Welcome

For a number of years, I have had a vision of where I wanted this site’s design to head… Sadly, I haven’t managed yet to bring those ideas to fruition. So if you land here by following a link from another page, bear with me… It’s a work n progress. – Gary Boyd, Blue Ridge Dreamer

You know.. It’s been awhile since I wrote the words preceding these. And in the interim, I’ve tweaked the site layout.. WordPress has improved.. Some where along the way I quit worrying about monetizing the site and took all of the adds off. Occasionally I’d even remember to post something when I would run across an interesting story on the web. Not too often.. Life got in the way.

And a funny thing happened.. People came and read the posts.. Followed the links.. So I guess what I wanted to do all those years ago.. Kinda happened. And here we are 18 years later… Still going..

So… Thank You to all of y’all who come by. I hope you can find something here that informs you. You can follow me on Facebook.

May 7, 2023, Gary Boyd, Blue Ridge Dreamer

Once again I find myself in the middle of a major site redesign. The only difference this time is I have a few collaborators. In December 0f 2025 I discovered AI, initially I was using it to restore the old photo scans I have acquired over a longer period of time than I like to think about. Then I discovered what fun it was to utilize AI to totally manipulate images into something that never existed.

After a month or so of playing around with images I decided to try real AI for research which led me to Gemini 3. Once I understood the fundamentals I dived in and had it research for articles on this site. I used it to do deep research for the series I published last month, The Appalachian Odyssey. Once that project was put to bed, I kept experimenting. And in the process I discovered NotebookLM. Oh my god… Where was this technology when I was in school? Oh yea, it was about 50 years in the future.

And that led to either the dumbest thing I have ever done… or one of the most inspired. I had Gemini 3 do a “Deep Dive” research into all three of my websites as a single entity. After a week of going back and forth on direction and concept of where the websites were going, we came up with a plan. And so, once again I find myself mucking around under the proverbial hood trying to fix things I/We mucked up in the process trying to give the three sites a consistent look and feel.

So, starting in Maine and working south down the mountains, I have been slowly reworking each state site and adding interactive landing pages (thanks Gemini 3). I’ve also discovered the Audio Reports. They are basically a Podcast based on the research that’s been done for the page. I really like how they can interconnect thing I would never realize would ar could be connected.

And along the way as a subject grabs my attention I turn my team loose to do a thorough dive out on the internets to research a subject. Then I throw everything they dig up into a notebook to percolate a while. Once brewed an article probably appears for your perusal.

After the fun I had on The Appalachian Odyssey doing genealogical research for the articles, I have been taking a break each day to do a post on my ancestors. Sadly we are a long way from having all of the research data on line, but every year brings more and more. And the AI team knows how to track it all down in a frighteningly competent manner. It’s not just searching for one person or one family… It’s following the groups of families that migrated across America together.

I think I have learned more in the past week about the states I have been researching for almost twenty years than I ever did before… And that’s just from reading the summary reports as I go along for the ride.

So anyway, I’m wearing both of my hats for the time being… I’m the Blue Ridge Dreamer and the Coordinator of Synchronicity for (I hope quite) awhile. – Gary Wayne Boyd, February 10, 2026