why did you change your name to 꽃기린 (kkot girin)?

When I became a Korean citizen in 2023, I wanted to change my name to something less cumbersome than 마이어데이빗샘웰 (which is a mouthful). My wife called me Girin/Giraffe since we first started dating, so it had been a familiar name to me for many years. When I was brainstorming options for a new Hangul name, she joked that I should go with 꽃기린, and I just fell in love with the idea of 꽃 as a surname. In fact, I fell in love with the whole idea of the name. It is very distinctly Korean, but also not at all a typical or conventional Korean name. In a way it symbolizes my experience and identity here as an immigrant—neither this nor that. Not to mention that the original “girin,” the mythological girin, is a chimera made from the parts of many different creatures. Nothing could describe my reality better. To be is to be many things.

what does 꽃기린 (kkot girin) mean?

꽃 (Kkot), my surname, means flower, and 기린 (Girin) means giraffe. Girin is also the name of a mythological chimera in East Asian folklore. 꽃기린 is also the name of a plant from Madagascar known in English as crown-of-thorns.

what is namu.blue?

namu.blue is a domain I purchased some years ago to provide myself and my family with control over our email accounts. I use this domain to host various services for friends, family, and colleagues—including this blog.

The word namu (나무) in Korean means tree. I wanted a domain name that was short, cute, and memorable.

what is giraffleur.org?

giraffleur.org is the home of my online identity. Giraffleur is a portmanteau of giraffe and fleur, which is what my name (Girin Kkot) liteally means (giraffe flower/flower giraffe). See the colophon for more info.

why are you sometimes called dr. goat?

Because that is my name. My surname in Korea, 꽃 (Kkot), is pronounced similarly to the English word goat. Therefore, I am Dr. Goat, which is how people sometimes refer to me in Korean (꽃박사, 꽃선생, etc.)

why don’t you use a yonsei email address?

I have email addresses from both Yonsei University and the University of Hawai’i, and while I still receive email through both, I no longer actively use either of them. There are two reasons for this.

1. Using my own domain gives me freedom and control over my email and my online identity. It allows me to keep the same email address and not be locked-in to any one provider, and it allows me to identify myself with the domain where I host this blog (giraffleur.org).

2. Both Yonsei’s and UH’s email services are provided by Google—whom I actively avoid like the plague (for reasons I may detail in a blog post someday). Typically, someone like me would use their institution’s email address because it allows them to identify with that organization and advertize their membership. However, these associations are precarious and transient. I no longer attend UH, and one day I may no longer work at Yonsei. If there is any sense in attaching your identity to an email address at all, then it makes sense to prefer stability and control over your identity itself.

3. Related to #2, in the summer of 2024, Google’s contract terms with Yonsei University changed, and somehow in that process, my Yonsei email account was deleted. What is worse, I was able to recreate the account afterward using the ordinary signup form, which is a major security flaw in Google and Yonsei’s infrastructure. So, yeah… hard pass.

how do you publish this blog?

See the colophon.

is the source of this site available?

It sure is. And it’s public domain too!

what fonts does this site use?

See the colophon.

which hugo theme do you use?

Everything on this blog is from scratch, more-or-less. I am not too motivated to refactor all of it as a standalone theme, but you can give it a shot :)

how do you typeset your eprints?

In short, I use typst to do the typesetting. The eprints are all generated on the fly from the same source files as those used to generate their posts on this blog. I convert them to typst code using pandoc and a very messy but functional template I enjoy tweaking from time to time. I sometimes use an app like MacOS’ Pages to make a prototype before wrangling with typst to get the layout I want.

is all the content on this blog really public domain?

Unless otherwise noted, yes, all of my original content shared here is public domain. Why?

1. Free cultural works make the world a better place.

2. Copyright is exhausting and soul-crushing.

3. Sharing is more fun.

aren’t you worried about plagiarism?

Not terribly. Just because something is in the public domain doesn’t mean republishing it as your own original work is okay. In the context of academic publishing, there would be no legal consequence for doing so, but it would be an absurd way to commit career suicide.

Copyright and licensing is a complex topic, but my two cents is that, especially when it comes to scholarly publications, the freer the better. Removing the barrier of copyright makes materials more accessible. I have personal reservations about how my creations are used—for example, I abhor the idea of my music being used in advertisements—but to me the bigger battle to be fought is not one that can be won playing the copyright game. Idealistic as it may be, I would prefer to err on the side of copyfree equanimity.

should i credit you if i use your materials?

You are not obligated to do so, but if it makes sense to credit me, then go for it.