Dickens of a Blog

Here we go. Here’s a decent “first real post” besides the classic “hello, world” type posts with with which blogs are stricken.

Every once in a while, I get into a mood for new music. It tends to be the kind of thing where I am beholden to The Algorithm™ to actually find anything. Bandcamp. Youtube. Maybe Google searches. A few other places.

One trick is to find a song/musician I liked. Search that/them. Look for other stuff recommended or discussed around them. Dip toes in. Keep going. Follow the trails. “Truffle hunting,” we sometimes called it while working at the library. Find a resource, see what it linked and cited, follow those and keep digging until you have a better scope.

Except, you know… The Algorithm™.

At any rate, one of those songs that I drummed up earlier this year while cruising through a mix of Durry’s build up to This Movie Sucked, trying to find new Japanese pop music, and trying to find new Belgian/French music (prior to the move) was Ghost and the King’s “Dreamin'” off their 2024 self-titled album.

I quite enjoyed it. Pleasant tune. Fair lyrics. I liked the set up of the video [including some very low budget Legend of Zelda cosplay]. I miss that personal vibe for Youtube. It feels like a passion project.

A handful of times since then I’d go back and listen to it. I even bought the album. I consider the album as a whole fair. “Dreamin'” is my still favorite song, but you can sample tracks “Don’t Often Sing the Blues,” “Nightingale,” and “Give a Damn” if you want to get a vibe for the rest.

With my most recent rewatch, I saw that only had 250 views (on Youtube, not sure about Spotify since I don’t really hang out in the latter anymore unless someone insists it upon me). Which seems low. I wanted to go ahead and give a shout out. Left a comment. All in all just trying to poke The Algorithm™.

It is currently the last video they posted and I don’t much else about it or them. Their online presence seems to be mostly social media. I’ll leave that to others to share.

It is nice to talk to you again, Space Pilgrims.

The very last post I made to the old version of Dickens of a Blog was “I, This Thinking Thing”. That was August 2016. That means it has been over nine years since I’ve made a real post under that branding.

Today, I went through and created a new [possibly temporary] front page to the wyrmis.com site that looks a bit like this:

It mostly directs people to here, to The Doug Alone and to the [still very much so being finalized] Doug Talks Weird. Those two and this site are the new “Dougiverse” [pronounced “Dougie Verse”].

While Doug Alone has been brewing for over a year now, and Doug Talks Weird dates back to something like 2014 YouTube videos, I have spent a good amount of the past two weeks sorting and trying to rebuild my online identity so that I can start posting and sharing things without relying on “more traditional” social media. A strange sentence to type.

So Many Words to Say

I reached a point those nine years ago where I wanted to shut up for a minute. Then, around two-to-three-years later I kind of wanted to take it back. However, the time it would take to rescue the old blog — from younger-Doug’s rambles as much as younger-Doug’s hand-coded functions that had been left behind by something like ten years on a changing web — always made me shy away. I would post online here or there, share pictures here or there, but mostly I just withdrew.

However, I am at a time again where I would like to just have a spot to ramble. So this blog is here, now. It is not a replacement of the old one. It is more a continuation in a way that is a bit more responsive, a bit less intensive — I would sometimes have to go into the Python back-end of the old one and custom tweak things to keep posts working and had to remember dozens of custom commands, tools, and pieces — and hopefully a bit reader-friendly without so many baked-in Dougisms.

It Will Take Time

That being said, it will probably a week or two at least before the page even looks like it is going to look. I’m going to try and not sweat it too much.

As for today, I have just spent five hours getting everything set up to hit the point I can post this. I am an hour behind eating lunch and still need to do my daily work out and shower first. Well, maybe not first. I’ll figure it out.

Hopefully, I’ll see you soon.

–Doug Bolden