Are you who Google thinks you are?

So in reading my news feed from Business Insider today, I found out that Google allows you to see the demographics that it gathers about you based on your browsing and search habits. If you are already signed into your Google account (and if you're reading this off my Google+, you are), click this link to go straight to it.

There's also a video explanation of this works, and what it doesn't collect in order to discover this information. (Basically, the "Ads by Google" that you see on other websites registers the category for the website you're on.) The video also tells how to opt-out -- but the preferences and opt-out information is stored only on the local computer! So the presenter does warn you, if you clear your cookies, you will need to opt-out again.

Just because I haven't yet played with embedding videos, here it is.

Personally, I'm good with the interest-based ads, and it picks up the categories pretty well based on my work (IT Desktop support and Infosec interest) and play (games, role-playing games, acting).  They let you edit your preferences too. Which means I'm going to knock out that "Beauty & Fitness" and swap "Arts & Entertainment - Performing Arts - Opera" for "Arts & Entertainment - Performing Arts - Acting & Theatre".


And I guess I look young online as well as in real life:

This is totally going on my acting resume.

I remember Stage Management! Honest!

I actually do.  Of course, it's been a few years, but my memory lets me utilize old skills like they were just-learned. It's just that this is my first time in the wild as a full Stage Manager, and as the norm where "I haven't done this before," I have stage-fright.

One nice thing about being a SM at Theatre Suburbia is that the scope is a lot less than it was at the University of Houston. There's a lot of autonomy: Tech calls its own cues, costuming is a cooperative effort between the actor and the theatre's costumer, and the AD writes down all the blocking. :)

The other nice thing is that the board is very appreciative of anyone willing to stage-manage.  That helps a lot in quelling those butterflies in my stomach.  Not that I'll be given a free pass to mess up (which I won't), but they make me feel welcome in the position.  Mind, I don't know if that will change when I ask to rummage through props for do-fers for the play. :)

Last night's rehearsal went pretty well. Play On! has a play-within-a-play, Murder Most Foul. No, not that one. This one's by a local playwright who's willing to let the theatre players put it on for free.  Our director blocked out the "ideal" of Murder's third act, because the players proceed to butcher it with all their stops and starts. We've got some fun stuff here, and I might even have foley work backstage.  It might be tricky, though: we're talking about having the set somewhat open so the audience can see some of the backstage hijinks.  I don't yet know if that means we'll have a back wall to hide the real backstage or not.  I actually imagine we will;  the current set has one built (from Dear Santa and Deadly Murder.)

On Midgarn's Tales

Or, what do I want out of my GI Joe diorama-comic fan fiction site?

I dunno. Using the basic Blogger blog may work for Midgarn's Tales, but I don't think it will ultimately work out.  It shows the pictures sequentially, and I can group them all together one post per comic, but I can foresee that in short order, the site will get hugely cluttered.  Plus, I use a lot of custom figures for the work that sometimes are in gear that are not the most iconic version of the character.

That's Airtight? Where's all the yellow?

On my old site, I created a Dossier page that would bring up all the basic info about the character, my best guesses as to the real-life MOS / ratings for that character, plus any other deviations I made from the canon regarding the person. We'll use Airtight as the example again:

(OK, really. The mouse is down here. Why does the newly-inserted pic appear at the top? I'll just switch to HTML, cut and paste the div.. Hah. Showed you, interface!)

So, yeah, about 100 Joes have a dossier, with the Cobras and other characters to follow. I'd like to have that again, and I really don't see an elegant way to do that in the blog.

I'd also like to have a person click on a particular "issue" (these are comics after all), and then flip through it like a gallery. You know the kind that gray out the page, and have left and right arrows to move fore and back through the pages pictures?  A blog post gives me that 'here's the link to the new issue' requirement, but the page seems to show every recent post, so it's a stream of picture after picture.

Why not just put up the old page? Because it was clunky. And old. I wrote it up in ~2004, but I used 1990 html technology -- it used FRAMES to navigate.  Shudder.  It also wasn't the easiest thing to point readers to the newest issue. The home page of my site was elegant: www . midgarnstales . info .  But for a given comic? That / Issues / bpscene1.htm . Granted, who looks at the gibberish up in the URL field any more? (Hackers.)  But still, I'd kinda like it to be elegant. Easy to maneuver, and easy to provide just an issue link.

And that dossier? a hundred separate html pages. At the time, I didn't know the first thing about SQL.  Now, I don't know the second thing about SQL, but I do know the very basics about creating a database.  I may not yet know how to create a field that can have 0-x entries in it (like that "Vehicle Qual" field in the Airtight "record" above), but it can't be that hard!

Finally, there's the gravy: the visual look. I mentioned having the issues come up one panel at a time. I'd love to have a frame around the main screen, maybe like the PIT's main screen a la the Sunbow cartoons, or something akin to GI Joe #1, where we saw the small monitors with the Joes' dossiers beneath a larger screen. The small monitors would be the controls: "Dossier, Comics, Minis, etc" for the main menu would switch to say "Joes, Cobras, Noks, Red Shadows, etc" if Dossier was pressed, would switch to "First, Previous, Dogfight, Duke, Dusty, Faces, Falcon, Fast Draw, Next, Last" or something similar. Clicking on the name would then change the main screen to the dossier.  A similar path for the comics.

Anyhow, I'm eager to hear suggestions on what may already be out there to do what I want.

Is this thing on?

This turns out to be a treatise on how to experiment and find the way to make something work. Welcome to my diagnosis process.

So, I go and connect my new Blogger blog here to Klout. Seems pretty easy: I click Connect, it bumps me to my Google Accounts page asking to confirm. I confirm, and the Blogger icon now lights up under my name.

You do know that you can get to any of my connected networks in Klout by clicking the network icon under my name, right? Plus, I do so love the Windows 7 Snipping tool. :) Okay, tangent over.

Thing is, you click on that Blogger icon and get a fail page:

I click the link, it informs me that I'm using my Google profile, and I should change it there. Again with handy links, but now, I'm suddenly editing my Google+ profile. I go to the Gear > Settings > Profile and Privacy > Sign into Dashboard, log in, scroll down to Blogger, and "Edit Blogger Profile".

Guess where that takes me?

Yep, step 3 again. Experiment time.  I delve back into the Profile FAQ and revert to just a Blogger profile. I unlink, relink in Klout and voila, my blogs appear! Along with an unfinished profile. Well. We don't want that!  So I return once again to the Profile FAQ, connect my Blogger to my Google+, and hit the trigger.  Not only do I get the profile filled in, but I also get a page prompting me to add my blogs to my Google+ profile page as "Contributor to:" ... Aha! The Blogger icon in Klout brings me to my Google+ profile, where the blogs are listed. (Which in hindsight is totally superfluous, but I suppose at one time, Blogger was not Google, so there you go.)

So, the trick is to add your blogs to your Google+ page. "How do you do that? That 'Add custom link' doesn't tell me squat." Here's a final snippet so you can see what a completed link looks like:

By the way, that X doesn't quit the editing for that link, that deletes it. 

Anyhow, it would be nice if the runaround gets fixed, a note that says, "Hey dummy, just add your blog here!" go into the Google+ blog area, or a simple checkmark option in the Blog settings to "add this to my Google+ profile". 

Eh, they're visible now. Is this thing on?

BoB

Influence, Wahooly, and XeeMe

I'm experimenting with my influence, getting more involved with stuff, and maybe, just maybe, organizing the disparate segments of my life. (What, acting and tech support and family and gaming don't just mesh together? :) )

Through Klout I came into a group of fantastic networkers in the inaugural group at Wahooly.  It's from them that I am learning a lot more about networking.  

Such as this item: A Social Network congregate profile service called XeeMe.  Bob's XeeMe


The Infosec guy in me says "don't use their password storage feature", and they do warn against filling in passwords for those who are wary.  

At first glance, the interface to add new contacts doesn't impress me either. 

However, I like being able to point to one link and say, "Everything about me is here."  That's how I will use it: a central location for the pages that are already publicly visible.

And if you want to create your own congregate social network portal, feel free to use my referral link: http://xeeme.com?r=x0*p14BtEC5B

Who I Am

Hello everyone,

Here we are again: a first post in a new blog. You'd think for a person who likes to talk as much as I do, a blog would be a sure thing.  And yet, I've had a few starts - and mostly stops.  But, I'm game for another fresh start - and I want titles in my G+ stream posts - so here I am again.

(Scary, Blogger lets me have multiple blogs. Maybe /this/ is how I revive Midgarn's Dio-Stories: Tales of G.I. Joe...)

Ahem. Sorry, I tangented. I do that a lot.  It has to do with who I am. Who am I? So glad you asked.

I am a devoted, non-custodial parent to a pair of wonderful kids who's remarkably on good terms with his former wife. For the better part of ten years, I was also a marginally-effective house-husband, with best marks in cooking and chauffeuring, worst marks in cleaning.

I am a pretty remarkable IT tech support detective, able to divine swift, accurate diagnoses to most solutions and sympathize with my user base on their issues. I don't code, but I can debug code as well.

I am a classically-trained actor with the good fortune to return to the community theatre stage from a several-year hiatus.  During that hiatus, I channeled my theatre skills into the art of diorama comics and custom GI Joes.

I am the 'desktop support' guy of our local Information Security group, eager to learn and help out despite having only tangential experience (so far) with InfoSec.

I am a peace-time veteran. It's nothing really, compared to the men and women who served post-9/11.

I am a long-time roleplayer, from D&D to Champions to Rolemaster to IFGS to L5R to Rifts. From Bard's Tale to MUDs and MUSHes to Everquest to Star Wars Galaxies to DC Universe Online to Rift (no relation).

I am a former Legend of the Five Rings enthusiast stuck in the Shadowlands of Houston, who was a better Historian than a player. I still have a ton of cards, plus a history of L5R personalities in binders that really needs to find a new curator. (Who won't sell them for profit.)

I am an internet dino, though not of Surly Dino fame. I learned to write webpages on Notepad.

I am a social media dilettante who promotes both acting and infosec on Twitter, plays games and chats with high school-era friends on Facebook, advertises everywhere but private homes on Foursquare, keeps his library on Shelfari, collects stickers on GetGlue, and tests out other interesting sites.

I am a geek and a dork. I grew up on GI Joe, Ghostbusters, Star Wars, the Legion of Super-Heroes, TNG, Buckaroo Banzai, Mr. Rogers, the Muppets, Monty Python, Dr. Who, and Willy Wonka.

I am a Renaissance Man. I know a lot. I know a lot about a lot. I have a wealth of natural talent and a learning capacity steeper than some mountains.  I am by no means an expert on anything.

I am all too aware of the other person's opinion. I care, I worry, I guilt. I do not believe in pushing my belief onto another.

I disbelieve most superstitions, but am stunned by how well I match up to the stereotypical Pisces and how often my biorhythms match how I feel.

I share too much. (No, really?)

Anyway, that's an idea of the many facets of me, any of which may appear in my online presence, this blog, or others.