Cry Holy

Cry Holy CD coverCry Holy by SONICFLOOd is hardly new any more (it took a month to get it by Media Mail) but it’s an awesome CD. If you haven’t listened to it yet, I think you should give it a try. It’s a great follow-up to Resonate.

First of all, if you were a fan of the original SONICFLOOd, you may be disappointed. Cry Holy is the same band from Resonate. Since I personally like both sounds, this doesn’t bother me, but it may be a problem for you.

Many songs from Resonate had a slight techno feel to them, particularly “Lord of the Dance” and “You are the Holy One.” Cry Holy is a lot more laid-back. What you get is a band which emphasizes very melodic notes from a guitar, a persistent but not overbearing drumline, and lyrics that seem to float. If you’ve ever listened to Savage Garden, you’ll find a similar sound on Cry Holy. (“Rushing In” is particularly like this.)

If you happen to get a chance to see SONICFLOOd on tour, don’t pass it up. They have the stage presence of many secular bands, and unlike those secular bands, they are singing with a message.

A Year Later…

I’m thrilled, because today I finished reading the Bible cover-to-cover. (Well, sort of – my Palm doesn’t have a cover.) I started last July by converting the chronological reading list at bibleinayear.org into a HandyShopper list that followed me around on my Palm. I took less than a year to read because I read more than one day’s worth every so often.

If you haven’t read God’s love letter to you from start to finish, I encourage you to give it a try. It makes it abundantly clear how much God loves you and wants to be a part of your life.

Now that I’m done, I’m not sure how I’m going to decide what to read next. I’m subscribed to Our Daily Bread in AvantGo, and I get a magazine from my church group called ec. One of these will probably become my guide for future study of God’s Word.

An Enlightened School

The University of South Dakota is the first college campus in the United States to hand out Palm handheld computers to every student. This is a very cool thing. Students will be able to keep track of homework, read many handouts without ever printing them on paper, and check e-mail completely through their Palms. Heck, they can even HotSync at IR stations built into the walls all over campus.

I’ve been a fan of Palm organizers since I bought a IIIxe. It lasted about two years before I dropped it and the screen smashed into smithereens.

Right now, my trusty m515 is charging on its cradle. It goes with me almost everywhere I go. On it is my homework, appointments, games, Bible, and more. During my free time, I’m working on getting it set up for offline blogging – more on this when it’s finished.

Anyway, Palm handhelds rock. They eat up less memory and less batteries than their Pocket PC rivals, and they’re a lot more intuitive to use. One place where Pocket PCs have a head-start is Wi-Fi access. This will soon change.

I’ve been a strong advocate for getting a Palm into the hands of every student that can read. It’s better for high school and college students, but I think our increasingly technology-oriented children will get the hang of it. If nothing else, a Palm campus will help prevent back injuries. Of course, I see the potential for much, much better uses as well.

(Original link via the University of Washington AccessIT page, which is itself an interesting read.)

DST Headaches

Seeing that Dean was kind enough to feature me in his tech cache over at b4G, I figured it was time to actually post something technology-related.

I discovered yesterday that Movable Type thought the time in Hawai’i was an hour later than it actually was. I hadn’t noticed before because I tend to write in spurts, saving drafts and publishing stuff whenever it’s convenient (and updating the time of publication manually).

Technology has rapidly been improving in its understanding of the horrible wrinkle in timekeeping known as daylight savings time (which Hawai’i was smart enough to ignore when it was introduced). Even my watch lets me set daylight savings time on my world clock mode with only two button presses. Even so, technology seems to get confused – just like me – from time to time. (No pun intended.)

I tried Internet searches without any luck. Finally, I bit the dust and sat down to do some tedious blog manipulation and kludging (I hate kludges):

  • I manually changed the RSS 0.91 and 1.0 templates to hard-code my time zone as GMT-10.
  • With the conveniently pre-installed copy of phpMyAdmin, I manually changed every time in the MT database to reflect the correct time. Good thing I’ve only been doing this a week.
  • On the Weblog Configuration page, I set my current time zone to Nome Time, effectively lying to my blogging tool of choice.

So, two hours later, Waileia is now chronologically accurate, if not confused. (I think.) Now all I have to do is remember to set the time zone forward to -1000 when Standard Time resumes (when? October?).

I don’t know what technology to blame for this irritating error. My web hosting provider seems to get both its local time (MDT) and GMT right, and it’s unlikely the problem is Movable Type’s fault for the simple reason that my provider’s user forums are off by an hour too.

If it weren’t for its blatant commercialization, I might be more agreeable toward switching the world to Internet Time.

Thoughts on Christian Blogs

I missed the big chat over at signposts, but I stopped in afterwards and met a few charming people, including Darren of LivingRoom, and Phil of signposts. I got to thank Mr. Claybourn for being one of my first visitors, as well.

Phil pointed out what became today’s topic of conversation, a post by Jordon Cooper commenting on how many Christian bloggers are interested primarily in the institution of the church.

From what I’ve seen in my (admittedly limited) experience, most Christian bloggers don’t focus strictly on the church; in fact, many avoid it altogether. The ones I’ve read that do discuss church often do so on a tangent, or they only discuss how Christ works in their lives, without worrying about the structure – IreneQ is a great example of this.

The reason I’ve personally chosen to read Christian blogs is twofold:

  1. I only have an hour or so to read and post each day.
  2. Although there will never be complete agreement when it comes to politics, personal tastes, or anything else, Christians can agree on our “core,” fundamental values. That makes it easier to filter out many of the bad influences on the net (such as a blog or two I’ve come by where there’s more profanity than words).

So even though I’m only reading Christian blogs, I don’t feel like I’m missing much. There’s enough eclecticism, intrigue, and punditry in this little corner of the blogosphere. Opening the floodgates to everybody else might be overwhelming, at least to me, personally.