is there life on gonterian?

I’ve had an amazing year.  I’ve had 3 art shows, sold more than a few paintings, bought an art studio, renovated it.  In the process my company [the one i work for: propeller] went over our highest annual revenue in September.  As much as the rest of the world scares me to death right now, our little world seems to be kinda’ ok.  For now.  I’ve had some other breakthroughs this year too.  I’ve been playing keyboards and bass regularly for the first time.  I even get in a few licks on the blues harmonica given to me long ago by Dave Mason [hope you're out there and well, mate.]  I was even surfing craigslist today looking for a piano/keyboards instructor.

There, I put it out there.  Have to take stock once in a while.  With so much uncertainty everywhere, I really have to say it’s been a pretty good year up to now.

G

It has been done.  I moved fixed impressions from blogger to the fixedimpressions.com domain.  Wordpress has an impressive tool that pulls your database from blogger.  It took about 5 minutes to migrate the whole history.  Since I had hard coded most of the photos from my .mac account, almost all of the links from the last 3 and 1/2 years still work.  I also am about to redo the gonterian website to run off Wordpress.  I’m pretty enamored of the lightbox photoblog thing and find the admin very usable.  It certainly beats any other approach that I can manage.

It seems like I’m soon to have to manage my own domains without the crutch of my suberb host and friend, Brian.  I need probably a couple weeks of hammering on bash and learning to manage server directives and permissions and the like.  Time has come.  More on that, later.

Anyway, change is hard and change is good, so I’m on it.

Word.

G

the next step will be for me to roll forward 3+ years of the fixed impressions which has been always hosted on blogger on to the www.fixedimpressions.com which has patiently awaited this move for about 2 years.  wordpress has a built in migration tool which i look forward to attempting to utilize.  check back here for the results!

I’ve hired an assistant to help me keep up with the studio and related endeavors, including keeping the blog current.  I’ve a known problems with consistency, witness with the fixed impressions  blog that i kept it current and full of rich content for the first two years.  since then, it’s been flat.  and when i have posted it has not been so rich.  i hope that when i get it  up on the new site, i’ll make the time to keep it full of life.

that’s it for now, much work to do on the backside.

over and out

g5

just back from a western mass cameo with mom and sis.  i am blessed, my momma’s still kickin’ it at 81 and doing pretty good.  we went out to dinner at her favorite restaurant [a favorite of mine too] and had a good time.  her memory is getting a little iffy at times, but she sure is fun to have dinner with.  i am blessed with a most wonderful, if offbeat family.

the amherst area is lovely, a little early there for full foliage by a couple weeks, but nice.  it still feels very comfortable, even if i left for good in ‘86.  i’d like to do a show of my art there, maybe a town over in Northampton, where there are a number of galleries of note.

we’ll be building a new website for the studio, hopefully starting this week.  i’ve lined up some help in the form of an assistant who will help with studio planning, newsletter, events, and general ship-shapey stuff.  i’m very excited.  we also have a couple of new artists joining the studio, i’ll write more about them once they’re confirming their residencies this week.

.g5~

This is from the bar area looking out in the courtyard

mad set by g5 during compression party 2008

g5 on the 1200s

hey, i’m going to work in the studio this winter on some new compositions, re-arrange a few projects and put together a new release for the playa next year

yea, i whacked the old database as repeated efforts to get a new-enough version of wordpress running on the old data just didn’t cut it.  cut my losses and give it the red pill.  now, i’m focusing on overcoming a 12 month posting hiatus across all of my domains.  i just quit in february this year.  i’d try to blame it on my job, but it just doesn’t work.  i just slacked, k?

last nite was bassnectar throbbin’ it up at the higher ground in s. burlington.  show ended about 0130 and i hurt all day for it, but hung out after the show and met up with lorin and his video guy.  video guy said that he was backstage, unlike the last show when he was out front with lorin.  he said he wanted a painter out there live to balance the stage with lorin in the center.  yea, i told lorin i could do it.  we’ll just see.  i have to figure out how to do something that would be interesting to do onstage over one of lorin’s long sets.  that would be a dream come true.

just finished bouncing around with bassnectar.  he’s honest, fun to rock to, and you can meet him after the show.  he seemed to remember me from an interview i did with him last year!

over and out

g5