Excellence in the Arts, missional lifestyle - by Jeff - October 15, 2009 - 12:01 Etc/GMT+5 - 1 Comment
“Free” software is heavily relied upon in church ministry, but by using this software the church is often seen as being “cheap-skates” and “free-loaders” – not a very Christ honoring image. This image is portrayed because the ministry is often only thinking of themselves, selfishly using the software but not giving back to the computing community, not abiding by the software use terms and even stealing the software by not paying for appropriate use. Not all “free” software is free and we as Christians need to be careful that we are honoring Christ in all we do, including our use of technology in ministry.
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Excellence in the Arts - by Jeff - August 3, 2009 - 18:01 Etc/GMT+5 - 1 Comment
We all occasionally have issues with our computer system freezing up, and it is no different with our fancy video production computers with which we switch the cameras for the video feed at church. However, when one of the video computers at church locks up, it tends to affect a lot of people, distracting them or preventing them from participating in the service, so we go to great lengths to make the video computer systems as reliable as possible.
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missional lifestyle, the City - by Jeff - May 14, 2009 - 04:08 Etc/GMT+5 - Be first to Comment!
Why would your church worry about being on ” the internet’s’ “? This topic is discussed on today’s The Resurgence blog.
Excellence in the Arts, the City - by Jeff - March 16, 2009 - 18:42 Etc/GMT+5 - Be first to Comment!
Okay, this was so great I just had to blog about it.
Late last week the trackpad button on my MacBook Pro was stuck… would not click. While investigating, I found my battery was swollen up, bulging up against the underside of the trackpad, keeping it from clicking. I removed the battery – it showed a full charge, but it has not been working right, dying at 30% charge, so I now knew what the real problem was. I put off calling Apple as I was busy.
So Today (Monday) I realize I have a trip coming up and I really need a battery. A quick look online, nope, will not get here in time – guess I need to run over to the Apple Store. I have heard some people have had good luck getting their batteries replaced under warranty, but those were newer computers, and most as old as mine just had to pay for a replacement battery (although my computer is still under the Applecare warranty.)
I arrived at The Domain around 1, and it is crowded – everyone is enjoying the nice weather after a couple days of winter. The Apple store is really crowded. I make my way towards the back when I get stopped by a guy in an orange shirt, “Can I help you sir?” “Um yea, I have a little problem” as I show him the battery, which is now split open. “Right over here, we can help you.”
My battery gets handed to a couple Geniuses, one to the next, finally a young lady says she just needs to check with a manager real quick, glances across the room and apparently got the nod – okay. The she explains to me that I really need an appointment, but since they don’t have any appointments available in the near future (SXSW maybe?) she would get someone to take care of it, just wait right there, it may be a few minutes.
Well before I can even get my iPhone unlocked, someone ask me for my battery, grabs a new one off the shelf behind me and ask me to go ahead and open it up as I follow him. We walk back to the counter, I snap the new battery in my MacBook as he scans the info, gets my name, zipcode and verifies my laptop is still under warranty. There you are, good to go.
And all of that took less time than it took for you to read this post. I am happy. My computer is happy.
family, Technology - by Jeff - September 9, 2008 - 02:03 Etc/GMT+5 - Be first to Comment!
had a very interesting experience today. I purchased my kids an inexpensive dell laptop (used) about a year ago and have regretted it ever since. This laptop was such a dog – slow, unresponsive and impossible to use if you had more than one program running. I tried everything – wipe the drive, install xp straight up (no manuf. junk), hardware test, etc, etc. This should be an okay computer – 1.5GHz mobile celeron (yea, I know, but cheap), 1gb memory, 256mb dedicated graphics, 80gb harddrive, but it never worked well enough to be very usable.
Then the power supply died. yup, that little brick of a powersupply. So the laptop sat around for a couple of months…. I decided I would sell it and see if I could get any of the cash I put in it back out…. but I wanted to make sure it just needed a new power supply – so, I grabed a power supply off a HP laptop we have at church…. simular specs, simular plug…. wow, all of a sudden this computer actually works! I can even draw in Sketchup while I run an anti-virus scan. Could it have had a bad power supply all along?
Cool Products, Technology - by Jeff - August 4, 2008 - 03:43 Etc/GMT+5 - Be first to Comment!
Just a quick post – a couple very helpful and useful tools.
Need to take and organize notes? Several different people all suggested Evernote to me recently, so I signed up and wow, I really like it – very handy. It is software / webware / pdaware enabled and seems to go a great job keeping everything in sync!
And love drawing and organizing in Visio but can’t afford it? Check out Dia (sorry, not available for mac at this time….. still looking for a free alternative)
thank you to all who passed along these great programs to me!
Cool Products, Media, Technology - by Jeff - June 28, 2007 - 17:56 Etc/GMT+5 - Be first to Comment!
Cast? What Cast?
podcast, vodcast, RSS feeds of various types – See, I ask because I know that a majority of you still just read what you want, when you want it using your web-browser. I have recently converted myself from one who just checked in when I felt like it, to one who subscribes to the feeds.
I resisted the movement for a long time – I figured the fad would pass, it was just a waste of time, I really didn’t need it, would not use it. Boy was I wrong. Everyone is blogging and podcasting. I even have heard that some church staff members are creating internal podcast just for their team members to improve communication. Now there is a thought – where is my microphone?
So what am I using?
- iTunes for all the media content feeds (podcast / vodcast)
- Vienna for all the blogs and news related feeds
It is nice to always have media I want to listen to ready on my iPod, and when I just have a minute and want to catch up on new, open Vienna and see what the latest is at all the sites I like to visit.
