Thought I would share my new computer desktop.
Tag Archive: Productivity
The Content Producing Church
Another area that I’ve been exploring is the transitional phase of churches in our culture today. The shift has finally come (in my opinion) that churches who are developing material only for their own use need to finally start seeing a global mission field that encompasses more than just people, but entire communities, other churches, and niche groups.
It is essential that churches realize the line between consumerist mentality vs creative involvement and know when to cross the line. One is not unequivocally better than the other. If a church needs the help, then by all means help them, that is what it is there for. But if a church can help another church to stand up on it’s own or be planted in a new area or even next door, then it is our responsibility to not just look out for ourselves, but for the Church overall in the greater context.
What I have seen in ministry is a secretly competitive model that seeks to achieve goals rather than lives changed. I say it’s “secretly competitive” because no one would ever say it aloud but a church in a given area will seek “numbers in attendance” or “amount given in tithes” or even (dare I say it?) “numbers of small groups” rather than actually engaging the community, setting an example, and truly loving each other.
What if you just completely forget the competition?
My wife and I are thinking of starting a photography business on our own. We’ve been toying around with it for awhile now. It’s going to happen, but we’re not sure exactly when.
First off, we are both photographers with semi-reputable companies that we both think are doing a lousy job at actually connecting with their customers and offering good value. Olan Mills and Sears Portrait Studio. I won’t go into the details now of why they are really eating their customers (and employees) alive with stupid prices, horrible customer service, and screwed up internal policies from corporate levels. The truth is that we could do a better job on our own than we can with either company.
It’s obvious that there is a market for individual photographers in almost any urban area you could imagine. Unfortunately most of these companies and people seem to care more about the competition than they do about the photography.
What if you just completely forget the competition? Just go for it. Market through word of mouth, through “social objects”, through just writing about photography and sharing your photography. Do all your marketing through these means and completely disregard the so-called competition?
I am not setting a timeline for this to take off, but sometime next year things are going to change.
(ps. if you’d like to help us get this idea off the ground, use the “buy me a coffee” link at the bottom of this post.)
Private/Public Journaling & Blogging
I’ve been blogging and writing online for awhile now, but recently I’ve started journaling on a personal level. I’ve come to a few realizations about my own writing. If it’s public, I tend to worry a lot about how I present myself. Like stage fright for a blogger. Anxiety overtakes me, I start thinking that I may just say something wrong or something that I’ll have to backtrack on later. As a result, I really don’t tend to stir up a lot of controversy in my public blogging.
When I write in my personal journal, it’s usually a bit more edgy. I tend to spell things out without regard for feelings, ideas or individuals involved. I would imagine if I started posting my personal journal entries, I’d probably get a lot more people fighting/agreeing/or encouraging me in the comment fields.
I’ve recently decided that I want to try bridging this gap. For me there seems to be some sort of division in my heart when I write one thing here, but personally I worry and fret and spill it all out in my private journal. While a certain amount of restraint for actual names and places may need to be manifested, there is no reason whatsoever that I can’t really share what’s going on with me even on an internal level publicly. I’d probably feel a lot better for it too.
My Desktop
I’ve been working on this all evening…. well after our thanksgiving meal here at home. Thanks to rocketdock, some custom iconization using my swirls (including a full and empty trash can icon), a wallpaper from Desktopography, and a file called SH_TaskBar (download below) to remove the windows taskbar on startup.
My goal was to have a desktop with minimum icons, focused on design and usability, without a bunch of headaches in between. Granted, I could buy a Mac, but I don’t have that kind of money.
Two Things Google Chrome Missed
I am a bit of a google hound. I love to play with their products and I like the way they function. While I probably will be switching over to Google Chrome as my browser of choice, I am disappointed with two problems I’ve already found in the first five minutes of installing. I know it’s in Beta, but if you don’t make a deal out of it, it doesn’t get fixed.
- Google Chrome isn’t recognized as a window in windows. Let me give you an example. If you have Google Chrome open and Firefox open, then right click on your Windows taskbar and click “Tile Windows Vertically”…. Firefox will do it, but Google Chrome doesn’t. In fact Firefox will open full screen behind Google Chrome if those are the only two (supposed) windows open.
- My image resize handles in my wordpress wsywig “write post” editor is gone. Instead, I just get a big blue box over the area where my image is but no graphical resizing is possible. I can however still drag the editor bar to resize the text area, but when formatting a post, I like to be able to drag the image around too.
I do like Google Chrome overall. It’s fast, standards compliant, and it makes great use of memory while running. I will still stick with it, but hope that they fix these two areas… soon.
Top Ten WordPress Plugins (plus three more) for WordPress 2.6
I recently met with another local blogger(s) and one of the things I realized was that there are a lot of great plugins I’ve found out about and implemented that some know nothing about. So I decided I would put together a quick list of the Top Ten WordPress Plugins for WordPress 2.6 (plus three more).
Note: I am going to start with the best plugin that I have ever found for installing themes, other plugins and well, pretty much anything I need uploaded to my wordpress installation. The reason is this, this First plugin allows you to install plugins directly from a url as opposed to the age old process of dowloading the plugin, unzipping the plugin and uploading the plugin to the plugins directory. For the rest of the plugins, I am going to include the url of the download so you can get started using these great plugins right away.
- WP Easy Uploader – If you are looking at trying to download a theme, unzip it and then upload it to the themes directory before you can even use it, and that process seems a bit tiresome (especially after you’ve done it 23 times in the last month on 6 different wordpress installations), then this plugin is for you. You can specify a url to pull the zip file from. The plugin grabs the file, unzips it into the directory you need it to (ie themes, plugins, etc) and you are ready to go. Just activate the theme and you are set. Installing a new theme is now as easy as a two step process. Oh, and if you still want to upload your files the old fashioned way, you can also upload a zip file from your local computer and install it into the directory as well using the handy upload feature. This is one plugin that should be included in the next version of wordpress from the get go. – Download
- Akismet – One word that makes my happy face turn upside down is spam. That includes the meat byproduct canned food as well. Akismet deals with the spam by filtering it, allowing you to mark it as such and overall, saves you a ton of time dealing with it. Ocassionally something gets through the filters, but for the most part, it just works. Akismet comes with wordpress already, but make sure you get your api key through registering with wordpress.com – Download
- Google XML Sitemaps – If you want to be seen by Google, then this plugin helps you do that. Providing an XML sitemap that will help you get noticed and better placement in search engines, will not just help you get better search engine rankings, but send you lots of cash as well. Well maybe not the cash bit, but even if you don’t notice it’s working, it makes you feel better just knowing it’s there. – Download
- CForms II – If you want to increase the effectiveness of collecting any kind of information from your readers, then CForms is the way to go. You can build custom forms that can let readers upload files to you directly from your blog. This is great when you want people to be able to contact you and interact directly. Great for art sites for readers to submit images. – Download
- Subscribe to Comments – A reader stumbles onto your site, likes what they read, then comments on a post. Then before they realize what they are doing they stumble off somwhere else. Either they are lost forever and never come back to your site, or… you have Subscribe to Comments installed on your blog. You then reply to their comment, they get a notification and think… “wow, someone actually cared enough to respond to my comment” The reader now comes back to your site to read your reply (and those of others) and now decides, “This blog might just be worth subscribing to in my feedreader” Now, you have a new subscriber… and maybe a whole lot more. – Download
- Related Posts – In your feed, you have a chance at capturing more than just a reader for that selected post, after reading the post, this plugin adds a little section at the bottom that displays either five posts that are tagged the same as the post just read, or even five other random posts from your blog. This is a great way to drive people deep into your blog to see what you really have to say about a particular topic. – Download
- aLinks – This is a newer plugin that I can’t find on the wordpress Plugins directory, but I think it’s well worth mentioning. If you have particular posts, pages, or even affiliate programs that you really want to drive traffic to whenever you use a certain phrase or word, this plugin will automate that for you. Let me demonstrate. If I use the word hosting, it will link you externally, if I use the word “dog” it will link you to a page where you can have your pet portrait drawn by my lovely wife. These links and phrases can be automatically configured in the plugin settings. No need to find that url to link to everytime you want to tell someone about your webhost. – Download
- Ad Rotator - I like this plugin because it adds a bit of randomness to your widgets. Say I would like to measure text ads verses image ads in a widget spot to see which one performs better. If you do it by just installing one and then the other at different times, you are faced with the dilemna “did one perform better because it was a different time of the day?” This plugin allows you to have a certain widget rotate between as many ads as you want to put in it just by using a more tag in the widget between ads. It’s handy also for just doing random quotes everytime someone comes to your blog. Drop in anything you want and surprise your readers with making it look like you update your blog a lot more than you really do. – Download
- WordPress Flickr Manager – If you use flickr and hate the fact that you have to upload to flickr first, then use the “post to blog” function in flickr to get your image to diplay, it has all changed. You now can upload to flickr directly from within wordpress and post to your blog all in one step. It also allows you to pull any image (even other people’s images) from flickr using a convienient image browser. – Download
- NextGEN Gallery – If you just want a really nice gallery for your blog that incorporates captions, albums, etc and still is pretty simple to use and configure, NextGEN has it. There are also some great plugins that interface with NextGEN gallery to do a lot more then just display your images too. – Download
- WP-DB Backup – A backup never hurts anything. If your webhost crashes and tells you that all is gone, then this plugin will save you a ton of grief. (knock on wood) This plugin will make that an easy task to perform once a week or so. It will even email it to you so all you have to do is search your archives for that backup. – Download
- FancyZoom – If I post an image, and I want a reader to see a larger version of that image, I don’t want them to have to leave the page to see it. This plugin makes that happen. It’s fast, and will usually pleasantly surprise the reader (cause it makes it look like you have your act together). Basically it will use an overlay to show the image directly on the post that the image is linked from and animates it to make it a little more… Fancy. – Download
- Buy me a Beer – or coffee… I drink coffee. This adds a little link at the bottom of your post that allows people to show that they love what you have written in a really nice way… by buying you a drink. A cool feature I like about this is that it is post specific. It will link to your paypal account where they can send you money, but also tell you the writer, what post in particular they liked. Tip me and I’ll write more posts like such, eh? You do get what you ask for… – Download
There it is. I hope you enjoyed the list. As always, there is a “Buy me a coffee” link around here somewhere, but if you don’t have the paypal balance for that right now, a little stumble and a digg can go a long way too.
My first Animation – Counting Hand
The above is a still screen shot of the animation. I’ve never done any animation before other than simple things in Bryce 3d.
So this is my first 2d frame by frame animation.
Part of what I do every week.
I design the powerpoint presentation for our church every week. It’s a pretty time consuming process, but when it’s done right can be very effective.
So what makes a powerpoint that both is effective and not overpowering?
Contrast, Color Sequencing, Appropriate Graphics that communicate rather than are just eye candy.
I decided this week on a warm color scheme and it seems to be coming together pretty well so far.
Still alive and doing great.
I go through many phases of blogging and alternating through ideas. I am not exactly sure what causes this, but I know that it does happen. I end up writing every day for a month, then I end up going 5 weeks without publishing. I guess I get so busy with other things, writing takes a back seat.
So, here’s the latest. My health is doing very well for the first time in several years. I am feeling a little better every week at this point so that is good.
I’ve been doing some painting but in reality Becca is doing even more so I am taking a bit of a back seat as she has been doing so much painting lately.
We looked at a house recently, but then looked a little bit more at debt and decided to wait a bit longer.
We alternate on finances so after the last six months of Becca doing the finances, I am taking the lead for a bit. This basically means that I have set up the database system that will track all our debt, bills and income in real time in openoffice base. 
All in all, we are doing better than I thought. We have about 10 debts left, but all of it is hospital bills, taxes and a school loan.
I have also recently taken a bit of a back seat with Sunday Morning speaking responsibilities lately. My attention will be focused more on small groups, invitation, discipleship and creative media endeavors.
I’ve put together some other sites, but really haven’t made anything from them as of yet. I may decide to automate the Thornville-Ohio site on news and info and see what happens while still incorporating some regular content every now and then.
The animals are all doing well. Dugal is growing. He is getting big. We had a hard time figuring out why he wouldn’t eat, then realized that he wanted to eat out in the open with us as opposed to being in his kennel and eating. Go figure. Once we got that figured out, the problem may be getting him to stop eating long enough to play more… maybe not.
Becca got a raise of around .50 at work recently so that will help. We may also try to sell some of her paintings and see what they will bring.
Anyway, that is a roundabout update with most everything… I think.