Fingertoe.com

One church in North Carolina is spending 11k on television advertising encouraging retailers to acknowledge Christmas in their holiday sales.

WFMY News 2 Greensboro, NC

I personally don't see a lot of benefit from coercing atheist or agnostic organizations into pretending to be Christian. I would rather they do what is comfortable, and be seen for who they truly are.

Every time a government official participates in the lighting of a "Holiday Tree" there is a controversy that ensues. I have searched through my bible several times, and I don't see the part where it tells us to chop down a tree, haul it in our house, hang lights and do-dads from it. I also can't find the part about the omni-present fat man with his elves and reindeer.

We need to realize that Christmas has been co-opted. Insisting on re-attaching Christ's name to cultural traditions does nothing but cheapen Christ's name.

As Christians, we should focus on Christ, and let our culture be our culture. We are foreigners here. We should not be surprised that the culture doesn't reflect our values. We should actually be pleased that we are not being deceived into accepting theirs. Or are we?

Posted by Josh Reighley at 12:53 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Townhall.com :: Columns :: Thin green line is bad science by Debra Saunders

"Consensus science isn't science" --William M. Gray Colorado State University professor of atmospheric science

I love watching the science shows that describe the history of a scientific fact.. Almost all of them started with a single voice being ridiculed by the scientific community.

Those who are considered crazy now are often seen as brilliant in 30-60 years.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 3:29 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

An interesting debate is emerging regarding the churches in China.

Luis Palau's Chinese church registration comments correct, or misguided?

I have heard from some missionaries and bible study leaders that some of the registered churches in China are quite effective.

Some leaders such as Luis Palau are encouraging churches to register with the government, so that the persecution is reduced, and they can preach the Gospel more effectively.

The Voice of the Martyrs argue that registering the church puts the communist party in front of Jesus Christ. The party has veto power over who leads worship services, can regulate who can come, and when, and "discourage" certain biblical teachings.

Earlier this month, I Blogged about Christian entanglement with politics in this country. It seems to me that many of the issues are the same, but the stakes are much higher over there.

It is hard to second guess those who are living through persecution for their faith over there, but I think it would be more couragous to preach the gospel to a large crowd, with the government censors listening, then to be persecuted for breaking a law about meeting secretly.

Even if you are unable to preach the entire bible, so long as you are able to open somebody's heart to the Savior, the Holy Spirit, can grow their knowlege and relationship with God.

I think submiting to an unjust government is always a challenge.

What do you guys think?

Posted by Josh Reighley at 3:24 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

IR // News // Anti-abortion group seeks aerial advertising over Honolulu

This is quite an interesting debate. I think that the content of the advertizing is a free speech issue, and should be irrelevant to the discussion. You should either be able to fly a banner, or you shouldn't no matter what the message.

Should a local government have a right to regulate the appearance of aircraft that fly overhead?

Would it be acceptable for the state to regulate the bumper stickers on the car that you drive through their state? Should an airplane be any different?

Certainly a curious topic.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 2:14 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Of course I had to run out and try the Google Analytics the instant I read about it.

It is pretty darn cool. I think it is very cool for E-commerce sites. You can let it know what your website's goal is, and it will monitor each customer, and let you know what referal source is generating most of your income.

At first Glance, it is not nearly as useful for content producers, For example this blog. My goal is not to get you to buy something, but to get you interested in coming back later. While it does monitor visitor loyalty, that is not the main function, and so it may take some tinkering to get really usefull reports on that.

I plan to add this to my church website. There are some things that would be good to know that the Statcounter that we have doesn't provide.. I.E. How many folks download our audio files, or pulling up the mapquest link. You can add some code to your outgoing link, and it will track how many folks us it.

It looks to me, that I have just barely scratched the surface. I bet some books are going to be written about this program. It appears to have a lot of features that are going to take some know how to make the most of.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 5:31 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I have always been impressed with simple websites. Here is a good example:EuroFox

When I visit a website like that, it draws my focus to one thing: their product. I don't have to worry about navigating through multiple pages. It is all right there. Everything you would ever like to know about this plane, all in one place. I did have to use google to figure out the currency exchange. It seems like a lot of Airplane related websites are pretty simple in design. I would suppose this comes out of the mindset of aircraft design. Most airplanes seem to have a "Keep it Simple" design. Less to go wrong I would suppose.

In case you didn't notice, I am still fighting the airplane obsession.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 3:56 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Usually I put my son to bed each night. He tends to stay in bed and fuss less when Daddy puts him to bed. Tonight, I put him in bed, sang a song to him, prayed for him, and I could tell that he was still too awake for me to walk away.

So I talked to him a bit. Nathan, did you have fun today?

"Yuh" he said.

Nathan is 2. He tends to speak in 4 or 5 word sentences, with a lot of space between each word. His pronunciation is good enough that his parents can usually understand him, but I think most everyone else would be puzzled.

I asked "Did you have fun at your BSF class?"

"Yuh" he said again, with a bit more enthusiasm.

"What did you learn?"

When he gets excited, he tends to be less deliberate about his pronunciation, and it is much more difficult to understand him. He also tends to leave out the pauses between words.

"Ammals, uh budda ludda. wane kudder wud. labba lea fug. rumma sla fund." He got more and more exited. I had absolutely no idea what he was saying, but I listened quietly as if I understood. "wan died fasa. Mout ain wad." he continued unintelligibly.

Then, as clear as can be he said "God gave rainbow"

He, my wife, and my daughter are all studying the same verses each week, so I know that he totally gets it. Genesis 9:1-17

Posted by Josh Reighley at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Okay, this is just sick and wrong:

Eat Hufu - The Healthy Human Flesh Alternative!

I wonder if this is a "gateway" food. The website sure does spend a lot of effort glorifying the cannibalistic cultures.

Weird. Lets leave it at that.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 1:20 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I got to play with Mechanical Turk today before it was slashdotted to the point it was unusable.

I made a total of 33 cents if they accept all of my work.

The idea is fairly clever. They pay you to do work that computers are not so good at. Like writing catalog entries or correlating photographs with business names.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I got rid of the calendar feature on the left hand sidebar, and replaced it with a listing of the most recent comments.

I know, it is a pretty boring change, but a change none the less

Does anyone really use those calendar navigation features? I see them on a lot of blogs, they look cool, but I don't think I have every seriously seen any functional advantage to navigating with them.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 5:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Open Thread: The value and quality of email at work | 43 Folders

I love email for personal uses, and my home based business. I hate it for my work. I usually get 50-150 emails per day. A good deal of them are automaticlly generated by one software system or another. Others are procedurally generated. When I finish certain processes I have to email the group and let them know it is finished.

Another chunk are semi-interesting internal team emails. Doughnut notices and the like.

There are usually 10-20 forwarded emails or links to interesting websites.

Then there are 3-4 notices regarding procedure changes or clearifications.

Another 1-3 may be actual items that I need to take action on.

Overall, I think the email system as it is used in most companies is archaic and ripe for replacement. I would much rather see blogs and RSS feeds for a lot of these items. Especially the critical items that people want me to see... It is just too difficult to sort through 100 emails to find 5 that matter.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 7:42 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

A few weeks ago, I asked what if anyone could guess the origin of fingertoe.com. I got a few good guesses, but the truth is. Nobody knows.

One day I was tinkering with Debian Linux, and I wanted to get a domain name to use with Dynamic DNS so I could connect remotely to my linux box. The only criteria was it needed to be something easy to remember. Fingertoe.com was not taken, and so I registered it.

Later I was playing with SWISH, and I made a cool flash Splash page. After a few seconds of displaying fingertoe.com, it dropped in the explaination "I don't know what it means either."

The name serves me well. It seems that Google likes webpages that have their own domian names. I have had thousands of people visit this website after googling "Indian Larry" or "Blake Pitching Tents"

Occasionally I get somebody looking for Fingertoe Therapy, which is apparently an indian accupressure technique that I know nothing about.

Posted by Josh Reighley at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments ()