Month: June 2014

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Approaching Ground Zero

In a few days, my “day job” (here’s a hint: it isn’t blogging) will ramp up for a month or so of crazy production. It will involve copious amounts of overtime, probably some extra days, and lots of overtime pay.

Yes I get paid overtime, because I’m an hourly worker, and I refuse to work another salary job. I’ve been there, I’ve done that, I will never do it again. I generally have issues with large mega-corporations (even though the one I work for is one of the better ones) and I also don’t like corporate politics, stupidity, wastefulness, attitude, and greed. Pretty much all things I’m sworn to destroy.

Ah, but for the lack of a paycheck…

Anyway, if I don’t post a lot over the next month or so, that’s why. Hopefully I’ll get time to breathe.

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The Myth Of “Abundant Life”

“Abundant Life” as we’ve been taught it, by the modern Church, is a myth.

If you’ve ever heard someone say “God has blessed me with a new _____! He’s given me life more abundantly!” then you’ve been exposed to the lie. In today’s climate of soft theology and relativism, this kind of thinking is rampant, it’s destructive, and it’s wrong.

I debated on whether to even write this, as it’s a hard topic to swallow. Take, for instance, my article on Technology In the Church. I knew as I was writing it that it would ruffle some feathers, because it clearly calls out believers to put their money where they claim their faith is. That makes people uncomfortable. But I’m okay with making people uncomfortable.

The Christian life is not about human comfort. If it were, we could discard the entire book of Job. Or Acts. Or the Gospels. Or pretty much the whole Bible. In the book of Job, the Bible says Job was righteous in every way, and yet God allowed him to be afflicted. All throughout the Bible, there are stories of righteous people suffering and enduring hardship. The thorn in Paul’s side. Lazarus’ death. Job. King David. The disciples. Even Jesus himself.

If God were in fact trying to make everyone comfortable, then what would the point of that be? We know God doesn’t change. We know God allows suffering in righteous people. Therefore, it is wrong for us to assume God wants us to be comfortable. Comfort does not honor God. He allows us to be comfortable, in the same way he allows us to endure suffering. To God, it’s just a part of life, not the goal in and of itself. It’s not a reward for being “good enough.”

“But doesn’t God want me to be happy?” Continue reading “The Myth Of “Abundant Life””

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Molten Voltage MIDI Pedal

My guitar pedalboard is finally finished! Got a Molten Voltage MIDI pedal to switch presets on my rack unit and also give me tap-tempo MIDI clock for my delay effects. Check it out.

[youtube_sc url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50EkIid7LpQ”]

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Tasker And Flowcharts

In my quest to simplify, I’ve ventured into the territory of Information Automation. Since I discovered the app  Tasker, I’ve challenged myself to find new ways to exploit it to automate tasks that I really shouldn’t be wasting time on.

Tasker basically is an automation programming language for your Android device. It allows you to take any number of trigger inputs (GPS position, battery state, apps, network status, emails, RSS feeds, etc.) and then perform any series of tasks you program it to. It has the capability to be a full-fledged programming language, with conditional logic, variables, and so on, which lets you make some incredibly complex “tasks” for it to run.

It also has the capability of using almost anything your device can do as an “action” or output, which means you can automate just about anything your phone/tablet can do. Take pictures, play audio, send texts, run programs, share to social media, control the device’s functions, or even speak and listen to voice commands.

So, sometimes I geek out on stuff like flowcharts and such, and programming is the perfect place for it. Flowcharts! Graphs! Logic! Here’s how it works. Continue reading “Tasker And Flowcharts”

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Why I Bike Commute

The folks at the Bike Commuter Cabal were kind enough to let me write up some stuff for you to read about why I decided to start Bike Commuting, and how it changed my life.

Have you ever been at a point where you know you need to change, but you just don’t know where to start? Four years ago, I was at that point.

This would have been around 2010. I had recently moved back to my home town, had a beautiful family, and was pretty much happy. Except that I wasn’t happy. I was pretty miserable in fact, but I wasn’t letting on. Why? Some of the reasons (a lot of them) were related to my job, but a lot of it had to do with me being 40 pounds overweight. I was weighing in at 5′ 11″ and 215 pounds.

“That’s not so bad,” you’re probably thinking. Well, no, relatively speaking, there are a lot of people that are a lot heavier than I was. But the reality was that I knew my life, and my weight, were spiraling out of control. I was always tired, having digestion issues, sinus problems, sleep apnea, and I plowed through it, being miserable and pretty much always exhausted.

But I knew there was a better way. Thanks to my friend Mike, I got interested in whole foods (which I knew practically nothing about) and realized how much garbage I was putting into my body. Somewhere in that time, my job started getting very frustrating. I was hating going to work, and I’m ashamed to say it carried over into my home life. I was not being the husband and father my family deserved. I knew I needed a change, but I didn’t know where to start.

So I bought a bike.

Check it out here!
Bike Commuter Cabal Blog (EDIT: Fixed the link. I’m an idiot. But it’s fixed now.)

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The Way-Back Machine

Fortunately, I’ve been able to find a bunch of my articles from before The Great Server Wipe of December August 2011. This is good in a lot of ways. You can see just how much my writing and thought process has changed over the last 6 years. And honestly, you don’t want to see my writing before that. That’s pre-Wordpress…. hardcoded HTML… (shudder)

It’s pretty entertaining to go back and see what I used to write about, and what I thought was important. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be back-posting these articles into the blog’s history, and adding redirects to the new posts.

Thanks to The Way-Back Machine for the help!

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Guitarix And Ubuntu For Live Use

I’m working on finishing up some articles and videos of demoing Guitarix in a live performance setting. Until then, here’s some screenshots of my rig in action! The last picture is what the laptop looks like when you put Guitarix in “Live” mode. The buttons at the bottom light up as you use MIDI triggers to turn on/off effects, so you can easily see what’s switched on. Also, if you have a pedal mapped to volume or wah, it shows what position the pedal is at. (That’s going to get a video demo as soon as I find the time!)

You can store presets in banks, so you can set up your sounds according to songs and sets.

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Corporate Emo Poetry Monday (Busted Keyboard Edition)

clicking and flickering letters they fly
onwards and upwards lest nimbleness die
the tongue from which henceforth forever proceeded
yet rapidly languishing, no longer is needed

yet the rapping and tapping can never subside
for the ravenous metrics we have to provide
together the syllables clutter and run
into pieces of meaningless information

and so now at last, my keyboard has died
a weapon that all geeks should have at their side
for writers, no greater blade can be drawn
but I’m stuck with a cheap piece of junk from Taiwan

 

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My Thoughts On Self-Publishing

My thoughts on self-publishing

Some of you out there in Internetlandia® enjoy reading books, and a few of you have even gone so far as to say “Hey, since I love books so much, and writing one doesn’t look too hard (I mean, look at romance novels, right?) I should self-publish one!”

Well, far be it for me to proclaim myself an expert in self-publishing books, but I have done it, so I figured I’d share my thoughts surrounding the process, instead of talking about the mechanics of the process itself. If you’re looking for helpful advice in formatting and/or figuring out the publishing process, there’s already plenty of information on that.

We’re going to focus for a minute on the why of self-publishing, which is something not many people think about. If you’re serious about writing, this is going to be a litmus test. Either a) you’re going to get upset, or b) you’re going to recognize what you need to be doing. Hopefully I don’t upset anybody.

These are the questions you need to be asking yourself if you’re seriously considering self-publishing: Continue reading “My Thoughts On Self-Publishing”

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New Music Project

For the last few months, I’ve been working on a new music project with my good friend Luke McNeely. It’s mostly 8-bit “chiptune” music, made using old-school video game sounds and instruments. Don’t laugh, it’s a lot harder than it looks! But between the two of us, we’ve spent thousands of hours listening to really amazing music written by greats like Takashi Tateishi, played through Nintendo and Atari game consoles.

We decided to call our group “Not Entirely Unlike Chiptune” as an homage to Douglas Adams. So, if you like old video game music, were a child of the 80’s and 90’s, or just want to hear something different, check us out on Twitter and Soundcloud.

Our first official project is an 8-bit tribute album of one of our favorite bands, Five Iron Frenzy. We’re releasing the songs as we go, rather than holding out till we’re finished. Feel free to check it out!

https://soundcloud.com/notentirelyunlikechiptune/

8-Bit Frenzy