Planet GFMorris

Recently, I set up a blog at the main URL for geoF:stop media, LLC. I don’t allow comments there. Why?

1. Comments have a very low threshold for barriers to entry into discourse. This encourages thoughtless replies. I wanted thoughtful replies to what I’m doing.
2. I don’t have to handle comment spam. I mean, Akismet pretty well kills comment spam for me these days, but any time I spend fighting comment spam is time I’m not spending being creative [or, well, slacking off].
3. Relating to #1, I think comments get a lot of me-too-itis, and for the most part, that’s not worth it to me.

Let’s take a case study here on GFMorris.com: my entry about my iPhone music disappearing and showing up as other. This was a temporary problem for me, but it continues to be a problem for other users. [Whether they're lusers or people jailbreaking their phones, I don't know.] But read the comments for the entry: no one is addressing my original post at this point. Google is bringing people to my blog, which is nice and all, but the content that people care about is from other people, not me.

Is that a problem? Well, I think that it is, in a way. While I do use Alex King’s Comment License plugin to say, “Hey, I own your comments, thanks,” I have some problems with that, in a way. I use the license to say, “You’re licensing your thoughts to me,” mainly so I can say in kind, “I can police the comments if I choose, fella.” I’m not really doing it to aggregate knowledge. This place is about me spewing out ideas, not so much what you have to say about it.

I want to go back to my first point, though. It’s not so much that I don’t want to own the discourse [which, again, I don't], but I want a higher level of discourse. What comes to mind is my post about the recording rig I’m using here in early 2010. The following thoughts come to mind:

1. The initial comments I’m likely to get are “That’s cool” or “That sucks, go get better gear like X” comments. Neither of those are terribly productive.
2. Future comments are likely to be irrelevant, because my rig is continually changing. That post would’ve looked different six months ago [mainly, I was too stupid to have battery boxes in the rig, plus I didn't have all the cabling I do now for soundboard patching]. I’ve learned. I will continue to learn, and I will make followups.
3. I want to encourage discourse on what people do with their own rigs. I don’t want someone describing their budget rig in the comments on my blog—I want them writing their own posts. Is that too hard? With free blogging tools out there like WordPress.com, I don’t think that it’s too much to ask. Why do I want this? The comment box is awfully restrictive [as it has to be to avoid the comment spam problems---again, low thresholds and all that]. I want freedom of discourse.

That said, I’m going to leave the comments open on this post and see what I get. How very meta.

Not-so-embarrassing admission: my computers are named after Space Shuttle Orbiters. Currently, I have Discovery [my 24" iMac], Atlantis [my Mac mini media server], and Endeavour [my Macbook]. [Ignore, for a moment, that I have other, non-working Macs in the house. Okay? Okay.]

Well, to the two desktops, I slave hard drives. And, well, I’m a bit of a geek, so …

Discovery has:

• HAL 9000, the internal drive for the iMac.
• Discovery II, the every-night-cloned-by-SuperDuper! backup drive that ensures I’ll keep running if HAL 9000 goes, well, insane. “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer true …”
• TMA-1, which used to be my Time Machine drive until it became full and unwieldy. I recommend a TM drive be 2-2.5x of the base HDD, and I had only 1.5x with TMA-1. So she became the Moon, and now I have …
• TMA-2, TMA-1’s bigger cousin, a 1.5TB miniStack v3.

I also have a Drobo, which, if you’ve followed me on Twitter lately, has been giving me all sorts of hell. Something is amiss, and I’m sure that we’ll fix it. Anyhow, the drives used to be named lame names, until I came up with the following naming system:

• Io, for audio.
• Ganymede, for storage I let anyone use. [Well, not just anyone ... just the people I give a CrashPlan backup code to.]
• Europa, which doesn’t have any cool pun to it, but is used for storing my Aperture libraries.

It would be cool, you know, if that worked right now. But I’m not bitter.

What about Atlantis, you ask?

• Atlantis’s internal HDD is Plato.
• Atlantis’s backup HDD is Cave.
• Atlantis’s Drobo, which is working just fine right now, is “Drobo”. I should rename it Timaeus.

Endeavour gets backed up to an unnamed Time Machine. Lame, I know. I’m actually preparing to sell it to fund an iPad purchase, and also to prepare for the day when I can utilize corporate’s interest-free loan plan to buy a 27″ iMac, which will get the Endeavour name. I’m trying to keep myself to three main machines, because otherwise, this house would be full of computers and all my money would go to Cupertino.

[Shut up, all of you.]

2010-02-27: Harvest Hands, Nashville, TN, USA

2010-02-25: The Rutledge, Nashville, TN, USA

In case you’ve been wondering how I’ve been doing with my bipolar depression, here’s an update.

1. Starting Monday, I’ll be at the therapeutic dose of my mood stabilizer. Right now, I’m at 75% of that, and I feel great.
2. Do I still have good days and bad days? Sure, we all have them. But my bad days aren’t so bad, and my good days aren’t so good that I want to quit the drugs and go back to the highs of hypomania.
3. Speaking of those highs: what I’ve come to understand is that a lot of my negative self-image stems from the fact that the only times I’ve felt right the past few years have been when I’ve been hypomanic. Let’s be honest: I’m a high-functioning overachiever. My hypomania maximized my potential for awesome, which is why I liked it so much. But I’ll also be honest in that the highs are not worth the lows that I have. Not in the slightest. Further expanding on this point: I’m aware that people really value me, but I don’t feel that way. There are some roots to this problem, and I’m exploring them. It’s hard work, but it’s so necessary to getting my head straightened out.
4. Therapy continues to be good, if hard. [See above.] A lot of my actions in the last 20 years have been to insulate myself from pain. Fixing this is not unlike debriding a burn: painful, but necessary. I’m just starting to unlock things inside my head, and it’s so good.
5. I had to get biochemically balanced to make therapy be fully efficacious. This isn’t to say that the last eight months have been a waste, because they haven’t, but I’m feeling like I’m just now starting to get somewhere. We’ve been laying the foundation, and now it’s time to raise the walls. [Or, well, lower them, as it were.]

And if you didn’t care, well, you read this far anyway, eh?

In case you’ve been wondering how I’ve been doing with my bipolar depression, here’s an update.

1. Starting Monday, I’ll be at the therapeutic dose of my mood stabilizer. Right now, I’m at 75% of that, and I feel great.
2. Do I still have good days and bad days? Sure, we all have them. But my bad days aren’t so bad, and my good days aren’t so good that I want to quit the drugs and go back to the highs of hypomania.
3. Speaking of those highs: what I’ve come to understand is that a lot of my negative self-image stems from the fact that the only times I’ve felt right the past few years have been when I’ve been hypomanic. Let’s be honest: I’m a high-functioning overachiever. My hypomania maximized my potential for awesome, which is why I liked it so much. But I’ll also be honest in that the highs are not worth the lows that I have. Not in the slightest. Further expanding on this point: I’m aware that people really value me, but I don’t feel that way. There are some roots to this problem, and I’m exploring them. It’s hard work, but it’s so necessary to getting my head straightened out.
4. Therapy continues to be good, if hard. [See above.] A lot of my actions in the last 20 years have been to insulate myself from pain. Fixing this is not unlike debriding a burn: painful, but necessary. I’m just starting to unlock things inside my head, and it’s so good.
5. I had to get biochemically balanced to make therapy be fully efficacious. This isn’t to say that the last eight months have been a waste, because they haven’t, but I’m feeling like I’m just now starting to get somewhere. We’ve been laying the foundation, and now it’s time to raise the walls. [Or, well, lower them, as it were.]

And if you didn’t care, well, you read this far anyway, eh?

Posted: 6:20am
Whiskerino is about community, about brotherhood in a way. I think we all know and understand that. Last night, I had the wonderful opportunity to see Waterdeep play an acoustic show for their hardcore fans in Nashville. I knew the photo that I wanted for the final shot for Whiskerino: my friend John, who got me the ticket; me; and Don Chaffer of Waterdeep. John told Don about it, and he agreed to do it immediately. I think you'll agree that three bearded guys hugging each other at midnight after sharing a great and emotional night of music is a good reflection on Whiskerino. Speaking of community, I have registered Whiskeroonis.net. I'm going to build that to aggregate Flickr, Vimeo, Twitter, blogs, etc. into one way for us to keep up with each other. We'll leverage the Google Docs spreadsheet that @michaeljstraub has put together. That, and I've followed every Whiskerooni on the Twitter now. I love you all and wouldn't have missed the final Whiskerino for anything. @mackle, thank you for bringing together the awesome. URL: GFMorris.net Facebook: facebook.com/gfmorris Twitter: gfmorris Cell phone: 256-527-8152 Email: gfmorris AT gfmorris DOT net.

[ 40 comments ]

Posted: 12:10am
Sorry to go out-of-order here, but @jat wanted me to take a cutout of him, on a stick, to the Throwdown. @michaelterry took this shot of me and @knoxandy well ... you can see.

[ 19 comments ]

Posted: 3:54am
A tribute to my King Beard from 2007

[ 34 comments ]

Posted: 6:29am
A girthbute and a clamebute all in one!

[ 12 comments ]

The Golden Archipelago

Got the Deluxe edition, which is why I’m just now getting to this…

Posted: 7:14am
For comparison: Nov 3rd.

[ 31 comments ]

Roseland NYC Live

Posted: 8:50pm
Photo courtesy of @michaelterry. We were old and lame about the throwing of the down.

[ 17 comments ]

Posted: 4:26pm
Dear Whiskeroonis: I will be in and out of town this weekend, what with UAH hockey and all. [After the shooting, I can't leave my guys hanging. We need to be a community just as much a W'rino does.] But I will be there for as much of it as I can. Need to find me? Want to talk? Cell: 256-527-8152.

[ 13 comments ]