Month: January 2007

I forgot to tell you… I love my church

Somehow I forgot to share this here on my blog. I think I e-mailed it to several friends and such but I love how our church is reaching out to the community…
From the Baptist Standard:

Encounter may not have had Spanish-speaking Hispanics as its target audience, but now that a couple of dozen attend, the congregation is excited at the opportunity God has given for ministry…
The congregation has now grown to number about 200 in attendance—mostly 20- to 50-year-olds and their families.
But a few months ago, the church began to draw from a new demographic group—Hispanics, some who spoke limited English and others who spoke almost no English. And several of them older than most of Encounter’s Anglo worshippers.
A scheduled testimony by a young English-speaking Hispanic couple in the church sparked the Hispanic infusion, Pastor Brian Treadaway said. The couple’s family and friends came to hear them share how God had reclaimed their lives after sin had stripped away from them everything they held dear. That group continued to attend, and other family and friends also joined them.

The funniest part of the article is a quote Brian (pastor) supposedly gave. He didn’t. “We are Baptists in our core—in what we believe we are Baptist through and through.” (Dang – even the Christian media can’t get quotes right.)

Software for starving students

Lifehacker shared a great resource for starving students, broke professionals or anyone else needing good, quality software for free sometime last week.
Software for Starving Students lets you download an ISO file with numerous open source programs like Open Office, Audacity and Gimp for PC and Mac.
Since it is an ISO file, you’ll need a program that knows how to burn ISO (disk images) to CD but after that you’re free to install and use all the software for free.

Software for Starving Students is a free collection of programs organized for students (but available to anyone). We’ve gathered a list of best-in-class programs onto one CD (one disc for OS X, one for Windows), including a fully-featured office suite, a cutting-edge web browser, multi-media packages, academic tools, utilities and more.

Granted the software is available elsewhere on the web but this takes care of hunting each program down seperately.
It could also make a great birthday gift for a starving student or other friends needing to work with “industry standard file formats” without having the money to shell out for the “industry standard software.”
Some of the software I’m starting to use on a regular basis includes:

  • ClaimWin – Virus Protection
  • DeepBurner – disk burning software
  • Filezilla – FTP Client
  • Firefox – Internet Browser
  • Gaim – all in one IM client
  • GimpShop – a variation of Gimp for photo editing. I actually use the original Gimp, but this is a very similar version.
  • InkScape – an alternative to Illustrator for vector graphics.
  • PDF Creator – make PDFs from any program that prints
  • Thunderbird – email client
  • WinLame – lets me encoded and decode MP3 files

Now if I could just find a great open source program for video editing and animation. Blender looks to be super powerful when it comes to animation but I don’t have the first clue as to how to use it. I better hunt down some tutorials and get to work.
If you’re interested, check out this short movie done entirely with Blender and other Open Source software.

Cowboys stadium preview

The cowboys have put together a computer generated tour of the their new stadium, set to open in Arlington in 2009. It may be the best computer generated stadium I’ve ever seen.

But there’s no audio until Jerry Jones makes comments near the end, so feel free to keep your computer cranked with OrangeNoiseRadio as you watch.

CWF on HBO

We filmed footage for this sometime back in 2006 and HBO will be airing a special Thurs. Jan. 25 featuring the CWF. From the description there’s not telling what they’ll say or show.

FRIENDS OF GOD
Journalist and filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi takes viewers on a road trip to chronicle the leaders and followers who comprise the booming evangelical Christian movement. Travelling through the red state heartland of the U.S. that helped elect and re-elect George Bush, Pelosi meets with an array of outspoken evangelicals, from television celebrities like Joel Osteen, Jerry Falwell and Ted Haggard to leaders of groups like the Christian Wrestling Federation and the car club, as well as regular folks committed to carrying out the Creationist messages.

Tune in at 8 p.m. CST on Jan. 25, 2006 to see Friends of God.

Watered down objections

The Baptist Standard has an interesting article on the SBC stance towards drinking.

A growing number of Baptists may have brought in the New Year by raising a glass of something a bit stronger than iced tea, some cultural observers speculate. Baptist attitudes toward alcohol consumption seem to be in transition, they insist.
Consider the spirited debate—and debate about spirits—sparked last summer when messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting approved a resolution opposing the consumption of alcoholic beverages—and an amendment disqualifying imbibers from service as trustees of SBC entities.

Jews don’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah

Protestants don’t recognize the Pope as the head of the Church

Baptists don’t recognize each other in the beer store