You’ve already seen if you’re here, but jcpretorius.com aka “House of Jacob” is now simply jacob.earth.
I’ve been thinking about this rebrand for a long time, but the thought of all the code repos, deployment pipelines, and setting migrations that had to happen to get us here had me call it off multiple times.
Then, The Year of Synthesis came around and with room to think about this deeply, I’ve come to the following conclusions based on interactions I have when meeting new people:
- Jacob is a common first name in many countries, people understand it easily.
- My surname is only familiar to people from South Africa. For everyone else, it commonly brings to mind Oscar Pistorius, the now infamous South African athlete who murdered his model girlfriend on Valentine’s Day. For the record, I have to point out he is Pistorius and I’m Pretorius. We’re not related, but it’s not the best mental connection to establish anyway.
- Because the surname is mostly unfamiliar, people may be hesitant to try say it.
- Because the surname is mostly unfamiliar, people don’t know how to spell it. I can’t blame them.
These factors make nearly everything about the old domain bad for anyone other than me.
I somewhat tried to get around the issue by referring to the blog as the “House of Jacob”. While I still like the mental model, I’ve also learned that the phrase has religious connections for some that I don’t think belong here.
So out with the old, in with the new.
I’m Jacob, and I’m on Earth (for now). Now I also have this fun emojigram —> 👨🏻🦰🌍
Thanks for stopping by.