Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1348
David and Romany Gilmour's haunting track, WP Engine/WP rumble, writer's block, QNAP/Plex problems, the band aid rack gets used for the first time, a kinda weird long Eddie Vedder daydream
Hello hello hello. Greetings from central North Carolina, where the schools are closed today because of Helayne. Helene? I have a friend named Helayne. I have a friend named Helene, too, now that I think of it. Neither are in the path of Helene, though. We aren’t really, but the rain is a-comin. So far not too bad, just a sad drizzle. We will survive. Jane and I had breakfast and she has wandered off. Free day. What will she do with this wondrous freedom? Does she still have gymnastics tonight? If we go, will half the class be absent? Are we still getting pizza this evening? Am I going to Walmart and the recycling center today? So many questions in this life of noble pedestrian domesticity. Thrilling, thrilling.
We are listening to our Release Radar, new releases today. It is currently playing an uncharacteristically mellow FIDLAR track. I think their album is finally out? Lotta advance tracks on that one, hard to keep track. Surviving The Dream. Looks like it came out last week. Release Radar, you lie. You lie! I finished my LP backlog, so until my utterly irresponsible, impulse purchases of the entire Butthole Surfers and Sault discographies on reissues, I think we can chip away at the brand new and improved “To Investigate” playlist today, now totaling 29 hours.
Last night Youtube suggested up to me the “Rehearsal Version” of a new David Gilmour track, a cover song named “Between Two Points” from his new album. He gives over the lead vocals to his daughter Romany and the whole thing is so good. Then I watched a 15-minute documentary about the new album, produced by the guy who produces Alt-J. David Gilmour lives such a life of luxury it really is something. Everywhere in the studio and the massive, gorgeous rehearsal space there is drapery, candles. So much expensive gear it is amazing. And having a young 22 year-old woman sing your mellow sort-of stoner rock really makes the whole thing work much better. I am obsessed. I watched it like five times. Also his daughter plays harp.
I’ve said it before, repeatedly through the decades, and I’ll say it again: David Gilmour, best Pink Floyd band leader.
At one point he calls Pink Floyd a “pop group” which I just love.
I want you all to know that yesterday, as I was collapsing boxes and placing them in my truck to take them to the recycling center today, I scraped a box against my leg. You know, the end grain of the cardboard on a flap, it’s surprisingly abrasive! Put three two-inch long scrapes across my right shin, broke skin. This means I will probably have a scar there forever since it seems like that, in my old age, the skin on my shins hates healing. I should probably get into lotions or something please advise.
But that is not why I am mentioning it. I am mentioning it because it was my first occasion to grab a band-aid off of the band-aid organization rack since creating it a week or two ago. It was awesome. If you have the means, I highly recommend it. It is so choice. Here let’s look at a picture of this thing of beauty again in case you missed that edition of GMHHAY it really is one of the crowning achievements of mine for the year.
You know I like it because one does not reuse content here at GMHHAY we are not a re-hasher. All original content every day. Or at least that is the goal. But… look at it!
Oh shit I am having writers block. I am distracted by Slacks and this amazing cover of “Eyes without a Face” I am listening to and I have no topics in my topic list because I thought I was going to go to Walmart before I wrote this and Walmart is such a fertile ground for topics, believe you me. But the rains, the rains.
When I am writing my private 750 words in the morning after GMHHAY, and I hit this sort of writers block, I have gotten pretty good at powering through, even if I have to write something like “oh god, what are you going to write, this is like pulling teeth, make it stop” for a few hundred words before something kicks in in my brain and the part that thinks about shit and the part that write about shit reconnect and the words begin to flow again. Sometimes it doesn’t happen. But usually it does, if you just keep powering through.
Feels like a bit of a different proposition here in GMHHAY, though. I mean, I make no claim that everything I write for you guys here is interesting. But usually it is at least presentable. So writing “oh god what am I going to write about’ a hundred times feels a bridge too far for you chums.
I am also pre-occupied with this whole Wordpress-WP Engine rumble, but it’s so inside baseball and I would have to, like, do a layperson explainer for you guys, but it has not yet cracked up into mainstream news, so the vast majority of my readers, who did not work in the tech industry (you beautiful, lucky souls) probably don’t really know about it yet.
Okay fine.
Wordpress is a non-profit that powers a third of the web with its blogging and content management software. Wordpress also has a commercial for-profit arm, Wordpress.com, that will do the work for you. Wordpress.com has a competitor, WP Engine. WP Engine is backed by Silver Lake Capital so, you know, default bias against them. The whole situation is analogous to Red Hat’s relationship with Linux: a for-profit that at its heart uses open-source software.
Except apparently, according to Wordpress CEO Matt (a casual friend of mine and a client so bear that in mind through all of this), WP Engine never contributes anything back to the Wordpress foundation: no source code, no money. I think. From what I understand. And he is pissed about that.
This has all been going on for years, and it’s not quite clear why suddenly Matt is super pissed about this situation, but he has escalated and is now in a war with WP Engine.
(oh man this new Father John Misty track is the best thing he’s done in a long time dammit).
It seems that part of the reason for the escalation is that WP Engine has been retaliating against some employees, according to Matt. Were these employees trying to.. I dunno… contribute to the WordPress source code? Maybe! Unclear?
My friend Guan just pointed out to me that Red Hat has a history of contributing previously-proprietary code to the open source project. This is pure conjecture but maybe some WP Engine employees were trying to do that and got shut down or something. Or maybe they just called out their bosses as penny pinchers and not giving back.
Anyway, over the course of a week, a situation that has probably existed for close to a decade has reached the boiling point and now there are legal threats flying both ways, and Matt has shut off WP Engine’s access to all of the Wordpress services it uses, which include, like, login!
Quite the escalation! And yeah, the trademark confusion is probably true (was just talking about this issue in a Slack group and one person was confused and thought WP Engine was part of Wordpress so, hey, anecdotal proof!) But also… not new?
I am defaulting to assuming Matt’s in the right here — I have an inherent bias against Silver Lake for reasons — but I do not fully understand the situation. Color me intrigued. I want to know more.
What is the point about writing about something if you do not have a hot take and cannot write a decent explainer, Rick. What is the point.
But that was a pretty decent explainer, Rick!
Okay, fair point.
My Plex library on my QNAP has disappeared. The Plex instance still works, the app still runs, I see all my friends’ libraries, but my library has completely disappeared. The files for all the movies are still on the QNAP. There are no error messages saying the library is corrupt or anything, there is no empty library in the app. It’s just… gone. poof. I do not know what to do. I do not possess the Linux chops (anymore) to fix this on my own, and a casual Googling Kaging yields no step-by-step solutions or, really, anyone else having this problem. It is all very disheartening and I do not know what to do about it and I miss my movies and I want them back. It is not even clear how to make a new home library! I would just rebuild the thing but the options is… not there? Or I can’t find it anyway. It is so weird. I am sad.
I think, by now, I would be aware if there were a QNAP+Plex expert amongst my readership, but if you have any insights into this problem and any possible solutions, I would be deeply grateful. And I apologize to those of you who enjoy my Plex library in your movie-watching life.
I’ve gotten to spend some time with my daughter again upon return home and it has been great. Even got to snuggle a bit, once she let me put a mask on god I hate doing this till Saturday night but one must do what one must. She is very pre-occupied with scratches and bruises on her body. She is trying to not use her right index finger which has a very strange, pinpoint-sized bruise on it. She is excited about her upcoming birthday party and very excited her first cousins are coming to visit from Alaska next month. Oh I should take a few days off there huh. That would be smart.
Get on that, Rick.
Covers playlist for you. All new covers, get your special covers here, hot off the press. Okay the Willie/Sinead cover is not new, nor the Lene Lovich but the rest are. Very into the “Eyes Without a Face” cover and the Ian Sweet cover and, I have to say, weirdly I am into the Eddie Vedder cover of “Save it For Later” that is not a thing I thought I would say I wonder what transpired to make Eddie Vedder stop and think about “Save it for Later” long enough to realize it was not just an overplayed new wave staple but, actually, a great song worthy of re-interpretation. I picture him sitting in the back of the tourbus, Miss Piggy style, taking in the scenic vistas of America’s expansive west while listening to the song on white Airpod Pros and even though Eddie Vedder probably looked dorky in his Airpod Pros — he’s probably one of those people who wears them with the stems sticking straight out and not pressed against his year — even though he looked dorky, he was struck with a revelation. He scurried back to his bunk and banged out the demo of this cover on acoustic guitar into his laptop, maybe using a Focusrite Scarlet or a Presonus Audio Box or maybe, just maybe, one of those cool two-channel Apogee Duets. Yeah, probably that one. Eddie Vedder has a sense of minimalism.
All right you have a lovely weekend and let’s talk Monday. Ciao.