Chrome goes Mac. A review.

After months and months of waiting, Google has finally released a beta version of Chrome for Mac. Sarah has been using Chrome on her PC for a while, and really likes it. So I thought I'd share some thoughts on the Mac version, and offer some suggestions to improve upon it for any of those Google developers who happen to swing by the site.

1. It's flipping fast.
It's true, Chrome is a wicked fast application. It loads in absolutely no time at all, and loads most web pages in a fraction of the time it took me to in Firefox. MacLife claims that Safari is still a little faster than Chrome, but I can't really notice the difference. And because I'm not professional at all, I like the customizability when it comes to themes and such.

2. Downloads are cleaner.
I have never really been wild about having a separate window for downloads. It easily gets lost on my already cluttered desktop, and I loose track of my processes. Chrome does all of its downloads in a pretty descrete status bar at the bottom of the page, which I totally dig.

3. Front page pros and cons.
The very first page you see when you open a new window of chrome is the six most popular sites you visit. This is really handy, and it was something that Safari already had going for it. The thing that Chrome could improve upon here is the flexibility of that page. At the present, you are limited to six (Safari let you expand to quite a few more). However, a feature that I love as someone who all too often closes a tab too quickly, is that Chrome puts the most recently closed tabs at the bottom of your screen, in case of accidents.

4. Bookmarks.
Really, my only major complain with Chrome at the moment is the lack of ability to organize your book marks. Once they're imported from Safari, you're kind of stuck with them. I'm sure that's something they'll fix with the official release, but it kind of bugs me right now.

But all in all I'd give it a couple of thumbs up! If you're a Mac user (or a PC for that matter), I highly recommend Chrome for all your browsing needs!

Godspeed,

Jason

The force of Twitter.

Hello friends.
I'm working on some thoughts on a bunch of subjects today, but I wanted to start with something that surprised me (but shouldn't).

Earlier this morning, Twitter took a hit because someone unleashed some sort of virusy thing. (Obviously I have paid very close attention to the details of this story)

The story was on the top of Google news when it first came out, which I was kind of surprised by. Twitter is supposedly not as popular as the ever-growing Facebook, and a lot of times, people tell me that I am in the minority for my love of the bird.

But what really floored me was that in the last couple of minutes, the Senate confirmed the very first hispanic for the supreme court. And while that news was historic and epic, the Twitter whale still made it's presence known at the very top of Google News. It hung there for a little while, and just fell the number two spot a few moments ago. It's kind of like watching TRL.

My question is this: Just how much does Twitter impact the work we do as youth pastors? (Oh yeah, that's what this blog is about!) If the mainstream media is willing to pay that much attention to a momentary lapse of service, how big of a hold does Twitter really have on our kids (and us for that matter)? Only time will tell, but it's definitely worth thinking about.

Godspeed,

J

Why Apple is taking over the world.

Another blog post! I told you I was going to be writing more!

I spent the day following the tweets from today's WWDC. For those of you who don't know, I'm a little bit of an Apple geek, ever since I got my first iBook a couple of years ago. I followed up with my current MacBook Pro (the old 15 inch model) and my second iPhone (again, I warn men everywhere to check their pants pocket before laundry day. Tragedy awaits those who refuse...)

Today was just another long line of new releases from Apple. Their laptops got a small facelift, the iPhone's new OS was released, and of course, there's the new physical iPhone (which, although cool, I don't think is worth the switch right now at least for me). But lost somewhere in the shuffle of today's activities was the announcement of Apple's new Mac operating system Snow Leopard.

I was excited to see all the features coming in over twitter this afternoon. Particularly the addition of Microsoft Exchange support is helpful for me, the lone Mac guy in an all PC office. But as I kept watching the updates, I reminded myself that I would probably skip this line of OS updates, as it's a bit too expensive to keep updating my OS every time they release something. Apple is known for a lot of things, but being affordable isn't one of them.

That is, of course until they announced that the upgrade from leopard to snow leopard is going to cost you a mere $29.

A quick list of things I've spent more money on:

• Dinner and a movie on date night
  
• 2 DVDs
  
• Books
  

Crazy, huh? So I'm nearly certain that come September I will be the proud new owner of Snow Leopard for my beat up old laptop.

And really, that's my arguement for Apple right now. Though at the time of purchase, my laptop cost a bit more than most PCs, it's still alive and well. In fact, this has to be the only computer I've ever owned where I haven't noticed any kind of slow down since the day I bought it. Sure, it's been dropped a couple of times, resulting in some less than attractive dings and scratches, but this computer could be around for at least another 4 years or so, showing now signs of slowing down.

When you start to add up the cost of anti-virus software, ad-aware software, extras like MS Office and other such programs, and repair and upgrades at third party stores, I wonder what the overall cost of a PC compared to my Mac would actually be? When Windows 7 comes out, I wonder what the divide in cost will be compared to Snow Leopard? I'm willing to be it's a couple of hundred dollars.

There are some happy PC users out there, and if it's doing what you want then I encourage you to keep on keeping on But for Mac lovers like me, today was a pretty good day!

Studio Blog Day 3: The Long and Winding Road

Greetings again. 

The new album is starting to take a bit more shape after the last few days. For starters, it looks a lot more like a Westminster Adult Worship Team Album (or WAWTA) than it does a solo joint. The gang seems pretty pumped to be a part of this, so I'm trying to work my way through my parts now as quickly as I can so we can get them involved. 

Here are some highlights that I'm looking forward to in the coming weeks:

• There are spaces set up in each track for four, count em, four different vocalists (me, Ed, Alan, and Linda). Now if only I were as good as the other three...
• In addition to the worship band, we're hoping to have special guest spots for cool people like Curt Scott, Dan Shaffer, Ben Beitzel, and a bunch of other people. Rock.
• Speaking of Dan Shaffer, we're going to have a percussion day, where we set up a ton of percussion instruments (as well as items that were not intended to be percussion instruments but can be) and playing along in a room. Should be interesting
• We're looking to add one or both of the kids choirs on "Loving Wings" to end the album. I have big plans.

Today I spent some time setting up some more acoustic guitar tracks. I finished "Hold Me Closer" and "Lights of Eden", as well as the intro track tentatively titled "Prelude" (I swear before it comes out I will come up with a better name than that...anyone have any suggestions?) I don't have my chart with me at home, but I think I only have 4 or 5 more songs to do for the acoustic. Then I'm going to go back and lay down some scratch vocals. Then Ed has to set up his two songs. Then we have to get the rest of the band in the studio. Then we have to bring in special guests. Man, we have a lot to do!

My goal this week is to get all of my stuff set up enough that people can start recording over it next week. I think that's reasonable, especially if I block out some time on Tuesday for a solid session. 

And if I can keep myself from playing too much Mario Kart in the breaks...

Last post will come later tonight. Topic: Plans.

Godspeed,

Jason

Studio Blog Day 1.5

Greetings bloggers!

I wrapped up the sermon yesterday. I'm pretty pumped about it. Deffinately old school J Freyer preachin. We'll see how it turns out tomorrow I suppose.

About a month ago I started working on a follow up record to my critically acclaimed "Between the Trees" (if everyone's a critic, and my mom liked it, then it's critically acclaimed.)At the moment the studio has moved into my house, and I'm starting out with some pre-production. Basically, figuring out which songs I want to include on the CD, what tempos they're going to be recorded at, and if I'm lucky, I'll set up the track for people to play along to later. I started on "Chemwehmweh", and had to give up because my fingers weren't doing as they were told. So a quick blogging break to get me out of my own head, and then I'm back to the grind. It would be nice to have this CD done by the sum sum summertime. 

Keep me in your prayers!

Godspeed,

Jason

Brain Jam

 

It's a snow day today. It looks absolutely nothing like this photograph. It's actually slushy and nasty and disgusting. However, school is closed, which means the office is closed, which means Veritas is closed. Usually this would cause me great pain and discomfort, because I love Veritas and hanging out with the kids. However, Ed is in India, and this is the one week during his trip that Mandi would have been unable to help me. I was not really ready to do Veritas all by myself, and so God has delayed us so that I can have one less day without my faithful assistant. But don't worry kids. I'm going to be spending the day dreaming up a new event for us to make up for our two cancelled Wednesdays. 

 

(TO THE LAB!)

===

 

Marko from YS has posted a link to my blog on his blog. I reviewed his book a while back, and I've actually be re-reading it since. It's spectacular! Go buy it! Go check out his blog! Go get a mohawk like his!

===

 

The Pens take on the Rangers tonight. I have a feeling that a lot rides on tonight's game. If we can't establish momentum now, I don't know if we'll be able to. 

===

 

I still freaking can't beleive the Steelers are in the Superbowl. I never would have called that at the beginning of the season. I really want to say that we're going to mop the floor with the Cardinals, but I'm hesitant to make such a bold claim. I know this for certain: it's going to be a great game. I wish I would have sent Ed to India with a terrible towl. 

===

 

I picked up the new iLife. I love it. I swear Apple can do no wrong. Well that's probably not true. Steve Jobs might be dying. But still. I love the fact that I can pick up a program, and within minutes be doing some really interesting professional looking stuff. More on this later.

I hope to have a more serious blog post later in the day. Hope you all enjoy the hibernation!

Godspeed,

Jason

Pass or Fail: Facebook for ministry?

Hey everybody,

When I first started at Westminster, I started a Veritas Facebook page. It was pretty hastily put together, and not very well thought out, but I was pretty intent on meeting the kids where they were in today's youth culture.

But since then, I've been pretty disapointed at what the end result of facebook ends up being. I'm pretty bummed that most kids in our youth group have a difficult time with some of the most basic of human interactions. I'm exceptionally disapointed when the kids "cyber-bully" each other, as I'm certain no one these days has quite the healthy respect for a "wedgie" that I have.

All kidding aside though, I wonder which is better. I wonder if it is better to (in this case in particular) engage the youth culture, and put it to work for our ministry, or is it better to stand our ground and admit that Facebook has some demons? I have a particular leaning, but I'll wait and see what the comments bring.

Godspeed,

J

Obama, Blackberry, and the "Right Now" Culture.

At the risk of getting too political on a youth ministry blog, I came across this story today, and thought it might have something to say to us about youth ministry, particularly when it comes to the idea of a right now culture.

To summerize quickly, Obama has a self professed "addiction" to his mobile communication device (is there any point in refering to it as a phone anymore? Do any of our kids actually make phone calls?). However, because of the security and legal issues that might surround the President owning such a device, his staff is threatening to take it away. Obama has suggested that "They're going to pry it out of my hands.", drawing his line in the sand. Hopefully better than these guys:

While it's a cute story that news agencies are reporting because they have no desire to focus on how little money we all have, it's gotten me to thinking. How do we do effective ministry in the instant culture? When our President can no longer live without instant text messaging and e-mail in his pocket, what are we simple youth ministers to do?

Of course, the advertising companies have already caught on to this. People hardly have need for the simple flip phone I would have killed for in college.

(Ahead of his time)

This Christmas, the fine makers of my phone debuted an advertisement series that attempted to make their phone's look cool, but only wound up making many of us hate Santa:

(Weight Watchers?)

I suppose the gist of this post is a question: should we speak out against the "need" for constant information and connectedness, or should we embrace it and attempt to use it for the better? Veritas already has a Facebook page, and a txt message service to keep our students up to speed on things, but should we embrace this culture even further, or run from it as fast as we can?

Your thoughts?

Godspeed,

Jason