Category: techno

Terabyte drives

Cnet reports:

Last year, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies predicted hard-drive companies would announce 1 terabyte drives by the end of 2006. Hitachi was only off by a few days.
The company said on Thursday that it will come out with a 3.5-inch-diameter 1 terabyte drive for desktops in the first quarter, then follow up in the second quarter with 3.5-inch terabyte drives for digital video recorders, bundled with software called Audio-Visual Storage Manager for easier retrieval of data, and corporate storage systems.
Hitachi terabyte drives
The Deskstar 7K1000 will cost $399 when it comes out. That comes to about 40 cents a gigabyte. Hitachi will also come out with a similar 750GB drive. Rival Seagate Technology will come out with a 1 terabyte drive in the first half of 2007.

I’m drooling over the size of this drive.

That’s enough room to hold 250,000 Mp3 files – or as CNet puts it – enough music to play continuously for two years without ever repeating.

The article also reports that the entire Library of Congress could be held on 10 terabytes.

This comes after the 50th birthday of the original hard drive last year.

The original weighed a ton and held 5 MB.

UPDATE: As of August 2011 I now have a two terabyte hard drive sitting on my desk that I purchased earlier this year for less than $125. As of today, you can buy the same drive for less than $90 from Amazon. The times they are a changing.

Power your church/ministry website with WordPress

Delta theme for WordPress

If you’re still behind the curve, remember it is 2007 and your church and ministry needs a website. Why not use WordPress or Blogger to power your site?

It’s as easy to use as blogging and with RSS already built in, visitors can always have the latest information delivered to their e-mail or RSS reader.

Seriously, it doesn’t get much easier.

And here are a few great themes to plug-in and get started with.

Delta Theme (as seen above)

Several other themes by the same designer

And here’s a great example of how you can really put WordPress to work: Missouri Valley Baptist
Or there’s also a sample site, Cory Miller did to show off how you can make a website with minimal effort and maintenance with Blogger.

Thanks to Cory Miller for the links.

What should I blog about?

I hear people tell me all the time that they don’t know what they’d blog about.

Everyone has something interesting to say.

There are 1 million stories in the naked city every night – or so they say.

But the key is to write about what you’re passionate about.

I love doing a random check over at technorati or other sites to see what keywords pop up in my blog posts.

You can see right away what I write the most about and by reading my blog you can probably tell very easily what my passions are. I write about things I’m passionate about.

If you’re passionate about your pets, write about your pets. If you’re passionate about your job, write about your job. If you’re passionate about health care or politics or your church or your God, write about it.

ChurchCommunicationsPro has started a new series for pastors who need to be blogging.

It’s got some great pointers for “the rest of us” as well.

Some of the posts include:

  • How to Get Blogging in About Four Steps, Five Minutes [See below]
  • Why I Suggest Pastors Use Blogger.com
  • Blog Your Passsion, First and Foremost
  • 10 Topic Ideas for Blogging Pastors
  • Blogging as the Spiritual Discipline of Journaling
  • How to Read a Blog … for Pastors
  • Make a Blog Posting Schedule
  • How to Write a Blog Post … for Pastors: 6 Ideas
  • The Best Blog Posts … Are Often Lists
  • Writing Effective Headlines, or Post Titles

The site also has 5 questions with 44 different blogging pastors that are each great reads.
Check it out and pass it along to your pastor. It will be well worth it.

Doctors grow new bladders

I don’t know how or why I missed this, but I found a very interesting report from the Washington Post from April of this year.

Researchers said yesterday that they have grown complete urinary bladders in a laboratory and transplanted them into patients, improving their health and achieving a Holy Grail of medicine: the first cultivation of working replacements for failing solid organs in people.
The “neo-bladders,” each one grown in a small laboratory container from a pinch of a patient’s own cells, have been working in seven young patients for an average of almost four years, according to a report released yesterday by the British journal the Lancet. The organs have remained free of the many complications that bedevil the conventional practice of surgically constructing bladders from other tissues.

According to the article, no embryonic stem cells were used in growing the new bladders. That’s great information for possible future health issues.
My decision is still out on embryonic stem cell research. I don’t know enough about the issue to decide. On one hand, I believe we should be looking to cure every and all conditions and diseases we can and I have a hard time believing that it’s OK to flush embryos from fertility clinics down the drain, rather than use them for research. It seems a bit hypocritical to me.
I have a hard time believing its OK to kill anyone, embryo, fetus, newborn or a 115 year old senior living in a nursing home.
On the other hand, I have no issue with adult stem cell research, or umbilical cord stem cells, or even fetus stem cells if the cells can be taken without harming life.
But depending on which report you read, the research seems to go both ways on how much advantage embryonic stem cells might have over other stem cells.
I would love to see the conservatives (or anyone else) stand up and say “While we realize there may be ethical issues involved with embryonic stem cells, we’ll fund research of umbilical cord stem cells, adult stem cells and others.”
Quit arguing over embryonic stem cells and lets find a common ground with other cells that we know will not harm a life.

In contrast to research on embryonic stem cells, non-embryonic stem cell research has already resulted in numerous instances of actual clinical benefit to patients. For example, patients suffering from a whole host of afflictions — including (but not limited to) Parkinson’s disease, autoimmune diseases, stroke, anemia, cancer, immunodeficiency, corneal damage, blood and liver diseases, heart attack, and diabetes — have experienced improved function following administration of therapies derived from adult or umbilical cord blood stem cells. The long-held belief that non-embryonic stem cells are less able to differentiate into multiple cell types or be sustained in the laboratory over an extended period of time –rendering them less medically-promising than embryonic stem cells — has been repeatedly challenged by experimental results that have suggested otherwise.

If this is true, why are we not funding more research on adult stem cells? Chris Bell said in a phone interview last week that he would propose spending $30 million on stem cell research if elected. He didn’t clarify if that was for embryonic or all stem cell research – but given the context of the interview, I would guess it would go towards embryonic.
If I were Gov. “McDreamy” I’d propose spending $30 million on adult and umbilical cord stem cell research in Texas right away. Show the supporters of embryonic stem cell research that there are other options. Prove it to us.
For more articles and information on other stem cell options, visit The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics

Tips on frequent posting

Tall Skinny Kiwi has some advice on frequent posting for bloggers:

Blogging Advice in the Wild Wild Web 2.0
The rules of blogging have changed for our brave new web and Eric Kintz has some good advice.
Why blog frequency does not matter anymore

#1 – Traffic is generated by participating in the community; not daily posting
#2 – Traffic is irrelevant to your blog’s success anyway
#3 – Loyal readers coming back daily to check your posts is so Web 1.0
#4 – Frequent posting is actually starting to have a negative impact on loyalty
#5 – Frequent posting keeps key senior executives and thought leaders out of the blogosphere
#6 – Frequent posting drives poor content quality
#7 – Frequent posting threatens the credibility of the blogosphere
#8 – Frequent posting will push corporate bloggers into the hands of PR agencies
#9 – Frequent posting creates the equivalent of a blogging landfill
#10 – I love my family too much

I’ve never set a goal for myself, but I do usually try to find at least two things I can blog about weekdays.
On the other hand, my mom and sister have told me they don’t read any of my “long entries” and usually just skim my page.
My dad tends to read everything, but usually a week at a time – like his e-mails.
My mom naturally is only concerned about things that directly involve me, rather than anything political or related to music, wrestling or other things. She does seem to enjoy the recipes though.
What about the rest of you? Why do you read my blog? What do you look for?
Do you enjoy personal insight? Politics? The fight for Africa?
What about other blogs you visit? Do you visit more than once a day? Why do you visit them?