Dead Oceans 2008/2009 Sampler

Another free one.

Neumann KM140’s~>Aerco Pre~>Sony PCM-M1

**recorded FOB/DFC
**recorded by MKHstudios
**this show took place in between a ferry landing and a set of train tracks of which both were active. a few times through this recording you can hear a low ohm rumble of the ferry. we were also treated to a frieght train that passed within 40 yards of the stage during Airline to Heaven.

2006-07-12: Alderney Landing, Dartmouth, NS, Canada (disc 1) and 2006-07-12: Alderney Landing, Dartmouth, NS, Canada (disc 2).

There’s a fundamental disconnect, I’m afraid, in Twitter’s two user models. Twitter, no matter what you’re pushing out on it, can be used in two ways: narrowcast or broadcast. You’re either considering yourself to be a broadcaster of information, or you’re a narrowcaster and trying to hit just a few people. I think the main different would be whether your account is public or private, but it’s also in use.

I’m a narrowcasting person—sure, I “broadcast” information, but I usually try to keep specific folks in mind when I tweet. Most of the time, but not all, I ask, “Is this something I would phone a friend about?” The rare “broadcasting” I do is stuff like today, when I’m posting weather updates. Otherwise, my random ramblings of under 140 characters tend to be things that I’d tell my friends.

This is, of course, not the only way to use Twitter. Everyone has these conversations, at some level; but you can truly broadcast as things get aggregated. If a bunch of people tweet about an event—be it an Apple product launch, a weather/natural disaster, or the stock market—it shows up in tools that glean the chaff from Twitter.

We’re seeing the same thing that we saw with blogging—you were either doing it for personal or promotional reasons. To be honest, we’re all on some portion of that spectrum. But where I think feelings get hurt and people get riled up is when people who were sociable and narrowcast go to the broadcast end of the spectrum.

An example: my good friend Mark Traphagen. Mark’s a marketer. He went from the narrowcast model—sending things that he’d call his friends on the telephone about—to far more down the broadcast end of the spectrum. I think a lot of people are turned off by that; me, I quietly unfollowed Mark and then explained it when he emailed me about it. From reading between the tweets, I see that it’s a kerfuffle again today with a bunch of my RMFO friends, many of whom have said, of late, that Twitter has replaced the forum as their primary “hang” place.

And see, that’s the disconnect: we all tell our friends about things, like “Hey, the weather is bad in your area,” or “Yo, traffic is blocked on your drive home.” But when you’ve got this friend who’s calling you all the time to tell you about things that you’re not interested in, eventually, you stop answering the phone every time they call, right? On Twitter, you just stop following them. Sure, some people are going to take offense at that—after all, the following thing is public, and there’s tools like Twitual to show you who is and isn’t following you—and that’s understandable. There’s also different toolsets for reading Twitter, including some with grouping features that let you filter incoming stuff.

The point is this: everyone’s use case is different. I add and remove feeds all the time for my own needs, and the only difference is that I don’t make that list public, whereas Twitter does make that public. Twitter does that, I think, to push people to be more social/narrowcasted with their service. A lot of my friends—and me!—use it this way. But it’s so arrogant to tell Mark, “You’re doing it wrong!”

Again, to quote Rands, you choose who you follow. That’s it. Twitter is totally an opt-in system. If you feel spammed, stop.

[And this is where I again wonder why anyone reads what I tweet if they don't know me. Because, well, I vent and it's craaaaazy.]

NHL 09 is missing a crucial mode in Be a Pro: the ability to go to the Coach’s office and say, “Hey, coach, I’m a right-handed left wing on a team where the best right wings are mediocre at best. Sure, I won the Hart Trophy last year and have won the Maurice Richard Trophy four years straight, but … shouldn’t you have me at RW and Dany Heatley on the LW? Really?”

Also, I would like to declare where I played in juniors or college, because I’d like to be the third Charger in the fictional NHL.

So I’ve been thinking lately about openness. I am, fundamentally, an open person. As such, my decision six months ago to lock down my Twitter account was a very hard one. I reversed it today. Why? Simple: I am an open person. You ask me a question, and you’re going to get an answer. Whether you like it or not really isn’t my concern. I talk about my faults, probably not often enough. I understand and respect the reasons for privacy, but at my core, I would rather be transparent than not. As such, I have a tendency to say some surprising and shocking things—partially because I don’t have much of a filter, and partially because would rather just speak my mind and be judged for that rather than hiding things.

So I’m sitting here in my terribly messy house, waiting for guys to bring in my furniture. In fact, they just called—they’re 15 minutes out. Is my house a wreck? Yes, it is, but I’m working on it. My house is a metaphor for my life, I think—too much junk, too much stuff of little value being held onto, entropic, chaotic and full of music and computers. It’s just who I am, for better or for worse. There is some of that that I’d like to change—de-junk the house, learn to let things go more, etc.—and I think that I can change that if I put forth the effort. But I really don’t want to change the fact that I’m a fundamentally open person.

As such, you can read my Twitter account if you wish. Warning: it can be scary inside my head.

We’ve all heard of DEFCON, right? The DEFense readiness CONdition rating system? If not, go check that link. I’ll wait.

Now, DEFCON goes from 5 [copacetic] to 1 [thermonuclear war]. Sometime recently on Twitter, maybe the last few weeks, I jokingly started referring to the GEOFCON system to gauge my mood/relative irritation at [colleagues|subordinates|support organizations|customers|NASA]. GEOFCON 5 is a normal, happy, easy-going time. Most of you would look at GEOFCON 5 and hate it, but I like the frenetic pace of what we do, and most of the time, I handle it.

But sometimes … well, sometimes, people start fucking up, and I get mad.

I have only been to GEOFCON 1 twice. The first time was in October. The second time was today. I’m really glad that it happened at the end of the day, because I didn’t get an opportunity to find out who’d screwed up. I … didn’t need the confrontation, because I was out of control.

Right now, I’m about a GEOFCON 3. I’m agitated. I’m gonna sleep like crap tonight. But hey … we have hockey on Friday night, and this means I’ll probably have some especially fine commentary for our referees.

So Facebook’s Notes function acts a lot like a blog, but … I have one of those. I got “tagged” [literally] in one of those viral Facebook things, but since it’s the lovely Dr. Perry, whom I’ve known for almost half my life, I’ll respond…

I. Once you have been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random facts about yourself.
II. At the end of the note, tag 16 people
III. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

Ain’t taggin’ no one but Jeff, because well, Jeff Holland sucks for making me do this.

1. I shoot a Canon DSLR, but I have a Nikon Coolpix S210 for my point-and-shoot … on purpose.
2. Despite the fact that I wore a lot of flannel shirts in the 1990s, I didn’t own a Nirvana record until the current decade.
3. Contrary to how I was raised, my vote for Obama was not my first for a Democrat. That one went to Don Siegelman, and boy do I ever regret it. [Correlation != causation.]
4. I had never met anyone in Caedmon’s Call [after a show, or otherwise] before becoming a member of the [caedmonscall.net] Staff. I don’t think anyone in the band actually realizes this fact.
5. I purposefully chose not to date in my two years at MSMS because, “I’d never find my wife there. We’re gonna go to separate schools, and what’s the point in that?” Somewhere, Rick and Jessica are laughing.
6. I love that my dad’s middle name is his mother’s maiden name, and any girl I date ends up getting judged, rightly or wrongly, by what effect her last name would have on the middle name of our theoretical first-born. [This random note intended to prove to my mother that I do, in fact, want to get married and have kids, and think about it.]
7. I own a classic acoustic guitar, a 1960s Gibson Dove, but do not actually play the guitar. Andrew Osenga played it on the first of his Letters to the Editor EPs, which you can still download for free, and it resides at his house to this day.
8. I swore that I would go by my middle name, Franklin [probably shortening it to Frank], when we moved to the South. I forgot about it until Mom asked me about two weeks before we moved, and I decided I’d stick with my weird shortening of Geoffrey.
9. I had never seen a live-action hockey game until I first came to Huntsville. I have seen many, many, many since then.
10. I had a 34 on my ACT, a 1510 on my SAT, was a National Merit Finalist, and finished college with a sub-3.0 GPA, lower than my brother’s collegiate scores. I am living proof that a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re gonna kick ass in college. My GPA is decremented for a variety of reasons: MSMS burning me out on school, my untreated depression, all the time I spent screwing around with Student Government instead of school, and … well, being a lazy student.
11. My boss asked me how much money it would take to buy me out of the last year of my degree program, as he needed me full-time at the time. I considered his offer but knew it would affect our ABET accreditation.
12. I used to be afraid to fly, and am still afraid of falling from heights. I used to freak out when our family would drive over bridges, especially the Brent Spence Bridge. [What can I say? I was a weird kid.]
13. Two of my best friends pretty well thought they’d never like me after the first time they met me. That’s because our first meeting was right before the second Lord of the Rings movie came out, and my friends decided to prepare for it by watching the extended version of the first one. How would you torture me, y’all? Strap me to a chair and make me watch a three-hour movie and do nothing else. I’m such a spastic, continuous partial attention person that I just can’t do it. [The last movie I saw in the theater was The Incredibles, and only because Mark wanted to go see it.]
14. If I’d been born three hours earlier, I would’ve graduated with the aforementioned Dr. Perry. I was born at 0300 on 1 Oct 1978, and Ohio’s cutoff to start school was 30 Sep.
15. I once had a friend tell me, “If something ever happened to my husband, I would want to get remarried to you.” This revelation became even weirder when she got divorced.
16. My pinkies are crooked, which is a family trait. My left one is straighter because I’ve broken it seven times. Okay, broke it once, playing soccer, and I keep re-breaking the same spot because the break is at the end of the penultimate bone.

Any other questions?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go back to working on my Antero Nittymaki and Mathieu Biron voodoo dolls …

Again, not available on DIME, but I’ll reseed if requested.

Mic: Sony ECM MS907 (120-degree setting)
Mic config: handheld, chest level
Location: FOB DFC, 3 concrete platform levels down inside the first semicircle walkway above the pit.
Source: Sony MZ-R37 MD Recorder
Lineage: source > Total Recorder (16-bit, 44.1khz) > TLH FLAC16 (Level 6)

Edits to track 16 and fade-ins/outs done with Goldwave.

Recorded by: litmus

Transferred and mastered by litmus
www.bigmicroscope.com

A ‘From Where I Stand’ Release: FWIS-014

2007-08-24: Greek Theater, Berkeley, CA, USA

When we played Colorado College to start our season, Scott Owens, CC’s radio voice and a former member of the Michigan State organization, called our coach, Danton Cole, to talk about the Alabama-Huntsville team. Cole is an MSU alum, and so the conversation was free and easy.

And then Owens asked about recruiting. And then … then I got to remixing.

That was a fun ninety minutes last night … and now I have to mix it down to 30 and 60-second loops before tonight’s game.

I just had one of those wacky ideas that might not be too wacky to work, so … why not post it on the Internet?

Everyone talks about the stock market, but no one talks about the credit market—at least until now. Why? The bond market is difficult to understand, because you’re lending money for a return on the investment, and sometimes you borrow money to lend it. It’s counter-intuitive in how the pricing works, etc. It’s wacky.

Anyhow, every economist worth their salt argues that what worries everyone is the credit market; the stock market just goes where it goes. [To wit: the credit market has been seizing up for weeks, while the stock market has only just now started to really, really tank.] So if fixing the stock market takes fixing the credit market, let’s really fix the credit market—not by an infusion of taxpayer cash, but true capital.

Where do we get that capital? 401ks. Everyone is aflutter over how 401ks are evaporating in value, which … well, yes, that’s what paper wealth does, people. It fluctuates until you liquidate your assets, unless you’re the cautious sort that only buys blue-chip, dividend-paying stocks. Otherwise, it is a big gambling market—that your investment allows capitalization of the company you’re buying stock in, which allows them to make more money. Until they’re paying you a dividend for the shares you own, you’re simply betting that, down the line, someone will value your investment more than you did when you bought it. This is the Greater Fool Theory, and at the end of the day, someone loses. [As long as it's not you, though, who cares?]

Anyhow, folks are worried about losing money hand over fist—again, paper wealth. So, let’s one-time, for 90 days, let everyone liquidate their assets, tax-free—ONLY if they buy certificates of deposit, T-bills, etc. You can only avoid the income/capital gains taxes if you capitalize the market or the government. Period. This floods the credit market with capital while letting the stock market tank. What happens then? The Warren Buffets of the world, the guys who buy for value and hold for a long time, they’ll go buy now-undervalued stocks. Flush with capital, banks will have money to lend companies—and with companies’ stock values in the crapper, that’s where they’ll get their capital, because selling their own shares of stock just won’t be all that appealing.

This fails all sorts of tests that I have for providing simple solutions to complex problems, and it might well be something I regret posting in the morning, but right now … seems like a half-assed good idea to me.

As Stephen noted, this whole fiscal mess is our fault.

So, of course, we’re gonna use another rocket scientist to fix it. [No really ... Kashkari worked for NASA before going to get his MBA.]

What freaks me out is that this guy would’ve finished his engineering degree about the time I started on mine. I have a bunch of friends from my freshman year of college who are 35 this year. :boggle:

Thirty! | Day #1

Originally uploaded by Geof F. Morris

I’m thirty today. I’m excited, can’t you tell?

I’m also joining Mike and Rae in a 365-day photo pool called “Hacks and Cameras”, which I fit on both accounts. Whether be with my DSLR, my iPhone, or Photo Booth, I hope to shoot something every day of my 31st year on Earth. You can follow the pool or 30+N/365 set.

Thanks to all who have called, emailed, and the like to send their regards. It’s been a good day after a number of really bad ones in a row.

You can watch some of the cringeworthy interviews that Sarah Palin has been giving and think one of two things, I believe:

• She is the idiot that some believe that she is, and she’s parroting these talking points without really understanding them. The old joke about Rudy Giuliani’s profile of “noun, verb, 9/11″ comes to mind, although Giuliani is, from what I can tell, a reasonably intelligent man. [A reasonably intelligent man who seems to be a raging asshole with poor judgments of character, but intelligent nonetheless.]
• She is a näif thrown to the wolves, and she’s been given these talking points as a rope to pull her out of the depths of her ignorance. And not ignorance in a bad sense—a mayor and a governor has to be focused on their local issues. There was talk prior to 2006, when a Democrat won the lieutenant governorship in Alabama and made the point moot, that my governor, Bob Riley, might be a good VP runningmate this time around. Bob’s like your kindly grandpa or great uncle, or maybe that nice old man at church. He’s nice, he’s safe. But I bet that, if you pushed Bob on Israel and the Wall Street meltdown and all that, he’d be iffy, too. Same for Bobby Jindal or Tim Pawlenty. These guys know the issues in their state and region, but rarely, if ever, do they have to think beyond that. And as an Alabamian, I’m glad that Bob Riley is focused on the issues of Alabama and isn’t expounding on American foreign policy every day [although, as a former Congresscritter, he's had to think about these things in the past].

The former gives Palin little benefit of the doubt; the latter levies the greater blame at the people who picked an unready VP. For the many who want to decry Obama’s lack of experience, I respond thusly: yes, he’s inexperienced, but he’s had 19 months on the campaign trail, talking with reporters, advisors, and voters about these issues. He’s had time to think it through, internalize it, and understand the issues at some level. He’s not as experienced as McCain or Biden; few are. But Obama’s had a long, long time to think all this stuff through, and as a lawyer, he’s got the background to have critically thought through the points.

In contrast, Palin has had about five weeks to figure this out. All signs indicate that she was a late pick and had considered herself out of the running—and she was busy governing her state in the meantime. She had other things going. And now, here at the end, she’s having to play catch-up. Even if she were as sharp as Bill Clinton, that would not be much time to have internalized everything.

Palin’s candidacy feels rushed, thrown-together. I would argue that these are not times where the American people can be rushed—and with nine of the 46 VPs becoming President, and McCain set to be the oldest man elected to the office … isn’t that just a little bit scary?

[Honestly, I think the truth is somewhere between the two points I laid out up above, but I was using that for framing purposes.]

Larry Lessig lays out more reasons I wouldn’t want Palin in the VP spot … now. Maybe later, though! [Note: I am also the person who said in 2006 that Barack Obama shouldn't run this year, so ... there's that.]

[Hubbs, Lessig just outshone your work.]