This is the second instance of my blog ‘xirdalium.’ The first instance for years ran fine on a university server, but lately technical problems became overwhelming. Ye ole ‘xirdalium’ is still there, but hardly reachable these days. Hence I decided to give it a go, got a proper domain on the servers of a professional hoster, switched from Blosxom to WordPress, and here we are. ‘Xirdalium’ for years was on the university server, because it, and a static website, accompanied my research-project ‘maxmod—an ethnography of cyberculture’ which meanwhile is finished. Well, not exactly, I haven’t published the book yet, because I am reworking it on a grand scale, and re-insert everything I skipped. Things to come, and this is why I need ‘xirdalium’ reliably online. Everything which was on my old domain xirdal.lmu.de will be migrated here, as time permits. Ah, yes, by the way, I am ↑Alexander Knorr, anthropologist—online better known as zephyrin_xirdal … just call me zeph.

By profession I am an anthropologist, mainly focussing upon technology, computer- and Internet-technology, gaming culture, and the like. An important focus of mine are the connections between contemporary ‘cyberculture’ (whatever that is), cybernetics and cyberpunk. Accordingly xirdalium carries a somewhat weird stack of topics, me thinks.

The header picture is a quick’n'dirty Photoshop-job of mine. It is based on photographies taken on the Moon during the ↑Apollo 15 mission in 1971—the first mission where the Lunar rover was in use. The picture shows the mission’s commander ↑Dave Scott at Hadley Rille. The photographer, lunar module pilot ↑Jim Irwin, is mirrored in Dave’s visor. Scott and Irwin are numbers seven and eight of the only one dozen human beings who ever have been on another planet. The font used in the header picture is called ‘Federation Classic’ and is floating around the Net as a free font—until today I couldn’t fathom its creator.