I swore an oath of non-technicality for this blog, but I hereby have to (almost) break it, for the very identity of this blog is being threatened.

One reason I don’t want to talk about domains and stuff of that nature is that this is not what this blog is or should be about, and technical topics, while of little interest to a potential reader, can easily take over the “meaning space” of a publication such as a blog. But this is serious. A few short months ago, the old domain of this blog – AlsoSprachZamolxis.com, which I had abandoned after transitioning my blog to asa.zamo.ca, its current domain, had been taken over by a “male-body-part-enhancement spammer” who is masquerading as a Wordpress blogger, and is now 3rd in a “Also Sprach Zamolxis” Google search.

I changed the domain name because I felt that the old one was too long even for me. When I first chose it I wasn’t too concerned with that, as I felt it would keep away individuals who had difficulties expressing themselves, but that did not seem to work out so well, and it had begin to annoy me as well.

The clickable comics posted above should perhaps explain this conundrum better than I can.

As you can see below, I registered the old domain back in 2007 (November 28, to be precise, and that’s the blog’s official birthdate, for lack of a better one). Since then, my blog evolved with a PR as high as 6 only to be demoted (seemingly manually) to 4, where it stayed for most of this blog’s existence. A year ago I let my old domain expired, as the transition was more or less complete. (I had not even attempted to sell my old domain name, as the market is dominated by Sedo and other idiotic companies that require you to “fax your gas bill” in order to prove your identity – I would never do business with a corporation that fails to understand that such a fax provides no security and is simply a privacy invading artifice.) Shortly thereafter, Tucows, the domain registrar, partnered with Sedo (dnn-sedo) and my domain was purchase by someone with Indian / Singapore ties, and my old domain became entirely spammy. My fear is that Google will either demote both domains on its next PR update, or it may even keep the PR 4 for AlsoSprachZamolxis.com and demote asa.zamo.ca which would totally suck, since it should be obvious to anyone that a spammer blog could not and should not have risen to that PR. Though Matt Cutts has said before that PR is [gradually becoming] irrelevant, it still seems unfair to provide it for an old domain on par with a blog that’s been working on its content for quite a bit.

And to further emphasize our brand and identity, I’ve decided to replace the default “veni, vidi, vice” image, from A Clockwork Orange, with something more personalized (though the old one will still be available, in the clickable links below) - see them all in the right side column.

More about why I write (to appease Blegoo), in a new article here or on BlogIdol.

archive

For archival purposes, I am posting here the scripts used to provide 301 redirects from the old domain.

Sources / More info: Znoflats, BlogIdol, bw-asz, dnn-sedo, seo-upd