cartesian-heights.org

[jack]

How about cartesian-heights.org? It's distinctive, it's a nice name, it looks fairly easy to type.

Are hyphens sane in domain names? I know many sites automatically reject[1] any email address with a "+" in, is a "-" likely to be a problem?

If you saw it, would you remember if it had a hyphen, dot, underscore or nothing between the words? If I said "cartesian heights dot org with a hyphen" would you understand it?

Are you familiar enough with the adjective "cartesian" to be able to remember it if you hadn't heard it before?

[1] See standard "why go to such an effort to make life more difficult for people?" rant

Comments

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I like the name. It sounds like an eccentric mathematician's mansion.

I've never known any problem with hyphens on the software side, but on the human side they're awkward and difficult to remember. As teleute said, it's more usual to just run words together. I think the only justification for having a hyphen is if the words would seem to mean something else without (like expertsexchange). The position of the word boundary in cartesianheights is obvious.

Are you familiar enough with the adjective "cartesian" to be able to remember it if you hadn't heard it before?
Definitely. (In your LJ username, "cartesian" is the straightforward bit, but I got confused by "daemon" and thought that cartesiandemon was you.)

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I like the name. It sounds like an eccentric mathematician's mansion.

Thank you. Credit goes to sunflowerinrain for suggesting it (for my house), and it's grown on me more and more. That's a great description, that basically is what it is, except that it's not a mansion yet, but when I do have a mansion, it will also be called that :)

on the human side they're awkward and difficult to remember

I know what you mean. I would have thought they were sufficiently unusual to be remembered, but the consensus doesn't seem to be.

I can't convince myself by "cartesianheights", it just looks like a mess to me, I think it's too long, and the "eanhei" looks to me like an unbroken mass of something.

"cartesian" is the straightforward bit, but I got confused by "daemon"

Yeah, in retrospect that makes sense. I originally thought "cartesian demon" was too obvious and picked this as a slight pun on it, but that doesn't really mean anything now, so it's confusing: I wouldn't expect ot be able to dictate the name to someone who didn't know it.

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

I thought daemon was the 'more intellectual' spelling of demon, so it sounded logical?

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty accurate afaik. In actual fact, I picked "daemon" as a reference to the operating concept (a program which stays in the background and serves requests from other programs), but there's no evidence of that other than my saying so, it's not inherent in the name.

Pullman put the supernatural meaning quite definitely back in people's minds. "intellectual spelling of demon" sums it up; I would have said to distinguish "daemon" meaning a supernatural out-of-this-world creature from a "evil" demon, but that's just the impression I picked up from people using it in books.

A quick look on wikipedia interestingly gives the original etymology: "dæmon, are Latinized spellings of the Greek δαίμων (daimon),[1] used purposely today to distinguish the daemons of Ancient Greek religion, good or malevolent "supernatural beings between mortals and gods, such as inferior divinities and ghosts of dead heroes" (see Plato's Symposium), from the Judeo-Christian usage demon, a malignant spirit that can seduce, afflict, or possess humans"