Because I Require Stimulation

A long time ago I threw out a question to my readers (Hi, all you beautiful people.) about installing some kind of forum thing here to allow for conversations, socializing, and that kind of thing.I’ve never done that simply because I wasn’t all that impressed with what was out there.

But I found something fairly recently that did impress me. It’s a plugin for WordPress called BuddyPress. Basically it turns your blog into a social networking site. And while I have no aspirations of being the next Facebook, I wouldn’t mind making it easier for people to interact here and, perhaps, do some interesting things.

The content won’t be changing all that much. I will still post things featuring erotica, hotties, fashion, cultural, and all that stuff. However, I hope to start putting some of my side projects on here. Things like my art, my writing, stuff related to libraries, and other things. I’d love to hear people’s opinions on those kinds of things.

So over the next few days you’re going to see some changes on the site. Things might break, but I’ll fix them. Hang tight, because I think this is going to be pretty cool.

If you’ll check above you’ll notice that the words Distant Early Warning no longer loom over the blog. I’ve been thinking about changing the name of the blog for quite a while now. I started calling my blog Distant Early Warning after a Rush song and it stuck with me for years and years. Thing is, I wanted something fresh and new that could go on for another for years until I need something else that’s fresh and new.

Which kind of explains the title, doesn’t it?

I consider myself a citizen of the Internet. One of the reasons I don’t watch a lot of television anymore is because I’ve got this issue. I’ve had it since I was a baby. See, I’d lay on my back with my bottle on my chest while my hands fiddled with some toy and my feet kicked the wall or fiddled with some other toy. It’s sort of an ADD thing where I crave stimulation.

I’m better than I used to be. Back in high school I’d listen to music while watching TV and reading a book. Or I’d play the Sega Genesis while different music played in the background. I can still do all of these things, but I try not to.

Still, thanks to the Internet, I can do all these things at the same time and not look like I am. I scare fewer people that way and it works out for everyone. So it’s not unusual to find me sitting in a coffee shop, hooked up to WiFi; and I’ll be drinking coffee, listening to Winamp, occasionally pausing the music to watch something on YouTube, and the reason I’m watching something on YouTube is because I found it while checking something out while writing a post for my blog.

Look, I never said I was normal.

So the stuff you’re finding lately on this blog and in my gallery is running a helluva gamut because, quite frankly, almost everything interests me. Fashion, sex, comics, art, music… you’re finding all that here and more, so I think it’s time for a name change.

Oh, and since you’re here, and reading this… perhaps you require stimulation too?

PS: I swear to god I’m not making this up: I wrote this post while cooking dinner, watching House Hunters on the telly, listening in and occasionally commenting upon my wife’s telephone conversation, and chatting with a lovely archivist friend on Gtalk.

Hi.

One of the directories I’ve been sitting on for a while contained various funny and WTF pictures. I’ve been meaning to put these on the blog, but dammit, there are just too many of them. I’d have to split the posts or post a few and a time, and frankly, I just don’t want to do that.

Instead, I’ve set them up in my online gallery here on the site. I’ve been meaning to use this gallery to greater and better effect in conjunction with my blog, so here’s the start of that. If you’ve never seen the gallery before, you should check it out. It’s got a lot of the same stuff you’d see here in the blog, but there’s a little less organization there. Mostly it’s a free form place for image delivery where I can share all the weirdness I’ve found without needing to write up a blog post every time I find a cool image.

If you’re into the RSS deal, it just so happens that the gallery has such a thing.

Anyway, below you’ll find a smattering of pics from that new LOL gallery. If you’ve got the interest, go check out the rest.

More images will be appearing soon in the gallery as I get things ready for upload. So snag that feed or check back in the next couple days or so.

Hi, all!

So I’m finally caught up with a bunch of stuff I wanted to post and, to make sure I don’t lag that far behind again, I’m going to basically start posting things I want to share on a daily basis. What this means is that, not only will there be more posts, but there will also be larger and smaller posts than you might be used to seeing here. See, I read through something like 200-300 RSS feeds per day looking for cool content, awesome photos, sexiness, and anything else I want to share with others. Then I collect them through various methods (Firefox plugins are a lifesaver in this case.) and then, eventually, I post them.

Well that “eventually” is going to become “daily” because I’m tired of waiting until I get some kind of magic number of images or magic number of posts before I finally put them online. Screw that, I want to give that stuff to you now rather than later. What this means is that some posts, like the images of cosplaying and costumes, or the hotties, may be smaller than you’re used to seeing. After all, I may have only found five images that day that I thought were pretty cool. Other days, I might find 35; who knows?

So, to this end, I’ve got Random Erotica posts queued up for a couple of weeks. Yeah, I was that far behind. Since I find more of that stuff every day, you’re going to see two erotica posts per day for a while. I know, I know… It’s a hard existence, but I’m sure you’ll be able to bear with it. I also turned up the posts per page to 20, so more stuff will be on the front page. That way, things shouldn’t disappear from the front so quickly.

Finally, I really recommend the use of an RSS collector like Google Reader. Not only can you follow hundreds, if not thousands, of websites in one place, you can also subscribe to my RSS feed and never miss anything. You know, just a thought.

Hey, thanks for reading, and thanks for showing up here every so often. It makes a blogging nerd happy to know someone reads his drivel.

Later on!

Back in the day, at a different branch, I had a poster on my office window where the public could see it. It simply recommended a book or other library item that I thought was worth a recommendation. I called that poster Dr. Gonzo Recommends because Dr. Gonzo is my nickname around here and I figured it sounded like a better title than Dan Recommends. When I changed branches and started working here in Lake Woebegone, AZ I stopped doing it mostly because I don’t have an office with a public window.

However, inspired by my colleague who turns out not one, but two, library newsletters on a regular basis, I decided to try my hand at the game. I simply passed the name from that poster onto title of the newsletter. Since my friend is handling What We’re Reading This Week and Writer’s Almanac, I wanted to take on an area that wasn’t covered and that area is new arrivals to our system. Now these items may not be brand new, hot off the presses things. In many cases they’re older things that we didn’t own until recently. So the newsletter can be a mix of new, bestseller type items and “new to us” stuff. (If that makes any sense at all.)

I wanted it to look kinda snazzy and eye catching since my idea was to hang it on the new item bookshelves as well as posting it online. So I decided to go the FLOSS route and use as much free and open source software as I could to produce the thing. That wasn’t too hard actually, and it was a good exercise in seeing what’s available and what you can do in the realm of FLOSS publishing for libraries. In this instance, I use a notebook running Windows 7, but that’s merely the OS. For the production of the newsletter I used OpenOffice for copy editing. Layout and desktop publishing was handled by Scribus. Web access came through Firefox and Google Chrome.

After the initial pain in the ass that is laying out a new page for text and graphics, I got something I really liked and started working with it. I snagged new item informaiton from the library’s RSS feeds and compiled it all together in a three page newsletter.

So ladies and gentlemen, here’s the newest, and first, issue of Dr. Gonzo Recommends!

As many of you know by now, I took down my adult blog. All that really means is that I no longer have a blog focusing solely on adult content. That doesn’t mean I stopped enjoying porn, erotica, or pictures of naked people. And given the outpouring of support I got from some of my fans (It blows my mind that I have fans.), it’s pretty clear that folks still want to see the goodies I find online.

So I’ll put ‘em here.

BUT, there’s a condition.

I’’m going to make it clear when the content of a post is explicit. It’ll carry a category of EROTICA and the image(s) will be underneath a click through link (just like the one below).

Free to be me, and if someone doesn’t want to see something, then they don’t have to. But if you do want to see some sexy image goodness, just click the link. Simple huh?

Read the rest of this entry →

Hi.

I’m gonna keep this short because it’s kind of a sordid story and, frankly, I’m still a little hurt about it. If you tried to check out my adult entertainment blog, you’ll find it’s gone and that you got redirected here. See, over the weekend I received a phone call from someone who was working on setting up a library at a school. I was working at the time and the person wanted to know if there was anyone there who knew anything about FLOSS library software and integrated library systems (ILS). They were setting up a library at a school and, from what I gathered, they needed tech help.

As it turns out, I do know something about FLOSS ILS packages. I told them about things like Koha, OpenBiblio, and XAMPP. Sure, it’s possible to set up a library using free software. I’m working with another school library to do that right now. No you don’t need an expert cataloguer because there’s this thing called copy cataloguing, and so on.

After a bit of conversation, I was offered a spot on their committee and I was happy and excited to help. It was a volunteer position but you have to realize, I think setting up a library is fun, especially the tech part of it.

Around two hours later the offer was retracted because the person discovered that I have an adult entertainment blog. Apparently they were worried about my connection to the blog and how it might tarnish the image of the school.

Whether or not I agree with that idea isn’t important. The only thing that matters to me is that I couldn’t help some kids get a library because of that blog. Even though they knew quite a bit about my talents, skill set, and of my love of libraries, none of that mattered because I had a blog featuring nude people.

So I took it down. I don’t know if I’ll ever get another phone call from another school, but if I do at least a stupid blog won’t stop me from helping some kids set up a library.

So it’s been a while since I last posted directly to this blog. I’ve been busy as hell working on several projects including drawing, writing, musical, and even performance related stuff. So while I direct the occasional post via RSS, I’ve just kinda been sitting on my ass and not doing too much.

Meanwhile I’ve continued collecting stuff for the blog like images, content, and the like. So I’m going to start tossing them this way.

I’m an image junky and I have been since the early 90s. Back then I had just gotten my first PC, a Packard Bell 386sx/33. Coming from a Commodore 64, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it or how it worked. Where was the BASIC compiler? DOS? Vas is DOS? Windows three point what?

So a very knowledgeable friend showed me the ropes and gave me some software to do different things, software like CSHOW.EXE, or CompuShow. CompuShow was a DOS based image viewing programme. With that I was introduced to files ending in .GIF or .JPG.

And I’ve been looking at and hunting for images ever since.

I’ve been fiddling around with different methods of placing galleries here on my blog. It’s not as easy as you’d imagine because I’m picky as hell. I wanted something that looked decent, something that didn’t look like a table layout. I wanted something that looked clean, polished, and well designed.

Naturally I found something that looks like Apple kicked it out.

Now that I’ve got this thing going, I want to start posting some images here every so often. Sometimes they may have a theme, but most of the time, they’re just as random an assortment as my travels across the world wide web. I’ll also gather an archive of them on a separate page, so they’re there without too much trouble or searching.

Right, let’s get started:

Yes I’m still around and I have a few library things to write about. I’ve been working pretty hard over the holidays on a few different projects involving things like the library band, my show, a new upcoming show, and musical projects.

Believe me, this blog isn’t as dark as it seems. I hope to have something useful on here later today!

Hey! I can post to my blog from my iPod Touch. This has distinct possibilities.

I’m a huge geek and computer nerd. I think that surprises no one. And if it does, well, please form a line to the left and we’ll get acquainted.

So I’m active online and I’m active in many places online. I have this blog, my adult blog, my Twitter stream, and on and on and on. Recently I’ve been looking for a way to put those into one place using a method that all the cool kids call “lifestreaming.” Basically a lifestream is a snapshot of everything you’re doing online, or almost everything. It’s a place where a person can go and see what you’ve been up to in a very compact way. In other words, one could go there and see my tweets on Twitter, my photo uploads on Flickr and Twitpic, my posts from all my blogs, the latest episodes of my show, the latest videos of the library band I’m a part of, and whatever else.

So with a little WordPress magic, a couple plug-ins, some RSS feeding, and only a tiny amount of swearing, I set up a lifestream project. I call it Faceless Lifestreaming and it captures almost everything I do online. If there’s something I’ve forgotten, I’ll add it in later, but right now it’s got a lotta stuff there just from the initial importation of the RSS feeds from the various sites I use. I’ll never post anything there by hand, or if I do, it’ll be incredibly rare. The entire point is that it’ll maintain itself, doing what it does to capture my life online.

Feel free to check it out and see what a perverted library nerd with a healthy interest in science and history gets up to in his online time. Over the next couple days I may do some tweaking with it, but other than that, I should be able to leave it alone and have it do its job.

Some of you may remember that I created, write, and narrate a podcast called Hyperlinked History. It’s done pretty well, especially when one considers that it’s basically a radio show about history.

Well, when I first started out with this idea, I wanted to make Hyperlinked History a full show, like an online TV programme. At the time (a year ago) that just wasn’t feasible. I lacked equipment and I lacked skills. So I read up, studied, learned a few things, and now I think I’m ready to give this thing a shot. I have a new website specifically for the show and I’ve already uploaded the opening credits as a sort of teaser for the whole thing.

Episode 01 should go online sometime around the end of August, so stay tuned!

Hi. I have a Question. Here he is.

But I have another for you too, so read on.

So I’ve had this feeling of nostalgia recently. I’ve been thinking about life back in the day (the early 90s in this case) and my old BBS and those of my friends. I was thinking about setting one up here. Not a WWIV BBS, mind you, though I suppose I can do that. Still, I’ve used a WWIV online BBS recently and let’s just say that, while I have a lotta love for that software, there’s no reason to sledgehammer a square peg into a round hole.

WWIV wasn’t created with the internet in mind, and thus it’s really kind of crap on the internet. But there are plenty of programmes that work just fine for this kind of thing.

So, I have a question for those out there who tune in here to read my prattling on. If I set up a BBS/forum thing here, would you bother checking it out? I’ve got a little survey on Survey Monkey to collect answers and I’ll let the survey run for a few days and see what’s said. If I get a positive response, I’ll set up a nifty BBS/forum thing here for y’all to come play at. If folks won’t bother checking it out, then I won’t bother wasting my time, or your time, with the thing.

So take the survey and let me know. It’s just one question so it’s pretty quick.

Thanks!

So the WordPress directory that holds my blog? I, um, accidentally deleted it.

Yeah, I’m a fuckin’ idiot. I was using a graphical FTP programme (FireFTP actually. It’s one helluva plugin for Firefox and a really good FTP client. It works even better if you’re not a fuckin’ idiot.) and I meant to delete the directory listed above the WordPress directory.

Now, GoDaddy can restore it back to new… for a small fee of US$150.

Um, no thanks. I love my blog, but it ain’t with $50, let alone $150.

So for the next few days you might see some changes here and there, and a few old posts, as I work on rebuilding this sucker. Really, I don’t mind. The initial shock sucked, but this gives me a chance to do a few things I wanted to do anyway.

For those who do the blogging thing, might I recommend Windows Live Writer? See, this is an instance where Microsoft screwed up and made something good and useful. Live Writer is a blogging client that connects to Live Spaces, Blogger, WordPress, and other accounts. It fairly rocks but today’s saving grace is that it archives you old posts on your computer. So I didn’t have to rewrite anything. I did have to go fetch images again, but that wasn’t hard.