David’s Bucket

I am posting from Starbucks for the first time. If you didn’t see it on the news this morning, Starbucks is finally reversing their trend on requiring their customers [who are already paying a premium on their coffee] to also pay for wi-fi service. As of today, if you have a Starbucks card that is registered with their rewards program and has been used in the past 30 days, you get two hours a day of complimentary wi-fi service. I’m really excited about the change because I can be connected in one of my favorite places to sit for a while to read and do sermon prep. 

While I’ve been critical of Starbucks for their policy on wifi in the past, I think this is a fairly good compromise. We have another coffee shop here in Mansfield that has become the full-time offsite workplace for many people in our community and you run the risk of paying the overhead for someone else if you offer totally unrestricted wifi.

For me, an hour or so on a particular day will be more than enough to recharge over a cup of coffee. 

Yesterday I received in the mail my new companion [sounds a bit awkward]. I sold my personal Macbook several months ago for a good deal, but I’ve really missed my traveling friend. My new machine is exactly like the previous one except for the color. I had a black one and bought a refurbished white Macbook. Here she is sitting on my desk at work. 

I named my previous Macbook Apolonia, the name of Michael Corleone’s first wife in The Godfather. I’m thinking this one is going to be named Angela. The beautiful purity of her white finish reminds me of Angela from the Office. Hopefully she won’t be as uptight as her though. 

For those Apple users out there who care, I decided not to do the standard system migration that is available choosing instead to just move over the info that I needed. It’s made me aware of how much junk I need to clean off my iMac at home after several previous transfers. It’s probably a bit bloated. I also realized during the transfer of files and apps how few apps that I have had to pay for I actually use. Outside of the iLife suite which comes on every Mac, I installed iWork [Pages, Keynote, & Numbers] and Microsoft Excel. That’s it! Everything else I use is a totally free program available for download. 

So, to all you PC users thinking about switching who get turned away by the higher priced Apple product, think about this. After purchasing this machine [you can get a refurb at a deep discount by the way here] the only software I added was a package that costs $79 and another one that costs $150 [Microsoft Office 2008, Student/Teacher Edition of which I only installed Excel]. 

If anyone out there is interested in being set free for the tyranny of Microsoft and entering the great light of Apple, Inc. as I have previously shared, I am an evangelist for Apple computers as well as Jesus. 

As of today, May 27th, my blog is now three years old. I started blogging again [after an earlier failed attempt] in May of 2005 right after I started working at First Methodist Mansfield. After three years, I’ve accumulated 732 posts [some of which are actually pretty good] and received 411 comments. It’s been a great journey and I appreciate each of you who have shared it with me.

This past February, I moved my blog from the Typepad blogging service to Wordpress. Since then, I’ve tried to give the blog more attention and with school wrapping up, I hope to continue that trend. 

I hope the content you find here is a blessing to your life and encouragement for your journey. 

Peace. 

Some of you may have heard of Pandora, an internet site that was started in 2000 that allows you to choose a few artists or songs which you enjoy and create a streaming music station for yourself. The neat thing about Pandora is that in setting up that station, the database finds other artists and songs which match the music you’ve selected. Here’s a bit more from the Pandora site. 

Since we started back in 2000, we have been hard at work on the Music Genome Project. It’s the most comprehensive analysis of music ever undertaken. Together our team of fifty musician-analysts has been listening to music, one song at a time, studying and collecting literally hundreds of musical details on every song. It takes 20-30 minutes per song to capture all of the little details that give each recording its magical sound – melody, harmony, instrumentation, rhythm, vocals, lyrics … and more – close to 400 attributes! We continue this work every day to keep up with the incredible flow of great new music coming from studios, stadiums and garages around the country.

With Pandora you can explore this vast trove of music to your heart’s content. Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go. It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings – new and old, well known and completely obscure – to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you.

If you are a Mac owner, I recently found PandoraBoy, a free download that puts Pandora on your computer and allows you to control the software with your Apple remote. 

So if you’re a PC user, give Pandora a try. It’s a nice way to listen to and find new music that fits you. If you have a Mac, try our PandoraBoy also. 

Other than graduation activities, I’ve also spent some time this weekend doing some spring cleaning here on the blog as well as installing some new back end features as well. Here’s what I’ve accomplished.

First, the front end stuff…

• The first few I have actually added in the last few weeks. First, in the side thoughts section, I’ve starting using the Twitter Tools plugin in order to post a daily digest of all my twitter posts. I’ve also installed the gravatar plugin which puts a small thumbnail image next to the person commenting on a particular post. In order for that picture to show, you have to register with gravatar. 
• I’ve simplified the category list you see listed in the sidebar and added a tag cloud to the middle column. As you can tell, I haven’t been using tagging through wordpress for very long, and unfortunately, the tagging of my old typepad posts didn’t transfer when I made the switch. So, tags will be a work in progress. In the meantime, I’ve kept categories up for quicker access to old posts. Currently, you can find older content by the search box at the top, the archive page which is broken down by month, the categories in the sidebar or the tag cloud.
• I’ve also added a RSS feed of pictures from my flickr account. I’m still getting my flickr account up and running properly. I only have about 7 pictures in their right now, but I’m having a login issue on my home computer I have to fix. To integrate the flickr feed, I am using the FlickrRSS plugin if you’re interested. 
• I added the Lightbox 2.5 plugin as well as the Add Lightbox plugin in order to install lightbox on the blog. To see lightbox in action, click on this post and then click on the image. 
• The last one is kinda front end and back end. I registered the new blog at Technorati. 

I’ve been using wordpress now since February as my blogging platform, and I can’t believe it took me several years to make the jump away from Typepad. I absolutely love wordpress. Sometime this week, I’m going to post about the ease of transitioning from another blogging platform as well as post about how to set up your own blog if you’re interested in doing so. I’m going to be working with a good friend on setting a blog up for their church so I thought I’d go ahead and post some thoughts here as well.

And one last thing. I almost forgot. I changed my About page to reflect that I am no longer a student a Brite Divinity School. Just had to say that one more time. 

UPDATE: I’ve also added a blogroll.

I’ve now been using Twitter for about 3 1/2 months. Sometime in the next few days, I’ll post my 100th update. If you are an RSS reader of this blog, you’ve probably noticed the daily updates that get posted to the blog from my Twitter account, but I’m guessing many of you have no idea what it is. On the Twitter website, they share this explanation.

Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

So, it’s sort of like a blog except for the fact that you are limited to 140 characters with each post. So the idea is to provide really short updates on what’s going on in your life. You then find some friends which you would like to follow. [I'm currently following 29] You can then receive those updates [from friends] via an RSS feed or text message. On your personal Twitter page [mine is here] you can see all of your posts together or click with friends and see your updates along with the updates of all your friends.

I know what many of you are thinking. It’s something along the lines of, “this sounds really strange.” I know you’re thinking it because I did to when I started, but it’s actually been a pretty cool addition to my life. Many organizations are using it to stay connected to their constituents. Who knows? Maybe we’ll have a First UMC Mansfield Twitter account soon? In case you’re wondering, Mansfield ISD has a Twitter account.

If you are interested in setting up a Twitter account, let me know. I’d love to “follow you.” [I know, weird stalker language, but that's what they call it.]

No, the writer’s strike isn’t over, but…

Several sources are reporting that Apple & NBC appear to be patchy up their fractured relationship which led to NBC pulling their content from the iTunes store. A few nights ago, my wife and I were catching up on all the season three shows we had purchased through iTunes. The Office is the only show we’ve bought a season pass for in the past so we have the entire season on the computer. All was going well until we wanted to watch an episode of season four. I checked out Amazon Unbox which had the show but their technology doesn’t work on a Mac. We then ended up watching the show online at NBC which was pretty frustrating. Perhaps NBC & Apple are ready to kiss and makeup? Here’s some hope.

The Financial Times recently interviewed Jeff Zucker of NBC Universal, who gave praise to Apple and Steve Jobs.

“We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”

Meanwhile, on Apple’s side, Businessweek got Jobs’ take.

“We’ll put it back together on the TV thing. Everybody lost (when Zucker pulled his content off iTunes). But NBC is a great company, and Apple is a great company,” neither of which make a habit of ignoring their customers’ desires, he said. “Fortunately,” he half-joked, “there was a writers’ strike, so it didn’t matter as much as it might have.”

This week, I got an iPhone.

I finally made the plunge and all I can say is that as revolutionary as the iPhone appears to be from a technical standpoint, it has exceeded my expectations (which have been built up for year) in my first week of use. Apple also made news this week with the annual Macworld keynote on Tuesday when Steve Jobs released a few new products including the Macbook Air. Quite honestly, I don’t see the need for the product for myself, but I found several of the components interesting including the multi-touch trackpad.

But what was more intriguing to me (as a Mac owner and recent iPhone purchaser, was the Time Capsule feature and the remote optical drive use. Coupled with that you had the upgrades to the Apple TV which included the ability to rent & purchase movies straight from that set top box. These few features which represent a dramatic increase in activity via wi-fi networks is really interesting to me especially when you consider the advancements made in the Leopard operating system that also show remarkable improvements in terms of file sharing and remote entry.

All this leads to an article I was reading today on 43 folders, which is Merlin Mann’s blog, that I thought had some really intriguing predictions on where Apple is going with all this. If Merlin is even close to the destination, Apple really might be set to take over the world. Here’s an excerpt.

Well, in essence, your Mac Pro, your MacBook Air, your iPhone, your iPods nano and shuffle, and your Apple TV would all become agents for using the stuff you’ve stored on .Mac. Heavy (invisible, background) use of rsync-like diffs-syncing (ala Time Capsule?) will ensure that all your devices have the stuff they need, and in the appropriate size and format; e.g., 720p version of Weekend at Bernie’s 2 goes to the ?TV; more modest size goes to the iPhone, etc. The value and attraction to consumers strikes me as obvious; on the same day, your electronic world becomes ubiquitous, backed-up, and very easy to maintain or access from anyplace.

If this is anywhere near do-able, Apple would be taking the concepts behind Spotlight, Time Machine, iTunes, and Smart Folders to their logical conclusion, creating an environment where Apple sits at the center of all your electronic needs, contextually syncing and serving what you need, when you need it, in a totally seamless fashion.

One more thing and then I’ll bring this very geeky post to an end. I was waiting on the iPhone to see if they released a 3g version on Tuesday. They didn’t. A year ago when Apple released the phone they were criticized for not having a 3g version. A year later, still no 3g, which I find surprising in that Apple using isn’t lagging behind. Now you could make the argument that Apple is new in the mobile phone market and that’s the reason for the delay, but again, anyone who has spent some time with an iPhone knows that Apple gave substantial energy to creating a device world beyond the competition… So why no 3g?

My theory is that it isn’t good enough for Jobs, and rather than simply being content with the current generation of technology, Jobs is seeking to jump ahead. Why isn’t it good enough?

Perhaps 3g isn’t fast enough for the eventual goal: A remote to access your entire digital life anywhere… anytime… We’ll just have to wait and see.

Here’s the link to Merlin’s full post.