Planet GFMorris

Mandy has a great idea with having text box widgets be nameable inside of the WordPress widgets area. If you add a Title, yes, they get shown as “Text: My Ad”, but then that “My Ad” title also gets displayed to the user. That’s really not what you want.

Disclosure: Mandy contacted us at the WordPress HelpCenter about this idea, and I suggested that she post it on the Ideas Forum.

Related: As a “WordPress Professional” now, I expect I’ll blog here a bit more going forward.

Did you miss us? Our comments on the last post indicate that you did.

If you missed the emails from the band, Caedmon’s Call is releasing a new album later this year, titled Raising Up the Dead. We’re not sure what Cliff will call this one when you ask: “the brown one” or “the mustard yellow one”? Time will tell, we guess.

As we indicated back last August, this is a slightly smaller Caedmon’s Call than the previous iteration. Andy O publicly stated back then that he wouldn’t be a part of it, and while we here at [caedmonscall.net] will miss him, it’s not like he’s not making music anymore. Same with Josh Moore. But our reports were a bit off with regards to the bass support: rumors of Jeff Miller’s musical demise are greatly exaggerated. Our favorite bassist/programmer even wrote a song for Raising Up the Dead. We know this because Derek told us so, although we think he said that on the Twitters, too, so that’s probably not much of a scoop anymore.

We can tell you that we really like it. If you’re wanting to hear it, you can get two of the songs up on NoiseTrade: “Sometimes a Beggar” [the aforementioned Miller-penned tune] and “She”. We would argue that these are pretty representative of the sound of the album, so if you’ve been wondering what a 2010-era Caedmon’s Call record would sound like, well, get to listening.

Pre-sales for Raising Up the Dead start on August 2. We would like to thank the band for honoring the anniversary of our rumor about the band recording together again with the pre-sale date. They love us like that.

Our inside sources have indicated to us that there will be a few one-off tour dates for Raising Up the Dead, but no tour is planned as of yet. There will be release shows in Houston and Austin that will be announced at a later date.

Would you travel to Texas for a Caedmon’s Call release show? Let us know in the comments. Maybe we’ll work up getting a group rate on hotel rooms or something and panty raid Bryan’s room.

• 79 days until puck drop. #

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Just about six months out from making my diagnosis known, and a bit over four months from when I got to a therapeutic dose, and things are going really well. I’ve gone through a stressful period in the last few months: Dad’s job situation changing, then mine not long after that. Have there been absolutely awful days? Yes. There isn’t a hangover, though. I don’t go through a run of just really, really, really shitty days where I can’t drag my mood out of the gutter if my life depended on doing so. I also don’t go through a week or two or eight where I think I can just rule the world, sleep four hours a night, and generally be a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.

I just feel normal.

I’ll tell y’all, it’s really weird to feel normal after you’ve not been right for a decade or more. I’ve tried to figure out when the onset of my depression set in for me. I’ve just about pinpointed it to late in middle school or early in high school. I honestly don’t know how I got through high school and college like this, but I must admit that it was getting worse—way worse. That was the really bad thing about taking a while to get to a diagnosis—even though that is just going to happen, you know? I felt like we were doing a lot of the right things, and we were, but then it would go all apeshit and be even worse, and man … for a while there it just seemed like there was no fucking point to it all, really. Here I was, doing the right things, and it was getting worse? Really, God?

At this point, my blog is the only way that I know that the month of June 2009 exists in my world. I honestly don’t remember anything from about mid-May forward until early July. I don’t think I’m ready to face all that just yet. I realized a few weeks ago that I was anxious merely about going back down in that hole. Hell, it still scares me some as I’m sitting here thinking about it now. But it’s not anything that I can’t live through.

Here’s the main thing I don’t get about “reading electronically”: the enduring idea of the page. A page is a physical conception, and physical conceptions often lose their meaning in digital applications. I get that there’s satisfaction in flipping a page. I get that there’s some mental accomplishment in saying, “I’m on page 75 of 252.” But do we still need these constructs in a more digital reading medium? I argue that we don’t, and that this is a time to return back to the world of scrolling.

I don’t get why people hate the concept of scrolling. We’ve had scrolls as instruments of communicating the written word for at least as long as we’ve had pages as a construct. My favorite iAnything app right now is Instapaper, which doesn’t use the page metaphor at all. To the left is a screenshot from my iPhone of Instapaper. You can see that, on that page, I’m about 3/4 of the way through the document. I don’t need anything more than that. If I’m wondering, “Do I want to keep reading this?” I don’t have to check the page count — I just put a finger on the screen and can see where I am in the reading.

Some will argue that the page conception allows random access: “I know this is on page 74. I remember reading it there.” I will grant that, but in a digital medium, it’s not as if it’s difficult to search. You don’t need a codex to tell you that Le Châtelier’s principle is on page 96 of your chemistry text, when you can search for it just as easily.

Do we still need the page? I don’t think so, but I’m willing to listen to the page’s defenders.

---

In related news, the Stockholm Syndrome page is now public …

Dear Need for Speed Shift:

Thank you for breaking NHL 10‘s months-long stranglehold on my Xbox 360. That said, we may have to renegotiate our business arrangement, because you once again soaked up four hours of my weekend night.

Your time is coming, as NHL 11 will be released soon,
Geof

Dear AppleScript:

Thank you for being fun and helping me manage all my audio stuff on my Mac. Thank you for also letting me pretend that I can program things from time to time. That makes me happy, even if it’s an illusion.

My only college programming class was in FORTRAN 77,
Geof

Dear long-neglected duffle bag:

Thank you for your many years of service in stowing my stuff. As I told Mom on the phone, I believe I’ve now had you half my life. You’ve been pushed out of service by bigger and better luggage, but I realized yesterday afternoon that you would be the perfect size for a recording gear bag.

Sorry about all the heavy mic cables,
Geof

Dear Waterdeep:

Thank you for putting out Everyone’s Beautiful. That was a perfect drive-home record last night.

Dear Don Chaffer:

Thank you for the final poem you read both nights this weekend. It made heaven more real to me than it ever has before. Your words were simple, but the imagery brought it home.

At least I waited until I got off the Interstate last night to start crying while thinking about it,
Geof

Dear melatonin:

I gave you up a few years ago when, well, you were contraindicated for depression. But now that I’m not a classical depressive, I’m allowed to take you again.

That was the first good night of sleep in almost a month,
Geof

Dear Audacity:

Thank you for crashing my iMac on Sunday afternoon. I mean, really? This is one bad-ass computer, and yet you brought it down by being very un-Mac-like.

Something is fucked here, Dude,
Geof

Dear Red Toyota Prius, Virginia Plates “BAMA 13N”:

The sign says SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT for a reason, dammit. Your slightly-above-the-speed-limit-but-not-really-in-the-fast-lane-speed choked traffic for at least 15 miles. I kept wondering what asshole was slowing things down, and then I realized that it was you.

The Bear would have pulled over into the slow lane,
Geof

Dear Christiana:

Thank you for the fine selection of a brewpub for dinner. My bison burger was excellent, and hey, I love a good Belgian witbier.

I still can’t believe Don hated on Belgian beer with both of us sitting there,
Geof

Dear Chattanooga:

Thank you for being in the Eastern Time Zone but yet being less than two hours from home. Your time warp effectively means earlier shows for me, which allows me to get home before midnight.

I hope you enjoy living in the future,
Geof

Dear TVA Bellefonte:

Thanks for being my favorite driving-home-from-Chattanooga waypoint. I love the way that your blinkenlights play off of the sky for miles and miles before I reach Hollywood. I’m just sad that TVA can’t get you completed.

I still believe in our nuclear energy future,
Geof

Dear Check Engine Light:

I don’t believe you. Last time you came on, it was my fuel cap being slightly loose. Thought I tightened that good and hard last night when I filled up in Falkville, but maybe I didn’t. But really, couldn’t you have come on tomorrow when I wasn’t 45 miles from home?

Sad that Subaru makes the Check Engine light cancel the cruise control,
Geof

Dear law enforcement officer who passed me and blipped his lights just east of Paint Rock:

Dude, seriously? I was driving 2MPH under the limit when you hit me with your radar. Sure, if my cruise was on, you probably catch me speeding at 6-9MPH above the limit. Thing is, I wasn’t speeding, and blipping your lights as you passed me was really disconcerting and made me jump.

I don’t know why you did it to the next three cars you passed, either, you asshole,
Geof

Dark Night of the Soul

• Luongo Takes Over for Cole at Alabama-Huntsville | USCHO.com http://fb.me/ArX86Su3 #
• If you follow us, you really ought to follow @uahhockey. We're just sayin'. #
• 86 days until puck drop. #
• Officially the schedule for the '10-'11 season has not been released yet. However, USCHO has an unofficial… http://fb.me/DjuGhkJ8 #
• Officially the schedule for the '10-'11 season has not been released yet. However, USCHO has an unofficial… http://fb.me/vZHzh4lw #

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I’m now working from home, but I can’t stand not having music going when I’m working. I often answer the phones, so it was important to me to have an AppleScript that would quickly do the following:

1. Mute the system volume so I can focus on the customer.
2. Pause iTunes.
3. Setting my Adium status as On-the-Phone so my co-workers know I’m on the phone.

The fun thing is that I’ve got to get the script to do the reverse when invoked again. Otherwise, what use is it?

My first step was to use Leaf Raker’s suggestion for how to mute the system volume with AppleScript. The approach there works fine; the only issue is going to be that the system volume returns to 50 when it’s invoked a second time. If you’re always using this script during the day, though, that shouldn’t be a problem. Thanks, Leaf Raker, for getting me started!

The second step is pausing iTunes. If you read the iTunes Applescript Dictionary, you’ll see that it has a verb “playpause” that toggles the status of iTunes. This is helpful for me when I’m listening to a podcast while working, because I would like to not lose my place while I’m on the phone. So it’s tell application "iTunes" to playpause to make it happen.

The last step, of course, is the Adium status change. The Adium wiki has a page on their AppleScript support, and after a number of tests, I found that this worked:

tell application "Adium"
	set thisStatus to the status type of the first account
	if thisStatus is available then
		set the status type of the first account to away
		set the status message of the first account to
		"I'm on the phone; be with you shortly"
	else
		set the status type of the first account to available
		set the status message of the first account to ""
	end if
end tell

Now, this only works for my setup because I have the one account in Adium on this machine—Adium, for me, is dedicated to the IM support I have with work. Multiple-account setups would take some sniffing; this is done with of account "somename", rather than “the first account”. Of course, if you’re in my situation—working from home, wanting to set your status away when you’re on the phone—you probably only have one account in Adium that needs toggling. [You better not be on multiple IM channels if you're telecommuting, or you won't get anything done!]

The whole script is as follows:

set curVol to (get (output volume of (get volume settings)))
if curVol > 0 then
	set volume output volume 0
else
	set volume output volume 50
end if

tell application "iTunes" to playpause

tell application "Adium"
	set thisStatus to the status type of the first account
	if thisStatus is available then
		set the status type of the first account to away
		set the status message of the first account to
		"I'm on the phone; be with you shortly"
	else
		set the status type of the first account to available
		set the status message of the first account to ""
	end if
end tell

You can also download this: on-phone.scpt.

As always: shared without license and support. I’ll help if you ask questions in the comment, but I am under no obligation to get you to done. I worked to figure this one out, so you can work, too.

Unlike with my Mail scripting, I invoke this with the excellent Launchbar, although I’m sure that Quicksilver will invoke it for you, too. I just put this in ~/Library/Scripts for safe-keeping.

So this is how the left side of my Mac screen looks these days. Dock on the left—the bottom, with the 3D shelving, is for sheep—with is shifted up to the left, with hidden dock items transparent. At a glance, I know my system state. Here’s how it’s done and what’s there:

Dock shifting and transparency: TinkerTool is how I pull that one off. As new programs are opened, the Dock lengthens towards the bottom of the screen.

Dock apps: Finder, Drobo Dashboard, Mail, iTunes, Safari, Seasonality, TweetDeck [sigh], and a Fluid instance for Fever. If my machine is up and running, that’s what’s booted.

That shiny thing next to the Dock: that would be iPulse, which despite not being updated for a couple of years now still works great. It beats the hell out of any other “What’s my Mac doing?” apps that I’ve found. The only thing that I haven’t been able to consistently do is live in that spot on the Desktop, but not exist as a window, like …

That album art thingy at the bottom left: CoverSutra. That shows me, at a glance, what song is playing in iTunes. Also, it pushes data to Last.fm for me.

The blank space in between is stocked, during the workday, with a slide-out Adium instance: if I hover over the left edge halfway between the Dock and CoverSutra, I get my Contact List for Adium. I mainly use Adium as a status awareness tool for Matt and Nathan using my on-the-phone AppleScript. The co-workers all look at my IM status to know if I’m on the phone or not before calling me, transferring people to me, or deciding to take the incoming phonecall themselves. It’s pretty fun.

What’s in your Dock? How do you manage it? Windows (l)users need not respond.

• UAH is looking for three to four students to work with the Sports Information Office for the 2010-2011 school… http://fb.me/DZtF6AZq #
• There will be a press conference for 1:30 p.m. on
  Friday in the Varsity Room of Spragins Hall to announce the new… http://fb.me/EqXqRlt5 #
• There will be a press conference at 1:30 p.m. on Friday in the Varsity Room of Spragins Hall to announce the new… http://fb.me/BXDEOLLB #
• http://fb.me/BX39XWtG #
• Chris Luongo will be the next UAH hockey head coach. #
• @BigMamaAJ Lou will do a great job. I know that he's who Danton wanted to replace him. in reply to BigMamaAJ #
• @luongodotca Wrong Luongo, my friend. in reply to luongodotca #
• And so begins the reign of King Louie I. Congratulations Coach Luongo! #
• Chris Luongo Named Head Coach of UAH Hockey | UAHHockey.com http://fb.me/D6VU6bSA #
• Luongo named head hockey coach | UAHChargers.com http://fb.me/yQv8Ipco #
• Our favorite comment from Coach Luongo after the press conference, to us: "Couldn't you have found an NHL photo of me?" #

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Multiple sources close to the situation have advised SaveUAHHockey.com that UAH assistant coach Chris Luongo will be named the head coach of UAH Charger Hockey at the scheduled 1:30 p.m. press conference at Spragins Hall on Friday. Luongo replaces Danton Cole, who took a coaching position with USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program in June.

Luongo came to UAH two years ago, joining his former Michigan State teammate Danton Cole in Huntsville after a sixteen-season professional career. After a three-year stint in the minor leagues, Luongo made his NHL debut for the Detroit Red Wings during the 1990-91 season before spending time in the Ottawa Sentors and New York Islanders organizations over the course of the next five seasons.

A member of three U.S. teams (96, 97, 00) in the World Championships, Luongo spent seven seasons playing in Germany. Following his professional career, he served as an assistant coach at Wayne State University prior to joining the Chargers.

A Fraser, Mich., native, Luongo along with his wife Cheryl and two sons, Anthony and Christopher live in Madison.

• http://fb.me/DhaI4piW #
• Our heartfelt thanks and love to Shelia Ray for her 16 years of hard work and dedication to the UAH sports… http://fb.me/DXF8puwN #
• I hope this stint with the Thrashers organization works better for Jared this go around. Because last time? Nope. http://fb.me/C4dkOyOp #

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