1. Because our instructor hadn’t returned the email sent on the 3rd asking for help.
2. a lot

If I live here another ten months, I’ll have lived in that house longer than anywhere else; the current title-holder is a two-story in a 1970s-era subdivision in a little place called Beavercreek, Ohio. If I make it to mid-August, I’ll have called the metropolitan Huntsville area home for fifteen years; this is the longest I’ve lived anywhere in my entire life. If I somehow make it to 2015, I’ll have lived half my life in Huntsville, but I hope to not be in this house by then, for I hope to be married (yes, finally) and have sold my house. I want to have the next house be “our house”. This is “my house” for as long as I can stay here.

Needless to say, the unsettled state of my last two years has all of this in doubt. There are some glimmers of hope to stay here, and I work every day to remain a Huntsvillian. I am not guaranteed this, though, and so I wanted to write of my little mile marker today. In a period of extreme uneasiness, it’s a welcome sight every time I pull in the driveway.

01. Spent a nice evening with a friend, and I wasn’t overly upset when a job opening at my old company ended up getting cancelled. I had appropriately managed my expectations, which is good. I did not do so with either of the last two job opportunities, which was to my detriment. Hooray for learning.
02. I finished my programming assignment with time to spare. I should have given myself more time, but I improvised.
03. Full day. I think the highlight is a good meeting with my psychiatrist, followed by S1E02 of Downton Abbey. I’m in. [If UAH hadn't blown a three-goal lead against Maine, that would be #1 with a bullet.]
04. Got a number of things done in the kitchen to get myself some more pantry space.
05. My back was balky again, so I watched four episodes of Downton Abbey along with the Super Bowl, which didn’t really hold my interest.
06. I got caught up on my reading for my Probability class¹ in advance of Thursday’s test. It took me five hours. My back does not like me right now.
07. I survived a day on 4.5 hours’ sleep. My chiropractor cleared my back problem in a painful-but-necessary adjustment. My probability prof slipped Thursday’s exam a week. All in all, a good day.
08. Downton Abbey, five episodes’ worth.
09. I got a UAH Student ID and a nice UAH Chargers coffee cup at the bookstore at the same time I got my mom a hat. She wanted a floppy canvas hat like I have, and she’d said that it would be okay for it to have UAH on it.
10. Time with my mother is always good.
11. I set up Mom’s Kindle. This is the first time she’s really been able to read much since her stroke over a decade ago.
12. My drive home was quite beautiful, even if it did lead to me wondering how much longer it would be home.
13. Good therapy appointment. Couple of interesting jobs applied to.
14. I took a great, much-needed nap. I slept the right length of time, and I felt as I needed to when it was over.
15. I powered through my studying for Thursday’s probability exam. I got to talk to Lucas for a while.
16. I got my programming assignment done quickly, although one went awry.
17. I got a lot of job applications out there, and I published a piece I’d been working on about Downton Abbey.
18. Waterdeep private concert!
19. The Downton Abbey Christmas special aired in the States, bringing us up to speed with our British cousins. I teared up again, and I’m okay with that.
20. Jobhunting!
21. I started working on a little Web project, and then I got to hang out with Stephen and Misty.
22. The Bruins won.
23. I feel like I did well on my programming test.
24. Home hockey! Hopefully this is not my last Friday night UAH hockey in Huntsville for the foreseeable future.
25. Weird morning, but good afternoon, highlighted by a solid, if losing, effort from the boys.
26. I figured out Blu-Ray ripping on my Mac. Yay me!
27. How I Met Your Mother was enjoyable.
28. I got a 98 on said programming test.
29. Leap Day!

1. which is to say that I started on it today

I had my initial doubts about the second version of the Apple TV, given how lame the first one was. My bad experience kept me from getting one until the time that MLB.TV streaming came to the device.¹ The NBA and NHL have followed suit, and that combined with Netflix has made it an essential in my home theater use. In fact, my Apple TV gets more use now than my TiVo does.²

The Apple TV is also a great device for using the content you already own. In 2009, I started pursuing a Mac mini-based home theater setup. I have a mini from that era slaved to an original Drobo with 6.5TB of raw storage in it. I am forever in the process of ripping CDs to it in Apple Lossless, moving from an MP3/AAC collection on my iMac. I also put DVDs through the wringer to have ready for the Apple TV’s use. I have an ever-growing iTunes catalog, store on that Drobo, all of which is available to the Apple TV via the Computers section.

The issue I’m tackling here, of course, is Blu-Ray. Steve Jobs famously called Blu-Ray “a bag of hurt” in explaining why it’s never made it into the Mac line. I think that it’s also safe to say that Steve believed that we would be in a post-physical-disc world very soon.³ This brings us to third-party hardware and software that we can use to make it work.

Hey, I finally figured out how to rip a Blu-Ray to my Mac. I'll buy them for the HD format but want to watch on the AppleTV. So there.

26-Feb-2012 16:14 via Twitterrific for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@gfmorris

Geof F. Morris

Without further introduction, here’s my setup:

1. OWC Value 12X Blu-Ray Reader/16X DVD Super-MultiDrive LightScribe gets you there on the hardware side. Anything that will read a Blu-Ray will work; one need not have a B-R burner to do this work.
2. MakeMKV to get data off of the Blu-Ray discs into the MKV format. v.1.7.2 was current at the time of this writing.
3. Handbrake to get take the MKV and make M4Vs for the Apple TV’s use. I used v0.9.5 at the time of this writing.
4. VLC to check the conversion at both steps. Make sure you’re using VLC v2.0 or higher; I saw skips in v1.1.12 that were not evident in the newer version.

When you I first opened up MakeMKV, I said to myself, “Windows software ported to the Mac.” The user interface leaves a lot to be desired, so I’m going to walk you through it with a couple screenshots.

What was obvious after knowing it was there is the large Blu-Ray ==> Hard Drive button, highlighted as shown.⁴ I went for the third icon at the top, which creates a backup of the disc to the local hard drive. Yeep.

Once you click the probably-obvious-but-not-to-me button, you get the following:

The disc will be read and the titles that matter get spat out as possible items to be copied over to the MKV file format.

When you have chosen the tracks that you want to convert, hit the MakeMKV button at top right. As I note, you need to make sure that the destination of the rip is going to need to be somewhere with a lot of hard drive space; as you can see, the episodes of Downton Abbey that I’m ripping here are each 10GB per hour-long episode.

Here’s something that I ran into with these Downton Abbey discs: you’ll see five titles of any length shown at left, but this is a four-episode disc. That third title has all four hours in one seamless file. That’s not what I want to use, so I de-select it. I didn’t know what was going on at first with these files. Using VLC 1.1.12 to examine them was even worse because it was choking on a 43GB file. Now that I know what is going on, I can just bypass that file. As the only discs I’ve ripped so far—I have a couple other Blu-Ray discs around the house that people have given me that I’ve yet to rip—have been these DA discs, I don’t know if this agglomerated title is common to all Blu-Ray discs or peculiar to this release. When I know more, I’ll update this section.⁵ Update 19 Apr 2012: The next set of discs⁶ did not have this problem.

Once you hit Make MKV, it’ll whir on about its work. I have a four-core i7 CPU, so I was disappointed by the results I got the first time given that the CPU load never really went up on my machine. At one point, I said, “Damn you, I have lots of horsepower. Use it!” ⁷ Earlier today, it dawned on me: it’s maxing out use of the GPU, and the CPU is used accordingly. More CPU cycles won’t make the data stream faster. As a result, it’s best to leave the GPU alone: no gaming, no image work, and especially no VLC spot-checks. I think I ruined some of the first rips I did because I was spot-checking completed files.

Once you have these in the Matroska file format, Handbrake can do the rest of the job. Unlike its excellent work with DVDs, Handbrake doesn’t handle Blu-Ray just yet. But when you have MKVs, Handbrake is ready to get you the rest of the way.

Again, you want the destination to be a drive with lots of space: my experience is that output files are 15-20% of the MKVs. Using the Apple TV2 preset as shown in the highlight will get you on your way. Here you’ll get the full CPU power of your machine, as Handbrake knows how to eat every single CPU cycle it can get.⁸ After all, you’re not reading a data stream off of a disc.

As I noted, I use VLC for spot-checks. There’s no point in spending a lot of CPU time on a transcode if the original MKV is fouled.

Your time to make these conversions is worth it if you enjoy all the things I listed at the outset. It’s obviously compressed 720p HD video, but I have a 73″ diagonal TV and do not notice artifacts. I have compared these rips with broadcast TV and Netflix and find no difference from broadcast and slightly better performance than Netflix, which likely compresses the data stream even more. For stuff I really like, I prefer to own rather than rent. This gives me the chance to own.

I hope this helps you navigate the rocks and shoals. Ask any questions in the comments, which I curate.

1. I paid for a year of MLB.TV with the idea that I’d watch. Even though I was unemployed and had free time to watch, I did not do so. That was when I knew that I was done watching baseball. RIP Geof’s love affair with the Reds, 1985-2011.
2. If I did not have steeply-discounted cable pricing, I would have gone OTA only using an Elgato device by now.
3. This world, in a marketplace where his company sat between producers and consumers, was going to make him a shitpile of money. Compare that to the royalties he’d have to pay to put a Blu-Ray device in his computers, and clearly it wasn’t worth it.
4. Oh yes, my screenshots are comically bad. I am not an artist.
5. If I remember to do it, of course.
6. When We Left Earth.
7. I’m sure that my WRX says that to me when I drive only in the city.
8. Unlike other video conversion utilities I’ve seen.

After I graduated from college, I had time to get into TV again. I bought my first TiVo at 23¹ , and I’ve not looked back. I never watched LOST, but that’s only because I was too busy catching up on Gilmore Girls re-runs to make time for this new show. ² I didn’t watch The Sopranos because I was too cheap to pay for HBO, but I picked up The Wire when Sean and Kat gave me a gift card that covered the first season’s price. I quickly bought the other fivefour seasons.

It’s not that I’ve always watched good TV. I also watched all the Law & Order series, which I found did not hold up well upon a second viewing. ³ I also followed several seasons of Big Brother until I got tired of the self-loathing. The Amazing Race isn’t good television, but I have watched every season since Season 4.⁴ I also watch terrible shows like Archer and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and I stuck with Rescue Me through its dreadfulness and have maintained interest in How I Met Your Mother despite all its dithering. Suffice it to say that I don’t claim to have The Greatest Taste in TV, Ever.

If I’m going to make an effective argument as to why you should watch Downton Abbey, I need to explain why I like the shows that I do. I enjoy shows that tell a good story well, and I prefer ensemble casts.

My favorite show is The Wire.⁵ What I love about it is that, unlike most shows, creator David Simon simply throws you into the swimming pool that is West Baltimore’s drug conspiracy without much in the way of standard pilot-episode exposition. You don’t know who any of these people are, and your job is to figure them out. That nice-looking black man in a suit who’s doodling on a legal pad? That man is a calculating fucker that will get you got. You don’t know that, though, when you’re first watching.

The other key thing that I like about The Wire is its realism, and not just the faithfulness of its portrayal of the decay of a once-great American city. What I love is that there are no real heroes, and that there’s only one real villain. Every “good guy” is fundamentally flawed, and most all of the “bad guys” are given a chance to show some humanity. The only absolute is Marlo Stanfield, a character for whom I can find no compassion. The character that a plurality of the show’s fans enjoy the most is Omar Little, the man who robs drug dealers like some modern-day Robin Hood. His complexity is only matched by Jimmy McNulty, and that only because the detective gets much more screen time.

Other shows that I have truly enjoyed are ones I’ve already mentioned. I’ve re-watched Cheers and Northern Exposure and gotten much deeper meanings from them the second time around. I watched M*A*S*H from the beginning, which was both funny and painful as I finally understood the use of the Korean War backdrop as a way to discuss Vietnam. I really do enjoy Gilmore Girls, although I feel that it has lost a bit of its lustre in re-runs.⁶

I first heard of Downton Abbey at a Derek Webb concert. Perhaps I’d seen it before on Twitter, but it didn’t register to me. I asked my Twitter people about the show and got back a lot of comparisons to other shows that I haven’t watched.⁷ I did have one friend who convinced me that I’d get wrapped up in the story quite quickly because of the quality of the writing, so I gave the first episode a shot. I thought it was okay, but I watched a second one, during which I laughed. Then I got to the third one, which … yes, yes, Mr. Pamuk. I was hooked. I ended up watching five episodes on Super Bowl Sunday, which made for a lot of time on my couch.⁸

Here’s what I wrote on Twitter about Downton:

Class upheaval. Three sisters with no direct heir. Love. War. Family of blood and of employment. Cunning. Feminism. Life anew. #downtonabbey

I also wrote a longer bit on Facebook at the request of a friend:

The longer review: imagine an earl with no direct heir, a family of three girls. Bring in a third cousin purely by research, a lawyer but certainly not an aristocrat, to be the heir after the first-cousin heir dies on the Titanic. Love abounds, then falters. That gives you the early setup.

It delves into the dynamics and cunning of the family upstairs—replete with a domineering dowager countess who is relentlessly funny—while not ignoring the servant family downstairs. They are indeed a family: unmarried, living in service to their lord and ladies. As you would expect, they end up finding things with each other.

The arc of the show is what happens when the British class system falls apart in the era surrounding World War I. This is beautifully cast through a family full of girls, women who are now primed to burst through walls that had previously hemmed them in.

It’s an entirely different show than The Wire, which is fundamentally about the failure of American cities through moral corruption writ large and small. David Simon came at television writing as a novelist, where Julian Fellowes comes in from film writing. They’re both very good in very different ways.

With both shows, you’ll know after the third episode if you like it. With The Wire, it will start with checkers with chess pieces, and with Downton Abbey, it will start with a foreigner. If you do not care about the world portrayed to you at either point, I’m going to understand, as not everyone will like every show. These are just two shows whose stories have captivated me in ways that few others have. Both shows reward a careful viewer.

Lastly: Downton Abbey is beautifully shot. It’s a single camera show, and they have this trademark device of a long shot, often 90 or more seconds, walking through the house with multiple characters then moving around an assemblage in a very fluid manner. More than once, I have rewound a scene just to figure out how it was lit and shot. I have seen but a few foibles.

I don’t buy TV shows to re-watch very often. The Wire was an exception, and Downton Abbey will be the next one. The first season is on Netflix Instant, and I encourage you to give it a try.

I have since bought both seasons on Blu-Ray, and I plan on re-watching it at least twice before Series 3 airs in September. I was so caught up in the story the first time that I didn’t always notice the mechanics of what they were doing. I also have an idea that I may write about the show and what I find interesting about it, although that dream is likely to be placed atop the pyre of previous writing projects.

If you think that this show would interest you, you should check it out. If your name is Don Chaffer, you should take my advice and put in the time to watch it.

1. I’ve owned four.
2. By the time I got caught up on Lorelai and Rory, J.J. Abrams was in his third season of torturing people without remorse. I guess I could go back and watch, but with how poorly the finale was regarded…
3. This did not, however, stop me from developing a checklist of episodes and ticking them off as I saw the re-runs.
4. Ignoring the shitty family season, which I stopped watching as soon as they passed Huntsville.
5. I am a self-respecting middle-class white dude under 40.
6. The main joy I find in GG is in the witty banter; now that I know what to expect, it doesn’t hold as much sway. I never knew where the Palladinos were taking me at the time, but seeing it a second time has just run hollow. Certain episodes are lovely—”Raincoats and Recipes” being the obvious favorite—but watching the show now feels like a chore.
7. Friday Night Lights was the most frequent one. I don’t care to watch a show with a high school football backdrop. Sorry to miss a show you like.
8. I had a bad back, so it was about all I could do that day.

Come 2011, I turned a corner. Once I finished my time working for the University, I needed something to do. I leaped headlong into reading, spending time in coffeeshops to get me out of the house and around people. When I wasn’t talking a barista’s ear off, I ran crazy with the reading, finishing 15 books with three carrying over into 2012. It’s not the reading rate that I’d like, but 15 books in five months works for me after none at all in 2010. Some thoughts about the books:

• Four W.E.B. Griffin books: they are page-turners. They’re pulp fiction. They’re the adventures I’ve enjoyed since long before Tom Clancy realized that he needed to write about something other than the Ryanverse. I had the full catalog of Brotherhood of War and The Corps back in high school, and I had friends who would raid my closet of them at MSMS. They’re like gum: you chew on it a while and then you’re done. I’m almost caught up with his military/OSS catalog now. I read these on my iPad because they’re cheap in iBooks.
• Love Is a Mixtape: I’d wanted to read this for a while, and when I got unstuck, it was a natural. I knew the gist of the story—boy meets girl, they fall in love, she suddenly dies—so nothing in there was shocking. I knew that there would be something there, though, something ineffable in the intersection of the music that we love and the times in which we love it that would be special. I don’t know a lot of the music that Rob and Renée gave each other, but that’s okay, as the music was just one actor in a good love story. Plus, I am back to making mixtapes, although for more than just girls.
• Two Gary Chapman books: I snapped out of things back in July, so I decided to do a little tilling.
• C.S. Lewis: A Year With C.S. Lewis is just the kind of thing I’d been looking for. I found it in late October and just dove in there. I’ll catch back up and probably keep reading. Lewis is good for my soul. The Four Loves is proving to be a bit dense, and it currently resides deep in my messenger bag. I would probably be farther along if I could get it on my Kindle.
• Gary Shteyngart: His novels are taut, ribald, absurd, and a lot of fun. Shteyngart looks at American culture with the perspective of a first generation Soviet Jew, and I welcome it.
• The Art of Manliness: I read this on my iPad, which is the only reason that it wasn’t thrown across the room a couple of times. I agree with a lot of what he has to say, but his insistence on “this is how you live as a man” and “psychotherapy is for weenies” fell on very angry ears. I think it was his blanket statement that psychotherapy is useless and his implication that those with mental illness were somehow not fully men that really pissed me off. That, or I’m a sensitive weenie. I would like to go camping with some guy friends, though.
• Michael Lewis: I would read a Lewis tome where he broke down the failings of the phone book-creation system, outlining why we have weak phone books and how they would be better. I have enjoyed his writing since Moneyball, so this year I bookended my reading with Liar’s Poker, his first, and Boomerang, his latest. Some people are turned off by the seemingly-dry subject matter that he chooses to tackle, but I feel like he tackles Important Things and relates them in approachable ways. I understood more about obscure financial instruments after reading The Big Short than I would have ever thought possible.
• John Siracusa’s breakdown of major OS X is always worth a read, and I want to support that work. As such, I bought the thin iBooks volume, which still ran 60+ pages.
• Jane Eyre and The Awakening: These were both re-reads from high school, and I loved each as if I were reading it anew. Yes, I like strong feminine characters in my books. You would, too, if you grew up with my strong-willed mother.
• I’m still moving through Nassir Ghaemi’s A First-Rate Madness, a study of why mentally ill individuals make great crisis leaders. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet, although I will note that many of his descriptions of what those illnesses feel like are quite true.

It’s nice to be back. I mentioned a Kindle, and you’re asking yourself, “How does an un(der)employed guy afford a new Kindle?” That’s a great story. I was doing a lot of the reading with iBooks, but I was thinking that I’d enjoy a Kindle. I figured that I’d buy one after I got a job, you know? But then a woman whom I’d interacted years ago popped back into my life. As I’d written about being a UAH engineering student in the early part of the last decade, she had emailed me to ask about what it was like for students, as her older son was thinking of attending. I traded emails with her and thought little of it after a few weeks. She dropped back in, though, and told me that both of her sons now had UAH engineering degrees and good jobs to boot, and she wanted to thank me … with a $100 Amazon gift certificate. I bought a Kindle with it.

Given that you can still get L&W&tSiB for free, go spend $10 and get two great albums. Go on.

Here’s the thing with these two records: I will remember them as being a part of my 2011. I will remember being so moved by “Bread & Wine” that I had to pull over to the side of the road as I drove to my parents’ house. I will remember listening to “Someone Like You” and thinking about how I, too, had been that foolish. These songs echoed in my ears in the two coffee shops where I spent a lot of 2011.² They have pushed me to look at life a little differently through the lens of their lyrics. In the coming years, I may decide that one of the honorable mentions below is the best record I got in this year—this has happened before.³ For now, these are my two.

Honorable mentions: Over the Rhine’s The Long Surrender technically came out 1 Jan, but I was a sponsor of that record all the way back in 2010 when I had a job and all that. The Decemberists’ The King Is Dead is the one record I wanted to buy when I actually had a dollar to my name. Radiohead’s The King of Limbs was almost as much of a must-buy, and while it’s not a killer Radiohead record, it would be a killer record from any other band. Lastly, The Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow was something I got when someone bestowed some musical goodness into my life. Will Carroll cracked me up with “It took me forever to figure it out, but his album sounds like breakup sex,” but he’s kinda right about that.

What were yours?

1. You know who you are. Thank you.
2. If you’re wondering how I can afford to do that, you haven’t seen how well I’ve trained these baristas to give me free or ridiculously cheap coffee. Being the Cool Regular has its perks, y’all.
3. See OK Computer, which I didn’t understand for two or three years. Oops.

So the NHL has embraced radical realignment. The more I think about the idea, the more I like it. It provides the league with flexibility for future team movement and also returns divisional—now conference—rivalries to the playoffs. The two thoughts rattling around relate to further realignment and conference naming.

Further realignment. It seems only a matter of time that Phoenix will move to another city, likely to Hamilton, Ontario or another similar locale. This would move the Coyotes from an eight-team conference into an area where seven-team conferences rule. But the eight-team conference concept can come with them. If Hamilton is indeed the destination for the Coyotes, you put the team in what’s being referred to right now as Conference “C”. There’s no rule saying that the two eight-team conferences have to be in the west. I had this thought as I was trying to figure out how to realign the west.

Conference naming. You’ve got two western and two eastern conferences. If you’re going to cop out, you can go with Western, Central, East (Conference “C”), and Mideast (Conference “D”). I think that this is boring. The Campbell Conference and Prince of Wales Conference have a background with the NHL, and I suggest bringing those names back and keeping the trophies associated with them for Conferences “A” and “C” respectively. To the pool, add new conferences and trophies: the Norris (Conference “B”) and Patrick (Conference “D). The two divisions now promoted to conferences consist of teams from those old divisions. This is simple and keeps us from having the Gretzky, Hull, Lemieux, and Orr Conferences.

1. The writing at a later date rarely happens.

If someone buys my music on iTunes, Amazon, or in a record store (remember those?), let alone streams it on Spotify, it’s all short-term money. That might be the last interaction I have with that particular fan. But if I give that fan the same record for free in exchange for a connection (an e-mail and a zip code), I can make that same money, if not double or triple that amount, over time. And “over time” is key, since the ultimate career success is sustainability. Longevity. See, the reality is that out of a $10 iTunes album sale, I probably net around a dollar. So if I give that record away, and as a result am able to get that fan out to a concert (I can use their zip code to specifically promote my shows in their area), I make approximately $10 back, and twice that if they visit the merch table. I can sell them an older/newer album and make approximately $10 back. The point is, if I can find some organic way to creatively engage them in a paid follow-up transaction, I increase my revenue 10 times on any one of these interactions.

As I have watched Derek’s solo career,¹ I have watched him gain (and lose)² fans. A lot of Derek’s core fan base comes from his decade in Caedmon’s Call³, and they have largely stayed with him. He’s developed quite a following, which is to his credit. He gave away Mockingbird, which I feel was a watershed for his career. It was a new idea at the time for artists of his caliber; sure, Radiohead did it, but a lot of people know Radio head. Relatively far fewer people know of Derek Webb. Giving away a record was a way for him to broaden the fan base because the cost of trying out his music dropped only to the time cost of giving it a listen.

This brings me to my only concern with the NoiseTrade model: findability. There is certainly a case where like-minded artists whose fans are aware of the other artist. As an example, Derek Webb fans generally know who Andrew Osenga is, because they either knew him as the front man for The Normals or knew him as someone who entered Caedmon’s Call as Derek left it.⁴ So when Andy put up a sampler on NoiseTrade, it rapidly shot up the charts. I downloaded it because I knew one of the not-so secrets of NoiseTrade, which is that the front page lists artists in order of the number of downloads⁵. This is an acceptable measurement of what should be on the front page, but I think that it’s a problem to end there. Back to Derek:

But as it tends to do, the market is adapting. The whole business used to be focused on the head of the sales curve, the handful of artists who were selling records in the millions of copies. But as music sales have sharply declined and fewer artists than ever are winding up at the head of that curve, attention is drifting to the “long tail” of the curve where thousands of niche artists live, none selling more than a few thousand records each. The power of the “long tail” is in the fact that its combined record sales are more than the combined sales of the top-selling artists occupying the steadily narrowing head of the curve. While there will always likely be a “hit” market resulting in a precious few artists moving records in the millions, the business is shifting to service these niches.

NoiseTrade is in the marketplace of ways to acquire new music, right along there with Pandora, Spotify, and the like. While Derek has made an effective case for why the streaming models don’t work in the artist’s favor, I feel that NoiseTrade suffers from the same big head / long tail issue as its own market. While this is to be expected at some level⁶, I think that tools exist for NoiseTrade to fight that dynamic and flatten the marketplace. One of Derek’s kicks is to democratize music, and I think that the way to do this is to put the power in the hands of the people.

I should stop and provide an example here. If Derek or Andy put something up on NoiseTrade, I’m going to say something about it to my friends, most likely via Twitter. My friends know to expect that. I may also become passionate about another artist; as an example, my love for Josh Garrels’s latest record. You can get Love & War & the Sea in Between record on NoiseTrade, too. Given that there are a lot of common themes among the three artists, there’s bound to be some overlap in the fan bases. Do my friends know about Josh Garrels? Yes, because I’ve championed the record endlessly. But my friends are but a small slice of NoiseTrade’s user base. Even moreso, do my friends know of my love for Sloan, Canada’s power pop mainstay? Maybe they do, but with that NT release, I didn’t say anything about it.

So the problem is findability: how do I find stuff on NoiseTrade that I’ll like? I can rely on my friends, especially with friends I trust musically. As an example, if my friend Jeff Holland said something about a band with a NoiseTrade release, I’m going to check them out. But I’m sure that there’s an artist or four on NoiseTrade that I’d champion as strongly as I have Garrels (or Webb or Osenga)—but that my friends don’t know about, either. How do I find them? I can spend time going through a lot of downloads and listen to the previews to find something I like. But that is time-consuming, and there’s a better way—two of them, in my mind.

The first idea is filtering by like taste and/or ranking. This solution would require NoiseTrade to implement a user system, which I know is very complicated. For a regular user, though, this has benefits. The email/ZIP step is gone: noisetrade.com/gfmorris would always know I’m gfmorris@gfmorris.net and 35758. I give up that for the convenience of the system knowing who I am and giving me good recommendations. If it knows that I like Derek Webb and Andrew Osenga, maybe it recommends Josh Garrels or Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors to me.⁷ Maybe it even recommends the Sloan to me—or maybe my “vote” for Sloan recommends that to someone else who’ve downloaded the same artists that I have.

You can even spice it up further with ranking and similarity scores. If I download an NT release and realize that I don’t like it that much, I should be able to tell the community that with a simple rank. I’d go with a good-okay-bad system; at most, a five-star system. A system where I check out an artist out of curiosity shouldn’t necessarily take my interest as a recommendation. Connection to an extant system like Last.FM would further improve the system.

The other idea that puts the system in the hands of the people involves podcasting. I’m sure that there’s a big head of NT users that has some folks downloading 50% or more of the releases out of sheer curiosity. Those people are going to fancy themselves taste-makers, and they really are. Give them a platform to share their best tracks and releases. You don’t want one official voice. Maybe seek out three podcasters at first, selecting people with auditions of a first cut. You want people who’re going to put out a good product and have strong opinions. Give them the space to have a voice in saying, “This is what’s good on NoiseTrade right now.” People will flock to the podcaster(s) that strike a chord with them.

This is not really a critique of NoiseTrade. I’m just wanting to see the ecosystem be even more awesome than it already is.

So please buy my music. Or take it for free. I’m honestly just grateful to have your attention. But this only works if we work together.

Derek, I want it to be easier for people to pay attention to you and the other NoiseTrade artists. I keep meaning to bring this up to you when I see you at a show, but we always get swept up in some other conversation. So here’s my thoughts—use them as you will.

1. I run derekwebb.net and consider Derek to be a friend. It’s stagnated in the last few years because of the social media tools that make it easy for fans to stay up to date themselves.
2. Derek is pretty strident in his beliefs, and that has run some of his fans away.
3. I run their fan site, too.
4. I refuse to think of it as a replacement because of the dynamic shift of the band.
5. This is the default setting. You can sort by other criteria.
6. Power laws are found in most marketplaces, and even in conversational media. Go look at message board post totals or number of tweets—we all follow that one person who is the chatterbox. In my group of friends, it’s me.
7. I had a recommendation on them from my friend Michael, who helps run derekwebb.net. He was right.

It was fun while it lasted, though.

We all open up from ourselves what we feel that we can give. It is good to give of ourselves, but it is also difficult. We can be in fear that our offering won’t be received. When we feel that it’s ill-received, it can feel like a crushing blow. I know how that feels.

With you, sharing is always free and never burdensome. You have a kind ear and a willingness to offe perspective from your own experiences. You may think that you don’t give good advice, but sometimes all we need is someone else’s story and time to think.

Be well, and do send me a note.

Geof

… and she says to me, “This is just how you’re wired, and there are a lot of people like you. Most people fall into one of two groups: hallways or clouds. A hallway will compartmentalize things, moving down through a project piece-by-piece until they get to the end—and then they’re done. A cloud processes pieces over time, building up steam before dropping a bunch of rain.”

That’s how it goes. The best research paper I wrote in college the first time around was one on Richard III. It was due at 1300 on a Tuesday, and I started at 1900 on Sunday. By “start”, I mean “walk over to the library and find some sources for citations”. I already had a pretty good idea of what I was going to write, and I needed the scholarly resources to back up my thinking. This paper ended up being so good that I was encouraged to be an English major.¹

With this paper, I had done plenty of research and a ton of thinking. I had really done a good job with the passive soak.

The soak is when you plant the seed of a thought in your brain and let it bump around in a rich stew of ideas, facts, and whatever other random crap that seems to relate. The soak is a protected activity that will rarely occur during your busy day because you’re busy reacting to the familiar never-ending flood of things to do. The goal of the soak is simple: an original thought. Whatever the problem is your stewing on, you want to find an glimmer of inspiration which transforms your response from a predictable emotional flame-o-gram into a strategic considered thought.

I may not have actively written the paper until the last 24 hours, but I have been passively writing it for the better part of the last month. ² I’ve spent time thinking about it in the car, in the shower, lying in bed, etc. It’s the way that I work. I can’t really get it any other way.

You see, here’s the thing. If a term paper doesn’t really involve knowledge gained along the way, then you could make the term paper due the second week of class and you’d get the same quality of paper as if you’d let it go until the end of the semester. I had the idea for this paper about five minutes after she’d told us what it would be. I learned a lot in this course, but my paper would have been just as good if due by mid-September as it is tonight.

Academia seems to relish treating every student as a hallway. I got a B on my research paper in my Western Civ I course because I didn’t do note cards. Note. Cards. I tried to explain that I was 23 years old and a fifth-year senior in college and didn’t need to write any friggin’ note cards. You can see who won that argument. The frustrating bit about it is that he loved the paper and told me after the semester that it was the best one submitted to him and that I’d been his best student. But that friggin’ B on the research paper brought me down to a B+. Yep, I’m still kinda cheesed at that, and it’s simple: if I can write a great paper without going through all the wickets, then leave me be and let me drop the bomb on you. If it sucks, then that’s on me.

I just hope Dr. Mc is in a good mood when she reads my paper. I like it, but I’m not grading it…

Hopefully and cloudily,

Geof

P.S. Mom, this was as much written for you as anyone.

1. I know, I’ve told this story before. I’ve told a lot of stories before. If you want new material, pay me.
2. “Term paper’s coming. Can’t sleep. Clowns might eat me.”

I love that I have a neighborhood coffeeshop. I needed it this summer when I was unemployed and otherwise unengaged: job-hunting only takes a couple of hours in the day. In retrospect, I should have been over this time last year, drinking coffee and getting the diversion from my problems in my house. When I am at home, alone, I am left in the midst of all my problems and failings. While a life unexamined is a life poorly lived, I do not need to wallow in it in order to have a healthy life.

I spent most of the summer over here, drinking coffee. I got to the point where I paid very little, if anything, for my coffee. [Mike, I promise you that whatever barista you're staring down right now always made me pay full price.] This enabled me to spend more time talking and listening, which were things that I needed to hear.

We’ve shared stories with each other: history, frustration, hopes, fears, and dreams. As an extrovert, I need to be around other people. On summer weekdays when it’s 100F outside, few people want to drink coffee besides me, so I would be the only one in the store with whoever was working, usually Mary. We have long conversations about whatever strikes us, because we’re not so much going anywhere with our stories as we are batting them about like a ball of yarn.

I’m apparently now an infamous regular, because two of the newest baristas knew who I was before I’d even met them. I’m glad that I’ve gotten to this status, and I hope to keep it. I get away with stuff that normal customers never would. I enjoy that.

It’s about building a relationship. We’ve built them, and they’re awesome.

Geof

Stepping back into the classroom this semester was daunting. I sounded all chipper about it in August, but I knew two simple truths: I hadn’t been an undergraduate since April 2002, and I hadn’t taken a math class since April of 1999. Twelve years away from mathematics-as-study and nine years from mathematics-in-application seemed a terrible distance to cover. I had started and stopped graduate school twice. I honestly wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I decided to give it a go. Your encouragement to try-and-who-cares-if-you-fail helped me through that hole.

I loved it when you emailed five people about squashing a bug, a group I described as “four people who can write a good algorithm … and me.” Your response: “You can write a good algorithm, you just haven’t practiced enough yet.” When I said I’d wait until I had to do it for class, your response was, “Why wait? You can grab a free C++ compiler and start working on it now.”

Your approach is irrepressible. “Let’s make mistakes” was in the title of a recent Weblog post. You decided to try drawing with your own charcoal, remarking, “Why can’t I pick up some charcoal from a fire and draw with it?” These are things that I’d be too scared to try.

I know why this is a problem for me. For the longest time—as long as I can think of—I defined my self-worth by tackling challenges and winning. I once saw former GE CEO Jack Welch’s theory of only competing in a marketplace if you could be #1 or #2 and decided that it fit how I was living my life. That’s a fine business strategy, but it’s a pretty shitty way to live.

I hope that one day I’ll be able to shed all that baggage—I’m working on it, and have been for a couple of years now—and be free to experiment with abandon as you do. Until then (and likely beyond), you will be encouraging me, and for that I am ever thankful.

Geof

As an addendum to the letter: Dad and I finished clearing out Papa’s genealogy work today. Not everything in those two filing cabinets was about family: I found tax receipts, church committee notes, campground information, and a pile of newspapers. I was flipping quickly through the papers before throwing them in the trash box when one stuck to my left thumb: the 31 Jan 1986 A section of the Birmingham News. The top-front story was about finding more debris from Challenger. I had a tiny moment.

I’ve closed comments here, but you can comment over there and I’ll see them. Also, read more of Kari’s stuff if’n you don’t already. She is worth the time spent getting to know her through her writing.

I don’t know why I have always expected you to be more talkative than you are. I have learned that you will speak a lot given space to do so, which is often difficult around me. You always have something good to say, and so I have to wonder if staying quiet allows you to edit out the bad stuff? Who knows.

We’ve both had a crisis happen and then had to live with the aftermath of it. I’ve seen people doubt you, and that’s bothered me because I’ve felt like they have not wanted to give you a chance to rally. I know that I desperately want that chance for myself, and I am faced with increasing doubt about the success. It’s an irrational doubt, but it exists.

I remember being sad when I got an invitation to your wedding, because I knew that I just couldn’t go. I told you that I couldn’t, and you told me that you knew I wouldn’t be able to—but that’s not why you invited me.

@gfmorris Glad you got it. --Figured it'd be a simple reminder that after the worst of years when there is little hope, all can be made new.

22-Oct-2011 14:21 via Twitter for MacReplyRetweetFavorite

@JoshStockment

Josh Stockment

Redemption is a story often found if we’re willing to be told of it. Thank you for the reminder.

Fuckin’ Greece,

Geof

I think that what I most treasure about you is that, somewhere along the way, you just decided to be okay with being a nerd. I never really did, so I have a lot of mainstream interests and have huge gaps in my reading list. [Truly, I wish I had chosen to relish reading C.S. Lewis instead of Tom Clancy. Ah, misspent youth.] You’re passionate about the things that interest you, even when they bring you grief—Arkansas football, mostly. You care about reading and writing, and these are things that we share.

I’ve asked you questions about what your life’s been like, about what you think about being a husband, a father, and all that. Your answers stay with me, of course, but the care you put into the responses shows me that you really do think about those things and lead a life that is Examined. That’s an important thing.

You’ve been very supportive for the last year-ish, always reaching out when you thought that I was a little on edge, and praying when you weren’t reaching out. I always know that I can ask for your prayers—I covet them—and that you will provide. Prayer is still this nebulous, seemingly-unknowable thing to me, but I know the sense of calm that comes with intervening prayer. Perhaps it is simply the momentary admission that we do not have enough strength in this life to live independently, and these admissions drive us further to the interdependence borne of Christ that can supply us with the energy and orientation towards what is Good.

You’ve stayed with me twice now: once in the inaugural Chris/Josh/Mike/Geof hotel crash run, and once in advance of Whiskerino. When I got to show you the US Space and Rocket Center, I had more fun watching you light up than I did seeing the new parts of the exhibit space. Yes, I had more fun watching you look at a Saturn V than I did looking at it myself.

That Whiskerino trip stands out because we were around the Throwdown but never fully in it. I think that’s part of what friendship is about: shutting down the outside world when you want to make time for fellowship.

Someday, I will make it over your way. The ledger has a lot more marks on this side.

Geof

It can be hard to get to know someone from afar, but I think that we did so about as well as two guy friends can, with you in Iowa and me here in Alabama. I do have the tendency to dominate a conversation given my preternatural talkativeness, but you can hold your own when you get a word in edgewise. You may tend to be an introvert, but you do have a lot to say.

We talk about so many varied things that interest the both of us. Frankly, it’s hard to find a ton of things where we truly disagree. If we do differ, it’s usually resolved in a conversation where one of us gives way or we find a middle ground. However that goes, the conversation has as much value to me as the conclusion. I think that’s mainly because in our writing—we never talk on the phone and rarely have time to meet in person—we force ourselves to really decide if those words are what we believe, what we’ve thought. I find a lot of the time that I have to re-think before I write—this is very hard for me, because I’m improvisational when not extemporaneous—and this contemplation does me a good turn.

I am sad that I have as yet been unsuccessful in getting you to move down here, but having you meet the Granades was merely a step in that process.¹ I think that you value good friends as much as I do, and I think that you would have a lot of them if you lived here. [We would adopt you. That's all I'm saying.] That said, you’re doing greater Cedar Rapids a good turn by being a part of that community and living your life there.²

Thank you for being a good friend, for having good words, and for having a ready ear. I can’t really ask for much more than that.³

Geof

1. It was Misty’s idea to have you visit, though. I didn’t bribe her or anything.
2. But really, please move.
3. Okay, I could ask for a job, but if you knew of one up there you would’ve already told me about it.

There are many people in this list: friends, enemies, but mostly girls. I write these letters in all sorts of moods, but the darker ones are usually the source of the emotion. To be clear, I often write because I need to process things out past guttural sounds, labial fricatives, and a smattering of profanity. I have a tendency towards swings of emotion, and sometimes writing is a way for me to have to take stock and weather the storm. It’s a way to think rather than feel.

I actually keep most of these letters stored on my hard drive. Once or twice, I’ve written the letter and then automatically deleted it before even Time Machine can preserve it for resurrection. I keep them as reminders of the way I felt at the time. They serve to remind me of what I was feeling and why, because those things can sometimes lie under the surface before coming screaming back for air at the worst possible times. As such, I treat these letters like the ones I actually do send, both paper and via email. I’m an inveterate filer because it’s important to me to have this around. Just as I sometimes go back and re-read important emails from other people, I do sometimes go back to these for insight.

You see, these letters really are for me and not you. You probably already got that, of course, but now you’re wondering what I’d have to say.

I’m not telling because I’m that much of a jerk,

Geof

I wrote about your wonderful husband yesterday, but you needed to know in letter form what you mean to me. I think what I love about you most is your outlook on life. Even when things are bad, I always feel like you’re looking for the good things in the situation. I don’t think this is the maternal instinct. This seems to be a characteristic of how you live life, and for that I am thankful. I would like to think myself an optimistic person, and I can be when I am in the right frame of mind. Since I am sometimes not, I need that balance that says that maybe it’s not so bad after all. You may not see yourself this way at all, but it is clearly how I see you moving in my life.

I find that you are quicker than Stephen to disagree with me, yet you mainly do so when I’m clearly wrongheaded about something. I look at this as a big-sister relation, and I so need that in my life. We should associate strong friendships with near-unconditional support, but that support can come with conflict in the realm of making everyone stronger. When you do disagree with me, it’s in a loving manner that disarms my natural defenses to swallow my opponent whole.

Back in April you sent me a link about a bi-polar restaurateur in Seattle written by your friend Matthew. Your email said that you thought that it would strike a chord. It did. I want to quote myself from that email: “It’s because I was starting to realize just how not right my thinking was, how screwed up the chemistry had gotten, how out of my normal self I was. It wasn’t really me.” You have been quick to note when I am not right, pulling me in a little tighter to your family so I can see those good things. As I also said in that email, it becomes easier to step outside of the pain when I can see good things in front of me, and that’s easy to do when I see Eli and Liza and how much you all love each other, even when you’re all wearing crazy pants.

I know that any phone call I have with you is going to be cheerful in whole or in part, and most every email I get is going to have lots of exclamation points! I need those when I am down and I relish them when I am not. You continually encourage me, and there are a lot of times when I need that.¹

I love you for who you are, and I would do so even if that Stephen guy sucked, which he so does not. You two are certainly a great team, but each of you are special to me independent of the other.

Geof

P.S. Invite me over for dinner soon. I haven’t seen you in a month.

1. See also: the last 14 months

I have always known you as one half of the daring Granade duo (Alabama version). I wasn’t totally sure what to think of you at first, much in the same way that y’all weren’t quite sure to think of me. After a while I remembered that, just like any of the rest of us nerds, you were more than just a piece of paper on a wall or a name on a business card. Somewhere along the way, y’all went from “people whose house I crash on Tuesday nights to watch sci-fi TV with my friends, an activity that I wouldn’t otherwise do” to a lot more than that. Such things happen in a natural progression, I guess. I think I started to get closer to y’all around the time of Kat and Sean’s wedding. The run-up to a wedding can always end up having that summer camp vibe, except for the fact that y’all were totally there after the fact. I feel like I won!

Over the years, y’all have become people I laugh with, think with, cry with, and sometimes argue with. We don’t argue much, really—it’s more of discussion that becomes sometimes spirited. [See also: 2004 election. You were right, and I don't like admitting that.]

You’ve been really supportive of me in a lot of ways over the last couple of years. You will invite me over to come and sit on your couch and verbally process what’s going on in my head. You know I need that, and you provide. I have this theory that I have to talk to people a certain number of hours a day—usually one-and-a-half to three depending on how things are going in my world—and you are often this person, whether it be an email or in person. You’re undeniably quick-witted, but I find you to be a careful listener, willing to nag me a bit when you think that I need it.

On one of the worst days of my life, you dropped everything and were there for me. I don’t know how you got past security, honestly. [Did you pull the Ph.D. card? That would have been awesome.] I know that we talked, and I know that I gave you Jessica’s house key, but what I remember most was a hug that lasted both an eternity and a brief second. You didn’t say it, but the message was clear: I am here for you, and you will get through it. You have been, and I have.

Here’s hoping I get that job and get to buy you that case of Rochefort 10. You deserve that and a lot more for being a great friend.

Geof

When I was in the hospital, you were right up at the front of the line of people to see me. When my family got to talking about some sensitive stuff, you tried to take that as your cue to leave. I don’t know if you remember that, but the person asking you to stay was my dad, not me, and his words were, “You’re family, sit back down.” You are indeed family: we have similar backgrounds, we believe in similar things, and we have similar aspirations in life. Also, we care about you as much as you do about us. My mother asks about you.

After I left MSMS, I thought you would be a distant friend, but then you came to Huntsville to visit for a co-op job that you’d take at the company you still work. I remember you telling me, “This is a really neat place. Why didn’t you tell me about it?” It would have been awesome to have you at UAH with me, but I think you ended up far better academically being at State, as much as it pains me to say that. I would have never guessed, though, that you would move here or that both of us would decide that it was home.

I’ve lived in metro Huntsville for 14 years, six years longer than I’ve lived in any one place. If I stay in this house for two more years, I will have lived in it as long as we lived in our Ohio house. I’ve lived a life of locational impermanence, and that has driven the friendships that I have. Being a Navy brat and the brother of an Air Force pilot, you know what that looks like just as well as I do. That I’ve had a friendship last longer than any of this—fifteen years—does my heart good.

You went with me to Ohio several years ago to go with me to an Over the Rhine show after seeing a Caedmon’s Call show with me the day before in Jackson. I don’t even remember exactly how that came off, but it was a great weekend. I got to introduce you to my childhood best friend, and you sounded a little surprised that we all knew each other as we did with the long time off—about eight years back then since I’d seen them last—but what caught me is how you fit in pretty easily. I knew you would, but it was still fun to watch. ¹

We don’t hang out nearly as much as I’d like, and that’s really on me. I really try not to just show up at people’s houses, but I also don’t call ahead, either, to make it work. I need you as a steadying force in my life, and you probably need me as an agitator some. It’s been really fun to watch you be a good husband to Jessica and a good dad to those little girls of yours. I really am jealous of you having all that.

I am a better person for having you in my life, and you’re right at the top of the list of reasons that keep me here. You’re the little brother I didn’t get to have, but you’re a lot more than that, too. I love ya.

Geof

1. Not so fun to watch? That OtR show where we were on the far side, front wall of the venue. I mean, it sounded good, but it didn’t look good from there.

593 of you downloaded a show I did last February in Nashville. If each of you had given me just a dime, I’d have had gas money for that show. Give me a quarter and I can sock some money away to a fund for better microphones to make you a better recording. [I am as far as I will get with that rig without $400-750 microphones.] If it’s a sawbuck, then I can probably buy those mics.

I’ve always told people that I do this as a hobby and that I don’t plan to make this my business. That said, street fairs and flea markets are full of people taking their hobbies and passions and getting a little spending money out of it. A number of my crafty friends did just that at the beginning of October. I won’t lie: I envied the hell out of them.

This imbalance—me giving, you taking without giving back—has been especially brought home generally and specifically today, which is why this letter jumped the line. You see, I actually had someone pay me to record a show tonight—not much, but something. He really wanted the recording, and he knew that I didn’t know the guy. He also knew that I would do the best I could if asked. [I think that I did.] That someone paid me to record a show—blessedly 0.2mi from my house—was good not just in terms of being valued but because I could use the money right now. I’ve been un(der)employed since last September. You could help a brother out.

I’ll keep recording, and I’ll keep sharing when I do. But the lack of appreciation makes me want to stop recording shows and go back to just taking them in. It’s a lot of work documenting these things, and I’m glad that I had tape rolling for all of it to keep me up when I missed something.

I’ll keep recording, but you’re an ingrate if you keep freeloading.

Geof