Category: Uncategorized

Way cool tool


I almost hate to give this away, but the North Central Texas Council of Governments hosts www.dfwmaps.com, which will give you great maps and arial photos of the North Texas area.
The arial maps are within 75 meters I believe. Amazing detail.
The only downside is that it’s not as scrollable as Google maps or MSN, but otherwise it looks great. It’s got better photography of North Texas than either Google or MSN.
The picture above is of the doomed Super Conducting Supercollider outside Waxahachie.

U2 hits

I finally added a site counter to my blog last week. I decided I wanted a better understanding of who visits and reads my blogs.
There’s some interesting results.
I noticed today someone from the Department of Justice visited. That’s a little worrysome.
But I also noticed that most people who came from a search engine, were looking for something related to U2.
So maybe I should be writing more about U2. You know, Bono, The Edge, Larry Mullen, Adam Clayton.
The best band in the world, U2.
Or maybe I should focus on other subjects to attract other audiences as well.
Or maybe I should just write like I always do and not worry about traffic so much. I think I like that idea better.
Except traffic on your blog is somehow like friends on Myspace.
Somehow you’re a better person with the more you have of both.
Or so “they” say.

Style guidelines

As a reporter, we’re always following AP style guidelines. And we dream often of a day when someone will put together a patch for Word and Office products that will change the auto-format, correction etc., in the software to go along with AP style, rather than MLA, or whatever style Microsoft has chosen to use.

Churchmarketingsucks.com has an article this week encouraging churches to adopt a style guide as well.

If you have any sort of background with words you understand the importance of a style guide. Is it Gospel or gospel? Are pronouns referring to God capitalized? Is it Church or church? Oxford commas, or no? In many cases either option can be correct and it’s a matter of opinion. But having both options in the same brochure would be kind of silly. Consistency is the key, and for that you need a style guide.

I think this is a good idea for anyone who does any type of publishing.
You can start from scratch or adopt and amend exisiting style guides.

Here are some pre-existing guides:
Wired Churches
AP Stylebook
Eats, Shoots and Leaves