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September 30, 2004
This is Friday (for us anyway)...
So, I told you that we’re flying up to Chicago to see the Cubs play tomorrow (the “real” Friday), but what I didn’t mention was that we are going to see the Royals (sitting at 101 losses this season as I type) play tonight. It should be fun despite their (completely sucky) record this year — we have great third-row seats at first base and there’s sure to be some entertaining heckling.
Anyway, this weekend is turning out to be a mini-baseball-tour for us (and we’re not really that into baseball, by the way). Have a good day tomorrow everyone! For us, fun awaits. Pictures will follow.
Play ball!
Informatio: Fun, Life
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September CAT meeting (a photo essay)...
Continue Reading...
Informatio: Life, Photography
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Religion and politics and personal opinions oh my!
Wise words from my buddy Mordecai (Esther 4:14 ~ The Message):
“If you persist in staying silent at a time like this, help and deliverance will arrive for the Jews from someplace else; but you and your family will be wiped out. Who knows? Maybe you were made queen for just such a time as this.”My interpretation?
“If you decide not to vote, that’s fine, a president will still be elected; but who it is will not be your concern. Who knows? Maybe you were made an American citizen for just such a time as this.”
Last night, we had a great discussion in our small group about politics and the upcoming election — in fact, some of what we all talked about came from the comments of a recent Blog entry of mine. The discussion got heated at times, and it was very introspective at others, but over-all, I think we gave a good go at it (I thank God for the people he has decided to place Julianna and me with!). We talked about everything from abortion (of course) to the separation of church and state — and who is, if anybody, is responsibile for looking after the “moral” affairs of the world. This isn’t our last discussion either, which I am glad for… I am still a bit confused about the two main candidates. It is maddening.
After last night, though, I am even more adamant about the fact that we shouldn’t sit back and do nothing. We need to vote (even if it’s for a write-in). And continuing the conversation is good too — even if you fear embarrassment, rejection, or even persecution… (Or even familial-rifts — just kidding Will and Lisa!)
If anything, I am realizing that this election is causing a lot more than debate and national dissent. America is restive and tense; in politics…in media…in the air.
Voting may be be a priviledge that we take for granted. Or, voting may be an ideal that’s been brainwashed into the American psyche. I don’t know. What I do know is that we were put here to do something.
Informatio: Faith, Politics, Rants, Theory and Philosophy
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September 29, 2004
A good reason to stick with NetNewsWire...
Bloglines will soon be able to sync with NetNewsWire (and other desktop aggregators).
Among the feature-set:
NetNewsWire will know what your Bloglines subscription list is and what items you have read.Thanks, Bloglines!
Informatio: Blogging, Linkage, Computing
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September 27, 2004
This coming Friday...
I have a friend named Jason. Jason is…shall we say…obsessed with the Chicago Cubs. And, I mean, why shouldn’t he be? Millions of other people are also, no doubt, obsessed with American baseball’s greatest underdogs. Anyway, Jason is so overcome with “Cubsness,” that even though he lives here in Kansas City, Missouri, he has season tickets to the Cubs (and I won’t even get into the little ditty about an apartment…yeah, nevermind!). As an example of Jason’s — ahem — hobby, please read his latest Blog post.
So, it turns out that Jason just happens to have a couple of extra tickets to see the Cubs this Friday. He also has a couple of free airline tickets from frequent flier miles that are about to expire. And, Jason’s a pretty cool guy. And Julianna and I have never been to Chicago…
So, this Friday, Jason is giving us the tickets to fly up and see the Cubs play!
(Yes!)
When we get up there, Jason is going to meet us for lunch and take us to the stadium. I am so excited.
Thanks, in advance, Jason!
Informatio: Fun, Life, Linkage
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Changing the world (continued)...
This past Saturday night, Julianna and I watched Gandhi for the first time all the way through (thanks to a recent Blog post by our friend Ashley). I had seen bits and pieces of the film over the years, but I never had the urge to sit down and watch the entire thing (it is 3 hours and 10 minutes long for God’s sake). But, we watched it this weekend… And we loved it.
Gandhi (the man, not the movie) was a great man — but not in his greatness… And that’s what makes him so great. Gandhi is an example of one man, trying to find truth — not in worldy possession, not in spirituality, not in prophecy, but in his life on this earth; Gandhi was looking for truth in who he was a a human being, who he affected, what he accomplished, and injustices that were changed.
Amazingly, he accomplished all of these things — and he accomplished them in love and without violence… Now, I don’t know if he ever found truth (in fact, even though “truth” was one of his guiding motivations, I don’t know if it was ever his primary drive). Nevertheless, Gandhi did leave behind an earth that he personally impacted.
Gandhi (the movie, not the man) was yet more proof that we can change the world (see proof point #1). I don’t know if I’m someone who will ever change the world, but in viewing Gandhi, I am reminded that people who question themselves (as I do) usually aren’t the ones who do any changing… Gandhi didn’t hesitate. He saw an injustice and he acted on it (and he never looked back). I’m sure Gandhi was afraid — it’s natural. But, his connection with helping mankind was greater than any fear.
It only takes one. Will it be you? Will it be me? Gandhi was only a man (just an attourney before he became a national leader).
Informatio: Introspection, Politics, Theory and Philosophy, Film
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Nachtwurst and art... A brave combo?
(Yeah, I know, I don’t actually eat nachtwurst, but it made for a good title.)
I’m coming down off of a fun weekend…
On Friday evening, a few friends, Julianna and I went to Oktoberfest on the Wasserfront. We ate, drank, cheered racing pigs (ask Julianna about that), and danced the polka well into the night — we even participated in a few competitions where we tried to say German phrases to win beer steins, but came out empty-handed. There was more processed meat and people dressed in funny clothes that you could shake a stick at. A highlight was seeing Brave Combo play a set of high-paced polka renditions of popular songs and old standards (the saxaphone/clarinet payer is in…cre…di…ble). Check out their website, listen to some music, and buy some of their CDs. You won’t be disappointed.
On Saturday, we had lunch with Julianna’s parents and then headed over to the Plaza Art Fair. Take the picture to the lft, multiply it by twenty, and you’ll have a pretty good idea how big this annual event is. There were some familiar booths — people that seem to get into every art fair that take place around the country — and some very cool new ones that we found very inpiring (we may even try to recreate some of the art we saw for our home). Of course, there was tons of food and plenty to drink here as well, but since we had just eaten at one of our favorite Kansas City restaurants, Blue Koi, we didn’t partake — that is until we got to our favorite Kansas City frozen custard-makers, Cherries; yum.
On Sunday, after church, a bunch of us headed over to a new Pizza joint called Pizza 51. The slices are huge and the pizza isn’t half bad. The best part was hanging out on the “patio” with all of our friends. The people who run Pizza 51 are very laid-back and probably wouldn’t have cared if we stayed there all day. I highly recommend Pizza 51 as a cool hang-out location alone.
Time to see what this week brings us.
Informatio: Art, Fun, Life, Linkage, Music, Photography
Posted at 09:45 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (5)
Race against race...
I was the only white guy on my first bus this morning.
It distresses how something so trivial can feel so uncomfortable.
I could say that it was them and not just me… I mean, it should go without saying that I should be able to be a minority on a bus for a few minutes, right? And couldn’t it be said that I wouldn’t have felt so uncomfortable if everyone didn’t stare at me like I was the minority?
I don’t know.
Something tells me that it is just me…
That is sad indeed.
Informatio: Introspection, Life
Posted at 09:04 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (2)
September 24, 2004
I need your help...
The closer we get to the election, the more confused I get as to who I'm going to vote for. So, in order to assist me in deciding, I am conducting a carefully moderated scientific study. Please take this quick poll and help me in making this important decision...
Who the heck should I vote for?
- George W. Bush (28 votes)
- John F. Kerry (27 votes)
Thank you.
(Voting has been closed.)
Informatio: Politics
Posted at 1:11 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (26)
Book Meme, revisited...
Back in June, I posted about something called a Book Meme. It got a few responses, but soon-after, I changed Weblog tools and I don’t know how many people actually got to read it. Inspired by my last entry, I decided to try it again…
1. Grab the closest book. 2. Turn to page 64. 3. Find third complete sentence. 4. Print sentence in comments here or on your own site (a trackback would be nice).And here’s mine, from Kalle Lasn’s Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America™ (which has a picture on page 64, so I’ll use page 65): “A story of early settlers, hungry and cold, carving a home out of the wilderness.”
(This meme was created by The Thinkling. I got the idea from John Adams.)
Informatio: Fun
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We can change the world!
The first two sentences of Kalle Lasn‘s, Culture Jam: The Uncooling of America™ are:
The book you’re holding carries a message that your first instinct will be to distrust. That message is, We can change the world.
Yeah! I think we really can!
I’ve had Culture Jam sitting on my bookshelf since it was published in 1999, but I never took the time to open it — my allegiance to the whole Culture Jammer ideal was already set at the time and I’ve always considered myself fairly learned on the concepts there within.
Well, why did I buy the book then?
Continue Reading...Informatio: Introspection, Linkage, Politics, Theory and Philosophy
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September 23, 2004
Too much linking, not enough thinking...
I’ve been linking to an awful lot of other peoples’ websites lately and not really writing much of my own. In fact, I’d love to quote a few sites I came across this morning, but I won’t. I’ll provide one link to Todd Hunter‘s most recent post entitled, “From Deconstruction to Positive Alternaitves: Evangelism.” It’s short and well-worth your time. I’ll also point you to an 8-minute Flash film that will knock your socks off (especially if you like Scrabble, are interested in patterns and codes, rate Pi as one of your favorite movies, and enjoy crafty, little short films like I do). It’s called Craziest. Watch it.
But that’s enough linking for this week, I swear.
It’s been busy lately. I have been the only one in the office this week as all of the other guys are at a trade show in California. This has been both a blessing and a curse. While I enjoy being here alone, I don’t necessarily enjoy acting like a “sales guy” — which I’ve had to do plenty this week. Still, the solitude is nice and I feel like I’m doing a pretty good job with all of the tasks that I don’t normally have to participate in. Still, I haven’t been able to finish all of the goals I had set for myself this week — I don’t know if this is good or bad. I feel a little bad about it, but, I mean, I was doing all of this other stuff so I know that my time is accounted for. I just wish I was finished with a couple of little…annoyances.
We haven’t had any new major disasters at our house. We painted the downstairs bathroom and the living room (now that I think about it, I don’t know why I didn’t document it all like I did with this project). The bathroom, which Julianna painted most of looks great. It is gray and feels warm and inviting rather than cold and cell-like. The living room on the other hand is taking some time to get used to. We painted it green — picture something close to the color of guacamole. Don’t get me wrong, the living room looks great. But it’s not quite the green that I expected. So, it’s taking some time.
We have a new house-guest…er…yard guest. It’s ablack cat that really wants to come inside the house. I am allergic to cats, but I figure having a cat out in the yard isn’t all that bad. You can see a picture of him here. So far, we’ve thought of a few (un-creative) names for him: Stinky Cat, Blackie, Panther, and Cat. What do you think? (I wish that there was a way to emphasize sarcasm in the written word.)
I know that we had some other things going on lately, but they’re all evading me right now. The last couple of weeks sort of seem like they are a blur.
I’ll see what I can do about that later.
Informatio: Blogging, Faith, Humor, Life, Linkage, Film
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"Dancing on the Grave of Apathy"
Today’s Bruderhof Daily Dig:
“Dancing on the Grave of Apathy”Now that’s some good advice. (And something we can actually act on too!)
Johann Christoph Arnold
This should be the rallying cry of every church, synagogue, and mosque in America: God have mercy on us and our nation and help us out of our need! But he will do this only if we become active. Even if we vote for the wrong party, may every vote this November be seen as a prayer to God for his intervention and his will to be done. If we see our vote in this way, then we will be united as a nation as never before. Then Psalm 141 will take on fresh meaning: “May my prayer be counted as incense before thee…My prayer is ever against the deeds of evildoers.” Cannot our vote become part of this prayer against the evil deeds in high places?
Informatio: Faith, Linkage, Politics
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September 21, 2004
Tickershock...
Now, this is a nice addition to the RSS/Atom world:
Featuring animated crawl and billboard displays, Tickershock is a departure from typical RSS applications that emulate web browser or email reader environments. Focusing on the “push” nature of the technology, Tickershock aims to be a passive experience only until the user decides a headline is worth exploring: a double-click on a news headline brings up a “News Inspector” from which one can explore a story in greater depth.
Tickershock is designed around the “stock ticker” paradigm, where new headlines stream across a “banner” placed somewhere on your screen. Included are several different themes so that you can make the ticker appear in different formats, or you can customize your own (mine is light blue at about 50% opacity, displays a 24pt. font — I’m blind all right?! — and floats at the bottom of my screen).
There are two major disadvantages to Tickershock. The first is that the unregistered version displays a bunch of advertisments in between the actual feeds (indicated with a “[ADV]” tag) — which makes for a good reason to purchase a license. Secondly, double-clicking on a headline doesn’t actually open the website that the headline is attached to but rather a “News Inspector” containing a link to the article — the News Inspector is basically just a browser window, so I don’t know why cicking a headline can’t just open the site.
There are a few minor annoyances as well: I wish Tickershock had a “QuickMenu” option so that it didn’t have to be launched everytime I wanted to use it; the headlines don’t display which feed-source they are from (not even when I hold my mouse over them); clicking the “Browser” button in the News Inspector doesn’t actually open the feed’s website, but only the feed’s text in the browser (and, strangley enough, it opened the text in Safari even though I have my Mac set to open Firefox by default).
On the plus side, Tickershock can import OPML files, you can “grab” the ticker as it scrolls past to move the headlines back and forth (or more slowly or quickly), and it looks pretty darned cool on my desktop.
I’ll try it out for a while and see how it goes. Tickershock has a lot of possibilities, but for now it may just be good for news feeds (and lookin’ cool).
Informatio: Blogging, Linkage
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September 20, 2004
The mathematics of 666 & an anagrammatical bible...
Mike Keith explores the number of the beast as it appears in mathematics.
The number 666 is cool. Made famous by the Book of Revelation (Chapter 13, verse 18, to be exact), it has also been studied extensively by mathematicians because of its many interesting properties. Here is a compendium of mathematical facts about the number 666. Most of the well-known “chestnuts” are included, but many are relatively new and have not been published elsewhere.Interesting.
(Link via John Walkenbach.)
Also, as I was investigating Keith’s site, I found that he has cowritten a book called, The Anagrammed Bible, with a guy named Richard Brodie.
The Anagrammed Bible is an “anagrammatic paraphrase” of three complete books of the Old Testament. The letters in each verse (or, in some cases, block of verses) from the King James Version Bible are transformed into a new text with a similar meaning – sometimes straightforwardly, sometimes more fancifully, but always with respect for the meaning of the Biblical text and, of course, strict adherence to the anagram rule.Here’s an example from Proverbs 1:8:
My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and forsake not the law of thy mother:Becomes…
When thy mom talketh of honesty, of trust, and of honor, carry it safe in the heart.Too cool!
Keith has also written some other books that appear equally as inventive.
Informatio: Faith, Linkage, Theory and Philosophy
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September 15, 2004
Slow as pitch...
In 1927 Professor Parnell heated a sample of pitch and poured it into glass funnel with a sealed stem. Three years were allowed for the pitch to settle, and in 1930 the sealed stem was cut. From that date on the pitch has slowly dripped out of the funnel – so slowly that now, 72 years later, the eighth drop is only just about to fall.Read the entire description and watch live video of “The Pitch Drop Experiment” here.
(Link via John Walkenbach.)
Informatio: Linkage
Posted at 11:46 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
Great article about Christian musicians...
From The Ooze (written by Drew Goodmanson):
With increasing numbers bands that are Christian are being received by the secular world. It wasn’t long ago when people mentioned Christian music that it caused a shudder because it was an embarrassing state of affairs. It is good to see the change, but questions arise about the role of a Christian who is producing music for the masses and the communication of their faith. In interviews, bands that have any hint of Christianity are scrutinized. It seems there is always a distrust of the message Christians bring. Bands are in a place where they have to decide, are we going to be a Christian band or Christians who play music.Read entire article here.
(Link via Maiken.)
Informatio: Faith, Linkage, Music
Posted at 11:23 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
John Adams on "allegiance"...
A free country is a wonderful thing to have, but it should never be our first allegiance as Christians. We have a greater purpose, and a higher calling. We are instructed to be in the world but not of it, to be Christians before we are Americans.Good thoughts, John.
Christ is our first love and the church is what He really cares about. To care about the nation you were born into more than the Savior whose blood redeemed you and the church to which you were called insults both Christ and His bride.
Read John’s entire article here.
Informatio: Linkage, Politics
Posted at 11:11 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
September 11, 2004
Today is September 11, 2004
It makes me sad to think that this moment in our history has confused this nation so much. I am grieved terribly for the families involved in this tragegy, but the thing that saddens me more is the fact that this tragedy still continues today — not only for those families, but for us as well (and even more for the families that have lost sons and daughters to a meaningless battle ever since). And that is a bigger tragedy than the first — I should only be grieving for the families of 9/11, but because of the events that have followed, I grieve for our entire country.
Lord Jesus, please end this war.
Informatio: Introspection, Life, Politics
Posted at 08:08 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (3)
September 10, 2004
Search results...
Gotta love it that I’m the third hit in the Yahoo! UK & Ireland results for “urinary catheter pains.”
Nice.
Informatio: Humor, Linkage
Posted at 11:21 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (5)
Old dog, new tricks...
I love it when I learn something new — which usually means that I love life. But just a second ago, I learned one of those little things that makes me wonder how I didn’t know about it before.
I have a few “shops” at CafePress.com — I’ve mentioned them here before. Until just a second ago, though, I would have to list each shop’s unique URL in order to point you in the right direction.
Check this out:
http://www.cafepress.com/occurrence,tahg,g7s0
That’s all of my shops on one convenient page! Thanks, Scott, for that little tip.
Now go buy something, people!
Informatio: Linkage
Posted at 11:11 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
September 09, 2004
Wha'ppen?
The latest episode of VH1‘s Bands Reunited just ended on a very sad note — they couldn’t get all of the original members of The English Beat back together (is this the first time that this has happened on the show?). I am really surprised, actually, but I guess Andy Cox and David Steele just couldn’t find it in themselves to attend. It was neat to see a few of the members get back together, though; not a complete loss.
One of the things I don’t like about Bands Reunited is their failure to tell the “whole” story about the bands that they are spotlighting. The first time I really noticed this was when they got Berlin back together. See, my very first roommate (after moving out of my parents’ house), Mitchell, is Berlin’s current keyboard/guitar player. He has been with the for a while now. Well, while Bands Reunited recapped the history of the band, they completely left out the fact that Berlin still plays and has a pretty large following — to the uneducated, it would seem that Berlin had been defunkt since the 80s. (In any case, Mitchell became one of the Bands Reunited equipment techs as a result of that particular show, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.)
During tonight’s episode, the fact that Dave Wakeling still plays sold-out shows all around Southern California was neglected (I am fortunate to have seen Dave play numerous times in Ventura, CA). Rankin’ Roger’s stint in the 90s with Neville Staple and a few other members of The Specials, as The Special Beat (I’ve got an autographed CD to prove it) was also left out of the show.
Anyway, I still enjoy the show. It’s entertaining and fun to watch old bands that I like get back together.
Here’s an early forcast of the English Beat’s Bands Reunited episode that I found — the guy mentioned in the article was more right than any of us Beat fans would have ever wanted. Do yourself a favor and follow the provided links on that page to find out about one of the most original, catchy, musical, daceable genres of music ever created (if you dont’ already know).
Informatio: Linkage, Music
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Homesteading Today...
“
(Link via Rebecca Blood.)
Informatio: Linkage
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Layers, Part 1.5
I got some good feedback on my “Who Controls the Layers“ post from a couple of friends last night that I thought I’d share. (And I concede that this feedback was solicited by me, as the subject of communication with God, theologically speaking, is relatively foreign to me.)
From Tim Keel on my “Mosaic period”:
I could have clarified some of the “eras” more succinctly, but the history of Christianity (which, for us believers, is the history of humankind) is vast and I probably could make a chart that was a mile long. These are good points, though, and I hope to delve into more of the finer details of these “milestones” at a later time.
- [Y]ou might try pre-monarchy, monarchy, post-monarchy.
- [In the bible] there are three offices where “control” is affected: priest, prophet, and king — these are sacramental leadership offices: the prophetic is a teaching office, the priestly a sanctifying role, and the king a ruling office. [I]n Christ all three roles are unified…
- [I]n the scope of that time in history even the content is different, vis a vis the Levitical versus Deuteronomic approach to Law.
Jason Clark‘s main questions was this:
[S]o what can this teach us for the debate on church history (as above) on how god speaks to us???Yeah, Jason, that is my question too! Hopefully an answer may be fleshed out. Mainly, I think that God desires us to keep these layers free — His layer is free, so why shouldn’t the others be? I think that this freedom can only lead us closer to God, as removing the “middle-men” from any system should increase efficiency.
Jason also pointed me towards a website that describes “General Revelation vs. Special Revelation” (how God communicates) which is pretty interesting. I am going to look into that more throroughly before attempting any new theorizing.
Informatio: Faith, Theory and Philosophy
Posted at 07:50 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
September 08, 2004
Who Controls the Layers?
A Brief and Unstudied Theory Regarding the Historiography of Christianity.
(Leave it up to me to attempt something as whacky as this!)
I’ve been making my way through Lawrence Lessig‘s book, The Future of Ideas, over the last few weeks. The book is described as such:
“With an uncanny blend of knowledge, insight, and eloquence, Lawrence Lessig has written a profoundly important guide to the care and feeding of innovation in a connected world. Whether it proves to be a road map or an elegy is up to us.” 1It’s nothing new these days (especially if you’ve read or listened to his latest book, Free Culture), but I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in the history of the internet and the internet’s impact on art, music, international copyright law, and how all of these inspired Professor Lessig (et al) to invent the Creative Commons.
Of course, these issues have little to do with Christianity (at least not directly), but there was one thing in the book really grabbed my attention. It was something called “layers.” Lessig explains how certain layers are inherant in communications (as theorized by NYU/Yale law professor, Yochai Benkler). Layers, Benkler states, help to organize out thought about how any communications system works.
This got me thinking… Communication can be categorized any number of ways — especially when thinking of it as a man-made device. But, what about the original Communication? (Yeah, I capitalized “communication” on purpose there.) What about the Communication between God and man?
Continue Reading...Informatio: Faith, Theory and Philosophy
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ThinFeeder...
“
(ThinFeeder)”:http://thinfeeder.sf.net If you’d like a small, no-frills, easy-to-use RSS/Atom aggregator, check out ThinFeeder. I’ve used it for about two minutes and already like the intuitive setup and no-nonsense interface. There is written in Java so there is a version for most OSs. Subscribing to feeds is a breeze and you can “skin” the application interface with a few different color schemes for readability.
One drawback to ThinFeeder is that it does not parse HTML — meaning that all HTML code is displayed in the text of the news feed rather than being formatted. This also means that images do are not visible in any feeds — only the HTML that should display each image.
Still, for a relatively new feed reader, ThinFeeder proves better than most of the competition: it’s light-weight, fast, and easy.
Oh, yeah, and support OpenSource!
Update: ThinFeeder’s developer, Fabiano Franz, just sent me this link to the future feature-set plans for ThinFeeder.
Informatio: Blogging, Linkage
Posted at 11:38 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
September 07, 2004
Laughing at translation...
As I’ve mentioned before, my brother and his family are working in linguistics in Southeast Asia. Recently, my brother told me about this quote, printed on the back of a chocolate wafer wrapper:
“Our chocolate recipe comes first and foremost from the personal taste and know how of the master of chocolate makers. It offers you an unbelievable selection, tastier than any other. The finest quality chocolate creates a unique premium taste and a symbol of love for every taste and moment.”Priceless… Not only would I love to meet the “master of chocolate makers,” but, I would give anything to taste something (anything!) that “creates a unique premium taste and a symbol of love for every taste and moment.” That must be yummy.
Informatio: Humor
Posted at 1:27 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (7)
Extended Weekend...
The past Labor Day weekend was very nice. There were some unexpected occurrences, but they all turned out great.
We had throught that my grandparents were going to leave on Saturday morning, but they ended up staying through Saturday to do some sight-seeing (Liberty Memorial, Union Station, Crown Center). It was fun hanging out with them and eating some good food. They returned to their trip early on Sunday morning. Later Sunday, some other plans changed. Originally, my mom was supposed to go to church with us Sunday morning (which she did), go out to lunch with us and some friends of ours (which ended up being us and one other friend) and then going home to rest before headin to the airport for her flight home. It all sound pretyy organized, doesn’t it? Well, when we go to the airport, we found out that my mom’s flight was not actually Sunday night, but Monday night… My dad had reserved the tickets and no one had thought to confirm them. So, unexpectedly — but to Julianna‘s and my joy — my mom got to stay another night and day!
Sunday evening was spent watching movies and eating pizza. On Monday, we all went up to Weston, Missouri with some friends for a picnic and hike — after which we stopped at Vaughn’s Orchard for some delicious apple goodies.
Monday night, my mom checked-in to the proper flight and went home.
It is always hard to say goodbye (and we will miss her so much), but we are thankful that we got one more day with her!
Informatio: Family, Fun, Life
Posted at 11:18 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
I love you, Julianna...
Today is our second wedding anniversary.
I can hardly believe it… And I couldn’t be happier.
I love you, Julianna.
Informatio: Family, Life
Posted at 08:35 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (5)
September 03, 2004
Exciting weekend...
We’re having our first house-guests at our new house this weekend: my mom and her parents. My grandparents are on a cross-country road trip — they go on some sort of trip/cruise/tour every year (sometimes more than once a year). They’ve driven across the United States a few times before. Along the way, they will stop and stay with various friends and family members. This time, a couple of those family members are Julianna and me!
As my grandparents were planning their trip, they had the idea that they could get my mom into coming along with them on the California-to-Kansas City leg of their journey. It took a little bit of coaxing, but she finally agreed.
So, today, at sometime in the early afternoon, my mom and grandparents will be picking me up from work. Tonight we’re going to have some authentic Kansas City barbeque at Gates and tomorrow we’ll do some sight-seeing around the city. When my grandparents return to their trip, my mom is going to stay for another day and then fly back to California.
I’m excited!
Informatio: Family, Fun, Life
Posted at 07:37 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (3)
September 02, 2004
Plea for iTunes features...
(Please let me know if I am pontificating on something that can already be done and my ignorance is preceding me.)
It’s simple… It seems like a feature that would have been suggested during some sort of target-user surveys… Most audio-editing applications support it…
Why can’t we set Cue Points in iTunes?!
(Ok, I know iTunes isn’t and audio-editing application, but go with me here.)
I listen to a lot of long audio files: usually interviews and lectures from places like ITConversations and NPR; sometimes sermons that I missed at church. In any case, these files can range from thirty minutes to over an hour in length. Invariably, I can’t always listen to an entire file in one sitting. Most of the time, I leave iTunes open and paused until I can cme back and hit play again — not really a problem when I am at work and I can sit down to listen to a bunch of five or ten minute chunks every once in a while.
What happens when I am listening to a file and it’s time to go home, though? When this happens, I need to either (a) decide to leave iTunes open until I come back the next day, or (b) shut my computer down and realize that I will have to “scrub” through the audio file the next day in order to find where I left off (which isn’t fun to do if I only had ten minutes left in a two hour lecture). Of course, there’s always the option of writing down the “Elapsed Time” reading so that I can come back to the exact spot later, but who wants to do that?
iTunes needs to incorporate the ability to set Cue Points (or Markers or Flags) — you can download a short PowerPoint presentation on Cue Points if you’d like. This should be as simple as hitting Command+Option+M while any audio file is selected. After a Cue Point is set, a flag is added to the iTunes timeline (see example below). If you hold your cursor over flag, the number of the flag appears over it (in cases where many flags were set, this could be helpful). Clicking on the flag would move the timeline indicator to that flag (conversely, a “Go to Cue Point” menu item could be added so that you could enter a numerical value for whch flag you wanted the timeline indicator to go to).
(And then again, along with Cue Points, iTunes should also add “Loop Points” — in/out points — for looping short sections of audio files, but that’s another Blog entry.)
Informatio: Commentary and Opinion, Rants, Computing
Posted at 11:50 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (10)
Blogday Season...
Seems like there are a lot of Blogdays happening out there in “God Blog“ land. Head on over and wish them the best:
And then, there’s one over in the MovableType universe:
- Walt Dickinson (5 years old!)
Informatio: Blogging, Linkage
Posted at 08:37 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (3)
