About my online nickname: SyneRyder

I became known as SyneRyder in early 1997. I launched my first home page under that name in April of 1997 at Geocities. The old Geocities pages aren't online anymore, they just redirect to these pages now.

While I was learning to use IRC (and before I was called SyneRyder) I went by the nickname Trashcan. I named myself after the first thing I saw in the room before I went on chat for the first time. Later I changed my nickname in order to earn credibility in the underground electronic music "demoscene". It didn't work.

The Ryder part of my name came from a video game called Death Rally. It was the first game by Remedy Entertainment, who went on to make the massively popular Max Payne games. The soundtrack to Death Rally was by Purple Motion, one of my favourite demoscene musicians. My favourite driver in the game was called Dark Ryder. I loved the mysteriously moody atmosphere the name suggests, it was just like the online persona I wished to create.

The Syne part of my name is derived from "sine", a mathematical function which is the basis for any sound. Any sound at all can be constructed from a series of sine waves. I replaced the i with a y so it was in keeping with the Ryder part of the name, and personally I thought it looked better.

I prefer the R in SyneRyder to be capitalised, or for the whole nickname to be written in lowercase. It was originally meant to be a first name and surname for my online persona - think "WinonaRyder" and you'll see what I mean.

A couple of years after I first came up with the nickname, I discovered that Syne is a real name. To my horror, I discovered that it is a female name! I guess I'm just keeping in touch with my feminine side. Or maybe it's one of those names that can be used by both genders, like Chris or Kelly.

The Kabalarians have an in-depth analysis of the type of character the name Syne lends itself to. The analysis doesn't describe my own personality well, but I do recognise elements of my online personality in their description.

The nickname is deliberately 9 letters long. 9 letters is the longest that a nickname can be without being truncated in most IRC programs.

It's not uncommon for my nickname to be spelt incorrectly. Frequent misspellings include Sinerider, Synerider, Sineryder, Snyeryder and even Snyderyder. It's easier to remember if you just call me by my shorter nickname, Syne.

I've heard all the "Do you ride sinewaves?" jokes so don't even think about mentioning it. The answer is that I don't ride sine waves, but even if I did it would be less painful than riding a sawtooth or pulse waveform.

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