I thought it might be fun to visualize the route I take while putting out signs for Revolution. Depending on traffic, it takes me 2-2.5 hours to put out/take up 60-ish signs along this route. Putting out the signs takes a bit longer than taking them up.
So here it is, in all its glory.
btw, “M” is the start and end point.
According to this map, I travel 49.8 miles. 1.2 signs per mile. 1.98 gallons of gas. 30 signs per campus. 5.45 signs per road. Pulled over 0.07 times per week. I could go on, but I’m thinking too hard at this point.
Our Canton campus is between J and K, and our Holly Springs campus is near the center of D, G and E. I don’t put any signs out by L or M, that’s just me driving to Canton/Holly Springs from where I live. Fun stuff.
I found a new url shortening service called Cli.gs today. It’s pretty nifty in that it can track various stats on your shortened url. It tracks total hits, link referrals, mentions on twitter, and a bunch of other stuff. Pretty nifty. Check it out at cli.gs.
Oh, and there’s also a Wordpress plugin I found that’ll automagically create a Cli.gs url for your posts and post it to twitter for you. You can find it here.
So, the other day, I bought an album from Amazon mp3 (this one, if you care). I’ve thought about trying it before, but always decided to go with the trusty old iTunes music store. But I decided to try it out, and it’s pretty much awesome. Here’s the reasons why I believe AmazonMP3 beats out iTunes:
PRICE - Most of the albums on AmazonMP3 are cheaper than iTunes. Looks like the majority of them are in the neighborhood of $8.99, while iTunes hangs around the $9.99 range. Hey, every penny counts. I’ve seen some albums on AmazonMP3 with a regular (ie, not in a promotion) price of $5.99. Doesn’t take much to convince me to sink six bucks into an album. Not much at all.
DRM (or lack thereof) - “Wait a second!” you argue, “none of the iTunes Plus tracks have DRM on them!” True. But NONE of the AmazonMP3 tracks have DRM. Not one. Nada. You don’t have to try and figure out which tracks are DRM-free. You can be rest assured that anything you buy from AmazonMP3 will be free of legal constraints. You buy it, you own it, do what you want with it.
MP3 - This is somewhat tied to the above statement. EVERYTHING on AmazonMP3 comes in mp3 format (hence, the name). Even some of the DRM free iTunes Plus tracks insist on downloading in AAC format. Not a dealbreaker, but it’s nice to consistently get the same format. And for those of you who have non-Apple-made mp3 players (do those people even exist?), AAC doesn’t play nice with many non-Apple players. Lack of DRM means it can easily be converted to another format, but why not get something that COMES in a format that can be used anywhere?
Quality - Every track on the AmazonMP3 store comes at 256kbps. And in case you have any doubt, it actually straight up tells you on the song/artist/album page. Some tracks use a variable bit rate with an average of 256kbps. That simply means that more complex parts of the songs will be encoded higher to preserve quality, and less complex parts will be encoded lower where higher quality isn’t needed. This generates an overall better quality encoding without increasing the file size. In iTunes, however, only the iTunes plus songs come at 256kpbs. The “regular” songs come at 128kbps. With DRM. Ugh.
Amazon even makes it easy to buy from them. When you download tracks from AmazonMP3, they’ll automagically add it to your iTunes or Windows Media Player libraries. If you have said media players automatically organize your library (ie, you don’t have to tell it where to put the songs when you import cds), AmazonMP3 will put the files in the right place. Download from AmazonMP3, open iTunes, and Viola! your songs are there. Fancy.
Since music studios are just warming up to the idea of selling DRM-free music, iTunes has a larger selection than AmazonMP3. AmazonMP3 is definitely the first place I’ll be looking to first for new music from now on.
Ok, I’ll admit it. I like Weird Al. And he hit it out of the park with his newest single. Maybe not his best parody ever, but hilarious nonetheless. It’s a parody of “Whatever You Like” by T.I. I like Weird Al’s better:
Hey girl,
You know our economy’s in the toilet
But I’m still going to treat you right
I said you can have whatever you like
I said you can have whatever you like
Tater tots, Cold Duck on ice
And we can clip coupons all night
And baby you can have whatever you like
I said you can have whatever you like
Take you out for dinner, anywhere that you please
Like Burger King or Mickey Ds
And baby you can have whatever you like
I said you can even have the large fry
Baby, you should know I am really quite a sweet guy
When I buy you bathroom tissue I always get the two-ply
Want it, you can get it, my dear
I got my Costco membership card right here
You like Top Ramen, need Top Ramen
Got a cupboard full of ‘em, I’ll keep ‘em coming
You want it, I got it, go get it, just heat it
Dump the flavor packet on it and eat it
Pork and beans and Minute Rice
And we can play Cribbage all night
And baby you can have whatever you like
I said you can have whatever you like
I can take you to the laundromat downtown
And watch all the clothes go round and round
And baby we can go wherever you like
I said we can go wherever you like
Hottest shorty I know, if you had some lipo
You could be second-runner-up Miss Ohio
Seven dollar bills rolled
Up inside my plastic billfold
Buy you a bagel even if it isn’t day old
And you never ever gotta wear your sister’s old clothes
As long as I’m still assistant manager at Kinko’s
Cut your hair with scissors and a soup bowl
You ain’t got to pay me, that’s the way that I roll
My chick can have want she want
At Wal-mart she can pick out anything she want
I know girl you ain’t never had a man like that
Who doesn’t make you buy generic brand like that
You like my Hyundai, see my Hyundai
I can take you to see your cousin Phil next Sunday
But that’s kind of far and I’m not made of cash
Do you think you could chip in for gas?
Mac and Cheese would be all right
But let’s send out for pizza tonight
And you can order any toppings you like
I said you can even have the last slice
Ran myself a cable from my neighbor next do’
Now I can get free HBO
And baby you can watch whatever you like
I said you can watch whatever you like
And you can always ride the city bus
Got a stack of tokens just for us
Yo, my wallet’s fat and full of ones
It’s all about the Washingtons, that’s right
You want White Castle, need White Castle
Long as you got me it won’t be no hassle
You want it, we’ll get it, just don’t be a hater
If I grab a bunch of napkins for later
Thrift store jeans on sale half-price
The underwear at Goodwill is nice
And baby you can have whatever you like
I said you can have whatever you like
Baby, I can give you anything you please
Even share my government cheese
And baby you can have as much as you like
I said you can have as much as you like
I like to keep track of various stats on my blog. One such stat is top search queries that lead to my blog. Here are the top results:
blog liberty heights church
advantages of ear murphs over ear plugs
pretty-virgins fraud
What any of those have to do with my blog, I still haven’t figured out. I thought it’d be fun to figure out what those are, and help out whoever was inadvertently linked to my blog.
Liberty Heights Church
Turns out someone from said church left a comment on my blog. So now my blog shows up on the second page of search results for their church. To whoever searched, you’d probably be better off at http://libertyheights.org
And no, I haven’t been invited to friend day.
advantages of ear murphs over ear plugs
I’m not exactly sure what an “ear murph” is. Apparently google doesn’t either. I searched for it myself, and I couldn’t find my blog anywhere in first 10 pages of results. Either I missed it, or they just looked really hard for it. Sorry, I can’t help you there.
pretty-virgins fraud
Oddly enough, my blog shows up first for this search. It goes to a post in which I talked about the story of Ruth. Apparently I am the premier source of information about the pretty-virgins fraud. I’ve never heard of said fraud, and apparently nobody else has, either. None of the results actually talk about it. Lots of sites about pretty virgins, but not anything about frauds surrounding them.
Alright, signing off now. Gotta be up at 4am. Oh yeah!
I’m a big believer in the chu.rch doing everything with excellence. If we have the God of the universe on our side, then we ought to be able to put the secular market to shame in terms of quality. Unfortunately, that often isn’t the case. I’m just as guilty as anyone else in that regard, though.
One area that God has been stirring my heart in lately is that of the web. I believe if you took the average quality of church websites, we as Christians would be ashamed of their quality. I am, by no means, an expert on making websites. In fact, I would struggle at this point to put together even a halfway decent one. If, however, I were to start building a website today, these are the things I would focus on the most.
Aesthetics
While some people would rank functionality and content over aesthetics, I would beg to differ. I would argue that aesthetics are equally important. You one get to make a first impression once, and if your website looks like crap, that’s naturally what your visitors will think of the church. Elements should flow together naturally, and the colors should be easy on the eyes. No hot pinks, please.
Content
Is your church website nothing more than an online brochure for your church? Again, this contributes toward that first impression. If all a visitor finds on your website is your location, service times, and and an overly wordy description of how awesomely Jesuslike your church is, they aren’t going to leave impressed. The content on a church website will obviously vary from church to church, but you should strive to cram in as much information as possible without making it look bad.
Functionality I firmly believe that websites shouldn’t be static brochures, but living, breathing fountains of information and content. But all the content in the world is useless if there is no functionality to support it. Navigation should be simple and intuitive, and all of the content should be easily accessible. I don’t want to have to fumble my way through 15 html pages to find what I want. If I can’t find it in 60 seconds, I’ll just forget about it. It’s usually not worth my time.
Backend This is a big one, but one that doesn’t often get much attention. The best site in the world is a pain if it’s not easy to update. You could show me the sweetest website in the world, but if the admin is clumsy and ugly, I probably won’t be interested in maintaining it. The admin should be just as visually pleasing and intuitive as the main website. It should be a breeze for an untrained person to update the website. I don’t want to have to go through a five hour training session to figure out how to change the header image through the admin.
Keep in mind that I’m no web expert. Those are just things I would focus on myself. I’m not currently capable of creating the slickest website in the world, but I’m just a wannabe web developer.
And just for fun, here’s some music that I listened to while I wrote this post. Yeah, it took me a long time. So?
Tell Me - Jonah33 // Can’t Lose - We Are Scientists // Believe Me Natalie - The Killers // You - Switchfoot // I Want a New Duck - Weird Al Yankovic // 33 - Coheed and Cambria // Here is Our King - David Crowder Band // The Call - Fighting Instinct // Brighter - Lee McDerment // Light Up Ahead - Further Seems Forever // How I Could Just Kill a Man - Charlotte Sometimes // Desecration Smile - Red Hot Chili Peppers // Taken Aback - The Rocket Summer // New Wave - Against Me!
If you haven’t heard the story of Elevation’s worship pastor, Wade Joye, and his family, read it here. Then read the rest of Wade’s blog for more on the story.
I’d like to give a Georgia-sized oblige (trust me, that’s a big oblige) to the following fine folks for sending people my way. I’d appreciate it if you’d give these fellas (or publications, as the case may be) a visit. It’s only fair.
So, Wordpress handily keeps track of search engine terms that link to my blog. Whenever anybody searches for something, and my blog shows up, it’ll tell me if they clicked on it. It obviously doesn’t tell me who they are - just what they searched for.
I know you’ll find this utterly surprising, but I haven’t had anybody finding my blog through a search engine. Until yesterday. I got two hits from somebody searching for “ricky merrefield.”
At first, I was like, “Cool! Somebody found my blog through Google!” Then I thought, “Who the crap is googling my name?” Seriously!
I know you’re out there. I’m watching for you…
Random other stuff:
My manager made me stay late again. Blah. Still annoys me how she tells me I’m staying late, rather than asking me. Oh well, I’ll just hold on to the thought that I won’t be there forever. A glorious day is on the horizon where I will forsake my nocturnal ways and rejoin those who live under the sun. Or something poetic like that.
I really hope the signs I put out for Revolution hold up this week. I’m not sure how it happened, but the signs got decimated last week. I don’t mean a lot of them fell over, I mean they were still stuck firmly in the ground, but completely bent over. I don’t even mean leaning - I mean the stands were completely bent. Some of the signs had legs that broke off, and crazy stuff like that. Either some crazy storm went through that I didn’t notice, or some random person decided to screw with our signs.
Not naming names, but one particular church in this county likes to put their signs exactly where I usually put them if they get there first. I’m still not sure if it’s just a coincidence, or if they’re intentially doing so. I try to remain a respectful distance away from other church signs. I would hope they’d do the same. Still - not ready to say they’re doing it on purpose yet.
Been reading Isaiah now. So far I’ve learned this: God doesn’t take crap. Don’t get on that dude’s bad side. Seriously. I know - deep, right? I learned how to deliver earth-shattering news from Gary. Seems like he hasn’t done that in a while…
Tomorrow starts Uncomfortable at Revolution. I’m excited for this series. I believe tomorrow’s service is going to be powerful. Everything was on cue at band practice. Gary’s been off for three weeks, so he’s probably gonna be putting Greg Rohlinger’s time to shame. We can’t have a guest speaker hold the record for the longest sermon! But seriously, I’m excited.
Duty calls, so I must go. You’re probably getting bored if you got this far, anyway. Can’t have that.
Just finished making that random song quote widget for my sidebar. Took a whopping 24 lines of code. It’s updated from an rss feed. Right now, there’s only three quotes it pulls from. I’ll be adding more as I come across some that I think are worthy. Fun stuff. Maybe I’ll do something productive with this knowledge some day =)
Feel free to make suggestions. Email or leave a comment. Or don’t. Whatever.
Don't take my word for it...