Who or what is a ‘djwudi’?

Howdy!

I’m not likely to be directly linking to this page much, if at all, so chances are good that if you’re here, it’s because you did a Google search for ‘djwudi’ after coming across that name somewhere on the wilderness of the ‘net.

So, first things first:

‘djwudi’ is me, Michael Hanscom.

A little history

A long time ago (though not in a galaxy far, far away), I was over at my friend Royce’s house when his dad remarked that I “looked like a young Woody Allen.”

For a time, this little nugget of trivia was known only to Royce’s family and my own. At some point during my later High School years, though, a few things (namely, frustration at there being so many other “Michaels” in my age group, and a teenage-angst fuled desire to be “someone else”) led to my deciding to adopt the nickname of “Woody” full-time. It started with the Yearbook and theater crew (both of which I was very involved with), and began to spread from there.

In the post-graduation years, I used “Woody” almost exclusively, in the social world and at my jobs. It wasn’t long before there were more people who knew me by “Woody” than by Michael.

Round about 1992 or so, the Anchorage alternative scene was somewhat in hibernation, especially for those under 21. I talked my way into a DJ spot at one club, then moved on to another, and then another, eventually spending around eight years DJing alternative/goth/industrial/retro/anything-but-pop for the Anchorage scene. My ‘DJ name’ was obvious: DJ Woody, or, depending on how I felt when writing it out on flyers, DJ Wüdi, playing off Royce’s pseudo-Germanic version of my nickname.

The DJing eventually moved on into past tense rather than present, but as the world of the Internet grew, I soon found that short, unique names were both desirable and valuable, and that smooshing everything together into ‘djwudi’ produced a string that, to date and to my knowledge, has not been used by anyone other than myself.

As the years have gone by, I’ve returned to using my given name in the real world and online, but I still claim ‘djwudi’ on any site I sign up for.

So what is this site (djwudi.com)?

Not much anymore, and I don’t foresee any major changes coming up. For many years, ‘djwudi.com’ was my primary space on the ‘net, hosting my photos, website, blog, and whatever else I wanted to toss at the online world. In 2002, however, I decided to take steps to own my online identity by claiming my real name whenever possible, and moved all of my ramblings to ‘michaelhanscom.com’.

Since then, ‘djwudi.com’ has more or less lain fallow, sometimes acting as a relatively unpublicized testbed for one project or another, though most often simply sitting here doing nothing.

And, as long as it’s likely to continue sitting here doing nothing, I finally figured that I’d at least use it to explain all this.

So there’s nothing worth paying attention to here?

Not really, no. If I haven’t bored you to tears already, here’s some things you might want to pay attention to:

Once you’ve found those, you can pretty much find me anywhere.

That’s it?

Yeah, that’s it.

Honestly, I’d be surprised if anyone actually read down this far.