If you have Javascript enabled and would like to view the lastest version of this Weblog, please go here.
May 28, 2004
Campin'!
Julianna and I are off to Leavenworth State Fishing Lake for a few days (it’s the same place my brother and I went last summer). Should be fun!
Because of this, I have to mention that grid::blog | Project 365 will be on hold until I get back… I will still be taking pictures, of course, but they won’t be up until Sunday or Monday night probably. (Too bad I don’t have a laptop and wireless internet connection, huh?)
See y’all later…
Informatio: Trips and Adventures
Posted at 08:19 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 27, 2004
Creative Commons 2.0...
I’ve upgraded my Creative Commons license to 2.0.
Take a look:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
This site still possesses the “Attribution-NoDerivs“ license which means that you can copy the content that you find here to anywhere that you’d like as long as you leave it unaltered and credit it to the correct place.
The new 2.0 licenses allow a few more “personal” options to be included and are a little easier to understand. I know I blather on about the Creative Commons and Free Culture a lot around here, but I really do feel passionately about them.
Happy blogging!
Informatio: Blogging, Linkage, Computing, Culture, Milestones
Posted at 12:36 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
Lady At the Park...
You see, voyerism does, in fact, have its place in the world! This made my day…
For the last two months, the same lady has been coming to the park during the day, and she just hangs out there for hours. She usually arrives around 8 a.m. leaves for lunch, and comes back and stays until 4 p.m. She wears the same clothes most of the time, and we have her wardrobe narrowed down to about 3 outfits. What does she do all day? She usually just sits there, but sometimes she reads a book. The last week she’s even been taking naps on the slide.Too funny. Visit the site to see pictures and read about the madcap antics of the “Lady At the Park”!
(Link via John Walkenbach.)
Informatio: Blogging, Fun, Humor, Linkage
Posted at 11:16 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 26, 2004
The Preacher comes out!
And his book will be out soon too!
Informatio: Blogging, Linkage
Posted at 10:01 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
Circle of Lights...
Yesterday evening, Julianna, her brothers John and Jason, our friend Julie and her daughter Ava, and I went to the J.C. Nichols fountain for Kansas City Hospice‘s annual Circle of Lights.
Circle of Lights is a “luminary service” that commemorates those who have died in Hospice care. We were there for my wife’s (and brother-in-laws’s) father who passed away last December after having suffered from cancer.
It was a good, though somber, evening. It was neat to see so many people out for the purpose of remembering their loved ones. There were a few tears, but mostly we had a sense of awe at the amount of people who had suffered similar circumstances.
Continue Reading...Informatio: Family, Family and Friends
Posted at 09:11 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
May 25, 2004
Wise words for any "organization"...
Via Jen Lemen.
what’s killing emergent: part oneRead the rest of Jen’s warning.
celebrity culture
we’ve got it bad.
nothing could be worse for us, and we reinforce it constantly.
we set up chairs in little rows in rooms with a podium in the front and invite men (mostly) to talk at us. men whose lives have drastically altered our own through their books, their talks. or so we think. mostly, they’ve rearranged our brains. and we still tend to think that that’s the most important place to be impacted. we still believe that the new idea will change us. fundamentally.
Informatio: Commentary and Opinion, Culture, Faith, Linkage
Posted at 09:09 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
Support Free Culture...
In preparation for Lawrence Lessig‘s upcoming lecture at LIFT (London Internation Festival of Theatre), fellow Creative Commons advocate and Free Culture AudioBook abettor, Suw Charman has written an amazing essay about Lessig’s groundbreaking book, Free Culture, and our experiences of recording the audio version.
From Charman’s essay:
Let’s say you’ve written a book. A big book. A book that is worth publishing.Professor Lessig’s response:
Let’s say you’ve got a publisher for your book. A big publisher. A publisher that people have heard of.
What happens when you convince your publisher to give your book away, for free, to anyone who wants it? This isn’t about giving review copies to journalists, this is about converting the book into an electronic format and giving it away to the general public so that they don’t have to spend their hard-earned cash on buying a hardcopy for their hardwood bookshelf.
If you believed the RIAA and other proponents of draconian copyright legislation, what happens when there is a choice between a free (legal or otherwise) download and a bought physical product, people will choose the free version over the bought version. Thus, say the RIAA, each time the free version is downloaded a sale is lost and the creators (read: rights holders) lose out financially.
By this logic, giving away your book, even with the consent of your publisher, is a bad idea. Commercial suicide even. It’s not something that any sane author should do, surely?
...“for half a second, I had to convince myself once again that this was a great idea, because although we expected people to be willing to read a book on a computer, we hadn’t really thought about them listening to it on audio. It took half a second and then I thought that this was actually an extremely good way to get the message out – my publisher is eager to sell books, and in some sense I am too, but I am much more eager to get the message out as broadly as I can, so the spread of the audio version was exactly what I was hoping for.”Oh, and, yes, I am quoted in there too.
I’ve written plenty on my own experiences with the Free Culture AudioBook project. It was a fun and fulfilling cause to be a part of.
And you can be a part of it too, by supporting the issues presented in Free Culture.
Again, from Lessig:
“The only way for this change to happen is if we start pushing for it. It’s not just creators who stand to lose out from the current copyright law, but consumers too. We might not all be creators, we might not all be affected by the inability to make derivative works, but we all suffer from the loss of those works. We all suffer from the inability to archive existing works, we all suffer from the way that old works that are no longer in circulation or have commercial value are kept out of the public domain.”Go read Suw Charman’s essay and think about whether our current copyright laws affect you or not. If you feel like they do, take a few hours to read Lawrence Lessig’s Free Culture and think about what you can do to help make a change.
Informatio: Culture, Linkage, Stories and Essays
Posted at 07:27 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 24, 2004
RSS via cell phone...
As if we don’t waste enough time blogging already.
Sure there is already software that enables users to read RRS feeds on mobiles. However the Teleca system breaks new ground in the way it presents the RSS feed as a kind of news ticker.Read more.
(Link via Tech Digest.)
Informatio: Blogging, Linkage
Posted at 10:33 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 21, 2004
"Salt & Light" by Eberhard Arnold (free e-book)...
Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount Eberhard Arnold
I read a little bit of it this morning and it seems very interesting. Dowload it for free here.Salt and Light puts hands and feet to the demands of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount from the viewpoint of a writer who believes they are not only viable, but inescapable – something for us to live out today.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus puts aside his usual parables and speaks plainly in language anyone can understand. Yet for centuries countless scholars have dissected and analyzed these important words – and dismissed their demanding precepts as unrealistic or symbolic.
Like Francis of Assisi and others, Arnold chose to live Jesus’ words. He found new life by embracing the self-sacrificing demands of the Sermon on the Mount. This collection of talks and essays vividly describes a healing, energizing power for those burdened by the concerns of daily life. Arnold calls us to live for the Sermon’s ultimate goal: the overturning of the prevailing order of injustice and building in its place a just, peaceable society motivated by love.
(Link via The Bruderhof.)
Informatio: Faith, Linkage
Posted at 07:29 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 20, 2004
Three and a half hours on the Metro ain't no fun...
Well, actually, it is kind of fun, but it is tiring! And my butt hurts pretty bad too. But (no pun intended, I swear), why would I do something like ride pulic transportation for three and a half hours? (And, really, it was more like three and three-quarter hours.) Well, it was graduation day at the school where I used to work and I had promissed a number of kids that when this day came, I would be there. Of course, that was when I was still driving, so the promise was an easy one to make.
This morning, at 6:30am, almost nine months after that fateful promise, I trudged out to the first bus stop on my journey from South Plaza to the middle of Independence. (The ride wasn’t going to be too difficult — only three transfers and a lot of riding — but my luck with trying new bus routes hasn’t always been the greatest.)
Continue Reading...Informatio: Trips and Adventures
Posted at 2:28 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 19, 2004
What do I have in common with Paul Simon, John Lithgow, and Erik Palladino?
Well, check it out for yourself. Something just doesn’t seem…right. But, facial recognition doesn’t lie, does it? Maybe I’m being too prideful, though. (It’s too bad that I’m not a woman.)
Wanna see which movie stars you look like? Go here (seems to only work using PeeCee browsers).
Thanks for the link, Teri! (Who’s own results aren’t too shabby.)
Informatio: Fun, Linkage
Posted at 3:38 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (5)
May 18, 2004
Fly Guy!
Fly Guy is an amazingly fun “game” made in Flash (more of a meditative practice than a game, but you’ll see what I mean).
Everyone’s reoccurring dream come to life.
(Link via Connexions — who got it from Josh Claybourn.)
Informatio: Computing, Fun, Games, Linkage
Posted at 07:27 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 17, 2004
The offer, continued...
Well, after a long week of agonizing over whether or not our offer would stand, I just found out that the appraisal required by the original offer went through. Oh, well. I guess there’s something better waiting for us out there somewhere.
But, I am sad. It was a great house that held a lot of potential.
A little rest now and then I think we’ll start back up in June.
Informatio: Miscellany, Humor, and Reality
Posted at 1:32 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
Bus portraits...
I hadn’t mentioned it, but, back in March, I started a new series on my Photoblog called “Bus Portraits.” They’re candid shots taken of my fellow public transit passengers. I don’t really know how “ethical” this is, but it’s all in fun (and somewhat anthropological in nature) and I don’t ever plan on making any profit from them.
Let me know what you think.
Informatio: Life, Photography
Posted at 12:46 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (2)
Bus Proverb #5
“If you can’t control your kids at home, why you got to bring ‘em into the public?!”All Bus Proverbs
Informatio: Bus Proverbs
Posted at 12:19 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (4)
AF = Acronym Finder...
WTF = What The Freak (polite form)
WTF, polite form?!
Find out what 350,000+ acronyms stand for at Acronym Finder. Pretty cool, IMAO.
(Link via FastCompany Now.)
Informatio: Linkage
Posted at 12:16 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 13, 2004
Blogger Idol - Week 15: Secrets ("The End")
Here’s a little secret… This is the end. I’ve decided to quit Blogger Idol…for now. There’s no real reason. I’ve enjoyed it immensely. It gave me some great inspiration when I might have needed it most. I’m just a little burned-out on it all.
Maybe, if I get inspired, I will take part again. For now, it’s the end.
Happy Idoling everyone!
Informatio: Blogger Idol
Posted at 3:38 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (5)
The offer...
I had mentioned that Julianna and I were officially looking for a house to buy. But, I hadn’t updated you with what was actually happening.
On Saturday, after about two weeks and somewhere around thirty-five houses (no that wasn’t easy), we finally found something that looked like it would suit us perfectly. The house had only been on the market for two days at the time we saw it. By Sunday evening, our realtor informed us that it was already under contract.
Bummer…
Here’s the deal, though. The potential buyers are using something called the AmeriDream Downpayment Gift Program. In a nutshell, this program supplies the buyers with downpayment assistance of up to 10% of the value of the home. But, guess where this 10% comes from… The sellers! And, the sellers’ portion of the cost is actyually considered a “donation” to the buyers. Kind of weird. Anyway, in using this method of mortgage, the sellers must bump-up the price of the home by 10% in order to make any money. To do this legally, the home must be actually be appraised for the bumped-up price.
Meaning, though the chances are iffy, there is a chance that that this will still work for the current buyers.
All this being said, we were informed by the sellers’ realtor and the sellers themselves (by happenstance, I met them on Monday night) told us to keep trying, because they were pretty unsure that the current offer would go through.
So, last night, our realtor, along with my wife and I, took an hour, or so, to go through a few hundred pages of various contracts to write up our offer.
Today we find out if the original offer will go through.
Here’s a picture of the house.
Informatio: Life, Milestones
Posted at 07:56 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (2)
May 12, 2004
Praise the Lord!
About a week ago, something horrible happened to my Adkoc website. After a server crash, I found that every subdirectory on the site had been deleted (strange, but true, as all of the root files still existed, but everything else was gone). The major bummer in all of this was that I hadn’t yet made a local backup of this site. You see, a bunch of work was done using Pivot (a wonderful little blogging tool/CMS), which means that a lot of the work was done online (not on my computer). And since Pivot stores all of its entries in a flat-file database…those were gone too.
I was pretty depressed about it all.
As of yesterday, I had been waiting for an e-mail back from my webhost to see if they had a backup of my site. Yesterday, I received the e-mail and the answer wasn’t good: they said that they did not have a backup. By this point, though, I was pretty much over my initial shock and depression and I figured that I would have to rebuild the site anyway. I didn’t want to — anytime soon for sure — but I knew I’d have to.
Then, last night, I received another e-mail from my webhost telling me that my website backup would be uploaded and available to me by this morning!
Wha…?!
And they came through for me! Everything that had been lost was restored from a backup made the night before the crash.
I am happier than I can tell you.
If you haven’t seen my other site yet, you should head over there and check it out.
Informatio: Computing, Life
Posted at 1:35 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
"Cold Turkey" - a Vonnegut Rant...
A rambling old coot or a herald of our times? You be the judge...
For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.(Via Wheat.)
...
But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, except for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on, which could make you act crazy, even if you weren’t crazy to begin with. Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love and hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and girls’ basketball.
Informatio: Commentary and Opinion, Culture, Faith, Linkage
Posted at 10:29 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (3)
May 07, 2004
Dumbfounded horror and grief...
Something happened today. The server that contains this site and my adkoc.com site went down…or something. Whatever it was, these two sites were inaccessible for a while.
I am glad the server is back up now, but… It seems that almost every file on my other site is gone. Just…gone.
That site contained a couple of month’s worth of work — a lot of which was created online (as is the way with most content management systems). This is work that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to recreate.
Yes, I should have dwnloaded everything and backed it up. I was stupid not to have.
But, now it’s all gone.
And I am sad.
I just sent an e-mail to the System Administrator to see if they have a backup. Please, God.
Informatio: Computing, Life
Posted at 1:45 pm | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
May 7th: No Pants Day
You heard me! (Via Jay Allen.)
That’s right, kids! Whether slacks, jeans or shorts, Friday is the day to leave them “behind” and greet the world with a smile. [via my web-less friend Ravi]Of course, I forgot and wore my pants today… Should I just take ‘em off?
To be honest, I believe that if this were an internationally observed holiday that the world would be a better place. Seriously, war and power struggles simply cannot exist when the two combatants have on Snoopy and little-heart Valentine’s boxers.
Informatio: Fun, Humor, Linkage
Posted at 08:05 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (2)
Bus Proverb #4
“No, wait… What’d you just ask me? Oh, I’m older than you, boy! You best not be askin’ me questions like that! I’ll go find yo’ mama, boy.”All Bus Proverbs
Informatio: Bus Proverbs
Posted at 07:01 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 06, 2004
Conflict Map...
Via Wheat.
The Nobel Prize folks bring you this Shockwave-powered map of world conflicts in the 20th century. You can select the range of years and hover over the conflict areas to learn about the issues. Sobering and informative.I would say that this is really cool, but it is just too serious to be that. What an amazing take on the education of history, though.
Informatio: Linkage, Computing
Posted at 11:10 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
Others' thoughts on Jesus and boundaries...
The other day, I mentioned that I wanted to think more about “Jesus and boundaries.” A friend of mine commented with some of her thoughts there — all of which were very good.
I am still thinking about them.
It came to my attention today, that I’m not the only one who is thinking. Check out this thread over at OpenSourceTheology.
A couple of comments that caught my attention, though I would encourage you to read the entire thing as I am just pulling out some biased excerpts (and the conversation there may continue)...
“Imagine” began the thread with:
On reading “Jesus and the Victory of God”, what struck me strongly was the sense that Jesus’ vocation was an invitation into the kingdom and the scandal which provoked his death was that this was available to all. Would Tom Wright endorse the idea that emerging church concepts build on this inclusive gospel. How would he and others see this in practice; if we follow Jesus’ approach, especially in the multi-faith, post 9-11 West how and to whom is the challenge of this gospel made. And what does Tom Wright think is actually “happening” on the cross to realise this welcome from God?Continue Reading...
Informatio: Commentary and Opinion, Faith, Theory and Philosophy
Posted at 08:32 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (7)
"Hey, Hey 16k!"
Via Adam Curry.
Ahhh, the good ol’ days. Remember them here in Flash.
Informatio: Fun, Humor, Linkage, Music, Computing, Film
Posted at 08:07 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
May 05, 2004
Disney 'blocks' Moore documentary
Via BBC News:
Controversial director Michael Moore has said film studio Disney is refusing to release his new documentary, which heavily criticises President Bush. ... Miramax spokesman Matthew Hilzik told the New York Times: “We are discussing the issues with Disney. We’re looking at our options and look forward to resolving this amicably.”Read the rest...
But Zenia Mucha, a Disney spokesman, said: “We advised both [Moore’s] agent and Miramax in May of 2003 that the film would not be distributed. That decision stands.”
Let freedom ring.
Informatio: Culture, Film, Linkage
Posted at 08:56 am | Permalink | Trackback | Comments (1)
Guest Post: "Just Like My Dad, and His Dad's Dad"
Today is a first for my Weblog: I am offering a “Guest Post” from my brother, Luke. (The website that I maintain for his family’s ministry used to be made public, but due to certain delicate issues regarding Chistendom’s influence in certain parts of the world, I can no longer provide the link.) In any case, his words ring true and I encourage you to read his account of something that…I found out years ago. It’s a story that a lot of us realize at some point in life — and there’s a bit of gospel allegory thrown in to boot!
I was out farmer-working (weeding) with my son Corban and my finger stared to sting. I looked down to see BLOOD seeping out of my finger just below my wedding ring. Immediately I realized that I was becoming my dad. You see, two things that are easy to catch my dad doing are gardening and bleeding, and usually at the same time. Whenever I’m back in California visiting and I wonder where my dad is, I need only go out to the garden. There I see him stooping over the weeds, sweat dripping off that same long nose I have, and bleeding from some nick or scrape he just acquired in the heat of work.
Has it come to this already? I’m on the brink of turning 30 and I am already becoming my dad.
A second thought also occured to me at that time, as I pictured the sharp, thorny weed that caused my injury. My long nose and propensity to bleed in the garden are not the only things I inherited from my dad. The very first man who lived in the very first garden resembled his Father. When he chose to disobey his Father he left the legacy of a cursed earth and a cursed will. From that point on thorns would infest the ground for his children, and all his descendants would prefer disobedience over obedience.
So as I stood there in the front yard, I realized the law of inheritance was at work. Like it or not, I was receiving what my dad, and his dad’s dad were handing down to me.
Thanks to Christ, my will has been changed to desire obedience to my new Father in heaven. That happened 10 and 1/2 years ago. But I’ve still got these weeds and this nose.
And my son is going to get the same.
~ Luke
Informatio: Faith, Life, Stories and Essays
Posted at 08:18 am | Permalink | Trackback | Make Comment
