Wednesday, June 01, 2005

De-link request; or, "This blog will self-destruct in three months..."

Executive summary: If you link to this blog using my real name in the link text, then please remove that link, or edit the link text so that it does not include my real name.

My real first name is a rather rare string on the web, which means that if you type it into a web search engine, you will get, more or less, a compilation of everything I've ever said or done publicly on the Internet and very little else. This has its good points, but it also means that everything in my online life is fully transparent to anyone who bothers to look for it.

It turns out that, although I've been pretty careful to avoid making any connection between my real-life persona and "Cog", this blog recently became the top hit on Google for my first name, ahead of my professional home page. Since I will, hopefully, be applying for jobs next winter, this is a somewhat undesirable situation.

Therefore, if you're aware of any links to this blog, on sites that you maintain, that use my real name in the link text, then I ask that you remove that link, or edit the link text so that it does not include my real name. If this blog continues to be the top hit for my first name on the web, then I will have to strongly consider taking it down in the coming months, and moving elsewhere.

(Of course, some of you may consider this a good thing; but if that's so, then why are you reading, anyway?)

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