My Might Got Loud

By | December 22, 2009
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If you had to define my musical taste The White Stripes and U2 would be mentioned and probably be debated about which as more influential to me. For most of 2009 I have been teased about the documentary “It Might Get Loud” featuring none other than Jack White, The Edge and Jimmy Page.

This movie was made for me. I could watch a separate movie on either of these guitarists, but having both share the movie, their stories and space in “The Summit” was amazing.

When I wasn’t grinning from ear to ear I tried to soak up the movie. I wanted to know more about what songs influenced them, or hear for the umpteenth time how they got start in music. Even something I was familiar with (ie: band posting by Larry Mullen which lead to the forming of U2) felt fresh and intriguing as The Edge walked down the same halls that the band started in.

What I really appreciated was the reason for why The White Stripes are what they are. From the color scheme, caricature appearance and simplicity was a way to distract from what was really going on. I also respected that Jack White would intentionally go out of his way to make to things more difficult. To paraphrase, it takes him three steps to get to the keyboard so he will put it four steps away so he has to run to make it in time. He pushes himself, constantly doing challenges to never be stagnant.

There was a moment where nine year old Jack was being instructed by current age Jack to stomp on the Airline, to get angry with it. I yelled at the TV in horror! I feared for the Res-O-Glass, for the safety of the sound that iconic guitar had provided. However, if something else broke off it, or would go out of tune easier then it would just be that much more of a challenge for Jack to perform with it.

When Page and The Edge were revisiting old recording/rehearsal areas Jack White was with his “nine year old self” talking about kicking the chair away from the piano for dramatic effect and how to become a performer. I found it a little strange to have a younger version of yourself in the film, but this movie highlighted the unconventional nature of Jack White, and it worked for him.

The Washington City Paper interviewed director Davis Guggenheim and asked about mini-Jack.

WCP: Speaking of Jack, who was that little kid in the movie who helped tell his story?

DG: That’s Jack White as a 9-year-old boy. Did it throw you off?

WCP: A little bit.

DG: Yeah. Jack said to me, “I want to teach myself how to play guitar.” And I was like, cool. And the next day he shows up in a hat and a bowtie and a suit, and in the back, seriously, was a 9-year-old kid dressed exactly like him. And he said, “Davis, this is Jack. Jack, this is Davis.”

WCP: Any idea how he found the kid?

DG: Not a clue. I let them tell their own stories, and how he told his was quintessential Jack.

WCP: The kid was good.

DG: The kid was good. [Pause.] How do you know it’s not him as a 9-year-old?

There was a level of respect that felt genuine in “The Summit” too. The Edge was instructing the others how to perform “I Will Follow”, and when Page began playing “Ramble On” White had the biggest and happiest grin on his face. They may come from different disciplines but they all understood what it took to get where they are.

Obviously if you are a U2, The White Stripes or Led Zeppelin fan you need to see this, but the movie was made in such a way that anyone who has created music or picked up a guitar would be engaged for the full length of the movie.

My Gallery2 Thumbnail Problem

By | December 16, 2009
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Gallery2 IconWhen I changed hosting plans with GoDaddy I encountered a few problems with Gallery2. All of the configuration was correct, but when I uploaded a new image the square thumbnail would not appear. I deactivated the Square Thumbnail plugin from Site Admin > Gallery > Plugins, and reactivated it but there was no change.

I attempted to rebuild all thumbnails from Gallery > Maintenance but I received an error message about the last image I uploaded. I figured something was wrong and began the task of troubleshooting.

If I have a problem with Gallery2 there is a good chance the answer can be found in the support forums. The forums were helpful but there was never a ‘catch all’ thread for my problem. Since I have gone through this process twice in eight months I wanted to write the steps I took for future reference and possibly for others if they have a problem when their square thumbnails are no longer being created after a host move.

Getting Started
The Thumbnails / resized images section in the FAQ got me on the path to troubleshooting the Graphic Toolkits. I started off with completely uninstalling ImageMagick, Jpegtran, NetPBM and Gd. At this point I uninstalled the Square Thumbnails plugin; I don’t know if this was necessary to remove the Square Thumbnails plugin but I did not want to take any chances.

Installing ImageMagick, Jpegtran, NetPBM and Gd was easy, but configuring them was where the majority of my time was spent. Gd installs without configuration, but the other three require a bit more attention.

ImageMagick
Fortunately ImageMagick is accessible by a public directory on GoDaddy hosting accounts, so when I had to provide a path for the IM (ImageMagick) binaries all I had to enter was “/usr/local/bin/” and Save Settings.

Gallery2 ImageMagick Settings

Jpegtran
This is where things got a little more difficult for me. There is a /jpegtran folder at “/usr/bin/jpegtran” but that would fail to crop the image when I tested the binary. I also received the error message “Incorrect exit status for jpegtran command”.

I downloaded my own Jpegtran library from the file “jpegtran.tar.gz”, which can be downloaded from here. I extracted the file and uploaded it to a folder inside of my Gallery2 installation. Then I set the folder and its contents to 755 and tested the settings again and this time the crop function passed.

NetPBM
I downloaded a version of the NetPBM file from Sourceforge (the same file is mirrored here). I extracted the files to a folder inside my Gallery2 installation and set the folder and its contents to 755. When I ran the test I had the “Jhead” path empty and had several error messages.

Gallery2 No Jhead Installed

I attempted to install the “Jhead” library with Jhead.gz and jhead-latest.tar.gz but neither appeared to work. When I did this in April 2009 I was not sure if I had “Jhead” installed or not, but I am still able to use NetPBM on MIME types image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, image/gif, image/png and image/tiff so that will meet my requirements for now. If I find the answer for the “Jhead” library path I will update this post.

With ImageMagick, Jpegtran, NetPBM and Gd installed and configured I reinstalled Square Thumbnails and when I re-uploaded the image my previously broken image now appeared.

My Temporary Down

By | December 15, 2009
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Under ConstructionOver the last few months I have noticed that the speediness of WordPress and Gallery2 (especially Gallery2) has become an issue. I have had to handicap the features on Gallery2 by enable caching, removing the random image and view counts all in an effort to ensure a quick page load time.

To combat this I am going to switch my hosting plan within GoDaddy. Unfortunately it will not be an easy and smooth transition. I will have to cancel my current hosting account, wait 24 hours for seangursky.com to disassociate and then it will be free to set up with the new hosting plan.

Hosting Grid

After my hosting failure in March I want to make sure I have everything in place before flipping the switch, and all told this process should take a few days. It would be great if it was all sorted out before the weekend, but we’ll see how these things go.

My Great White Order

By | December 14, 2009
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White Stripes - Under Great White Northern LightsFriday afternoon I received an email about a pre-order for the Under Great White Northern Lights box set. My heart skipped a beat and I immediately began panic mode. The “Under Great White Northern Lights” was a documentary that The White Stripes put together during their 2007 Canada tour.

What made this boxset special was everything else that was included in this:

  • DVD of the “Under Great White Northern Lights” documentary
  • DVD of the 10th anniversary show from Nova Scotia
  • Double LP containing 17 live tracks
  • Exclusive 7″ vinyl
  • Silkscreened print from Rob Jones
  • 208 pages of photography

All of this was put together in a beautiful box and presented in classic White Stripes stylings.

I spent a few minutes debating the cost, had some words of encouragement from Taylor and Scott, and then proceeded to submit my pre-order. Unfortunately this package won’t arrive until March, but it’s good to know that in a few short months I will have this amazing gift arrive, and expect a full unboxing.

My Book of Leftovers

By | December 13, 2009
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Life goes on and sometimes the blog gets left behind.

Lost - The Final SeasonThe Christmas break for TV shows has started to kick in. Some shows (FlashForward, V) may not return until after the Olympics, others will begin again in January, but this quiet is the calm before the storm. It will give me a chance to re-watch season five of Lost and prepare for the final season in February.

Details about the sixth season are very accessible. Casting spoilers can appear in an interview for TV Guide or in a not-Lost related article. With just over fifty days to go it is easy to cave and read the smallest detail, but I want to go into February with as much unknown as possible.

To pass the time a little easier and get excited for the upcoming season I have spent a lot of time watching fan made Lost trailers. In Preparation for Season 6 is some of the best fan work I have seen on any trailer. Keeping in ABC fashion (where no new footage is shown in previews) these videos do a great job of building up certain elements of the show.

Blue Skies Over Bad Lands
Sadly the giant black hole that appeared over Norway turned out to be nothing more than the Russians testing a missile out at water. The photos from this entertained the alien geek in all of us and fueled the what if conversation a little bit more.

Norway Light

Tube Steak Challenge
A long overdue update wouldn’t be without an increase to the Tube Steak Challenge. Thanks to my nieces second birthday I was able to add three more to the drive to fifty-two.


Tube Steak Challenge 21

My Trouble With Reverse

By | November 20, 2009
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When my torrents started to act up a few days ago I thought nothing of it. I chalked it up to the tracker being problematic, Shaw being stubborn, a weird seed to peer ratio or something else I would investigate later. I never thought it meant that my RAID 5 system had failed. When I went into Disk Management and saw my RAID drive not recognized my face turned a ghastly expression and Jenna said she “never wanted to see that look on me again”.

Wingman was crying for me and for over a day I neglected the signs. In fact it had been crying for so long that two drives were marked as failed. In a RAID 5 system it can survive if a single drive fails, but two or more is when things get serious and I had a critical issue on hand.

My 1and1 data loss in March is still an open wound and the thought of losing everything was too much to handle. When I say everything I mean it. I could survive if my Videos folder disappeared. I could slowly rebuild it over time, cut back on what I wanted to watch. However losing the photos would be an injury I could never recover from. I may not look at our Jasper photos from 2004, or reminesce about the giant pizza Dad and I made one day, but I always could, and to have that taken away would have been huge.

Wingman, we have a problem.

The thought of losing everything started to takes its toll as the RAID was being examined at work. How would I recover? What would I do differently? It was like being faced with a life changing conversation at the doctors office after being told what the dark spot on your x-ray meant.

This was a road I did not want to go down but I prepared for the worst and contemplated what would be my poison as I intended on drowning my sorrows in the evening if the results weren’t good.

Our company IT man, Nigel, had been investigating the RAID and seeing what (if anything) he could recover. After a few hours had passed I heard an exclamation of victory and I was told Wingman would be okay. One hard drive was lost in the process and I would be wise to add a fifth drive to the array to allow for proper redundancy. Fortunately the next task of locating an old model hard drive was easy and for $140 (plus the lunch I owe Nigel) Wingman will be okay and with no data loss.

The Sunday before all of this started Jenna and I were relaxing at home and she was watching an episode of “Sex and the City”. It happened to be My Motherboard, My Self in which Carrie Bradshaw has her Macintosh laptop die and loses all of her files. Everyone she spoke with asks her what she uses to backup and equates backing up to something everyone does that no one talks about.

Even with a backup solution you can still come face to face with losing everything and having nothing.

My Last Parade

By | November 18, 2009
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Leading up to the November 14, 2009 Matthew Good concert at Shaw Conference Center I listened to recordings of Good’s performances in Edmonton from over the years. The improvement in recording quality aside, there was something special about those older shows that encourage me to replay them frequently. It was like a certain chemistry on stage, a feeling or chaos as the band knew a large back catalog and it was very possible to hear “Suburbia” or “Carmelina”; or even that older material from the former Matthew Good Band sounded fresh and interesting.

A few more albums have been released in the last few years and the studio (and live) band have been replaced with new faces. I do not know what the catalyst was, but there seems to be a difference in enjoyment of shows over these last few years. Saturday was my 23rd time seeing Matthew Good perform over the last since 1998; and it was almost to the week that he performed there a decade ago with Moist and Gob.

Saturday night was a good show but I don’t know if it was a great show. Perhaps for the casual Matthew Good fan it gave them everything they wanted to hear, or maybe it converted people to become more interested in his work; and if that happened then the show was a success. I feel I am the minority in the audience when it comes to set lists and what I would like to hear and playing to my tastes could alienate the other several thousand in attendance.

I consider the March 23, 2006 acoustic set at Horowitz Theatre one of the best he’s done, and the October 2005 three night stand at the Starlite Room spectacular. The Pepsi Taste Tour from the summer of 1999 at The Rev was a part of an amazing day and the performance was the first time I had heard material from Beautiful Midnight (the show was prior to the albums release) and that will always be a show held in high regard. Those performances only had a few “never hear that again” moments, and everything else was fairly standard; so what does it take for a Matthew Good performance to stand out amongst them all?

Saturday night had a mix of new material and fan favorites. The new songs from Vancouver sounded great. The crowd responded well to them and they really evolved to something else on stage. Underplayed favorites like “Giant” and “Everything Is Automatic” made for a high energy encore. I think longer songs like “Avalanche” or “Empty’s Theme Park” may be a little too cumbersome to play for a large audience (especially in a bigger venue like the Shaw Conference). Perhaps the attention of those in attendance wanders during an eight minute song, but that is their loss because long Matthew Good songs is a specialty and they sound great live.

By the standard of past shows there was very little banter or political commentary. We were treated to the “pirate and ninja story” as well as some other musings that Matthew had with his band mates. When I look toward the stage I may not see Christian, Pat or Rich, but Matthew is having a good time with their replacements and it shows.

The one thing that hadn’t changed was that the regulars at Good concerts were in full force too. A ‘triple sky kick’ may have been a little more difficult to pull off and we were all kind of sore for standing for a few hours but part of the appeal about going back to any of Good’s shows is the chance to see familiar faces and talk the set over and discuss our favorite moments. We no longer wait outside the venue for hours day after day but it is almost a standing date we have when a tour is announced.

I may never hear “Symbolistic White Walls” or “My Out of Style is Coming Back” again but when Matthew Good comes to town it’s a guaranteed enjoyable night and I hope the next stop is a little sooner than the 17 months I had between the last shows.

A highlight worth mentioning from the night was Mother Mother. I was familiar with their discography going into a show (a rare occurrence with openers for Matthew Good) and their thirty minute set was fast paced, very tight and extremely entertaining. They will only continue to get better and more popular as time goes on and I’m glad to say that “I saw them when” they played a venue that only held a few thousand compared to what they could be playing to in the future.

Sound IconAs to be expected, I recorded the show and here is my favorite song from the new album performed on Saturday night: “Great Whales of the Sea”. As an added bonus is my favorite song from Mother Mother: “Hayloft”.