blog
20080428
Get off the shed.
Gosh, I'm sorry folk(s), I haven't updated in a whole 3 days. I got you all worked up, and then walked away. I've been working on Heather's website the past couple days. It's going to be Piñata.On Wednesday, while we were shooting the Wild West CVA, The school at MorningStar was having their chapel. The Spirit of God just had a picnic with those kids and was healing people, giving people visions, prophesies for other people... it was nuts. And it didn't stop. In fact, they cancelled all classes for the rest of the week, and they basically opened it up 24/7. Staff, teachers, pastors, students, leaders, and strangers were being hit hard with the power of God. People that I know, and people that I know would never act like this, or fake it, are just going crazy. It's still going on, every night this week. Heather just bought the MorningStar Webstream for $10 per month so she can watch it from home with Zay. The webstream is a really good deal, and it's about to get better. We are about to add archives and we'll probably star airing the TV Show that I edit online as well.
I miss the Bound4LIFE crew. I miss my family. I miss America.
20080425
hey, who's hair is this?
One of my best friends, Joel Khouri, just got back from Italy last night. He brought us back some coffee, cheese, and chocolate. We also went to a friend's house tonight to talk about India and eat some Indian food. It was soooo good. Elizabeth, who is coming on the India trip with us cooked and introduced us to a family she knows who lived in India, so it was really good to interface with them. I'm getting more and more excited about this trip, and trying to get my gear ready while not really trying to plan anything. I anticipate things, but I don't really want to over-plan or over-produce the video aspect of it. It's real easy for me to latch onto a "style" or "look" that I like or have seen, and try to imitate it, or use it as a model. I really want to break away from everything that I've seen and experienced, and let this be something so natural and in tune with our experiences, that it forces it to be unique. It's good that I educate myself on how things are done, or how things have been done, and I'm not saying that I'm trying to re-invent the wheel, but It's good for me to re-imagine how it would be like if I were to invent the wheel in the first place.I got my Pelican Case in today, and I'm outfitting the foam to conform to the camera, and the other case will be for the laptop and hard drives. Water-proof, shock-proof, but not Isaiah-proof.
30/30
I hijacked the following video from Matt Lockett's Blog. He's the Director of Bound4LIFE. This is the Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama, addressing the city council. I love it.20080424
your mom is out of context
I had so much fun on Monday and again on Wednesday when I was acting as Director of Photography for a couple "film-like" productions. On Monday, I shot a scene from a screenplay that director Thomas Torrey wrote. He wants to put together a montage for a promotional package in order to get the film produced. It was a lot of fun, and very refreshing to work in a relaxed, yet professional environment with scripted material. On Monday, Thomas returned, this time to direct another CVA (Church Video Announcement) for the up-coming Sunday Lunch at MorningStar. I'm not going to spoil it by telling you the setting, but it's going to be good. The video and the lunch.I ordered a couple of 10 megapixel still cameras for Heather and I from Woot! and I couldn't be more pleased... except for maybe if they ended up being free, then I could be more pleased. We have our cell phone cameras, which are pretty lame, and our big Nikon, which is pretty big, and so we just needed something in the middle so we could be good American parents by taking mediocre photos of our adorable first born child and post them on the internet. Oh, plus, the cameras shoot better video than our cell phones, so we don't have to be torn between a 8 oz. 50 dollar cell phone video camera, and a 28 lb. $10,000 HD Film-quality camera. Oh, choices.
Discuss.
20080422
in case of fire, pull down
I think maybe once or twice I've actually used a blog title that had anything to do with the blog contents. In fact, I've tried to hard to keep that up, and often times I'll type in a good title and after completing the blog entry I'll realize that the title may, in fact, have a little bit to do with the topic in the entry, and thus, has to change.So, no, I wasn't sheering any sheep yesterday.
Oh dang, now I'll have to change the title.
As I'm typing this, Matt Lockett posts a twitter entry that simply says, "Looking for... money." Help a brother out will you? Give to Bound4LIFE.
Speaking of helping a brother out, I love tabbed browsing. If you don't know what tabbed browsing is, well, it's where you only have one window open of your browser, say, Safari for instance. But all the websites you open have a separate "inner window" to reduce having multiple instances of the same browser. Almost every popular current browser out there has tabbed browsing: Firefox, or Camino, or Opera, or Flock, or Fluid... Basically anything but Internet Explorer*. I personally use Safari for my web-browsing and interneting. I have an iPhone, and it syncs up my bookmarks, plus it's way fast and works really well with all my other mac apps.
I have the latest version, Safari 3, and with that flavor of browser it has the ability to gather all my separate windows into a single window with multiple tabs. So it makes a new tab for every previous window that I had. I find that in the menu bar > Window > Merge All Windows. It's really great, and helps keep my desktop tidy. Now if I can just keep my desk tidy. Now, as great as that feature is, I never really liked having multiple windows open in the first place, and I wished that regardless of how an application or email or other website wanted me to open their link, it would open in a new tab in my current window. Well, I found a little "modification" that has made me really happy.
CAUTION: APPLE MAC ONLY. Not for the basic user. I do not recommend using terminal if you are the kind of person who's motto is, "When in doubt, click OK". However, this is really simple, and hard to mess up, but make sure you run "Software Update" first... that is always a good thing to do.
Open up Terminal (found in the Utilities folder within the Applications Folder) and paste this line:
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool trueand hit Enter(Return). You can quit Terminal and then quit and re-open Safari. Now, you force any link that would otherwise open a new window, to open in a new tab inside your current window. You can still force a new window by selecting the tab you want, and going to the menu bar > Window > Move Tab to New Window. If you don't like the way this makes your Safari feel, then you can reverse what you have done by opening Terminal again and typing the following:
defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool falseNotice the
false at the end? "I really love technology, but not as much as you, you see..." Aaaaaaand that was my Mac tip for the week. I'm not implying that I'll be sharing a new Mac tip every week, It's just, well, this is a Mac tip and it's during the week. (gleaned from Mac OS X Tips)*I excluded Internet Explorer not because IE can't do tabbed browsing, but instead because I hate Internet Explorer. And I'm not saying that just because I'm an Apple fan, and all Apple fans must hate Microsoft, nay, it is because I'm an aspiring web designer/developer, and IE makes life hard for us. However, if you MUST use Internet Explorer, I highly recommend you get the latest version.
20080420
oh. my. gosh.
So I had a dream last night that I gave the Blueberry (our crippled 1983 VW Van) to my dad and he got it working by putting a new battery in it. So, I acted upon that dream today after church and tried to jump-start the van. Glory to God, it worked. So I drove it home, kept it running, got Heather and Zay and took it for a spin. We drove it through the neighborhood and around the block and then back to the house. It ran great. Super smooth, no problems. I pulled it into the driveway and turned it off. And she wouldn't turn back on. Tried jumping it again... no love. I have NO IDEA what is wrong with this thing. I have replaced the battery, alternator, starter, vacuum lines, fuel lines, plugs, wires, rotor, cap, air filter, fuel filter, fuel regulator... ok, basically everything but the radio. I have called two mechanics, one can't have it towed, the other doesn't seem to return my phone calls. At this point, it's sitting in my driveway and I'm at a loss of what to do. If I can get it running, it can be our daily driver because it runs great. The trick is getting it running. Maybe it is the radio.Smallville is on... "Somebody saaaaaaaaaave meeeee."
Heather and I just got back from Piedmont Medical Center. That's where Muffin will be born. It was nice to see the place and get a little tour, and it was a really great facility, albeit a little hospital-like.
Isaiah is a toddler. Pray for us.
20080419
I'll take that as a yes
So, from what I read from these comments, my action sequence will star my brothers vs. Angie G., choeographed by Sarah V., costumed by my mother, and featuring my wife as a food-providing damsel in distress.Our roommates are starting on Season 3 of Smallville. It's a good show, but a tough one to keep track of. There's a lot of teenage angst in it and a lot of drama. The effects are really well done for a TV Show.
I'm wearing a necktie today, and I really like it. I don't really like many of the ties that I own, but I'd like to start wearing them regularly. A few of them have been through Isaiah's hands, and so they are not really in a presentable form.
Ok, Call of Duty... I have to let off some steam.
20080417
tweet tweet
I just danced with Heather in our kitchen while Isaiah was pretending to cut things on a cutting board on the floor. It was very romantic.A lot of people have been asking me about Twitter lately, and so I'm going to attempt to explain it in detail here. If you're like me and you don't mind signing up for new internet services, then just skip this post and go directly to Twitter.com.
Most of my conversations with people I haven't seen in the past 12 hours start off with, "So, what's up?" and they reply with whatever it is that they have done lately. I enjoy getting blog updates from friends, family, and interesting strangers probably more than I enjoy actually going through the process of updating myself. I'm on a computer all day, and when I'm not, I have my iPhone with me. It's very rare that I would be "off the grid". Instead of opening up Blogger, logging in, typing up enough text to justify a blog entry, and waiting for people to find me and read it, and possibly then know what I was doing when I typed it, I would much rather instantly update a small snippet.
It's not really worth it to me to log in to my blog in order to type, "I had a good day at work today." But you might want to know that, and I want you to know it, so where can I put something like that?
Twitter has been called "microblogging", "instant status notification", "stalker candy"... ok, I made that last one up, but if you're familiar with the status updating on Facebook or Myspace, then just think of Twitter as doing the same thing, but instead of making it available to just your Facebook or Myspace followers, it broadcasts it to the entire world. I can set my Twitter feed to publish to Facebook, Myspace, organicvisual, Skype, Instant Messenger, Gmail Chat, as well as a slew of desktop clients that are sleek and fast. (oh, and really great mash-ups, like Twittervision. They take the public Twitter feed and mix it with Google Maps) Get it? Then get it. It's free.
I guess I'm just trying to say that I want to know what you're up to. Don't worry, I'll let you follow me too.
Labels: twitter
20080414
Totally Boss
Isaiah has short hair now. Yeah, we gave him a hair cut because it was getting in his eyes and irritating his neck. He's a good boy, but he's 1 and a half, so when our roommate Andrew was cutting his hair, he said it was like cutting hair on the back of an ATV.I love my little boy. He makes me feel like I'm a kid again. He has so much energy, it makes me tired just watching him. However, he is incredible creative. He colors, plays the guitar, the drums, creates(read: destroys) legos, and reads his books out loud, very loud, early in the morning.
I'm excited about getting back into the prayer room at TheCause. I need to not only keep playing the guitar and mandolin, but I also need to get in the habit of getting up early again. The point of it all, of course, is to soak in, exalt, and pursue the presence of God.
I really want to make an action movie sequence. Not a whole movie, just a scene. Something that involves a footchase, hand-to-hand combat, and high-stepping dance. Anyone want to learn some fight choreography?
20080405
ex. 309
So I was talking to my very good friends Claire and Luke the other night, and I got to talk to them about Amy, and all the events of that week. They were very much in the loop and were praying fervently with everyone while they were here in Fort Mill.Claire was the worship leader for Amy's intercession team here at TheCause, and she remembers Amy always talking to her about how excited she is to go to Heaven. Claire told me that often times Amy would describe, in great detail, the creatures and angels in Heaven.
Amy had a wonderful voice and loved to sing, and now Amy has a perfected voice and IS singing.
I really appreciated how Luke and Claire took this call and contended, then waited, and trusted God with us for Amy's life.
And that's the bottom line. We had to trust God with Amy. We had to move past the hope and faith of expectation, and go into the place of rest, peace, and trust. I had to get to a point where I KNEW that God knew what was best. I'll often times convince myself that I know, but I don't really understand it, and I can't really wrap my head around it, but I was surprised to actually have peace about any outcome because I knew that nothing that change God's goodness and nothing can change His love.
I'm nearing the end of the Women's Conference here at MorningStar, and because it's a WOMEN'S Conference, and I'm a man, it's a little overwhelming. I find myself looking for another guy to hover around, because there is power in numbers.
I love my job though, it's a lot of fun, but it can be awkward sometimes. To me, it's worth it.
Keep your eyes on Cross.tv and look under "Tv Shows" for MSTV and Stairwell Sessions. Those are the two shows that I produce, shoot and edit.
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