, it would have been better to go further in the playoffs, but that is how it goes. I had fun, played a game I love with a good bunch of people and hope to play with them in the future.

Still, stupid Flyers. Stupid short bench.

There is little to report, but like a presentation being better with PowerPoint, I decided to dress up this entry with some images to assist in my story.

Extreme Prize

I completed an online survery for Value Drug Mart and was quite intruiged by the prize they were offering me if my entry was selected.

I guess this could be an interesting prize.

Tube Steak Challenge

Canada Day marked our nations 142nd birthday, but it was the official end to my innagural Tube Steak Challenge. We celebrated this years holiday at work but enjoyed a BBQ for our troubles of working July 1. It was here that hot dog number 54 was consumed.

Of course when the Coney Island hot dog eating contest from July 4th has a record breaking 68 hot dogs eaten in ten minutes it puts my ’1.03846′ hot dogs a week to shame.

Still, I am proud of it all the same.

Months of Waiting

In March I lost everything to 1and1.com. In addition to losing blog posts and photos my domain was held for ransom by 1and1. I had to wait for my registration of the domain to expire, then wait the month for the redemption period to run out. Following that I entered an auction to purchase the domain.

After winning the auction I had to wait 60 days to move the domain over to GoDaddy, and now seagurs.com is rightfully mine.

Three weeks after PRK eye surgery I am pleased to say that things are getting better, albeit it is slow process. The differences I am noticing are not day-to-day improvements but I recognize the changes when I see something clearly now that was a blur last week.

I have returned my monitors to their original resolution and moved my work laptop from darkness to light. While it is great to have detail on things several feet from me I am still experiencing blurriness on distant objects. Driving is less of a risk, vehicles seem clear and I can see street signs as I approach them in daylight.

I find my vision is blurry in the morning and after a few hours the text on my monitors sharpen up. I return to the doctor the first week of July for a follow up and I hope that these small improvements continue so I can feel better about my decision for eye surgery.

Until I can see distant objects with detail I will have to leave CanSeanSeeYet.com as a blurry “No”. Even though I can partially see I want to wait until I can see everything as well as I could with glasses. And to have that condition written out under “Yes” would be quite cumbersome.

Because of the 1and1 incident from March all of my previous blog entries from the last four years were lost, including the one which announced the start of my Tube Steak Challenge, but that won’t prevent me from declaring that the challenge has come to an end.

The challenge started when Jenna showed me a video of a medical show. The doctor being interviewed was given a coupon for a hot dog in the cafeteria and said something to the extent that he is only given one coupon a week.

I wondered if 52 hot dogs, one a week, was a lot or not. Jenna asked how many I ate in a year, and without having a good answer I decided to start counting. The challenge was announced in August but I included my July hot dog count since it was fresh in my memory, and so began my journey.

A majority of my hot dogs were on the BBQ, there was an unhealthy amount cooked over an open fire and even some from Mexico. I am proud to say that I never consumed a microwaved hot dog during the last twelve months.

There you have it, hot dog number fifty one and fifty two. Not pictured was the fifty third hot dog, which means I will continue to count my hot dog consumption until July 1 and then begin counting for another year.

Can I repeat my efforts in the last twelve months again in 2010?

Coldplay on Thursday night was amazing.

Go back and re-read that first sentence because there is no amount of italicization I can use to express how good that show was. It surpassed all expectations I had and thoroughly impressed me. It was more than a concert, it was a truly passionate performance.

I always considered myself a Coldplay fan. I own all of their albums and enjoy what I hear. They are my 30 most popular artist (which surprised me, I thought they would be top 15) according to last.fm but after last night there is no denying how much I enjoy this band. If they ever return to Edmonton I will not hesitate to see them live, and you would be wise to do the same.

The energy, crowd interaction and stage presence were outstanding. This reminded me of how good a concert can be. Older songs were performed with new intensity, favorites had a twist of techno beats, new songs from the album sounded brilliant and subtle things like the addition of beach balls during “Yellow” helped separate this show from others.

I have nothing but accolades to give to these four guys from London. They seemed to genuinely enjoy themselves and the Edmonton crowd let the guys know how much their effort was appreciated.

There were many memorable moments, like the fierce and high energy batch of songs to start the show, a techno version of “God Put a Smile on Your Face”, a set list that feels like it was made for me or the climactic end with confetti. However the one that stands out, and will rival any other moment at a concert I have attended was the performance of “Green Eyes”.

This was our first dance song at our wedding, so hearing it live was a treat. The way it was delivered made the song amazing. The band walked off the stage, to the rear of the arena and was escorted right in front of us. Then they walked up the aisle about twenty feet and performed the song acoustically. The larger than life band had brushed right by us and performed our song. Something like that is tough to top.

While the night belonged to Coldplay, they had a great supporting team. Snow Patrol, who I saw headline several years ago, was perfect in their middle slot. They played many popular songs and got the crowd nice and warmed up. I was surprised at how little they played from their new album, instead they opted to play songs that most in attendance had heard and it worked. Both times I have seen this band live I have never been disappointed and would be pleased to see them again.

The first opening act, Howling Bells, was another pleasant surprise. I knew nothing of their catalog and found myself getting into a groove and enjoying their music. This is a band I will have to listen to more of because they definitely caught my attention.

When the lead singer, Juanita Stein, stated a few facts that she learned while researching Edmonton I thought that was a nice touch, certainly better than the “your city is the best we have played in” standard talk bands say. Something Juanita said in her facts of Edmonton was brought back up during Coldplay’s acoustic set when they performed an impromptu song and name dropped Michael J. Fox. Just like a good Arrested Development joke, you have to wait until the end to get the punchline.

The Coldplay website was updated with a blog post from Edmonton, and said that they suffered a bizarre incident involving a windshield. Seeing these thoughts of an outsider to our city on events like that or the show itself was interesting and I hope the band returns in the near future for another memorable performance.

I did bring my recording gear to the show. I had intentions of recording Snow Patrol and Coldplay. Unfortunately I only recorded Snow Patrol as nothing from Coldplay was saved to the hard drive, I believe I made the fatal mistake of not pressing ‘record’. In the above Coldplay blog post there was a seventy second snippet from “The Hardest Part”, which puts anything I would have recorded to shame, but it acts as a nice memory with the crowd giving it everything they had.

With that said, here is a song sample from last night’s Snow Patrol performance. The song is “Hands Open” and you can Right Click > Save As to download it.

This could fall under the tag of ‘eye surgery‘ but it was more of a casual joke than anything that turned into a joke on me.

Last week I was speaking with Gord and jested that I would buy CanSeanSeeYet.com and have it similar to IsItChristmas.com or IsMacTFired.com. Gord talked common sense into me, got me off the ledge and basically said that registering a domain for a joke “3 people will get” was a waste. I thought it was a fair argument and that it was impulsive on my part. I gave up my quest for this joke site and did not think about it after that.

Wednesday morning I was renewing another joke domain, IReallyLoveTheMcRib.com. I selected the domain and went through the checkout process for renewal. I must have been too busy making sure no other GoDaddy ‘upgrades’ made their way into my cart to really see what I was buying.

I completed the purchase without error, however when I received an email notice thanking me for purchasing a new domain I realized something was wrong. I went back to my domain manager and saw the horror! I had purchased CanSeanSeeYet.com without realizing it.

CanSeanSeeYet.com was still in my cart from last week and I purchased that instead of renewing my intended domain. I had already paid a years domain registration for it so I might as well make the most of it.

I present to you: CanSeanSeeYet.com, in all of its blurry glory.