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This is a pretty amazing video.
I wonder how many hours it takes to make something like that. I am sure it took months of practice just to learn the skills nessesary to make a film like that. I would also guess each 'Scene" took many tries to get right.
I think the common wisdom "Time is money" is wrong.
Knowlege is money. The loss of time is just a symptom of your lack of knowlege.
Many companies go out of their way to micromangage the flow of their employee's time. They can actually hurt themselves in doing so, because their policies often intefere with the formation of networks of knowlege.
Time goes away weather you manage it or not. Healthy companies have employees with significant amounts of idle time. Unhealthy companies have employees with no idle time. Each time murphy strikes, there is no extra capacity to spend on solving the problem, and as a result things fall further an further behind schedule.
Employees should be encouraged to use thier idle time to expand their knowlege network. Learning about their co-workers. Learning about the technologies of their industry. Learn about internet resources available to provide knowlege on demand.
There are a lot of healthy companies that are being driven to become unhealthy companies based on this common knowlege that "time is money".
Disclaimer for my boss: This thought pattern entered my head after a discussion with a friend who works somewhere else. It is not a commentary on the management of any company that I work for. Probably good advice the same. ;-)
I think it should be obedience.
Today's culture doesn't like obedience as a character trait very much anymore, but I think it is invaluable.
I can't think of one problem in my life that is not somehow rooted in disobedience. We know what we are supposed to do, but we do something else.
Left this link off my last post..
I am still anxiously awaiting the "Under the overpass" book's arrival at my doorstep. I think I may have to cancel the order and go to the local Christian bookstore.
I further fueled my hunger for the book by listening to Mike's hour long talk on this website:
Michael Yankoski's Online Media : Client Profile : Ambassador Speakers Bureau & Literary Agency
His talk shows an amazing amount of wisdom and insight for a 22 year old kid. There may be something to be said for giving up your entire life for a few months and focusing solely on your ability to trust God.
Part of my job is processing online banking requests. I don't really move any money myself, but I recieve the requests, and dispatch them to the proper person to handle the request.
As a result I have to constantly update statuses on the requests. Basically simple stuff like "forwarded to _____" and "Approved and processed by _________", etc.
I figured out that I can use the speech recognition software and make up new words for those statuses. Now I can say a made up word and my computer interprets my word and types the corresponding status.
I have to be sure to do this before my Co-Workers get in. if they hear me speaking a bunch of made up gibberish at my computer, they might think I lost it.
I ordered 3 books last week from Amazon.com I expect to recieve 2 of them tommorrow. The other one is back ordered.
I ordered Created for Commitment
I heard Mr. Yankoski on the radio, and was inspired to buy his book. He voluntarily became homeless for 5 months, and wrote a book about his life and how people treated him during that time. This book is back ordered. hopefully I will get it next week. Check out the excerpt
Once I order one book, I am always inspired to order more to save on shipping. Miss Johnson was a missionary to China who founded Bible Study Fellowship. I hear her life story is quite inspirational.
I keep hearing about this A.W. Tozer guy from every preacher who I respect. Figured I better check it out for myself.
Check back over the next few weeks for reviews. Hold me accountable if I flake.. ;-)
After testing a little bit, I find that I can turn on dictation for my entire windows environment. I can now dictate directly into my movable type blog.
I have found some efficiency through using the speech recognition software. When working with excel, I find it is easier to use voice commands than it would be to use keyboard commands. It easier to say "bold" than it is to find control-B. This is mostly due to my tendency to push "control-V" when reaching for "control-B". It is much more difficult to accidentally say "paste" when you mean to say "bold".
I think they still need to do some work on the speech recognition software. Common windows tasks should be activated by voice commands. I would like to be able to say notepad, and have notepad open. I do not believe this is possible as it is currently installed. Once I have notpad open I can dictate directly into it.
Anyway, it is a learning experience. I will keep practicing and let you know what I learn.
Tonight I decided to test out speech recognition software that is built into Microsoft office 2003. It takes a little while to get used to using the dictation software. I am curious whether it increases my productivity or if it is just going to be a nerdy toy for a week or so
I really am pretty fast it typing so I'm not sure that the dictation will increase my productivity. I would suppose that if you're an auditory person being able to dictate your letter instead of typing it would make your brain work a little bit better.
So far I've dictated this entire post and I've had to make seven or eight corrections . Also the dictation software doesn't punctuate so you still have to use your keyboard to put the appropriate marks in your sentences.
Anyone else use this? Does it help you? Does anyone have any cool tips that make this a really useful tool?
Update: Actually it can punctuate. Just had to scour the web to find documentation. Microsoft did a very lousy job documenting this feature.
In 1999, I built myself a bat house. I took pictures and posted a step by step description of the process on the internet.
I made quite a bit of money off of that website. (a lot for a college kid anyway) by selling the instruction book through Amazon.com
The website is still up even though I cancelled my service with that ISP years ago. I still get a few sales from the amazon links, and I still get questions from strangers about how to build bat houses. I was even interviewed by the Discovery channel once about my bat house.
My bat house has been in disrepair for quite some time. The wind and rain pulled it from the ground and bent the concrete reinforced pipes. We have been considering re-constructing it this summer.
I am not an expert on Bats or bat houses by any means, but what I do know I am happy to share. It is amazing how many people are hungry for knowlege.
I suspect most nitche interest areas have a simularily hungry audience.
I just wanted to leave an update for anyone who is following the Asterisk PBX saga..
I had quite a bit of trouble with the Sipura-841 phones I ordered. I bought 4, and had to return 2 of them because they became unusable after a week. One created a terrible scratchy screeching noise on the recieving end of the call when using the handset. The other had a bad network card, and would not talk to the network at all.
When I recieved my replacement phones, and brought them up to the most recent firmware, I found that calls made on the handsets where often barely audible on the recieving end. It was pretty disappointing. I emailed telephonyware, my vendor, and they where quite helpful.
They provided me with a special firmware patch, and it did resolve ths issue. The church has been using the phones now for 2 weeks without complaint.
Overall, I still would recommend the Grandstream GXP-2000 phones over the Sipura 841. My GXP-2000 has worked perfectly from the first time that I flashed the firmware. The sound quality has always been good, and it has a lot more features built in. I think at most vendors it is runing 10 or 15 dollars more than the Sipura phone, but the upgrades and reliabilty are well worth the money.
I have just set up a new website. IT-leverage.com is intended to be a community to help churches and non-profit ministries work together to implement and maintain open source solutions to their technology needs.
By working together, people involved in IT Ministry can really leverage their skills. Instead of helping one church, they can help several. I am hoping to build economies of scall so that quality software like Asterisk PBX, Typo3, and k12-Linux Terminal Server Project can allow ministries to offer services that they normally would not be able to afford to do.
If you are involved in ministry and have a need, please visit the IT-leverage.com forum and let us know what you are looking for, If you are a IT person who has skills to offer, please let us know what you can help us with.
'Evangelical' is a dirty word in a lot of people's minds. It shouldn't be that way. I think the church has been defined by 2 or 3 social issues. Our mission is much bigger than that. Philip Yancey discusses this in a very good article in Christianity today:
A Quirky and Vibrant Mosaic - Christianity Today MagazineWhen I return from such trips and read profiles in Time and Newsweek about U.S. evangelicals, I feel sad. Many Americans view evangelicals as a monolithic voting bloc obsessed with a few moral issues. They miss the vibrancy and enthusiasm, the good-newsness that the word evangelical represents in much of the world. Evangelicals in Africa bring food to prisoners, care for aids orphans, and operate mission schools that train many of that continent's leaders. There, and in Asia and Latin America, evangelicals also manage micro-enterprise loan programs that allow families to buy a sewing machine or a flock of chickens. About a third of the world's 2 billion Christians fall into a category to which the word evangelical applies, a large majority of whom live outside North America and Europe.
Made a breakthrough on my Asterisk PBX today.
I have been having an issue with the Sendmail functionality. Basically the idea is that when somebody leaves a voicemail, then the owner of the Voicemail box is emailed a copy of the wav file. Asterisk@home worked as expected for a couple of weeks, then stopped for no apparent reason. (I had not changed anything)
After searching the forums, and dinking around with the sendmail configuration, I finally decided to turn the server from Fixed IP to DHCP. I suspected that my lease expired from the original boot up. When I did this , all of the spooled mails went out.
I left it on DHCP for a while, but that was not a long term solution. Unfortunately the router we have does not have the option to assign IP address based on the MAC address. Whenever I set the server up with a fixed IP my email notifications stopped flowing. I have to set a fixed IP, or my phones will not know where to connect.
I have tried several different things to fix this issue. Finally I upgraded the Linksys Wireless router to the latest and greatest firware, and the problem was resolved.
It is always the last thing that you try that fixes a problem.. ;-)
I turned on Quality of Service in the router, giving SIP packets a high priority. This helped our audio quality substantially. I have on Generic FXO card that echos terribly. I am going to replace that with a higher quality card, In the mean time we are using a single line.
I wonder if William Rehnquist is sick of having the paprazzi follow him around like he is a 21 year old hearthrob movie star?
The Body for life plan really works. I have lost about 20 lbs so far. I think we started in May sometime. (I am not a records person) My weight loss has kind of hit a plateau, but inches started falling off.
I have not been as disciplined as I should, but I am still mostly behaving. I go to the Gym 5 or so times a week and do stair-steppers, ellipticals or treadmills. Also lift weights 3 times per week.
I don't eat any sugar based foods, and I try to eat protein and good carbohydrates with each meal. I have not been very good about portion sizes. Cutting out the 4 Dr. Peppers and the Mocha in the morning makes a ton of difference right out of the blocks.
People are starting to ask me if I lost weight. It must show.
I am working on a new website to promote churches and other ministries using open source software.
I see a lot of high quality free open source software out there that could be used by churches and non-profit ministries to improve the services they provide.
Usually there are a few barriers that prevent implementation
1) Often there is a steep learning curve, and it takes quite a bit of time to get up to speed on the ins and outs of a particular piece of software.
2) It is dangerous to be reliant on any one individual to keep one of your critical systems up and running.
3) Sometimes you don't have the right server setup to run a piece of software.
The interesting thing about this is that all of these barriers is that economies of scale make them relatively trivial. What is a huge problem if you are running a small church, is not a huge problem when you are serving 20 or 30 churches. The return on investment becomes much larger.
More to follow... Stay tuned. Let me know what you think about this idea. I am still brainstorming and praying, but I feel like this is something that I have been called to work on.
Sunday was in interesting day at church. Our founding pastor announced that the Lord had called him to a new and exciting ministry, and he would be leaving next month.
The emotions flow at a time like that, and it is interesting to try to balance your fleshly reaction with your faith.
The truth is that the bond deepest bond I have with this pastor is the Holy Spirit that lives in both of us. Nearly every Sunday, his words are dead-on applicable to my life. When there are 200 other people in the room and most of them feel the same way, I know that that is not his skill, but the miraculous inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Emotionally, I don't think I recognize this truth. I grieve. Intellectually I do understand this, and I am excited for what God has planned ahead.
Hopefully experiencing such a transition and witnessing God's provision for the church will make us all more focused on Christ.
In my random wanderings this evening, I came across this teaching:
brucedjohnson.com: There is No Growth Without Loss
Dead-on, exactly what I needed to hear.
I have found quite a few good Christian bloggers out there. Reading these blog entries are usually thought provoking, and encourages you to open your bible. Unfortunately reading the comments on these blogs can drive you crazy. Nearly every church, every pastor, and every ministry has some critic out there who is absolutely convinced that they are the the devil incarnate.
BibleGateway.com Passage Lookup: Acts 18:24-28;24 Meanwhile a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was a learned man, with a thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. 25 He had been instructed in the way of the Lord, and he spoke with great fervor[a] and taught about Jesus accurately, though he knew only the baptism of John. 26 He began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Priscilla and Aquila heard him, they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately.
27 When Apollos wanted to go to Achaia, the brothers encouraged him and wrote to the disciples there to welcome him. On arriving, he was a great help to those who by grace had believed. 28 For he vigorously refuted the Jews in public debate, proving from the Scriptures that Jesus was the Christ
I wish the critics would think a little more like Priscilla and Aquila. There are a lot of believers and pastors out there who are quite passionate and persuasive. The fact that they leave something out or 'glossed over' some truth doesn't mean that they should be discarded. They should be respectfully encouraged and challenged.
Fingertoe.com is now a statistic:
I started my new shift today. 11:00PM-6:30AM Monday-Friday. Pretty wild.
My wife and kids are out of town for the week. That makes things kinda interesting at home. Not a lot going on. Went on a nasty hike Saturday. It was really cool, but very steep. Had a wonderful view of the Palouse when we got to the top. My legs where too tired to lift weights yesterday. Here is a page with some photos.
Been eating too much good food lately. I have been doing pretty good on the Body for Life program over the last 4 weeks or so. Now that Andee is gone, it is more difficult to resist the resturaunts. I have been pretty good about only eating quality foods though, and I have been getting plenty of excercize.
I would recommend the Body for Life program to anyone looking to lose weight. It is nice, because instead of focusing on not eating bad stuff, you instead focus on eating the right foods. I have lost about 15 pounds so far, and I have gained a lot of muscle. I am no longer afraid to engage in strenuous activities. I used to alway sit on the sidelines because I knew that I would be winded in 3 or 4 minutes if I played. Andee is losing even more weight than I am.