A couple days ago, I responded to a person on a list who was asking about multi-located identity on the Internet. That means, some people don’t have just one blog they control to put themselves out on the internet. They have more than one blog, a wiki, portfolios, wiki user pages, and member profiles. I have a bunch of those, most of which are configured (if at all) once and left to rot. These things are all for Kevin Makice, of course, but I also had an Internet life before I changed my name … as Kevin Isbister. Interested to see if I had some multi-located identity as an Isbister, I did some former-ego surfing.
The result was a combination of a walk through my past and a family tree I never knew I had. The family story has three Isbister brothers murdering some duke in Scotland and fleeing the highlands for the New World. Two stayed, one went back and got himself hung. I’m descended from the Eastern brother, who settled in Nova Scotia / Maine. The rest of Isbister creation seems to have come from the third brother, who went to Western Canada and sired humanitarians and lots of academic types. And a hockey player. Here are the highlights …
E-Skeletons in my Cybercloset:
- High School Skit — Well, just a reference by a Woodstock High classmate, Christy Halda, to a high school skit I wrote. I believe it was about a trip to a Career Zoo to see all of the business people in their natural habitats.
- My Math Question — Back in 1997, I had this idea for a virtual ride board where any student could post rides to and from home at breaks. I think I felt a need to calculate the radius from scratch using longitude and latitude, but I hadn’t done math for years. “U-Ride” never got very far, but apparently, I eventually got an answer to my question.
- Polyconomics — The father of Reagan’s supply-side economics, Jude Wanniski, responded to one of my early emails by starting The Supply-Side University. I wrote to Jude and Paul Krugman after reading a spat they had in Mother Jones in ’96. Wanniski responded; Krugman didn’t. Unfortunately, I won’t get a chance at a 10th reunion with the SSU prof, since he died in 2005.
- My Onion Reference — Todd Hanson, a writer for The Onion since being pulled out of a local diner kitchen in Madison, went to school with me for a few years. He took my name for one of his fake characters in a fake news story.
- Looking for My Uncle — My mom’s brother disappeared shortly before my grandmother died. I used the last letter I received from him to try and figure out where he might be hanging out in Detroit. This email to an accordion shop didn’t get a nibble on the search (he’s still missing), but it was translated into German.
- Web Lab’s Reality Check — I tell everyone I meet about my love for WebLab. The experience that made it eternal is still available on the web.
- square.city — The non-existent site, which officially died in 2000 with the expiration of the domain, is still listed in some online city links sites. This is still a painful part of my life, as I replaced my altruism with dot-com boom $$$ when a local businessman wanted to make it a company.
- KelleyCam — My stint as a Web Services Coordinator at the Kelley School of Business is what allowed me to escape freelancing and move to Bloomington. This was a camera installed in 1999 to track the construction of the grad building across Fee. The guy who replaced me apparently forgot to check it and they weren’t able to use stills from the camera to build a construction video.
The Other Branch of the Family Tree:
- Katherine Isbister — This is sort of the coolest find, which I’ve known about for a while but has taken on extra relevance since joining an HCI program. Katherine (also my sister’s name) is an HCI prof at RPI … the place I likely would have landed if I had stuck with science in 1991 and dove into solid state physics. Her list of projects has relevance to communities and use of avatars, among other things.
- Brad Isbister — I had the aforementioned professional hockey player on my fantasy team while he was a Coyote and an Islander. He apparently is part goon.
- The First Isbister — Some Scot named Robert changed his name in the 1500s to match the name of his town. That town still exists, although mostly as a pile of rocks from a fishing village. Still don’t know what the family crest looks like.
- A host of Canadian Isbisters — James Isbister and Alexander Kennedy Isbister are two big names. I’m not sure who did what, but there are Canadian rivers, a writing award, and a building named after some family members.
- Isbister Elementary School — A school in Michigan is named after this guy, maybe.
- World Time Clock — Although I don’t think I have the email explaining this anymore, I believe that this application was once called iSBiSTeR, named for the street on which the programmer who wrote it lived.
- Laurel Isbister — A singer from down south who lists Aimee Mann among here MySpace friends.
- Some other Kevin Isbister — He likes trains and gets people jobs in the UK.
Professors. Artists. Blue-collar enforcers. It’s in the genes, somewhere.
