I spent my free time today planning a web site for Crescent Lake Bible Camp. Heather was a big help and we really enjoyed working together – as usual. I realized that Adobe GoLive sucks and that I am more comfortable hand coding my web pages than using a WYSIWYG program. So, I cracked open my JavaScript for the World Wide Web book and reviewed my rollover programming.
As a practice, I removed all the GoLive code and reprogrammed my buttons to a nice snazzy look.
Enjoy.
I’m done redesigning my blog for a while. It’s been fun but I really don’t know CSS and PHP well enough to redesign my blog into a static page. My goal was to build Crescent Lake Bible Camp‘s web site from WordPress. However, it’s just not worth the time investment when I can design their site using simple HTML and CSS. It will be static but at least it will be a well designed site.
I’m trying new things. I’ve been frustrated with my Outlook calendar not syncing properly on two computers with my PDA as the intermediary. Somehow appointments were getting duplicated or put on the wrong day (mostly birthdays and reaccuring appts). Clearly it is wise to have only one calendar. I wanted to put a calendar on my web site so I can make changes anywhere I had internet access. This is where Google rules.
I’ve set up a Google calendar, a task plug-in, and have signed up for GMail. That pretty much wipes out Microsoft Outlook.
The only thing I’ve not done is import my address book into Google. But, I think it’s time to rid myself of the old address book with contacts gone by to never be seen again. I have over 500 contact but only need a fraction of them. So, no importing of the address book. I’m starting over.
The grass is now growing and needs to be mowed! I dusted off the old push mower and cut the front lawn today. The grass isn’t that tall nor thick yet so I lowered the blade one notch. It was nice to get back to summer chores.
The last time I mowed the grass was October. It seems so long ago. The oil in the mower looked clean so I must have changed it late in the season. But, I really can’t remember. That was eight months ago.
So my mom and Dave came to WI for a visit from Ohio. Here’s a video of her reading Curious George to the twins. Go mom!
Recently I’ve been trying to get the volume of the sermon CD to normalize so people don’t have to turn the volume up and down while they are listening to the sermon. It’s too much of a pain to do post-production using Adobe Audion and the church does not have a compressor. Pastor Darrell thinks that purchasing a headset microphone might work – which I’m sure will help – but that costs $300.
A youth pastor friend, Steve, from Grace Foursquare told me about the Levelator. I believe Steve’s brother is into sound engineering. Anyway, I downloaded the Levelator and am testing it right now. Hence, I’m writing this blog while I wait…
Stay tuned for the results.
Boy Prodigy does it once again – I’m referring to Isaac Bowen, of course. Isaac is the teen who originally programmed the church web site and the boy whom I’m so diligently trying to match in web design skills. As of yet, Isaac is way further ahead than me.
I’ve been struggling with embedding streaming flash video to my web site. You Tube has upload limits and I just did not want to pay for a third party service. So, Isaac informed me that Google did not have said limits. Nice. Here’s Isaac’s recommendation at work with my first test of Google’s video services;
My web site got zapped by a virus. My father in law found it – or should I say that it found him. Fortunately, his anti-virus caught it before it infected his computer. Appearantly, one of my PHP programs had a vulnerability and this virus was running wild all over the web host servers. My Norton did not catch it when I viewed the site but maybe the virus did not “attack” me. I’m not entirely sure because my Norton subscription just elapsed a week ago. Yet, this virus is several years old so my scan should have caught it if it were present. We shall see. I stopped by Office Max and picked up a copy of McAffee antivirus.
I called my web host and they found the virus on the server, deleted it, backed up my files, and created a new root directory. This caused all sorts of problems as the inforation was older and I still needed to upgrade to the most secure versions of my gallery and blogs. Needless to say but I learned a lot in the process. I have to learn how to do my own backups next. My web host has lots of automated tools but I have yet to learn them.
Reading reports of the latest doomsday prophesy on how the church in America and Europe is in decline is like drinking tonic water – yuk. I’m sure there is validity to the reports but the reporters seem to hype the story to invoke fear from the reader as if this decline is going to cause armed gunmen to burst into our homes and steal our children. Such behavior would not be tolerated in our developed countries. We are not even close to such things.
IF the worst comes true and churches go bankrupt from lack of tithes, if pastors find themselves without paycheck, if there are no places to meet for worship, if our litergy is compromised because we cannot afford the comforts of routine, if we are arrested for speaking the truth about morality, then we will find ourselves resembling the early church. That doesn’t really scare me all that badly.
Bottom line – God is faithful and He is always saving mankind from their sins. There will always be a remnant of believers. God’s grace is available to a declining church just the same today as it was in the persecuted early church or in modern persecuted countries. Do I want the church to decline? No. But I find that fretting over decline in attendance distracts us from worship and causes us to lose trust in God’s power.
By the way, there is currently growth in the gospel based churches in my area.
The Florida Keys are beautiful and I thank the Lord for this opportunity to serve on this Marine Biology trip. My purpose is to shoot video for a promotional DVD of the trip. Thus far it’s going very well. I’ve documented a research project, the Dolphin Research Center, and several marine habitats. Now comes the interviews that will serve as the backbone of the content. It’s been lots of fun and I love spending time in the sun.
The marine life is absolutely facinating. There are so many different kinds of creatures that we are playing with every day. The knowledge of our team is amazing. I’m learning tons and making many new friends.