My big ol' head.

The Indiana Jones School of Management

Mon 31 Mar 2008

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Sun 30 Mar 2008

WordPress 2.5 - The Best WP Yet

Filed under: — Geof F. Morris @ 20:22
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For my money, WordPress 2.5 is the best WP version yet. [Yes, one hopes that software would get better as it matures; this is not, of course, always the case.] A lot of the things that can be automated have been, and the UI has been thoughtfully re-designed. As always, there are some small things that bug me, but I’m gonna see if those complaints hold up over time.

I’m hoping that having a new toy to play with is going to cause me to write more. I’m about ready to write about some of the things I haven’t been writing about lately, but I guess I need to hold off a bit more. Anyway… thanks to the WP guys. [And yes, I waited to post this until all the WP installs that I control on the box were upgraded. I think the count's now about 85. Yeesh.]

Geof’s New Music: 30 Mar - Apr 5 2008

Filed under: — Geof F. Morris @ 05:55
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The new label releases this week are things I’d always meant to get but just hadn’t … probably because I needed some downtime to get them.

Last week:

links for 2008-03-30

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Sat 29 Mar 2008

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Wed 26 Mar 2008

Gas Prices and Fisking

Filed under: — Geof F. Morris @ 18:02
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Every so often, a piece I wrote in 2005 about gas prices gets people leaving snide comments. I thought I’d fisk today’s, ’cause I’m feelin’ snarky.

Lets see we can go to mars. We can build a space station. You kind of get the idea.

Sure do. I work in manned spaceflight. None of this means anything, not even considering that the International Space Station is managed out of Houston, a notable oil city. Your point?

MB comes out with a car that is the size of my shoe and it only gets 35miles per gal. So why can’t we make a car that get 60 to 70 miles per gallon??? I have a 2 seater sports car that has a supper charger on it and I get 29MPG on the highway.

None of that is internally consistent. I drive a Subaru Impreza WRX wagon, and not only does it drink 93 octane, but being turbo-charged and all-wheel drive means that it’s lucky to get 27mpg on the interstate. Does it suck to fill that up at $45 a tankful? Yeah, it does. I would love it if 93 octane were still $1.45 a gallon. That would rule. But it’s not.

You can kind of fill in the blanks. I have this feeling the good old American public is getting the screw job. I don’t hear anyone talking about this on the campaign trail. But we know big oil is a big backer of our dear legislators.

Still lost as to what the point is here. And frankly, I do hear folks talk about the economy on the campaign trail—and I saw campaign footage of Hillary Clinton at a gas station. So it’s being discussed. And sure, oil companies donate lots of money to politicians—same as every large corporate strata in this country. I don’t like any of that, but I don’t see it getting fixed anytime soon.

And yeah, this is a painful cost increase to working folks. But here’s the perfect storm that’s happened, as I see it:

  • Relative economic prosperity and low gas prices in the 1990s finished the drive away from the fuel-efficient cars we saw in the latter half of the 1970s and early 1980s. Why were those cars built then fuel-efficient? Gas crises in the 1970s the last time oil prices were up this high [indexed to inflation, that is]. When oil was below $20 a barrel, the American dream of driving a bad-ass vehicle came back in vogue—you could fill up that Ford Explorer for less than the cost of steak dinner.
  • American fiscal policy has radically weakened the dollar. Even if oil was no more expensive to get out of the ground or no more sought on the market, the very fact that oil commodities are sold in dollars means that, as the dollar weakens, the price of oil is commensurately going to rise. [In fact, it would be interesting to convert 2008 oil prices into 2006 dollars for shits and giggles.]
  • American foreign policy in stirring shit up in the Middle East has everyone worried that oil production in this country or that country could be cut off, which always drives scarcity.
  • More of the world is developing, and let’s be honest, powering with oil is damn easy—light it on fire, turn the heat energy into steam, and use the steam to drive a turbine.

I figure that the rise of hybrids and generally smaller and more fuel efficient cars—here comes my friend Stephen to talk about his Honda Fit, which is about the size of my WRX and probably has half the operating costs—will continue as long as oil prices are high. I’d love to see CAFE—Corporate Average Fuel Economy—standards pushed ever higher, because let’s be honest—we’ve not spurred automakers to be more efficient with market means. When we’re given the ability to be cheap and lazy about our energy use, we’ll become profligate. Only when it’s expensive do we worry about it.

We’re fighting human nature here, and fundamentally, I think that’s what government does. Some certainly disagree with me, but I think that’s what it is.

[Now let's see if linking to that old entry gets more comments with email addresses of "fuck@you.com", eh?]

Tue 25 Mar 2008

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Mon 24 Mar 2008

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Sun 23 Mar 2008

Geof’s New Music: 23-29 Mar 2008

Filed under: — Geof F. Morris @ 05:36
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This week sees a couple long-awaited studio releases for me: one that just hit the streets, and another that I just never got around to getting:

Last week:

  • Alli Rogers - You and the Evening Sky Alli Rogers’s You and the Evening Sky. Is it legal to say that you don’t like Don Chaffer’s production? [I kiddingly ask, but only because I have friends who are both fans and fellow musicians with the male half of Waterdeep, and well ... they all might string me up.] But I hear the production on “Carry a Light” and am … sorta turned off. But I guess I’m wrapped up in this visage of Alli as this guitar-bearing songstress … which she is, but that doesn’t stand up to being very interesting for 13 tracks on a CD, even for the best singer/songwriters. But it gets better from there; I really like what he does with the rest of the record. “At Sea” and “The Things We Can and Cannot Keep” are, for me, the highlights. Four stars.
  • 30 Mar 1996 [New York, NY, USA] concert bootleg of Elliott Smith. Admittedly, I’m blessed with the awesomeness that is the present era of concert bootlegging, but even for the era and technology, this is a pretty meh show. Two stars.
  • The Weepies - 20040918 - cover 18 Sep 2004 [North Olmsted, OH, USA] concert bootleg of The Weepies. Highly, highly recommended! Sounds fantastic, even for being a soundboard. [I typically find SBDs to be flat and lifeless.] Four-and-a-half stars.
  • Andrew Bird - 20070504 - cover 4 May 2007 [Portland, OR, USA] concert bootleg of Andrew Bird. Oh my, this recording’s terrible. This is only recommended for completionists. Two stars, barely.
  • Over the Rhine - 20070608 - cover 8 Jun 2007 [Nashville, TN, USA] concert bootleg of Over the Rhine. Noisy, indistinct, and overly bassy. One of these years, I’m gonna record them in that room and it’ll sound fantastic. Maybe I won’t have a terrible cough, either. Two-and-a-half stars.
  • 5 Oct 2007 [London, England] concert bootleg of Son Volt. What the heck? A Son Volt bootleg that doesn’t suck? No matter what you think of the Uncle Tupelo breakup, Jeff clearly got the support of the killer tapers. But this recording sparkles, and it’s done with binaurals, which impresses me even more. Four stars.
  • Wilco - 20080219 - cover 19 Feb 2008 [Chicago, IL, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco. Nels Cline’s solo during “Impossible Germany” never fails to make me smile. :) Another solid recording from the Riv residency. Four stars.

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Sat 22 Mar 2008

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Fri 21 Mar 2008

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Thu 20 Mar 2008

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Wed 19 Mar 2008

Seven Years of Todd Making I-jsm Jokes

Filed under: — Geof F. Morris @ 13:48

Holy crap, I’ve been blathering here for seven years.

Doesn’t seem that long.

links for 2008-03-19

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Tue 18 Mar 2008

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Mon 17 Mar 2008

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Sun 16 Mar 2008

Save the Fishes

Filed under: — Geof F. Morris @ 20:19



march16bennett14

Originally uploaded by verticalhouse

I aggregate all Flickr photos tagged with “Huntsville”, just because it’s fun to see how people see our fair city. [This does mean that I see photos from Texas and Ontario, but far less often than the city that put men on the moon.] There are times when I sometimes wonder why I do this.

Photos like these remind me that doing this is definitely worth doing. This is an absolute gem.

Geof’s New Music: 16-22 Mar 2008

Filed under: — Geof F. Morris @ 06:01
Tagged with: · · · · · · · · · · ·

No real intro this week. I’m spending time and energy this week getting a new hard drive on my new mini and getting all the music off of my old mini. Such are the joys of having a 200GB+ music collection…

Last week was very, very good to me:

  • Five O’Clock People - Temper Temper Five O’Clock People’s Temper Temper. Simply fantastic. I hadn’t been listening to the stuff on their MySpace, so I wasn’t prepared for the shift to a bit more of a modern rock sound [in spots], but … very nice. Four stars.
  • Led Zeppelin - Coda Led Zeppelin’s Coda. Okay, so we all know what this album is: an album put together by the remnants of Zep after David Bonham’s sad death. I … just kinda wish this hadn’t been made. :shrug: Two-and-a-half stars. I need to get Houses of the Holy so I can finish my tour through the LZ catalog on an up note.
  • 2 Mar 1992 [New Haven, CT, USA] concert bootleg of Uncle Tupelo. Two-and-a-half stars. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m burned out on Uncle Tupelo or if I’ve just been babied by superior bootlegging technology.
  • 11 Feb 2005 [Richmond, VA, USA] concert bootleg of Caedmon’s Call. It’s a soundboard, Danielle’s not there, and it sounds flat to me. It’s good, but this is one of those recordings that reminds me why I generally prefer AUDs to SBDs. [No, really, I do.] Three stars.
  • 14 Dec 2006 [Nashville, TN, USA] concert bootleg of Over the Rhine. It’s pretty meh. That was definitely not the best recording environment, nor the best recording setup. Two-and-a-half stars.
  • Sandra McCracken - 20070316 - cover 16 Mar 2007 [Nashville, TN, USA] concert bootleg of Sandra McCracken. As I listened to this one, I thought about two things: one, thanks to Stephen Lamb for babysitting my recorder that night so I could walk around and take photos all night, and two, man, do I wish that I’d had a bass roll-off for this show. If I had, it would be as good as I could get out of single-point stereo omnidirectional microphone. Three stars.
  • Wilco - 20080218 - cover 18 Feb 2008 [Chicago, IL, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco. Fan-fucking-tastic. That’s it. The second disc … my oh my. Four-and-a-half stars. This is why I prefer AUDs.

links for 2008-03-16

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Sat 15 Mar 2008

links for 2008-03-15

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