Published on
May 30, 2007 in
fun.
So, um this post has been in queue for a while. I wrote most of it the day of the Digg Riot (someday an old geek will turn to his grandchild and say “I posted in the Digg Riot of 2007. Those were the days, young man, those were the days.”), but never got around to posting until now. So, in the grand tradition of “Signs Your Church is Geeky,” “10 More Signs Your Church is Geeky,” and “Another 10 Signs Your Church is Geeky” I bring you this:
- You offer a “Noobs in Christ” class for converts.
- The preacher begins a few too many illustrations with “While in World of Warcraft the other day . . .”
- Many in the congregation knew about the situations first hand.
- The rest see it later as a Machinima reenactment anyway.
- Current sermon series: “What Bruce Schneier Doesn’t Know About Eternal Security”
- Last Week’s Benediction Song: “All Our Base Are Belong To Jesus”
- Your worship leader specifically chose the following songs from a hymnbook for this week: 9, 249, 17, 2, 157, 116, 227, 91, 216, 65, 86, 197, 99, 86, 136, and 192 (this made more sense in early 2007 and here).
- During your Easter program, the young man playing Peter runs out on stage ahead of everyone else yelling “Leeeeerooooy Jeeeenkins!”
- It is often pointed out that the Lamb’s Book of Life isn’t a wiki.
- Someone actually suggested placing this sign out front.
I installed reCAPTCHA today, and it was a bit of a pain to get it integrated with this theme due to the AJAXiness of it.
Akismet has been doing a great job at catching spam, but there is just so much of it, about 30 per day. I thought I would give this tool a try to see how it works. At least we can be productive in your annoyance by helping convert scanned books to a digital format. So far it hasn’t seemed much worse than most annoying captchas.
Try it out and let me know what you think.
UPDATE:
Verdict on the reCAPTCHA plug-in for Wordpress: useLESS
Number of spam comments per day since installing reCAPTCHA: 100
Number of people annoyed by it: At least 4 (I’m just going to leave those comments out)
One of the ministers here has been called upon to speak about blogging at the North American Christian Convention as part of a panel. He is beginning to get concerned that he may be asked about more information than what he has on hand for the following topics:
- Blogging
- Podcasting
- E-Newsletters
He has asked me to pull some information together. We currently have three separate podcasts being published through the church, so I know how to do it, but I want to pull together as many resources as possible.
This is what I am looking for:
- Tools for the initial recording: (we have CD recorders hooked up to the sound systems, but a computer with good software would be even better). What tools do you know of and/or use?
- Editing Software: We currently use an older version SoundForge for the editing. We have also discussed Audacity, but not moved to it.
- MP3 creation: Since the version of SoundForge we use does not export mp3 we have been using CDEX for mp3 creation. Audacity could do this, but it requires the LAME plugin. CDEX was chosen because when I started doing the podcasts I would just grab the sermon on the CD for the bookstore and extract it from there. CDEX was the first CD ripper I used back when I bought my first mp3 player (a Diamond Rio)
- ID3 tag editing (if not included in the MP3 encoder): CDEX does limited ID3 tags for ripped CDs, but not for converted .wav files (which we sometimes use). Fixtag (which requires Java) does a good job of adding them.
- Your Naming conventions: I am a very orderly person when it comes to cataloging data. Some of our sermon podcasts are name based upon Service-Series_Name-#-Sermon_Title while one which does not rely on sermon series is done as Service-YYYYMMDD-Sermon_Title. No blank spaces due to the fact that URLs make blank spaces look awful. I want sermons to be nicely sorted when they are all placed into a directory and ordered by name.
- ID3 conventions: We include the preacher’s name as a comment in the tags as well as date information in addition to the sermon title and series name.
- Podcast Posting Software: We use WordPress with The Audio Player WordPress Plugin for some podcasts while one of them is currently hand coded by the resident web dweeb (me). We used LoudBlog for 1 year, but it became a hassle. I started handcoding in order to bring in some features I had been considering, but I plan to move to something automated in the near future.
- Feed Distribution: Our feed goes out through FeedBurner so that we have some good information on feed usage and because it makes the moving to a new posting software easier. One reason I kept up with hand coding was so that the podcast address would stay the same. We have also been posted on iTunes, but our sermon podcast is considered a resource for the church and not intended to climb the iTunes charts.
Anything else you would like to add or correct (PLEASE?). Post in the comments or follow up at any of the forums I am going to cross-post this to.
Published on
May 15, 2007 in
Techie.
I just received an email from TigerDirect with the following message:
 If you’re still running a computer with less than 1GB of memory, odds are you aren’t ready for the 64-bit, multi-core PC future. Right now, you can get 1GB of Ultra PC3200 400MHz DDR memory for only $79.99. This 184-pin array features 400MHz memory speed.
Honestly, if you are running a computer with less than 1GB of memory then chances are that box is not going to have a 64-bit multi-core processor added to it. It implies an interesting non sequitur, that if you upgrade your computer to 1GB or more then you will be ready for a 64-bit multi-cored system. First buy the system, then upgrade it.
Technology investments pay off through their use, not through their storage. Unless it is a fabulous deal that won’t ever be repeated (and I have never met one of those with new tech hardware) then save the money and purchase when needed. One of my favorite examples is to watch one particular piece of new technology to see the dramatic fall. You can see one of those at the Open Source Ministry Forum.
The fires have been horrible down here. It had been just Georgia blowing smoke in here, but it looks like the whole state of Florida is on fire. Today’s map from the Florida Division of Forestry reminds me of when I used to play Sim City and the whole city would start catching on fire.
Most of our smoke seems to be coming in from Bugaboo and the Sweat Farm (Ernest Sweat).
I am subscribed to several local news feeds to keep up on things happening in the quaint backwater town of Jacksonville, FL, and JaxDaily.com is one of them. They have been working to encourage an online community and have gone a step further by creating a local video site at JaxVideos.com. The cost of this site is negligible since it runs on WordPress and they don’t actually host the video, they just display video submitted from mainstream online video sites. It has been up for just under 1 month, has nearly 30 videos, and local ministries have already taken notice.
This is a nice idea for a community reaching site. For a small price and a bit of moderation (encourage family friendly posts) you could provide a service to your community with local amateur news postings as well as church related items.
Check out this American Idol take-off from a local church (Copyright Questions?).
There is also a video of set-up at the local Christian band venue (Murray Hill Theatre) if only it was a little more exciting. It was a bit more exciting last time I was there, of course that was 8 years ago at an Insyderz concert.
Anthony Coppedge has finally uploaded the Copyright focused installment of the Creative Synergy Podcast.
I am downloading it now and adding it to my mp3 player to listen to this evening.
Published on
May 6, 2007 in
fun.
What an exciting time of the year!
Published on
May 5, 2007 in
Techie.
I installed Silverlight the day it was announced, but only now have I found some good places to try it out.
Check out Silverlight.net and more via the Vista Team Blog.
It will be interesting to see how this compares to flash in putting videos on the church site.
