A man with the raw hunger of an addict
who's seen his last fix walks into an Internet
cafe. He starts a blog and learns a little bit
about HTML. The next thing you know he's
a property tycoon who owns more than
his fair share of cyberspace.
And all he needed was a place for his stuff. |  |
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| DORSEYLAND
Dorseyland is the mothership of all the blogs and webpages profiled here. As of January 2008 I'd made 424 posts on all kinds of people, events and ideas that I've found interesting or amusing. There are 11 categories but of course not everything fits into one.
A major category for me is Google Earth, my other hobby, and all the big Google Earth tours and geo-biographies I've posted there as "Dorseyland" are duplicated on Dorseyland the Blog with Google Earth imagery. A few of these have generated some of the more fascinating comments among the 432 this blog received in its first 25 months. One reader's observations on the post "Hank Williams' Last Ride" are particularly compelling. He was evidently an eyewitness to the reason it was Hank's last ride. |
My stuff seems to have expanded to fill the available space online.
When I established Dorseyland the Blog in November 2005 I was actually
convinced that the space available on the Internet to any
one individual was limited. I didn't know that the Web,
like the universe, just keeps on going.
It's certainly not my intention to try and fill it, but some days I do have difficulty
remembering just how big a chunk of the Web I own. Hence this page.
Below is a glimpse of Dorseyland's original look, with a black background and
pre-Samarkan-font title and, along the left side, a vertical strip of portraits
of some of the people who inspired me over the years. The strip is cut up and
remounted below right. If you don't recognise them all, see this page. |  |
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| THE DORSE REPORT
The Dorse Report came online purely on a whim in June 2008. I simply wondered whether the format of the popular Drudge Report news portal could be duplicated (quite easily, to no real surprise) and adapted as a catch-all site for my posts at Dorseyland and Dali House, as well as YouTube.
Once completed, I sat back and wondered if it would be at all feasible to update the links on any kind of regular basis. Given enough readers (a whole lot more than I have now), I might do it. But for now the page merely exists. |  | |
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| DALI HOUSE
Dali House opened for business at the same time as Dorseyland, in November 2005, because I'd also amassed at bunch of art stuff, too much artiness to accommodate on a general blog. A lot of it — images and text — was by or about Dali and there were a lot of optical illusions at the outset as well, so I combined images from the two collections to make a title graphic and the name "Dali House" seemed okay.
I've regretted the name choice since, although it does bring in a lot of Dali searchers from Google. In fact, whereas Dorseyland is lucky to get a handful of visitors each day, Dali House routinely gets more than a hundred. I keep trying to improve the navigation, but browsing through 416 posts (as of early January 2008) in two dozen primary categories is still not as easy as I'd like. Dali House's biggest achievement to date has been a biography of Salvador Dali transcribed from the Google Earth tour I made. |  |
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Dali House has its own back page, a sidebar to a post I did on Auguste Renoir. Again, I reckoned the story behind Renoir's painting "The Boating Party" deserved its own page. It was at this stage, though, that I realised I didn't need to be encumbered by the front-page template and could design an entirely separate webpage — or website — while still using Blogsome as a host. The only problem was that, because of my limited understanding of how CSS design works, I'd have to rely completely on HTML tables. I'm still getting used to these too, but the results have been pleasing, and neither Dali House nor Dorseyland has had
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Dali House flipped its lid in January 2008 — it got a new header, so below is the previous incarnation for nostalgia's sake, not the original — there have been several in the past two years. This one was based on the optical illusion below it, in which I inserted Uncle Sal's face, but of course, as soon as you turn it on an angle, the effect disappears.
So, back to the drawing board. |
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The way Dali House originally looked,
a nice clean design custom-made for
me by Shana, one of the moderators
of the Blogsome forum. |
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| THE BIRTHDAY BLOG
"Hey, It's Ae's Birthday" was a (cheap,
admittedly) gift to my wife on her
31st birthday in April 2006. It was a
collection of pictures of her
alongside "happy birthday
posts" that I'd solicited from
friends and family.
Since then it's become the birthday
scrapbook for the whole family, complete
with images from the Powerpoint
Presentations I've made for
our kids and Ae's sisters.
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| DORSEYLAND IN PHOTOS
Via Blogsome and the free photo-album program JAlbum, which is also excellent, my family photo archives are displayed from two webpages I created in August 2006. This is a private site, and the design is quite simple, representing my first attempt to move beyond the CSS templates at Blogsome.
The project survived the cataclysmic demise of Cabspace.com, my original online photo host, but of course its loss didn't hit me as hard as the many people who had entire, full-fledged websites rooted in Cabspace when it abruptly ceased to exist without warning. We all learned a major lesson there. I highly recommend Bravenet, which is now storing all my photos. | |
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THE BEGINNING AND THE END OF THE INTERNET
"The first page of the Internet" and "The last page on the Internet" were someone else's clever jokes. In April 2007 I fleshed them out with webpages of my own because I was learning more about HTML and wanted to see the coding in action.
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My "first page" is called "Welcome to Larry's Internet Connection" and, suitably enough, has little going for it, apart from primordial hyperlinks and a search button. Al Gore came in handy.
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Far more interesting is my "last page", actually a "progress report" called "The Internet So Far". It has some basic HTML code gadgetry, plus the truly remarkable sliders that adjust the background colour, from a code written by
Ronald H Jankowsky.
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| THE DORSEYLAND SHOP
Every website tries to sell you crap, so Photoshop and I whipped up some T-shirts and other junk bearing the Dorseyland
and Dali House logos.
Utter nonsense, all of it. But what the hell.
The page is here.
Has anyone ever asked to buy anything?
Not a stitch.
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| MUSIC IN DORSEYLAND
The six very basic webpages I created in February and March 2007 really are "places for my stuff", specifically the list I toted around for decades of all the concerts I've attended. Now it's online and illustrated, staring with the main page featuring "History's 15 Greatest Concerts", or at least my choices, with links to my reviews of them on Dorseyland.
Then you can jump to the Master List of all the shows, the "next best 15", the "best of the rest", "all the rest" and a look at the concert venues.
I don't think I ever "pinged" these pages — advertised them — and yet people find their way to them. I've had a few appreciative comments from other music fans seeking information about shows I saw or other shows from the same era. | |
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| HOUDINI REAPPEARS
More stuff finds a place. "Houdini Reappears", launched in September 2007, is a classic example of how modest ideas can mushroom. I'd read books about Harry Houdini since I was a kid, and finally got around the tracking his life on Google Earth. I figured a biographical post there might involve his old house plus the scene of a bridge jump, and that would be it. Months later I'd documented almost every step the illusionist took.
That went on Google Earth and was supposed to go on Dorseyland, but it was massive and, worse, still developing, thanks to the 2007 request to exhume Houdini's remains. So a website was in order, and here Blogsome's blog format proved its worth, in a combination with an HTML-table title graphic and other smoke and mirrors. Other than Dorseyland, this is the site I like best. There are 71 posts and at least a few more will be added. Of visitors, though,
not a soul. It's spooky.
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| DORSEYLAND ON YOUTUBE
I never really cared for the idea of having videos embedded in my blogs and websites, but then I moshed up some music with the Houdini pictures I had and figured that YouTube might be an interesting addition after all. My Dorseyland on YouTube page is mostly devoted to home movies of the kids, which are only accessible to family and friends, but I'm planning to make more public clips that will be popping up among the webpages. | |
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| VINCENT HAS ARRIVED
Another Google Earth biography and another website, "Vincent Has Arrived" was necessitated more by a desire to give big play on the page to Van Gogh's paintings and the Google Earth images of the places in his life. It runs to four pages in all, and that only covers the artist's final 30 months. I have no plans to cover the rest — this job was big enough.
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| GEOGRAPHY
"Where the hell is it?" It's a secret, but we do have some maps here someplace. You get one when you're granted citizenship. This one below is the so-called "Red Herring Map" that everyone surmises about, of Portuguese origin, circa 1670, which uses a name from antiquity, "Dorsia". It's not going to help you. It doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone who lives here.
You can have a look at another map here, but it won't do you any good either.
Have you tried Wikipedia?
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| HISTORY
In the spring of 1545 the Portuguese ship Lors Verdinto (literally, Mudflats Are Adequate), bound for the Spice Islands but far off course as a result of rum and bad weather, mostly rum, ran aground on the eastern shore of the island that would one day be named Dorseyland. The seamen found the natives fond of eating psychotropic plants and obsequiously friendly as a result, and quickly repaired the Verdinto and moved on, but not before taking note of the island's location and the curious fact that everything there was completely the wrong colour. |  |
This geophysical oddity was lost in the rush to colonial supremacy, until 1858, when the British adventurer Sir Alfred St Kitt-Fetchit stumbled upon the allusion in the archives of the Royal Explorers Club. A visit was included in an expedition planned for the following year to the Bumbles, the celebrated archipelago that, at the time, was the only known habitat of the Bled Squalling Finch. (This outrageously animated crimson bird became extinct during the expedition,
in circumstances never fully explained.)
The smaller reconnaissance party that reached the island of "Dorsia", well to the northeast, in June 1859 found a pleasant climate, ample provisions for a colony if need be, and an indigenous population of about three score who were every bit as amiable as the Portuguese account had suggested. The people were indeed intoxicated during most waking hours, but the plant from which they drew their euphoria also rendered them invariably maudlin, and the English visitors
strove to avoid personal encounters, which involved repetitive conversation
and what St Kitt-Fetchit disdained as "a lot of weepy hugging".
This was, however, the very social trait that protected the islanders from any lasting foreign incursion. Imperial Japanese forces landed ashore on what they termed Itsubitsu in 1940 with an eye to establishing a beachhead for the coming Pacific War, but swiftly fled in horror. Nor did the United States Marines appreciate the form of "hospitality" meted out to them when they reconnoitered the island two years later, though a few of the Americans did express a wish
to stay on in what the European charts were now referring to as Dorseyland.
No immigration or co-mingling with the natives was possible until 1969, when a handful of young German backpackers arrived in a dinghy, having been expelled from their cruise ship. They'd survived a week on the open sea and, certainly more than any other strangers before them, appreciated the local welcome. To the Dorseyland culture they introduced the Western counterculture then simmering in a stew of rock music and casual drug use. Attuned by
previous habits, the two societies melded as one, even though the islanders never did
understand a word of German.
Other Western concepts, such as democracy, were clearly superfluous in this young nation-in-waiting, already something of a Utopia in the eyes of the more recent visitors. Nevertheless some social reorganising did take place, and in 1977 an election was held. There was only one citizen wishing to be a candidate, and he was chosen president by an overwhelming majority. That man was Paul Dorsey, his surname derived from the name of the country itself, as was every other resident's. The origins of the name "Dorsia" itself, whence "Dorseyland", remain obscure,
although there has been some academic research into the matter.
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| GOVERNMENT
Dorseyland is a defaultocracy. If the boss is asleep, you do it. The last time anyone managed to get something done, we found ourselves with this coat of arms. It's all explained here.
One of the president's old speeches is online,
but it's dreadfully boring. Don't say you
weren't warned.
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| | The House of Parliament. Not everyone who aspires to a seat can make it: it's quite a climb.
| A recent photo of the president in an uncharacteristically benevolent mood. | |
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| CLIMATE
It's hot. There are palm trees. There's no snow. Canada can have all the snow. We're way ahead on global warming, and loving every minute of it.
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| CURRENCY
We've saved up about US$350.
How about you? | |
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| IMMIGRATION
"Pick me! Pick me!"
Immigration is simple if you're smart. Come up with something very funny or otherwise pretty darned clever and we'll find a place for you. The population is only about a dozen;
we need servants.
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| TOURISM
We concocted all the photos in the travel
brochures using Terragen, so they're utter
imagination. Use yours to envision what this country really looks like.
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CUSTOMS AND CURIOSITIES
Though the citizens of Dorseyland adhere to the Gregorian calendar, the New Year is traditionally greeted in late October, which for some reason lost to the ages inevitably brings significant change, usually but not always for the better. As depicted in this stone carving pictured here, dated to about AD 1100, celebrants still greet each other around this time by simultaneously patting their heads with one hand and moving the other in a circular motion over their tummies. This is a well-known gag elsewhere in the world, of course, but here a deeply spiritual expression of social solidarity ("I share your world") and, perhaps, hunger.
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| Each spring, every citizen is required to enlist in the National Air Force for at least one month. The timeframe is too limited to allow for everyone to become a qualified pilot, but by the end of the month the rookies' abilities are adequate for an impressive aerial display against the April full moon. These demonstrations rely more on launches than actual flying, of course. Enlistees who opt to stay on in the force can earn pilots' wings with Softland, the national airline, based at Amelia Earhart International Airport, which was founded in 1937 by the famous American aviatrix, who lives in Dorseyland to this day.
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WILDLIFE: Dorseyland is inhabited by a wide range of charming flora and fauna, including the Livid Tree Frog (Joe) and his pal, a common snail named Maurice, and is visited by many strange creatures on wings and any number of legs, of which some (the creatures, not the legs) are profiled here. |
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The National Animal, however, is the indigenous Silly Rollerbug, a mere six centimetres in length and commonly encountered in restaurant buffets, often too late to be of any scientific value. |
RECREATION: The National Sport of Dorseyland is the computer word game Bookworm, which is destined become an Olympic event in the
near future. Hopes are high for a medal. Many Dorseylanders are also dead keen on tennis,
but just try and get Roger Federer to
consider a visit. Not a chance!
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FREQUENTLY ASKED
QUESTIONS
QUESTION: You're kidding, right?
ANSWER: Probably.
QUESTION: Is there really an airline called Softland?
ANSWER: Yes. Here's a picture of one of the aircraft flying over the Pretty Good Canyon in southern Dorseyland. We prefer to use blimps because
the name is funny. Blimp.
QUESTION: How come it says "US Navy" on it?
ANSWER: Shut up.
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