Here’s my new Perl programming blog. I have another blog where I talk about a number of different things, but I like to keep my Perl writing separate from the rest of it. Until recently I kept a Perl journal over at use.perl, but the technology behind that site is looking pretty dated so I thought it was worth striking out on my own. So here I am at PerlHacks.com.
It might be interesting to explain how I came to own such a cool domain. It’s a story that has some useful lessons about the kinds of scams that people try to pull on the internet.
It managed to get perlhacks.org in 2005, just because no-one else had thought to buy it. But someone already had the .com and, even though they weren’t using it for anything, I suspected that they’d want a lot of money to part with it, so I didn’t even bother contacting them.
Then in September of last year, I got an email from someone offering to sell me the domain. They contacted me as I owned the .org and they assumed that I’d like the .com to go with it. They wanted just under $1000 for it, so I ignored them. Over the following few weeks, I got three or four more increasingly desperate emails from them. All of which I also ignored.
At the end of October, I got a different mail. In this one, they dropped the asking price to $99. That was closer to the price that I wanted to pay, so I investigated further. I mentioned the mail on the london.pm IRC channel and someone pointed out that the domain had, in fact, lapsed and was available for anyone to buy.
There was a brief race as three members of the channel tried to register the domain at the same time, but it was a race that I won. I got the domain for less than £10. I took great pleasure in pointing out that fact to the people who were trying to sell it to me for $99. They never replied.
The lesson is, of course, to always check whether you can buy something cheaper than the price it’s offered at.
So there I was with both perlhacks.org and perlhacks.com. And now they both point to my Perl blog.
Now I just need to think of something to write about.
“I might be interesting to explain how I came to own such a cool domain”
Should be:
“It might be interesting to explain how I came to own such a cool domain”
Anyway, I look forward to reading your new blog.
Also, what kind of rubes would do that knowing you were looking into it and in fact knew nothing about it until you mentioned it to them?
sigzero: that was my first thought too – how rude!
Dave: nice to see people migrating away from use.perl… I look forward to reading more from you here.