cat /dev/random

A bit over two weeks ago, a student was almost lynched by her colleagues for using a short dress in her university, Uniban, in the São Paulo region. She even had to be escorted by the military police when leaving the room where she was hiding during the incident. This issue has gained huge proportions in Brazil, but apparently the international media hasn't really commented about it. Now the university published a note saying that it was all her fault and decided to expel her.

I could say it all started with GMail, but that would be a lie. My digital mess has been around forever, but it took me some time to recognize it. I still remember when a friend logged in to my computer to help me with something (or was it to download something?) and the first thing he said was, "wow, what a mess, I can help you clean up if you want". I also remember being slightly hurt by that comment. But well, he was right.

It all started with the book "Little Brother", by Cory Doctorow. Or maybe the seed was already there before. The thing is, my previous alias contained my real name, and suddenly I was very upset by it. I needed a new identity. And I needed it fast, as I was being pressed to go back to Twitter for work/academic reasons. Being a Linux user for some six years now, or maybe a bit more, I started searching for names related to my favourite Operating System. And there it was, the name catdevrandom, unused in Twitter, unused in the domain, mentioned in some abandoned blogs. So I took it.