Pam just received a new ipad from UWSP for a technology thing that they are doing and thus her old ipad has been passed down to me. It an attempt to make it a little more mine and less Pam’s I decided to not only remove all the Jane Austin wallpapers from it but to replace it with some wallpaper of my own.
So here are the three that I made today for it.
The one on the left comes from the Christmas gift that Adam made for me. It is about to be hanging in my study.
I don’t have it yet but Pam bought me a Raspberry Pi for my birthday. The Raspberry Pi is a $35 ARM GNU/Linux based computer. It primarily meant for hackers and educational use (i.e. learning to code). In other words this thing is for goofing around. It is interesting to read some of the uses that people have come up with for the Pi. I think I am going to do one of three things with it.
1. Turn it into a media streamer for our TV via xbmc.
2. Use it for some random video projection at Tapestry
These are just the first few uses that I can think of for the Pi. I am sure others will come along once I get my hands on it.
I use Dropbox a great deal for personal and church use. I love it. Of course, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t want to try something a little more DIY. I’ve been thinking about doing something with the Raspberry Pi for a while and I think this might be what I try with it. Making my own dropbox clone should be fun. I can do that with the Pi and with Owncloud. Here are the instructions.
i read lifehacker daily and i love it. it is amazing the things that i learn from the myriad of tips they put out. a read a few days ago they posted concerning an “auto journal.” i go through phases of journaling. in fact, i’m in one right now. i write down thoughts, what i have been reading, and things that i am being challenged by.
one thing that i have not done in the passed with journaling is keep a basic list of things i have done during the day. i’ve read a few diaries in the past that had such simple details as “i traveled to such and such today,” “bought this at this price,” and “ate this today.” these details are incredibly simple and yet i find them wonderful. so i have started adding those details to my journaling experience.
lifehacker’s post pointed out a way to do an auto journal of my basic online daily activity. using if this then that to save small details of my online activity to a journal file on evernote. obviously this is not the same as my written journal and will by no means replace it but i think it will be fun to try the auto journal. right now i have setup “recipes” for it to copy my foursquare checkins, facebook statuses, tweets, google calendar appointment, blog posts, and amazon purchases into an auto journal file. i think it might be fun to look back years from now and see this stuff.
another lifehacker project that i am considering is doing something with the raspberry pi computer. these little $25 & $35 computers look very interesting. lifehacker described making a media center computer out of one. they described making a media center computer for less than $500. i am kind of thinking of less than $60.
SIDE NOTE – i spoke with alan lusk today. he is an old friend and former co-worker. i am excited to hear that he and his family will be planting a church in prairieville, louisiana. since i’ve done ministry along side alan before i know a decent amount concerning how he ministers. he’ll do a great job and i therefore imagine that the church he plants will be pretty dang cool. there are a couple of churches in the baton rouge area that i think the world of. obviously, i kind of like parkview since it was my home for 7 years and i love the ring and its leadership because i believe they do an amazing job of following CHRIST. it is nice to know that there will be another one soon. GOD has allowed me to work with some really cool people and it is so much fun hearing what HE continues to do through them.
SIDE SIDE NOTE – the story of the senior adult who decided to “restore” one of the frescos in her church, the church of santuario de misericordia in borja, spain, is pretty funny. she was just trying to help. the whole situation reminds me from the scene from bean when he messes up and “corrects” whistler’s mother.
much of tapestry’s communication is done online. a ton of social media, online presence, website changes, email, etc. this means i regularly post LOTS of links. some of them can get kind of long, which is, of course, why in the past i have used url shortening services like tinyurl.com and tiny.cc. i decided i wanted tapestry’s name to be in the url and personally have more control over the shortened name of each url without making the address super long. so i just installed yoURLs which make the tapestry website into our own personal url shortening service. now i can shorten url’s with the sptapestry.org address.
for example, thanks to wesley (one of the leadership team members) i have begun posting youversion “scripture events” each week. these scripture events are basically a way that people can easily see each week’s scripture, the power point slides, take notes, etc. this (bible.us/e/ICL) is the link to this week’s (as yet unpublished) scripture event on youversion. it isn’t a very long url but it makes no sense and thus is hard for me to explain to someone without writing it down for them. i could run it through another url shortening service and hope that the custom name i want is available or i could install (which i did) yoURLs on the sptapestry.org domain and know that the custom name i want is available. from now on the link to the youversion scripture event will merely be that sunday’s date. here’s this week’s sptapestry.org/2122012.
come on now, you know that’s awesome.
SIDE NOTE – we’ve actually determined that while youversion events are great, they are also actually not quite in step with our level of participation. youversion events allow individuals to slightly participate with the scripture of the message but they do not allow the church to participate with each other as we go through the scripture during the message. so drew is looking into developing an app for tapestry that will take the good we like of youversion scripture events and add a ton of interactivity for use during our worship gatherings. for example, drew is going to set things up where the scripture event becomes a conversation that you can comment on and then someone else can respond to your comment. youversion allows you to take notes and send me questions but doesn’t really allow for the threads to respond to each other’s responses and bounce reflections off of other people’s thoughts. this is going to be awesome. when he is done people who might not feel comfortable speaking up verbally during our worship gatherings will have yet another way to respond.
again, come on, you know this is awesome.
i have mentioned this before but i am amazed at how bad some powerpoint presentations are. it is even sadder to me when these presentations are done by preachers. the reason for this is two fold: 1) i believe preachers are proclaiming the most important message in the world which makes a bad presentation all the worse because it is about something important and 2) preachers are one of the few groups of people who usually have actual training/education in how to effectively communicate. actually i need to change that last statement a little. i believe that seminary students are trained well in how to develop a sermon but not so much in how to deliver a sermon. if you are presently going to seminary i would love to hear how you are being taught to present your message.
i think most of the threads would describe me as an adequate preacher. i’m not the world greatest (though pam would say differently since she has to) but i am also not the world’s worst. regardless of my preaching skills i know that most of the threads remember the presentation slides i use. i know this because it is one of the things that my friends who make up tapestry comment on the most.
there are tons of excellent resources on the web concerning how to make an effective presentation. these sources have influenced me greatly. i thought today i would post how how i handle powerpoint.
put very little on your slides – presentation slides are supposed to be visual aids and yet so many preachers use their slides as the text of their sermon. if you have all your information on your powerpoint slide why do i need to listen to you? i can read faster than you can speak. just give me the slide show and don’t waste my time. well at least that is my thoughts on the matter. instead i place on my slides only the info that i believe will help someone to remember the point i was talking about. usually this is an image or a single word. the image to the right is an actual slide from one of the lectures for one of my d.min seminars at nobts. this is way too much information for one slide. extra slides don’t cost you anything so i tend to use lots of them with little information rather than few with lots of info on them. 
don’t use clip art - the cheesy clip art makes your slide look awful and doesn’t help people to remember your sermon. visual aids really do help people to connect with, remember, and apply sermons but your visual aids need to be something that they will remember. the slide to the right is an example i found on the web of a guy trying to show preachers how to use powerpoint. this is supposed to be a good example according to him. i would not describe it as a good example but the opposite. if a picture speaks a thousand words then most of the words comgin from your clipart are communicating to your congregation that you don’t actually have anything of value to say. there are tons of resources on the web that teach how to use powerpoint slides effectively but these are the rules that direct me. just to be fair here is an example of one of the powerpoint presentations i use while preaching. you can judge for yourself from this slide show whether you should value my thoughts or not.
SIDE NOTE – i just re-read my previous post on bad powerpoint presentation and realized that all i did in this post was expand on what i had already said there. this probably says a great deal about how much this bothers me. i think i may start collecting images of bad sermon powerpoint slides. if you have any please send them to me.
i have been a big fan of google docs for quite sometime. we at tapestry have used the collaborative nature of of google docs for many projects. we used it for the development of our church constitution and we are using it right now in a sermon preparation project. yesterday i found out about google cloud connect which is a plugin that allows you to work in microsoft office products over the google cloud. i’m going to be trying this over the next few weeks to see how it works.
up until last month our cell phone service have been through alltel. we are no longer with alltel but it is through no choice of our own. instead, alltel sold their central wisconsin contracts to a new regional company, element mobile. the transition has not been easy. i’ve spent about 3 1/2 hours in one of their stores trying to get our old alltel phones to work on element mobile’s system. it never worked and so element mobile finally gave us new phones. it has been a royal headache. our contract ends in august and i’ll be reconsidering who we do business with then.
anyhow, my new phone is the samsung messager and which has a touch screen. i’m a cheap cell phone guy so this is step up for me on phones. this is the first touch screen phone i’ve had. i’m pretty pumped about the fact that i have three desktops on it that can have a different wallpaper on each one. a big thanks to kris legg for posting these wonderful phone wallpapers. i love it when talented people share their gifts with others.
i’m helping pam with her graduate student orientation this friday. she wants me to discuss web technologies that can help students. here’s the list that i am going through
anybody have any other recommendations? any other cool web, computer, and/or phone programs that you use?
on a lark today i setup a qr code for the tapestry website. in theory you should be able to point your smart phone at this image, scan it with a qr code app and then automatically be taken to the church website. the problem is that i don’t own a smart phone so i can’t really check it out. even if i did have a smart phone i’m not sure how effective it is to even have a qr code. still i think tapestry is the first church in wisconsin to have its own qr code and it was free. woohoo! now my life is complete :)
the only thing that i have actually thought of doing with it is beginning to place it on various posters i make for the few special tapestry gatherings we do every now and then. i might also have some stickers made that i can place on various things in hopes that someone discovers them and scans them. i might set it up to a special qr code page on the church website just so the people who use it feel special. i like for geeks to feel special. it makes me feel special.
of course, i might just make it link to this.
