The Second Moon of Adonis

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

No, it’s not a real ad (and there’s a decent chance it won’t show up here since it’s been pulled from YouTube at least once), but I loved it anyway.

Update: Found a working copy elsewhere.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

Fire Eagle is Yahoo’s new geolocation service, and until today was available to a handful of developers who had managed to wrangle an invitation.

Fire Eagle is primarily intended to provide a standard way for other applications to store and retrieve data about where you are at any particular time. For example, you may have an application on your cell phone that sends GPS coordinates to Fire Eagle, where they can then be retrieved by another application that can inform you about places in the area that may be of interest to you. Yet another application may check your location against that of your friends, and let you know who’s nearby and what they’re up to.

I allow Fire Eagle to tell WikiNear exactly where I am at any time so that it can tell me about points of interest on the street I’m walking down when I access it from my cell phone’s browser, but I only let the location-based social network/Yelp hybrid Rummble to access the zip code I’m currently traveling through. Each application that access your location data can have different privacy settings, and you can choose to allow one application to know your exact street address, while only allowing another to know what country you’re in.

As an example of the sort of thing that can be done with a common access point for location data, you may have noticed a box that appeared in the upper right of these pages that showed where I was at any particular moment (it’s been temporarily removed due to an incompatibility with the version of WordPress I run here, but I’m sure it’ll be back in some form). At various times I may have Navizon determine where I am using information about the Wi-Fi hotspots nearby, or I may have checked in at the office using the Twitter-like Brightkite. These are two very different applications, but they share the ability to store data about my location in Fire Eagle’s databases. Once one of those applications had stored where I was at Fire Eagle, another applet could access that data and display my current city, state and zip code on my blog.

Fire Eagle’s just getting started, but already there are several interesting applications listed in their gallery that support the platform, and I’m sure many more are on the way.

Update:

Used a few elements of Klaus Komenda’s “I Am Here” Wordpress plug-in with a little code of my own, and an improved version of the “Where Am I?” box in the upper right corner is back.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

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Where does the tongue go? In the front or the back?

If you’ve got a Facebook account, Jimmie really wants to know. I’m not sure what that says about him, but he does.

He’s got a poll up here. At the time of this posting front and back are a 50/50 toss-up, with “I put my bare ass right on the seat” a close second.

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An internet acquaintance of mine has a video log over at YouTube, and I highly recommend it. He’s charming, cute as hell, subtly geeky, and has a rotten, evil soul.

Check it out: The James D Show.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

This is a friend of a friend… I can’t confirm it myself, but I’ve been told he’s worth the price of admission, so to speak:

Cam Chat with me Because I’m Poor!

Updated: “Girls only, sorry dudes!”

Bummer.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

Got a momentary chuckle from some spam I received a few minutes ago trying to sell me a bogus diploma, and I didn’t even have to open it to get to the funny part:

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• Oddcast TTS Demo
  Really handy when you need to know how to pronounce things like “What are you wearing?” in Portuguese, Greek or Swedish.
  (tags: language speech reference)
• Planet Adonis
  My blog aggregator.
  (tags: me blog)
• GayGamer.net
  Queer geeks, video games, and a very active forum. The Gay Gamer of the Week is even occasionally yummy, much to my surprise and delight.
  (tags: gay gaming queer games news)

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

I don’t know if it’s a sign of anything or not, but I’m feeling vaguely self-congratulatory that I start my mornings lately with the batch of crap the spam filters here caught the night before. It’s not so much that it’s a huge chore to get rid of it, but it is a sign that at least the spambots know where I am. I’m not too proud to count them as my fans.

So far I’ve been seeing almost exclusively online-casino spam, but I figure it’s just a matter of time before I hit the big time and the Viagra and stock-scam bots start dropping by, too. Then it’ll be a party.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

After having done some complaining about the perils of meeting people online, I couldn’t help thinking of the upside. It probably wouldn’t kill me to look on the positive side of something, anyway, after all the grumbling I’ve been doing around this place lately.

If you’re as mental a person as I am, there are few methods better for weeding out the people you like from the ones you don’t than a little online back-and-forth. If a hot body and good hair aren’t as high on your list of priorities as literacy and a sense of humor, a little written correspondence can go a long way toward letting you know if a person is up to your standards or not.

I’ll admit that bad spelling and grammar are a huge turn-off for me. I’ll cut non-English speakers a lot of slack, since the Internet’s a global thing, and I’m sure I’m worse in their languages than they are in mine. If you’re a native English speaker and can’t write in sentences, though, I’m really not interested. There are a few exceptions to that rule, but you’re going to have to look pretty damn good, and be able to prove it, before I’ll let you slide. Hey, I am a guy. Be glad I at least pretend to have standards.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

A good number of the websites I frequent allow you to have a profile associated with your account. Every time I have to create one of those, I have a hell of a time. I’m not sure if it’s that I’m bad at talking about myself, that I’m too complicated to boil myself down to a short summary, or that I just don’t understand myself well enough to try to describe who I am to other people.

It doesn’t help that I’m a mess of contradictions. I’m an incurable optimist, but something of a misanthrope: I tend to think that people have great intentions, but will always find a way to fuck things up. I’m cheerful, friendly, and sympathetic, but you’ll probably never know if I don’t like you. Either way I’ll act like your best buddy, but if you’ve gotten on my bad side I won’t hesitate to tell anyone out of your earshot what a total prick I think you are.

I’m insecure about my work, but I’m very good at what I do. I’m very intelligent, but I’m constantly worried I’ll say something that makes me look like an idiot. I’m a very good typist, but only use four fingers.

I love animals, but I hate cats. I’m ambivalent about babies, but I’ve been looking into adopting one — and I’m sure that if I do I’ll screw up the poor kid for the rest of his or her life.

I’m already feeling like I’ve spent too much time here talking about myself, but I can’t help thinking I’ve left out all the important stuff. Like that I’m one of the few gay men who can’t stand Madonna, dances like a retard, and hates shopping. I can, however, replace a car’s transmission without help. I enjoy getting dirty, but I throw like a girl. I dye my hair regularly to hide the gray, but often won’t shave the grayer stubble off my face for a week or more at a time.

See? Too damned long already, and I was getting started.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

Anyone who’s been online for any length of time probably has a few people he knows, and possibly some he considers friends, who he’s never met.

That’s one of the great things about the ‘net: It brings people into contact with other people who they’d never meet otherwise. They can separated geographically, socially, or for any number of other reasons, but even the other side of the world is just a few hops and a couple hundred milliseconds away over TCP/IP.

I’ve had a few “Internet friends” over the years. Some of them have become co-workers, some have ended up in my bed, and others have become very close friends in real life. Some have disappeared from my life, and some have remained bits out there in the ether, even some of the ones I’ve talked to online regularly for over a decade.

Then there’s the other group: The people I never realized I couldn’t stand. People who I found a hell of a lot more endearing online than when I had them standing right in front of me. Some personality traits just don’t translate well into ASCII, and real life has a way of changing someone you find amusing into someone who grates on your nerves. Maybe it’s a voice. Maybe it’s a nervous habit. Whatever it is, it’s something you can’t detect online, but it’s enough to destroy a perfectly good relationship once you know it’s there.

I hate when that happens.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.

I’ve been told I can be a little obsessive. I suppose there is some truth to that; when I find something I like, I tend to latch onto it pretty hard.

My latest Internet obsession is Last.fm, a site that tracks what kind of music you listen to, and recommends other music you might like. It’s also a social network, with groups that bring together people with similar interests (musical and otherwise), and allows you to do things like recommend music to other users, stream MP3s you or other users have been listening to, and a whole lot of other music-related stuff.

It’s been sucking up a lot of my time lately. I’ve been digging through the site discovering new bands that are popular with people who like the same kind of music I like. I’ve started up a group for Queer Rockers that’s just starting to gain some momentum. I’ve (virtually) met quite a few people with whom I’ve had countless conversations, about music and just about everything else.

I’m finding it really addictive. Look me up if you drop by. You’ll find me as IMTrick there. Just don’t give me any crap if you find out I’ve been listening to a lot of Tom Jones again lately.

Published at blog.Adonis.net. You can comment here or there.