Ever wonder if you have an unidentified proclivity for eschatological global domination? Simply type your name(s) into the name box on this site and it will let you know if there is a way to make your name add up to 666.
I got bad news… my last name contains 666. If you put 100 for A, 101 for B and so on, it will add up to a total of 666. It’s good to know I’m not alone. Other names with 666:
Bush
Rush
Moses
Paul
Kennedy
Check your name. Its a simple JavaScript hosted on Open JS.
Twitter announced today some upcoming changes to it’s web interface. They seem to be trying to bring a lot of the features that we all love about the various desktop clients we love to the web. They plan on splitting the screen in two, allowing one half to be your update stream and the second to be your followers, any media embedded into the stream, trends, and more. It’s a little reminiscent of the drawers they use in the new iPad app they released a few weeks ago. I don’t know if it will be enough to sway me from using Tweetie, but we’ll see.
Check out this video they made to show it off:
And just in case you don’t already, you can follow all the geekiness of this site at @ymgeek.
Youth ministry blogs are as common as youth ministers. Actually, they are probably more common since the people I follow contribute to multiple blogs. They are also all incredibly similar: one youth pastor sitting up late at night giving you a taste on just exactly what he thinks needs to happen in the church, or what her newest great game has been, or a great way to use technology in your ministry. That’s the formula: 1Youth Minister + 1 topic + 1ironic illustration= Blog post of <500 words. That is not Slant33.com
I think that the best way to describe Slant33 is an evolution (or maybe a next iteration) of a youth ministry blog. Each week, three contributors respond to a single question with depth that is usually absent from this type of communication.
The depth of these articles flows from the depth of the contributors. To call these individual veterans is an understatement. You have seminary professors, youth ministry corporation CEOs, publishers, trainers and , of course, authors galore.
What I love about Slant33 is the ability to look at multiple, well-thought-out perspectives. Being able to see overlap and distinction among contributors is not only helpful but quite engaging. The best way to explain it is just to tell you to read this week’s Slant and experience it for yourself.
Youth ministries have a bad reputation for being underfunded and understaffed because they often are. That probably translates into you needing to do everything from fix the hole in the wall that happened during a wild game of pin the pool stick on the Jr Higher last week to installing a new hard drive in the Pentium II youth machine. If you don’t know how to do everything, you will at some point need to use MonkeySee.
MonkeySee is an online repository of free how-to videos that range from how to select home theatre system speakers to how to apply a french manicure tip. So, next time you have to install a new dishwasher after trying to clean the uncleanable after a youth event, go to MonkeySee.com.
I’ve been involved in a project to provide free Youth Ministry resources online at umyouthpastor.com for a while now. We thought about doing a training podcast for a while, but wanted to make sure that we were adding something worthwhile rather than just creating more work for ourselves. After consuming a lot of podcasts, I realized that what I wanted was a periodic training/idea podcast that was short and to the point. That is where the idea for 10-minute Training (itunes link) began.
Each episode is an interview with a talented youth minister about a specific topic covering everything from having hard conversations to indoor game idea roundups. Every episode then concludes with a resource recommendation from the guest. All in about 10 minutes.
I love and listen to tons of long-format podcasts like the SYM podcast (iTunes link), but know very few people who are both entertaining enough to listen to for that long and experienced/talented enough to have that much quality content (Doug and the gang are some of the few in youth ministry). The point of the podcast is to get you some usable information or idea as quickly as possible, or as the tagline suggests… we get to the point so you get the training. Check it out by going to the website or subscribing via iTunes.
Peter Krough has written an excellent article on backup in which he suggests the 321 system. It says that you should have three copies (one primary and two backups) on two different media with one off-site. Not only is this incredibly easy to remember, it really helps me sift through the myriad of backup solutions to get what I need and not a lot more.
For my on-site backup, I have mentioned before that I like to use Chronosync to automatically backup selected files whenever I mount a specific hard disc or thumb drive though Apple’s Backup (free with Mobile Me) or Time Machine will meet most mac user’s needs. On the PC side of things, I have heard good things about Paragon Drive Backup and NovaBackup.
For offsite backup, I use and am really satisfied with Carbonite while Chris has written a bit about his preferred offsite backup service: Mozy. Both are great and both support Mac and Windows. The point is that you need to have your mission critical files and irreplaceable memories (photos, videos) stored somewhere that fire or flood will not cause you to lose money or memories.
I think Peter Krough said it best in his article, “There are two types of people, those who have experienced hard drive failure and those who will.” Do yourself a favor and get your 321 system in place today.
It was a perfect storm: 1. I realized I could save well over $200 a year on seminary text books purchasing them on the kindle store. 2. I found $100 off deal when you subscribe to Audible 3. I made the decision to wait until the next revision to buy the iPad. It culminated in the purchase of a kindle. The first question I had was, how do I get news and free books onto it without having to manually copy and paste, and transcode into the Amazon format blah blah blah.
That is the problem for which Calibre is the solution. Calibre is an ebook management program that allows you to automate all the tedium of dealing with ebooks. After doing some basic setup, all you do is import files and then click the “send to device” button and voila! It appears on your reader.
But it does more than convert and upload ebooks; it will also manage fetching your favorite news and blogs. It comes preconfigured with a myriad of news sources in 25 languages complete with a place for login information if that service has a paywall. Once you select the news source, you tell Calibre how often you want it to be retrieved, and it will download the news and automatically send it after it is obtained.
Want to keep up with your favorite blogs that are not listed already in Calibre? No problem! Just click on the triangle next to the “fetch news” icon and you can choose to add a custom news source (think rss) and it will then appear in your list.
The only problem I could find is that the user interface is not totally transparent. For example, you should be able to click and hold the icons that have the dropdown options. Add to that several other oddly located things and you see where the future improvements will need to be focused.
That being said, it is the best implementation I could find of these features. And it’s free!
