Game of the Year?

From University Of...

Main point - I took a series of photos with my humble Sony Ericcson Z520a at the Bears/Cardinals game in AZ and stitched them together using a terrific freeware program called Autostitch, and the results (click to see) were more interesting than expected.

Same goes for the game. To be honest, I'm no football fan, so the highlight for me was when the loudest Chicago fan in the stadium (and his whole family) sitting four rows in front of us had to reverse course and slink back to their seats when the tables turned. Afterwards he sheepishly announced that he, "was GOING to the BATHROOM!" to explain why they were halfway to the aisle on their way to the parking lot when that 70+ yard fourth-quarter punt return turned into the game-tying touchdown. Being a Massachusetts native I'm well acquainted with the fact that it's never too late to lose a game, but I guess a Chicago fan wouldn't know what that's like.

More Deadly Bugs

Black Widow

Truth is, my desire to live free from fear of being stung to death has not diminished my compulsion to document the danger in my back yard. This picture was taken outside my apartment under the stairs going up to the second floor.

Separated at Birth

From Aaron and Bono

From Aaron and Bono

I'm told my brother and I look so much alike that people think we're twins (we're 2-1/2 years apart). Well, I think I've found his real twin.

Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM)

One of my major interests is Christian apologetics, so as I'm exploring the whole Podcasting world, I was pretty excited to find that one of my favorite apologetic speakers, Ravi Zacharias, has his own Podcast feeds, which, if you use, are also available through iTunes.

I wasn't really surprised, as he's had downloadable audio for a couple of years now, but I was excited that I could just add his feeds to Doppler (that's the podcast aggregator I use - http://www.dopplerradio.net/) and get them automatically.

Anyway, if you're at all interested in Christian Apologetics, intelligent design, or even basic philosophical reasoning, his work is required listening. He's written some excellent books, too, naturally, and I put them right up there with C.S. Lewis. They're different, and Zacharias is not as good a writer as Lewis, but he captures the philosophical issues of our post-modern era with great clarity and personal honesty.

This brandie new 5Gb Zen Micro was partial birthday present and partial present to myself. A nice match for my new interest in Podcasts and my lifelong love of music. Plays all the file-types I’m interested in and has a 10hr voice recorder and built in condenser Mic. The sound quality on the mic is much better than I would have expected. Sound quality from the Micro is also great, of course, and 5GB really is fairly big – not that I haven’t already wished for more, mainly because I was using the “removable hard drive” feature (which I set to 1GB) to transfer a ton of digital photos from my laptop to our home computer.

After having the player for a day, I figured out that the adapter I bought years ago for a portable CD player would work great to give me some sweet tunes in my beat up old truck.

I’ve also made myself a padded metal case using an Altoids tin based on the info I found on this forum: http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?p=1203112 Cool stuff. Many folks are modding these tins for the Micro based on the perfect sizing. I have not gotten around to cutting a hole for jack access in the top, so I still take it out when I want to listen, but it sure beats the cloth bag for putting the thing in my bag to carry to work or wherever. I have a Dremel tool, so it’s only a matter of time. I’ll try to post a picture when it’s done.

I'm in the process of learning about Podcasts. I downloaded a couple of individual podcasts as mp3's and pretty much liked what I heard. It seemed like part of the purpose was to have the content delivered and available at any time, rather than going and looking for what you want to listen to at the time, so I searched a little and downloaded Doppler (http://www.dopplerradio.net/ ) which is a Podcast... uh, collector. (they have a name for it - I just forgot what it is).

Much better. Now I have a new problem, which is more interesting content than I have time to listen to paradoxically combined with the sinking feeling that there podcasts out there that I don't know about that I'm missing. At this point my favorites are thechurchisNOTtrue (exmormons combine biting satire, humor, and tons of research to debunk Mormonism) and the Engadget Podcast (gadget news and views). BluePower.com (blues music and interviews) is pretty cool and Skepticality has some interesting guests.

Anyway, I'm considering the idea of having my own podcast. I've got a lot to say, but like this Blog, I haven't really arrived at a mission. Maybe songwriting. Blogging my MBA program?

Hey here's Camp Berea - the Christian Camp and Conference Center where I went growing up and where I served full-time for a few years. www.berea.org.

The grip handle rotates to 3 positions 0�, 45�, and 90�, which is pretty cool. By the way, it's a model 21200, which is hard to find info on for some reason. 

The handle doesn't turn to lock the miter. Instead, that little red paddle to the left is a cam lock that pushes a grip against the from of the miter table. 

My early birthday present!