Genesys of my nick name ----------------------- When I first had to choose a nick name for a telematic service (was a fidonet-style BBS) the name "Starrik" came to my mind probably as a reminescence of the TV character "Inspector Derrik". The BBS had a card associated with each user where the first, middle and last names were required and you could also insert a picture. Thus I picked Cyberandro as the first name honouring an old friend of mine that used to call me like that when my interest in cyberspace started showing up (My real first name is Sandro). I then added J.K. as middle names, in memory of J(F)K, not really having any corresponding long name and I uploaded a nice drawing found on the web as my "picture" (was a spy-like/hip-hop dressed guy walking on a river side). "Cyberandro J.K. Starrik" After some time I found the first name inappropriate for the perception of myself, so I stopped using it. Middle name without first name are useless, so I removed also that part. I was now just "starrik" (lowercase). With that name I used to log on unix machines and irc networks, and open mailbox accounts. The more you type on keybord, the more you feel the weigth of letters. This is why after a certain period of time I dropped the vocals shrinking my nick to just 'strk'. This process is commong to a lot of people on the net, you can see many transformation of this kind, it's like a genetic growing process of the digital being, like the skin changing of snakes. I like this new skin, but I soon found out that it's very had to pronounce ! In 1996 when I went to the HIP in Holland I had to phone call somebody to drive me to the camp, and it was very hard to tell who I was :) Old digital friends know it cames from "Starrik" but I suspect that if you have to guess you'd tell it cames from "stark". Stark is ok for me, I think I've a rather stark personality. When I encountered the father of a friend of mine I came to the knowledge that in the Russian Language "starik" (I'm not sure about the spelling) is a word that means something like "little old man". I picked that coincidence and removed an 'r' from my long name. The pronounce after all is the same in my mother's italian dialect: in Rome we rarely pronounce double 'r' :) Finally, the stable version of my nick name is: 'strk' - internationally pronounced "stark" or "starik" - locally pronounced "starik" or "starrik" - some old friends just use "J.K."