Quantized is a personal blog run by me, Erin! It is part of the erinduffy.nu network, which was established on April 26, 2011. Although I stopped blogging for about a year, I was motivated to start again for a few reasons:
- I took my first trip to Europe from June to August 2011, and I felt like a European adventure automatically qualified as something worth talking about. I was in Austria for ten weeks for a research experience in chemistry.
- Sometimes I want a place to vent and talk about my personal experiences with dealing with and overcoming mental health issues. For a long time, I never talked about it because I was too afraid to admit what I was going through. However, there will always be shame, stigma, and misconceptions about mental and psychological issues if no one ever talks about it. I want contribute to that conversation and help break down some of the barriers and misunderstandings if I can.
- I also just want to talk about the super-fantastic awesomeness of being a chemistry student. Chemistry is pretty cool, after all, and it totally needs its reputation built up!
Site History
Well before I bought erinduffy.nu, I entered the blog/personal website scene in 2004. I kind of meandered between free hosting on Yahoo! Geocities and Freewebs until I got hosted on a subdomain by Angela at indigoisland.ca in the spring of 2006. My website was then titled Honorstudent—yeah, one word. When she got a new domain, falling-dreams.ca, I moved along with her and renamed my site Slant Rhyme. I kept the name even through my next move in 2007 to a subdomain on letters-to-you.com, owned by Olivia and Rosanna Bell. They hosted me until April 2008, when I got the domain lovechem.net for my birthday. I kept my blog there until April 2010, when the domain and hosting package was set to expire1. Just before, in March 2010, I bought killerjewels.com for myself, but I ultimately did not blog there and merely used it as a writing portfolio. A year later, I was asked by Marcelle of the up-and-coming small business, Killer Jewels, if I would redirect my domain to her website until it expired. I agreed and she amply compensated me. With those funds, I bought erinduffy.nu on April 26, 2011, and I reopened my blog as Quantized on May 19, 2011.
Why “Quantized”?
I chose to title my blog “Quantized” because it represents my interest in quantum mechanics, and I can also extend the definition to describe my personality and life, in a way. For those of you who don’t know what “quantized” means, the dictionary.com definition should suffice:
quantize, [kwon-tahyz]
–verb (used with object), -tized, -tiz·ing.
Mathematics, Physics. to restrict (a variable quantity) to discrete values rather than to a continuous set of values.
Because it is a scientific term, it obviously has a relation to science. However, how it relates to me as a person might require some explanation: I’m an “all or nothing” kind of person. I’m either okay or I’m not. I’m either going to do something well, or I’m not going to do it at all. I don’t feel like I exist in in-between states. Perhaps this is kind of a stretch, but I like it.
Credits & Acknowledgements
Thanks to Adobe, Holdfire, WordPress, Free Icons Web, Heartdrops, Memorylast, and the creators of the various WordPress plugins that I use.
- However, I managed to let it renew automatically, so I will still own it until April 2012. [↩]
