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Leaving for Chippewa National Forest
2008-06-06 21:16:00
Tonight the guys and I are packing our gear and early tomorrow morning we’ll be heading up north to Chippewa National Forest to stake a claim on our camping location for the week. Despite recommendations from rangers and friends, we’re forgoing the usual reservation system and ‘knowing where you’re going to be’ for more of a ...
More About: Travels , Leaving

The Secret History of Star Wars
2008-05-22 16:29:00
via: http://www.secrethistoryofstarwars.com “At its simplest, The Secret History of Star Wars is a new full-length e-book exploring the writing and creation of the Star Wars saga. Culled from over 400 sources and filled with quotes from people such as George Lucas, Gary Kurtz and Mark Hamill, it traces all the way back to 1973 to examine how the first 14-page treatment that began the series came to be and was slowly built, draft by draft, year by year and movie by movie. Covering a period of over four decades, you will discover how George Lucas got his ideas for the original film, how Darth Vader was made into Luke Skywalker’s father in 1978 and forever altered the arc of the story, what happened to the infamous third trilogy in the series and how the prequel stories came to be. The book also reveals the style and method of Lucas himself and how his personal life affected and shaped the story, for better and worse. This is a book which challenges many legends surrounding...

Tips for a Better Burger
2008-05-22 00:37:00
Ever since I received a propane grill for a housewarming present (thanks Mom & Dad!), I’ve been experimenting with ways to cook a better burger. We’ve all seen how burgers can come out black, bulged and just plain wrong, so I’ve come up with a few tips from experimentation as well as research on the ...
More About: Cooking , Tips , Burger

The Landlord: A Will Ferrell Short
2008-05-20 21:55:00
WARNING: This video contains mild swearing from a child and suggestive underage drinking. It also contains Will Ferrell , and it is funny. The Landlord on FunnyOrDie.com
More About: Video , Comedy , Short

Get a free DVD rental that could have cost you $1!
2008-05-20 21:49:00
Sarah and I have been renting from RedBox (those neat little machines they strategically place in McDonalds and certain grocery stores) lately and the other day I got an idea to check their website for which DVDs were available. While there, I noticed you can sign up to get a free DVD rental from any ...
More About: Money , Rental , Free , Cost , Savings

Annual Road Trip: 2008 Plans
2008-05-19 17:29:00
Well, it’s that time of year again and the guys and I are planning our Annual road trip. This time, due to increasing fuel costs and a change of pace, we are heading north to Chippewa National Forest for a week of camping, fishing and just generally being lazy. On June 7th we will be ...
More About: Friends , Plans , Trip , Road Trip , Road

Apple TV: Hacks and Mods
2008-04-15 12:00:00
That title might be slightly misleading if you think “mods” are hardware changes. None of the changes I discuss in this article have to do with modifying the hardware of the Apple TV. But many of the changes to the software go beyond simple hacks. They change the behavior of the device. So, I went with “Hacks and Mods .” You can gripe in the comment section all you want. Okay. The Stage Allow me to briefly expound on my network and devices. My Internet connection is from Comcast cable with advertised speeds of 5Mbps/1.5Mbps. Lately, I have seen much faster speeds at fairly regular intervals, something I am not complaining about. Perhaps one hidden feature of the Apple TV is a handshake with the ISP that gets a hot connection for all those savvy HD downloads. Or not. From the cable modem, I run into a Linksys WRT54G wireless router. The firmware is stock Linksys, last updated sometime last year, so likely up-to-date (haven’t checked though.) I use DHCP to...

Apple TV
2008-04-11 02:30:00
Last month, I received some disposable income for getting older. I had really become interested in doing something to make my digital media more accessible on the traditional medium of our living room television. While I really enjoy working on the computer all day long, sitting at a desk to watch podcasts and movies is really not a great experience. So I started researching a few of my options. I really like the idea of a Sony PlayStation 3 and started to just save up for one. Then I thought about Apple TV. It’s moderately priced, would likely handle the “iTunes” side of things in a cinch, would certainly have good hardware and likely good software. I’m no Apple fanboy. I like the diversity of operating systems and believe each serves well in unique ways. But I do love iTunes and the way it handles media (generally speaking). And once I looked at what the Take2 upgrade to Apple TV enabled the device to do, I was sold. Using craigslist, I managed to locate a ...

CSS Naked Day
2008-04-09 06:00:00
Well, it’s that time of year again. So I let loose of these stylesheets to get to the bottom of things. Many web standards enthusiasts from across the globe will do the same thing over the next day. Don’t be surprised if some of the sites you know and love have a plain look about them. It’s all for the opportunity to raise awareness about the importance of the semantic web and the standards that provide a healthy set of best practices that make the web a better place for everyone. CSS Naked Day Technorati Tags: css, web standards, dustin diaz

Speed of the Interwebs
2008-04-05 03:33:00
Not bad while paying for a 5MB/768k connection. Looks nearly three times that. I hope it stays this way for a very long time. (Well, at least as long as 14MB/s is good download speed.)
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ExpressionEngine Open Panel at SXSW
2008-03-09 00:25:00
These notes are from a live discussion and may not exactly represent the orator’s intention. Each quote is merely a paraphrase and should not be taken as the literal presentation of the orator’s exact words. If there is no name attached to a question, I was either unable to clearly hear the name of the orator or they did not mention a name. If there are any corrections, please feel free to leave them in the comments and I will correct. (The same applies to forum names.) Q: Are there plans to extend Simple Commerce or add a more complex e-commerce system? A: Yes. Internally, it’s Paul’s project. Though he set it aside briefly to help with EE 2.0. The EllisLab team needs it as much as anyone else. Q: [Andrew] Will there be any future modules or upgrades to the 1.x branch? A: [Rick] At this point, there isn’t a firm decision. 2.0 has taken a lot of resources and they’d like to keep things focused. [Leslie] We really don’t make those decisions u...
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SXSW Interactive
2008-03-07 10:28:00
I’m headed to Austin, Texas for a few days to enjoy SXSW Interactive . So far, I have the first two days of the conference all planned out. I’ll play the other two by ear and schedule as I go. I want to leave a little flexibility. I already feel like I’m quite maxed out! It’s going to be a blast. I will likely need a day just to recover from the insanity of it all. I’ll log updates here as much as possible. I’ll also post @Twitter, assuming they don’t have any downtime, on Pownce and possibly on Flickr. A few events I’m looking forward to are: The Flickrite Meetup at the Cathedral of Junk Google Party The 2008 SXSW ABX The SXSW Godbit Dinner Of course, those are all evening (non-official) SXSW events. I will be attending a plethora of sessions. One session I’m especially excited about is the ExpressionEngine 2.0 Preview. Hopefully, I’ll get a few free moments to meet up with the EllisLab folks and thank them personally for...

Information Management
2008-03-05 12:43:00
Lately, I’ve been bombarded with information from a wide variety of sources. Most of the noise is self-inflicted. So I’ve been contemplating several ideas about managing information. The Source of Information I’m curious about how the source of information creates an amount of signal or noise. Since everything is either useful or useless to me, given that my experiences create such a filter, I should be able to find information sources that give me brilliantly useful information with little noise. And, in most cases, that’s where I aim. But I have learned of other variables that play into the value of the information. Timeliness - If I receive the information in a timely manner, it is much more valuable than receiving the same information a day late. It might sound trivial to some, but poor information management could mean that you are simply not receiving good information when it is most valuable. Practically, we should learn to tap information resources d...
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Welcome Chris Hodges to Blogging
2008-03-03 13:00:00
I’d like to welcome Chris Hodges to digital publishing. Chris pastors Church of the Highlands a top-notch church in Birmingham, Alabama. While in college, I attended Church of the Highlands and became a part of the living legacy of the church. Highlands was born in 2001 and God has miraculously blessed the church with abundant spiritual and physical growth. This past January, Chris cast vision for a new paradigm at Highlands—a focus on the inner-city of Birmingham. I believe God will continue to do wondrous things at Highlands and I am excited that more of my friends will hear first-hand the unique work that is happening there. Chris is one of the finest church leaders in the world today! He takes no credit for the success of Highlands, but I believe the church wouldn’t be what it is today without a pastor who gets on his knees and humbly prays for Birmingham to come to Christ! May we all find inspiration in his words to help us reach people for Christ in our own...
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Hello world!
2008-02-25 12:21:00
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
More About: World , Hello World

WordPress Resources at SiteGround
2008-02-25 12:20:00
WordPress is an outstanding blog software and that is why many people choose to use it for building their blogs. SiteGround is proud to host this particular WordPress installation and to provide the following resources, which facilitate the creation of WordPress websites: WordPress tutorial Free WordPress themes Expert WordPress hosting WordPress tutorial The WordPress tutorial at SiteGround explains the basic ...
More About: Wordpress , Resources

Microformats
2008-02-07 10:50:00
Microformats are the way of the present, and most certainly the way of the future. This is simply an approach to HTML that allows you to markup information on your site in a way that allows humans and devices to use the text/data on the page in new ways. We use microformats at theaterchurch.com to markup our contact information and events schedule. Visitors to our site can take that information from a page and into their address books or calendars in one simple click. It is also easy to work microformats into dynamic content by inserting them into the markup of your content management system. I have crafted our content management system to microformat our data at strategic places, like the small group directory, where visitors can add the small group leader’s contact information right to their address book. It’s completely hands-off, once a system is in place to produce the proper markup. While it’s hard to gauge how well microformats are utilized, I think it’s clear tha...

Flickr Uploadr and Stats
2008-01-14 17:13:00
Flickr is a site I doubt I could live without. It rocks my world. Last month, two updates were handed down that improved Flickr even more. The first update was to Flickr Uploadr, the first-party upload tool that makes adding images to a Flickr account as easy as snapping the shutter. (Okay, almost that easy.) The new version of Flickr Uploadr has improved handling of uploads, adds the ability to title individual images, now allows re-ordering of images using click and drag, and maintains the other features like tagging and groups that were present in earlier versions. The second annoucement was huge. Stats ! I’ve longed to satisfy my craving for statistics from my Flickr account. Finally! In general, I find the stats provide enough information to keep me happy, but we’re not talking depth like Google Analytics. Still, I think it’s all I’ll need to keep track of traffic to my Flickr account. Thanks, Flickr! Killer upgrades! Technorati Tags: flickr, upgrade, ...
More About: Flickr

OpenDNS
2008-01-09 11:18:00
For quite some time now, I’ve enjoyed the benefits of using OpenDNS on the networks at NCC and at my home. If you are not familiar with OpenDNS, allow me to briefly explain what their service does. Using the web has become quite dependent on the domain name system (DNS). In the very early days, we used IP addresses to navigate the web. Domain names solve the problem of the human factor by allowing text, numerals and hyphens to be used to translate IP addresses into something more friendly. OpenDNS is a service that allows you to change the route of your DNS requests away from your ISP. This provides a number of benefits, as outlined in the OpenDNS features. You might also be interested in a very simple explanation of how OpenDNS works. The features I particularly enjoy are: Adult-site Blocking - It’s important to have these types of filters in place even when no one on the network intentionally uses adult sites. It avoids embarrassment and potential accountability issue...

Opera Browser
2008-01-04 11:45:00
I’ve been a long time fan of Mozilla’s award-winning browser Firefox. I’ve heralded the glory of safe browsing and championed the cause of FOSS. I do still love Firefox. But lately, I’ve been troubled by a single problem: Firefox eats alive my available RAM, occasionally to the point that my machine slows to an unbearable crawl. I’ve researched the problem extensively only to come up with many dead ends on options to repair this. Apparently, many people (and seemingly Mozilla) touts this problem as a “feature” in that it is caused by caching history of the open tabs. If I have 10 tabs open at one, Firefox stands at the ready for any one of those tabs to be selected and will allow faster access if I navigate forward or backward to recently browsed pages. Of course, the idea is fantastic. But the price to pay for such a feature is costly, especially on my home machine where available RAM is 1 GB. After trying several modifications to Firefox,...
More About: Opera , Opera browser , Browser

World Vision
2008-01-02 15:04:00
Today, I had the honor of leading worship for World Vision at their chapel service. It was quite an experience and the set went really well. They had planned a great service to start the year in reflection, prayer, worship and scripture. Stacy, one of the vocalists at the Georgetown location of NCC, works for World Vision and sang with me. Their facility on I Street NE is awesome! The colors are wonderful and there are scriptures and other positive messages on almost every wall. It is always fun to get out of the NCC office for an hour and experience something different—especially seeing another ministry and have a few brief moments immersed in their culture. I met many friendly people and enjoyed hearing testimonies of how God is at work through World Vision.

New Year: What Next?
2008-01-02 03:36:00
Happy New Year ! It’s the season to reflect on the past and for vision of the future. I’m busy tidying up projects from 2007 and preparing for the year to come. It seems every year I get into something new. Last year, it was photography. And getting into it changed my perspective on everything. The timing of that was perfect! Andrew arrived in September and his dad had a few months to get good enough with the camera to snap some cool shots of the kid. I’ve learned so much from photography—I’ll be shooting for the rest of my life! This year, I want to really narrow my focus even more. I had the same goal in 2006 and truly ramped up my skills in web development. I also intended that year to produce a better practice regimen for music, but due to poor prioritizing of my personal time, I failed to really take my musicianship to the next level. In 2007, Missy and I felt God nudge us to serve at Georgetown. That was tremendous for me musically as I now lead wo...

Budget Proposals
2007-12-12 18:09:00
This year we moved to a more standardized form for budget proposals. Each department prepares a worksheet with their estimated expenditures in each subcategory of the budget. For IT, I prepared something very close to last year’s budget by following the baseline for last year’s actual expenses. Other than a couple of “shifts” that were approved for me to make last year, my estimations on the IT side were fairly accurate. We knew what we needed to do and so I “shopped” and budgeted accordingly. This year, we’ll probably do fewer projects on the IT side because we handled so much last year: New Server New Server Rack VoIP (SIP) Phone System Desktop Standardization Project1 Improvement in Spam Protection (Postini) Storage Implementation Plus, many small but consequential tasks You must read that list slowly to really feel the weight of those tasks. It was a big year for a team that has no real IT department. It’s me and Dave Clark pick...
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War Eagle
2007-11-26 20:39:00
Andrew watches his first Iron Bowl on Saturday night. The Auburn Tigers won the match 17-10 over Alabama, sealing a sixth-in-a-row victory against the Tide. War Eagle ! Technorati Tags: auburn, tigers, football, iron bowl, television, sports

Speed Test
2007-11-18 03:44:00
The service at Speed test.net is excellent. The application is really slick and seems to provide reliable results of connection tests. It is a hybrid solution of Flash and Ajax and the UI is quite nice. (Ads are about the only negative aspect of the site, but they pay bills just like us and I appreciate that the service is free.) If you are into speed or need a solid way to make sure your ISP is giving you what you pay for, hit Speedtest.net. Here are some results from my latest speed test: Technorati Tags: speed, test, bandwidth, connection, Internet, Flash, Ajax, speedtest.net
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Google Reader Gets a Shot
2007-11-02 20:07:00
Mere hours after I posted the entry on Monday evening, the Newshutch team announced that they were pulling the plug. Stangely, I did not see the announcement until this morning when I pulled up Newshutch to delete all my feeds. Instead of my feeds, there was a message informing me that Newshutch was no more. There was a single option: export feeds into OPML. Well, I had done that on Monday to begin loading feeds into potential candidates. So Newshutch is done. I’m really sorry to see it go. It was the best web-based feed reader in the world. I hope the developers consider releasing the source as open, or at least packaging things up to sell. I took the advice of my friends who commented earlier this week. The was near-vehement support of Google Reader . Everyone tended to agree that Google had really upped the ante on Reader since the early days. I had seen enough of the current version to know that Reader would be robust enough to handle my frantic reading style. There are jus...
More About: Google Reader , Shot

Newshutch Loses Steam
2007-10-29 22:18:00
Well, my beloved RSS reader, Newshutch, has taken a turn for the worse. I hung in as long as I possibly could, but the service lately has been downright terrible. While Newshutch still manages my feeds excellently, the site has been plagued with very slow response times causing the interface to feel far too sluggish to be usable. Over the past few months it seems that Newshutch was gripped by overload after a switch to hosting company Joyent. I had fond hopes that the developers would come through on their assurance that service would be restored, but there has been no real resolution. After many weeks of frustration, I’ve decided to look for another RSS reader. For me, there are a few must-haves: Web-based application Browser integration Simple, usable interface Feed Organization (Categories) Support for alternative content types (video, audio embeds) I would also prefer something ad-free, even if there is a small monthly cost on my part to ensure this. I really enjoyed New...
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Eddie Griffin Pow Pow Power wheels into concrete.
2007-04-09 22:52:00
Eddie Griffin recently wrecked a car while practicing for his next Hollywood bomb. Except it wasn’t just any old car, it was a rare Ferrari Enzo valued at $1.5 million. Griffin, while practicing on a closed course, managed to slam the Enzo into a concrete barrier, completely destroying the front end of the vehicle, and ...
More About: Power , Rete , Wheels , Wheel , Eddie

Clooney makes deal with lemonade cartel, gets publicity as a perk?
2007-04-06 07:22:00
In the battle between Hollywood and the Lemon ade Cartel, actor George Clooney made a bold move today by developing a synergy between the two rival factions. George took time out of his busy schedule to extend a show of good faith by offering a “bonus” to a few young, but promising, entrepreneurs from Local Stand ...
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Clooney makes deal with lemonade cartel, gets publicity as a perk?
2007-04-06 07:22:00
In the battle between Hollywood and the Lemon ade Cartel, actor George Clooney made a bold move today by developing a synergy between the two rival factions. George took time out of his busy schedule to extend a show of good faith by offering a “bonus” to a few young, but promising, entrepreneurs from Local Stand ...
More About: Public , Publicity , Arte , With