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8/31/2005 8/30/2005 8/29/2005 8/27/2005 8/24/2005 8/23/05 8:44PM I haven't tried it out yet, but it looks like Google Talk isn't really all that different from any of the other IM clients. It allows you to send and receive instant messages, and it allows you to use your microphone and speakers to talk in real-time to another person. Other than that, it seems to be pretty much the same as any other IM client. FAQ 15 has a cryptic message about future features, but there really isn't much information that is divulged. Time will tell. 8/23/05 I, for one, welcome Google into this arena. I, personally, use AIM, but the last few versions have been rather bloated pieces of softwar that--in my opinion--border on spyware. They install so much junk that clogs up the system. It's awful. If Google can come out with a clean, slick piece of software (which they always seem to do) then I might be tempted to jump on the Google Instant Messenger, aka, Google Talk, band wagon. Ars Technica is speculating that perhaps Google Talk will be tied in with Gmail so that you will have a saved record of all your IM conversations in your account. That would be kinda cool, but it would also be really scary. Can you imagine a vast archive of every IM conversation around the globe? That's just a little bit unnerving for me. In other tech news today, Canon announced new versions of their Powershot line. Notice I said "announced", not "released". The new versions of the cameras are not set to be released until late September. This puts me in a quandry because I was totally looking forward to buying a Powershot SD400 only to see Canon update it and release the SD450. The cameras are almost identical in specification, except the SD450 has a 2.5 inch screen instead of the 2.0 inch screen found on the SD400. That extra half an inch sure makes the screen look a heck of a lot bigger. As well it should. If my algebra serves me correctly, you're looking at a more than 56% increase in screen real-estate (3 square inches versus 1.92). In the words of Jay "Wow, that's great!" On a more personal/spiritual note, isn't it good to serve a God who keeps his promises? When he says he'll do something, we know we can count on him to do it. And when he says he'll never do something, we know we can count on that, too. What a blessing! 8/22/05 Today, however was different. Google decided to update their Google Desktop software to version 2. Oddly enough, the software is still in beta. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that this is one of the first times I've ever seen a company release relatively "mainstream" software to the masses while it was still in beta. I mean, I know that Microsoft does it all the time, but this just seems so odd. I would have thought that if Google was going to release a version 2 of anything, they would have removed the "beta" moniker from the name of the product. Oh well, "different strokes for different folks" I suppose. The one really intriguing part of the new version is that it is now a full-fledged side-bar á la the Microsoft Office Sidebar. This means that those of you with gigantic wide-screen monitors who shall remain nameless (right, Andy?) will once again have something else to take up your copious screen real-estate. The other interesting tidbit I have is this image. If you stare at the cross in the middle long enough, all of the pink dots go away. Amazing, huh? Does someone wanna e-mail me at and let me know how this works? I have my own theory which I'll share after I've received any responses. 8/19/05 Twelve years ago, 49 percent of all women between age 18 and 29 thought unrestricted abortion should be the law of the land. Today, just 28 percent of young women hold this view. Colson gives three reasons this is so:
That's really interesting to me. I really never thought about the first reason at all. Certainly there were "unintended" consequences for the actions of those women who have aborted. For more information, please see the article in its entirety here, and the Breakpoint website. 8/14/05 Notice who had the high score? I didn't even have to look where I was shooting :-) I guess it was all that target shooting with Gung Gung. Thanks, Gung Gung. 8/12/05 8/10/05 8/8/05 Here's my typical scenario: I find something that I want like a job. I pray about it, and then I go through all the normal job-finding steps like sending a resume, dressing up, going in for an interview, etc. After the interview, I pray about it some more. They call me back for a second round interview and everything is looking good. I pray some more about it and thank God for the opportunity. Then the crushing moment comes. I find out that they've selected another candidate and will not offer me a position. I'm crushed. My pride is wounded. And I think to myself, "Does God love me? Maybe He doesn't..." I figure I've prayed about it enough, why wouldn't God give me the job if he truly loved me. This has happened more times than I'd care to admit. This last week I came to the conclusion that this line of thought is the stupidest, most insulting thing a person can think. (Notice I didn't say "Christian". I said "person" because it applies to all people.) Why God doesn't just smite me for thinking such thoughts is beyond me. Here's why: God, the Creator of the Universe, God the Almighty, chooses to allow me to breathe every day. He sent His one and only Son, Jesus Christ, from the glory of Heaven to the shameful wickedness of Earth in order to die for all of mankind. Jesus Christ died the most horrible death on a Roman cross in order to save me from my sins, the very acts of injustice that I perform against Him. Christ summed it up best when he said, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Christ did exactly that. He lay down his life for his friends. What greater love can there be than that? To even consider that God doesn't love me because I don't get what I want is stupid and insulting. It's stupid because such thoughts don't deserve consideration. It's insulting because it completely ignores what Christ did on the cross for eternity in favor of focusing on a small problem in its ephemerality. And it's especially insulting when the "small problem" is more an issue of pride and getting what I want (read: Sin) than it is of actually not receiving employment. I hope that puts things in perspective for you. I know it helps me put things in perspective. It's a great encouragement to me. Have a great day! I will, just because I know what Christ did for me. 8/6/05 8/5/05 8/4/05 I "decided" to read Habakkuk out of curiosity as to why I've never heard anyone quote it. Not from the pulpit, not in Bible studies, not in casual conversation. I was beginning to wonder if people truly believed that it was an important part of the Bible. But this is what I found:
I also found these words as part of the Lord's Answer to Habakkuk's question: Of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, 'Come to life!' Or to lifeless stone, 'Wake up!' Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it. But the LORD is in his holy temple let all the earth be silent before him. Have a great day in the LORD! 8/2/05 8/1/05 7/26/05 7/25/05 I do give Microsoft's team props for two things. They've implemented the ability to zoom in and out by using the scroll wheel on my mouse, and they're using aerial photography in some areas which means you can zoom in a heck of a lot closer than you can with Google maps. Interestingly enough, my hometown of Bakersfield seems to have gone completely back in time with all black and white photos. Nothing is in color. Now what's up with that? I know Bako has the reputation for being the armpit of California, but to have all black and white photos when Google can get their hands on color ones? Come on. 7/24/05 7/22/05 Windows 2000 was a good operating system. I'm still running it as my primary OS on my computer in a dual-boot configuration with Windows XP. I just haven't had the time or opportunity to migrate all my settings and stuff to the new OS. 7/14/05 7/13/05 They smell bad. They're more prone to all kinds of cancer including lung cancer. They can get emphysema. It's really freaking expensive. I just read a story that says smokers have a life expectancy 10-25 years shorter than the average non-smoker. 10-25 YEARS!!! I can't even imagine. I haven't even been alive 25 years. Well, I suppose if anything good can come out of it, it's that Altria, through it's wholly-owned subsidiary, Phillip Morris, has a pretty decent stock chart. I guess someone has to profit from other people's stupidity. 7/12/05
7/4/05 There's definitely some good tech news to be reported, though. Apple did a minor update to their iPod line. The black and white iPods no longer exist. There are only color iPods. Essentially what Apple did was to integrate the regular iPod line with the iPod Photo line. I just noticed the post I made on 5/19 regarding Google's price. If I'd only bought at that price...Today Google is at $291.25, slightly off of their 52 week high of $309.25. If only...if only. In other Google news, Google has repackaged and rebranded the products they acquired when they bought Keyhole. They're now touting it as Google Earth. Unfortunately, for the time being, downloads of the program have ceased. Unfortunately for me, I downloaded it, but I downloaded the Plus version which requires payment and a subscription key. Looks like I'll have to wait for the download site to open up again, just like everyone else. While I wait, maybe I'll buy some Google stock. 5/30/05 5/19/05 In other Google news, they would also like to have large corporations jump on the bandwagon with their new Google Desktop Search for Enterprise. It seems like taking over the desktops of every citizen at home isn't enough. They want your corporate desktops as well, and they want them before Microsoft can get to them with the reported WinFS, which was supposed to ship with Longhorn, but has now been pushed back to an unknown date and product release. Let the battle for your desktop continue. Regardless of who wins the battle on the corporate front, all consumers stand to gain. 5/17/05 5/9/05 5/3/05 New Taylor T5-S1 Tobacco Sunburst: We hope you're
ready for the future, because now it's here-- our first arrival
from Taylor's anticipated T5 series is breathtakingly beautiful
with that unequaled Taylor playability. But it doesn't just look
and feel great! The expansive tonal palette sets this apart from
any standard acoustic or electric guitar. All fully hollow body
construction paired with the dynamic neck-joint pickup and body
sensor soundboard pickup really captures the acoustic essence of
this short scale player. The back & sides are solid sapele,
and the gorgeous maple top has plenty of figured flame. The white
bound ebony fingerboard has dot markers, and a comfortable 1 11/16"
bone nut. In addition to the pickups already listed, there is a
bridge position humbucker that sounds great through traditional
"electric" amplifiers. Also included are multi-layer white
body & f-hole binding, an ebony bridge, chrome tuners, active
preamp bass/treble/volume controls, and a 5-way switch for a multitude
of pickup combinations. Are they going to be popular? Well, this
one just SOLD as we were posting this description, so now you'll
have to check back! With hard shell case. More to come soon! (list
$3098) PHOTO I really look forward to playing one soon. Maybe I'll be able to get one after this summer. We'll see. Enjoy all of the pictures courtesy of Buffalo Brothers. 5/1/05 4/30/05 4/29/05 The built-in Web server provides you with a more secure way of building applications on a development machine. The built-in Web server cannot be accessed remotely (it can only be used by a local web browser) and it automatically shuts down when you close the Visual Web Developer development environment. The reason this is so interesting is that they are billing it as a feature. It certainly seems to add to the security of working on any such projects. This means that the pages will only be available from your machine, and only while you are working on them in VWD. While I can certainly see the positive spin on this, it seems painfully obvious that the real reason Microsoft included this was so that people don't end up using VWD as a full blown web server. This all seems very logical to me. I just find it funny that they've chosen to bill such a limitation as a "feature". 4/27/05 This is a pretty cool invention. I've never seen a walking machine this big before, and best of all, it cuts down trees. 4/25/05 4/21/05 Other than that, file this under deals I'd rather avoid. Thankfully the mistake was rectified in a later post. Screen shot courtesy of gotapex.com. 4/11/05 In other news, Age of Empires III is well under development as we speak. It is slated for release in the second half of 2005, which means it will be out in time for Christmas and should be discounted for my purchase by my birthday. Gamespot has a nice interview with the lead programmer and director of technology at Ensemble Studios that talks about the development of the game. There are also some sweet screen shots of the game itself. I think the key element in this edition of the game is going to be the awesome lighting effects and attention to detail. This causes me to wonder if my present video card is going to be able to handle it. I've got a 64 MB ALL-IN-WONDER® RADEON® 8500DV. Seeing as how there are new Radeon X850s that are about a billion times faster, I'm not sure that my computer will be able to handle it. Time will tell. Andy, keep this in mind when you choose a new computer and video card. 4/7/05 4/7/05 I'd highly recommend that everyone run some form of anti-spyware application on their machine. I'd highly recommend Ad-Aware from Lavasoft. It's a great free application. They frequently update their definitions, so your computer will be ready and able to deal with the latest Spyware/Malware threats. Another great product that has given me great success is the newly released Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta. In typical Microsoft fashion, the program is rather large (6.3 MB compared with Ad-Aware's 2.5 MB) and invasive, but it seems to do the trick rather well. The other program I've heard good things about is Spybot. I've no experience with it, so I can't personally recommend it. Unfortunately, no spyware program by itself is enough to fully clean out an infected computer. If your computer is severely infected, you'll need to run at least two of the above programs. In the case of my friend's computer, I ran Ad-Aware and AntiSpyware. You'll also need to run them from safe-mode. (Although, AntiSpyware will not install from safe-mode in my experience.) I'd run one of them until it comes up clean. Reboot into safe-mode again, and then run it again. Re-boot again, and then run the other program until it comes clean. Re-boot and run again. If everything comes up clean, you should be good. Now you can see why it took me so long to fix her computer. All those scans...all that re-booting. I also poked around the registry a little to delete some other spyware stuff. Not fun at all. But hey, it pays for the gas in my car. 4/5/05 In other news, it looks like Best Buy will now sell the Mac mini that Andy and I want so badly. 4/4/05 Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries. 4/3/05 4/2/05 I just wish it was possible to access my wongside e-mail through the G-mail interface. 4/1/05
There's also a cool new video on Factory Fridays about Side-bending. It's interesting to see how they get the waist and the bouts in the guitar. Lots of heat, and a little patience. 3/28/05 3/24/05 3/23/05 3/6/05 2/20/05 After I got my CDs yesterday, I decided to go to the respective websites and have a look around. I found out that Kutless has a number of music videos on their website. One of the cool things is that instead of using WMV or MOV streaming video, they use Macromedia Flash streaming. I really like that interface a lot more than the other two. I think by far the worst streaming media is WMV. The Flash interface is so clean it's great. Check it out here. I also made my way over to Jeremy Camp's site. I know I said earlier that I liked Kutless' use of Flash for their streaming media, but I've decided that the most annoying thing about most artist's websites is the fact that they're all done in Flash. This has two immediate results:
Flash sites are notorious for their terrible navigation. You never know when something will click or not, and often times it's difficult to determine when it has finished loading. You can't tell if a link goes to another page, or simply goes forward in the Flash animation. There's no indication in the status bar because it's all self-contained in the Flash. The annoying music is probably one of the worst features of Flash sites for artists. It's one thing if I have the ability to click and demo tracks. It's completely another thing if they start playing on their own. I don't know about you, but most of the time when my computer is on, Winamp is open and playing something. So then when I'm surfing along, I come across a site, and all of a sudden my speakers are playing a jumbled mess of two songs. That really bugs me. Why don't they just let me play the demo songs if I want to. Would it kill them to have the page load with the music in the "STOP" position? Thankfully, the Kutless website didn't have the annoying music, unfortunately Jeremy Camp's did. He also used MOV files for his music videos. I guess that's two strikes against him, but his music is pretty cool. I guess that's enough ranting and raving for one night. 2/19/05 I went to the Parable Christian Book store in downtown SLO today. They were having a CD Sale. All single CDs were on sale for $9.97. I got the new Kutless CD, Sea of Faces, and I bought Jeremy Camp's latest CD, Restored. So far, Kutless sounds pretty good. I think they've gotten more mellow since their debut album, Kutless 1/10/05 Let us continue to pray that God shows himself to the people. 1/6/05 1/5/05 2004 Taylor 614CE: (exc-) Get it while it's hot-- this gorgeous player has a solid glossy sitka spruce top, glossy solid flamed Big Leaf maple back & sides, and a hard rock maple neck. The ebony fingerboard has mother of pearl markers and is bound in white-- just like the body and headstock. You'll love the abalone inlaid rosette, gold tuners, tortoise shell pickguard, and built in Taylor Expression System. All this and the tone of a Taylor grand auditorium in this barely used cutaway. With original hard shell case. Stock#UGB16635 PHOTO There were minor, minor scratches on the pick guard, and for some reason, the label looks like it was partially removed, but other than that, the guitar is flawless. I'll get to play it at church on Thursday unplugged, but hopefully, I'll be able to play one of these Sundays and take advantage of the new Taylor Expression System inside. If you're ever in the market for a new guitar, I'd highly recommend purchasing from Buffalo Brothers. As far as I know, they're the only ones with the 100% Upgrade Policy, which basically means that if I ever want to get a new guitar from them that costs at least $100 more than I paid for my current guitar, I can return my guitar, spend a little money, and get the new guitar. This is an awesome reason to buy from them. Unfortunately, while their prices are generally lower than Guitar Center, they're not negotiable, and they're not the lowest. For the lowest prices I found on Taylors, I'd recommend a company in Ohio called Wildwood Music. Their prices are consistently 60% of list price, which is just about as low as it gets. (IF you find a place that offers lower prices, let me know. Just click the e-mail link to the left.) Their customer service is super, super helpful, and if you live anywhere but Ohio, you're not gonna pay any sales tax. (Sales tax really adds up quickly on a high end guitar like a Taylor, while shipping on one of these babies is only like $30 or so.) 12/31/04 12/4/04 11/28/04 Anyway, Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. We had a lot of people over this weekend. Pastor Andy was over for dinner on Tuesday night, then we had the Scotts over for Thanksgiving, and then on Saturday the Taylors came over for brunch. It was actually pretty enjoyable to have all of those people over. Mom did a really good job cooking and was an excellent hostess. 11/22/04 11/20/04 11/15/04 I think that from now on, I'm going to take a note from Greg Saiki's website and post short thoughts instead of long dissertations. I'm just too busy to be posting everything all at once. By the way, Saiki Family, you are in our thoughts and prayers. 10/9/04 |
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