GodsMoon's Take on the World

My Android Projects

2010-07-02T14:41:00.000-04:00

I've launched a website to promote the Android apps I've been developing.
Right not I have 2 Android apps:

Smart Lock - Allows you to let kids or friends play with approved apps on your phone without giving them access to everything else on your phone.
Disc Golf App - Give you directions to disc golf courses and keeps track of your score.

Check the site out at: http://www.nightshadelabs.com

Weezer = Awesome

2008-05-23T16:22:00.000-04:00

High speed video of popcorn kernel popping at 5,400 fps

2007-11-03T18:24:00.001-04:00

AWESOME!

Pleo: the Smartest Dinosaur Alive

2007-10-25T10:38:00.001-04:00

Forget hedgehogs. I want one of these!

Interview with Mr. Potato Head

2007-10-05T10:37:00.001-04:00

Real transformers

2007-06-22T09:58:00.001-04:00

Is it possible to go too far?

White and nerdy by Weird Al

2006-09-26T00:28:00.000-04:00


I love this video!

Blogging Riverbend

2006-06-08T18:30:00.000-04:00

Riverbend is ~~getting ready to~~ fixen' to start back up. I'm super excited about it. I love the Riverbend Music Festival so much that I blogged it last year. I had so much fun doing it last year I that I decided to do it again this year. But this time I've decided to have a special blog just for Riverbend. You should check it out.

Just like last year I'm going to have pictures and reviews for each day. I'm even going to add video this year. And if I run into you I might even give you a phone interview!

See you there! :)

I got Engaged!

2006-02-28T22:43:00.000-05:00

If you have been wondering why I haven't updated in a while its because I've been super busy with school, work, and now... getting married! Because I'm getting married. Did I mention that I was getting married?
Anyway, I'm now engaged to this really awesome girl and we're getting married on August 5th in Gatlinburg, TN. So mark your calendars, because you are invited, even if you don't get an invitation, come anyway, because it will be a good time... At least I'll have a good time.
Ok, so now your probably really excited, and jumping up and down or wondering to yourself how many times I can used the word "married" in this post... married... married.
But, by now your probalby asking how I purposed to my girl. Well, its kind of a long story, so I'll save it for the next post, but for now you can see the pictures from the special night at my photoblog if you like.

Creating Christmas Memories Game

2005-12-28T16:04:00.000-05:00

Here is a fun game. Out of the presents you got this year for Christmas, which do you think you will still be using the most next Christmas. You have to pick just one.

Mine would have to be the 40GB FireLite Portable Hard Drive that Roxie, my wonderful girlfriend, got me. I'm using it to store all my pictures and music on.

So here's the deal, next Christmas we'll look back and actually see if we are still using the stuff that we thought we would. Sound like fun?

You can play the game by posting a comment or by make a post on your blog (if you make a post leave a comment linking to your post).

Have fun playing!

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you.

Tags: Christmas | game

Jingle all the way with Google Talk

2005-12-24T20:49:00.000-05:00

So I know I said I was going to talk about that other post and other google related stuff, but I lied. If you want to know more about it, check out these links.

new gmail stuff
Google Safe Browsing for Firefox - You really should get this. It helps protect against identity theft through phishing.
Blogger Web Comments for Firefox - only get this if you are a super geek ;)

But, what I really want to 'talk' about is Google Talk and the recent announcement of Libjingle. Why would you care?

2. Voice calls between mobile devices and Google Talk!
More and more WiFi-enabled mobile devices (including WiFi-enabled mobile phones) are coming on the market. Imagine being away from your PC and still being able to have the same free high-quality calling experience you have today between PCs using Google Talk. I expect to see a lot of innovation here in 2006. - link

Imagine that! Talking with your cell phone!!! So I know for must of you still aren't impressed. But if you've ever used Google talk before you know that the audio is about twice as good a cell phone. It pretty much sounds like the person is in the room with you. Every time that I've used Google Talk in a public place people are amazed at how good the audio is. And if I could have that good of a quality every time that I talked on my phone with somebody then that'd be awesome.
However, its not out just yet. Google just released the tools for someone to do this. It has yet to be done. Libjingle also has tools for file sharing (P2P) and video. For those that thought Google Talk was behind all the competitors, think again. As always with Google they take something that's already kinda cool and take it in a different direction.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you.

Tags: Google Talk | Libjingle

Are you ready?

2005-12-23T18:13:00.000-05:00

Oh I'm ready.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you.

Google Safe Browsing Test Page

2005-12-15T17:52:00.000-05:00

I see you've download both of Google's new extentions :)

If you're reading on this on my blog I'll tell you more about it in my next post.Read more at www.google.com/tools/fi...

The 2 Wizards

2005-12-13T13:38:00.000-05:00

If you're looking for a fun christmas lights set to music, you should check out this video on Google Video.

If you are looking for something that will excite the geek in you, you should should check out this article on Free Online Date Storage.
The most exciting of these I think is Openomy. Openomy is a tag based online file stystem, with an open API. The possibilies of this system are numberous. If you have no idea what I just said, all you need to know is that you can store up to 1Gb of stuff online for free. So you can back stuff up if you like. :) Geeks can read more about it, on this wiz kid's blog.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you!

Is Christmas not a holiday?

2005-12-09T16:27:00.000-05:00

So, its been a while since I posted anything, I'm finally done with School for about a month. So, expect somewhat frequent post for about a month, before they start to trail off again...

Over Thanksgiving dinner my aunt says that she read this article in the paper of a guy that went to the local mall and was startled to find that only a couple stores had "Merry Christmas" in any of their Christmas decorations, instead they had it replaced with "Happy Holidays". She proceeded with some of the normal ignorant "taking Christ out of Christmas" jargon that is all too familiar in Christian circles. Considering the timing (over Thanksgiving dinner) my immediate response was that it was too early to talk about Christmas. She agreed with me but after thinking about it some, I've decided that this is not my main objection to this kind of thinking.

Little did I know that the "Happy Holiday" debate had become a rather hot topic nationally as well as locally. When I came into work today there was a company memo by the clock-in station inviting people to the "Holiday Party". The word "Holiday" had been marked out in pen and someone had written "Christmas" in the margin. An addition comment pointing to the alteration saying "God bless". Is it just me that finds this ridiculous?!?

Why on earth would we look to corporate America to define what our holiday name is advertised as? Retail outlets are mostly just concerned with moving from the red to the black. Their main concern is not taking a loss for the year. And why shouldn't they? If they didn't make money then they'd tank. And to this end they are trying to reach as many people with their advertising as possible. They're trying to be inclusive, they don't want to offend Jewish potential customers. So they use the word "Holiday" which is by the way derived from Holy Day, instead of "Christmas". Why is that such a big deal? Do we except corporate advertising to line up with all of our personal beliefs? Does Sears really care about evangelizing the world? And should we expect them to even respect God at all? Why do we expect non-Christians to act like Christians? Could it be because we are doing such a lousy job of showing the meaning of the Jesus' life that we expect others to make up for our hypocrisy?

I tend to lump these Holiday complainer into the same category as the people that point out that "Santa" is the word "Santa" with the letters rearranged or say Xmas is an attempt to X out Christ from the word Christmas.

All this is simply ridiculous.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you.

Tags: Chirstmas Holiday

Harry Potter and if it was just dancing

2005-11-24T20:01:00.000-05:00

What if Harry Potter was only 3 and a half minutes long and was just dancing. Well, find out for yourself. :)

Happy Thanksgiving.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you.

Bubbles with Color!

2005-11-21T19:32:00.000-05:00

Somebody has finally improved the Bubble. In February stores will start selling Colored Bubbles called. They will called Zubbles. I know what you're thinking, 'well that's pretty cool, I'm sure my kids will have fun with that'.However, the technology used in these bubbles might have other applications as well.

"For decades, the color industry has been focused entirely on color fastness. No one has really thought about the potential of temporary color."

"...making things like a Swiffer that leaves a momentary trace showing where you've Swiffered and a temporary wall paint that would let you spend a few hours with a color before committing to it. The dye's reach is so great that there are even biotech and industrial uses being discussed."

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you.

Cre824

2005-11-16T21:18:00.000-05:00

Check it out. 24 hours, competing to represent the United States at the Olympics, ok so not really the Olympics, but if you win you do get to represent to United States in the world wide website design competition in France. That's right, this weekend they're holding a 24 hours web design competition, in Chattanooga, TN and the winner of that goes on the world competition. Pretty cool ay? I'm not competing, but I am going to watch the participants and attend the seminars and stuff. Should be lots of fun.
I'm also suppose to be about 3 other places on Saturday, so I'm not sure if try and spend some time and learn lots of cool stuff while I'm there.

P.S. Sorry the site looks like crap right now, my other template started crashing my browser from some odd reason. It will be back when I find out what's wrong with it.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referral, and it could be you.

Man I hate that

2005-11-04T16:32:00.001-05:00

You know what irks me. Cell phones with non-instrumental ringers tones. Ringers with voices, I hate them. High quality phone ringers are great but I don't want to hear voices from my phone before I answer it. Find your favorite song with out words and make that your ringer. I don't need to be sung to by some terrible country artist or yelled at by some hip-hop gangster. Why can't phone ringers sound remotely like someone is calling you?!?! Leave the voices for talking.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle. I only need one more referal, and it could be you.

Flock the what?

2005-10-28T12:46:00.000-04:00

So I'm writing this post in a new type of web browser called Flock. It's build on top of Firefox but it's not meant to compete with Firefox, because it take a completely different approach to the web. Most web browsers let you view stuff other people have written. If you want to do somthing interactive like blogging, using flickr, using del.icio.us and stuff like that you have to use a rather clunchy online interface, unless you download some special add on stuff. For example, if you want to upload pictures to Flickr you have to pick each file individually form your computer and then hit upload unless you download the flickr uploader. In which case it works a lot better but you have to open up another program. Another example is Blogger, you have to use their somewhat useful formating tools to write a blog post, unless you download the Microsoft Word plug in, in which case you have to switch to another program to blog.Well here is where Flock comes in. It is integrated with several web 2.0 companies: Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, del.icio.us and others. Right now its "somewhere between alpha and beta" and will crash rather frequently but the idea is really cool. The interface I'm using right now is defiantly the best I've seen for adding pictures from flickr to your post. I'll let you know more after I've played around with it some more.
P.S. It defianlty has its downsides right now though, for example there is no spell check, so I'm sure this post is littered with errors.

My bookmarklet on the Official Google Reader Blog

2005-10-26T21:46:00.000-04:00

Google has made note of the bookmarklet that I made recently. They have a link to this site from the Official Google Reader Blog. I'm pretty excited about that as you can very well imagine. Soon I'll be improving on my bookmarklet even more, so stay tuned. I'm about half way done with it, once I get some free time I'll try and finish it up. :)

Page Rank is weird

2005-10-21T01:28:00.000-04:00

Lately my Google Page Rank has dropped to 1 and I have no idea why. And my posts have stopped being indexed too. Strange. Wow its really late, I should go to bed. I think tomorrow I might write some JavaScript to replace all my :) and :( and ;) with smiley icons using JavaScript. That sounds like it could be fun. Of course that would probably make my site take even longer to load. I should really do something about how long it takes. Does it bother anyone else that it takes so long?
OK, I'm actually going to bed now.

Google Reader Bookmarklet Version 2.0

2005-10-17T11:43:00.000-04:00

Update: Google Reader now works with Xanga so that part of my bookmarklet is now relevant.

I have improved the Holizz bookmarklet/favlet for Google Reader and added a few features. Drag and drop this bookmarklet to your toolbar:
Add to GReader
The bookmarklet allows you to easily add subscriptions to Google Reader while browsing the internet. To use the bookmarklet find a website that has a site feed and click on the bookmarklet in your toolbar. This should take you to a preview of the feed you want to subscribe to. Click on the large Subscribe button in the middle of your screen to subscribe.

Feature list:

Detects main feed from blogs that link to them correctly (both absolute and relative links)
Previews feeds before you subscribe to them
Subscribe to site RSS/ATOM feed that you are currently viewing
If feed is not detected then it will search for one using the title of the page

Special Cases supported:

Subscribe to older blogspot templates from any page in blog
Subscribe to Xanga sites (note: GReader is now compatible with Xanga, but previously was not)

Eventually, I'll improve on this even more and allow you to select which feed you want to subscribe to if the page has multiple feed.

Note: if you are having trouble dragging the bookmarklet you can try right-clicking on it and selecting 'add to favorites'/'bookmark this link' and putting it in the 'links' or 'bookmark toolbar' folder respectively.

He really does exist...

2005-10-13T23:02:00.000-04:00

So I was walking down the hall at school and this random dude was like "hey, I know you." He then proceeded to identified himself as Bicx. And then I was like, "cool" and then he was like... yeah this post is starting to sound like I'm a girl so I'll stop all the like stuff.
But anyway, I saw Bicx so that's exciting, and know I know he exist... or was it his evil twin brother...[dun, dun, dunnn]...hmmm.

Moving to Furl

2005-10-11T19:21:00.000-04:00

I just finished converting all my Filangy bookmarks to Furl.net. It took quite a long time because I had to do it manually. Filangy does have an export function but not in a format that is compatible with Furl or Del.icio.us or anybody else. So why did I leave Filangy? Well, mostly it was because they were small and weren’t very popular. If it gives you any idea of their size, I was ranked the 49th most popular user, and I didn’t use it that much. I still think Filangy is really cool, but I don’t really care about the personal search thing so much, and compatibility with Filangy and anything else is pretty much non-existent. But why not use Del.icio.us? Pretty much I think its ugly. I know that’s a week excuse, but they do pretty much the same thing and Furl looks a lot better. So there you have it.
Farewell Filangy, hello Furl.

If you use Furl too, I’d love to make you a contact, just let me know what your username is.
Earn your own free iPod Shuffle and help me out at the same time!

Great music

2005-10-07T14:09:00.000-04:00

Good, innovative, rock bands, they are hard to come by and have been mostly absent from the radio since the early 90's when grunge was in its hay day. But is there anything new that's coming out that is both good and innovative in the rock industry?

I've been thinking about this for a little while know I've decided that I can narrow the list down to 3 bands in no particular order.

I thought about adding NIN but they're not very good. TOOL, but everybody these days sounds like TOOL. Maybe Cake, but I'm not so sure they're very innovative.

So let me know what you think do you agree disagree, should I add anybody?

Earn your own free iPod Shuffle and help me out at the same time!

Grrrrrr I hate comment spam!

2005-10-07T13:38:00.000-04:00

122272 said...

Interesting blog you have here, I landed here on accident. I was searcing for something else and came across your site. I found it pretty interesting and entertaining. I got you book marked.

I will pop back in from time to time to see what you have new here.

My site is a bit different than yours, but just as entertaining and educational, I run a penis enlargement reviews related site pertaining to penis enlargement reviews related articles.

I see... an educational site ay? right.... This is getting old.

Six flags is awesome, except...

2005-10-06T15:30:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday Roxie and I went to six flags and had a great time except, my girlfriend threw up after riding Batman: the Ride. Which is really sad because that's one of my favorite rides, and I felt bad for her. Its too bad you can't decide not to be sick. :(
Other than that' we had a good time though. :)
Man, I love that theme park!

Was the Real Catastrophe Media Coverage?

2005-09-30T14:13:00.000-04:00

"I think 99 percent of it is bulls---," said Sgt. 1st Class Jason Lachney...
"Everything was embellished, everything was exaggerated," said Deputy Police Superintendent - www.nola.com

What are they talking about? The news reports that came out of New Orleans during Katrina. Apparently the people in the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans were not all killers and gang bangers!

Following days of internationally reported killings, rapes and gang violence inside the Dome, the doctor from FEMA - Beron doesn't remember his name - came prepared for a grisly scene: He brought a refrigerated 18-wheeler and three doctors to process bodies.

"I've got a report of 200 bodies in the Dome," Beron recalls the doctor saying.

The real total was six, Beron said.

Of those, four died of natural causes, one overdosed and another jumped to his death in an apparent suicide, said Beron, who personally oversaw the turning over of bodies from a Dome freezer, where they lay atop melting bags of ice. State health department officials in charge of body recovery put the official death count at the Dome at 10, but Beron said the other four bodies were found in the street near the Dome, not inside it. Both sources said no one had been killed inside. - www.nola.com

This great news to everyone except journalist, that now have the very hard task of regaining the trust of myself and the American people. And despite all of this the, often sited, BBC article suggest that Katrina saved US media
saying, "Amidst the horror, American broadcast journalism just might have grown its spine back, thanks to Katrina."
Sounds like the exact opposite to me. For the most part, American broadcast journalism was full of mostly false reports. Maybe media outlets should thing twice before tooting their own horn.

New Orleans vs. My Pants

2005-09-23T14:34:00.000-04:00

So I was just watching news footage or New Orleans flooding again, I thought how lucky I was to be dry and how I didn’t deserve to be dry. My life is so good, I don’t deserve this, so I decided spill the full cup of water that was in my hand all over the left side of my body, my shirt, my upper thigh (yes it looks like I wet myself), my knee, and my shoe. No one bumped me, or said my name suddenly, or tried to scary me. I just dumped in on myself. Good times…

In other news, what kinda weirdness bites my neck twice close together and instead of leaving bite wounds leaves zits. Yeah, that's kinda odd. I'd show you a picture but my camera is very very dead. sigh...

What's happening

2005-09-21T20:21:00.000-04:00

Well I finally got my laptop set up right so I can do all of my homework on it instead of having to go to the lab. That's exciting. I've been using Google Talk alot and its awesome! As you might have noticed, taken down my home made music player and added a much fancier one, it will even pop-up in its own window so you can continue browsing while listening to fabulous music. I tried to put music on it that is pleasant to listen to while reading my blog or general web surfing. I hope you like it.

I was helping Kerry out when I signed up for an iPod shuffle offer. He now has his! It is possible.

hand, kerry said...
I wanted to let you know, I did indeed receive my free iPod shuffle, a week or two ago actually. I named it jaime and we are pretty much dating. You don't have to tell people that when you say you know someone who actually got a free one, that might not help them do a referral for you.

Earn your own free iPod Shuffle and help me out at the same time!

Wow that's awesome!!!

2005-09-18T18:40:00.000-04:00

New Google Blog Search

2005-09-16T14:31:00.000-04:00

Google has now joined the ranks of blog search engines. So the question is. Will I use it for searching though my blog entries? For now, I think I stick with icerocket.com but will just have to wait and see, in the mean time you can look at both of them and tell me which one you like better: Google IceRocket
New Google feature sorts through blogs / Test search engine likely to undercut smaller rival sites

Earn a free iPod Shuffle

And Life is Good

2005-09-14T00:45:00.000-04:00

I’m typing this from Microsoft Word on my new laptop connected to my wireless network at home while I install Half-Life 2. Oh yeah that’s awesome. I know, I know, I’m a geek…

Earn a free iPod Shuffle

Perhaps I spoke too soon

2005-09-09T16:27:00.000-04:00

It now seems that it was not as easy to get out of New Orleans as I had previously stated. Reports are now coming in that several of the local governments hindered people from leaving. In particular the main bridge west out of New Orleans was closed a day before Katrina hit. The local government seemed to not be very cooperative at all it turns out. Perhaps it was not so much the peoples fault that they stayed there as I had previously suggested. And afterwards the local government wouldn't allow aid to go to the SuperDome because they wanted to get people out of the city and bringing aid to the city would prolong that effort.

Earn a free iPod Shuffle

Suggestion to relocating Katrina survivors

2005-09-05T16:58:00.000-04:00

Suggestion to relocating Katrina survivors by Pirate

Earn a free iPod

Super catastrophe

2005-09-02T11:56:00.000-04:00

WARNING: THIS POST IS NOT POLITICALLY CORRECT.
Has anybody else notice that the people at the Super Dome are all black? Look at the picture above? Do you see anybody but black people? For New Orleans:

The racial makeup of the city is 28.05% Caucasian, 67.25% African American, 0.20% Native American, 2.26% Asian, 0.02% Pacific Islander, 0.93% from other races, and 1.28% from two or more races. 3.06% of the population are Hispanic or Latino of any race. - New Orleans

Where'd everybody else go? Only 67% of the population is black, that's a little over 2 to 1 ratio of blacks and whites. So were is everybody else? The answer is they left before the hurricane in the mandatory evacuation. Is it part of the black culture to not retreat or something?
I'm not a racist and I don't think I would have noticed at all if I hadn't seen a picture of one white soldier among several black people.
While the condition at the Super Dome are terrible,

A 2-year-old girl slept in a pool of urine. Crack vials littered a restroom. Blood stained the walls next to vending machines smashed by teenagers. - LA TIMES

People there are making it worse by panic. It seems like the only people ~~down there~~ that get plastered across TV are either thugs (looters, drug users, etc), handicapped (mentally and physical), or just plain stupid for not having left when they had a chance. I know its easy to draw conclusions from this statement and previous ones. I'm not sure if making those conclusions is fair or not, but I'll leave that up to you. If you have any ideas feel free to share them within reason (I will delete any blatantly racist comments).
Having too any desperate people in one place is never a good idea and as we have seen, can make disasters areas into war zones.

UPDATE:

Commentators noted the victims of the hurricane were overwhelmingly African Americans, too poor to flee the region as the hurricane loomed unlike some of their white neighbors. - AP

They're poor because they're black?!? I hate media bias.

UPDATE:

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with members of the Black Leadership Forum, National Conference of State Legislators, National Urban League and the NAACP, held a news conference and charged that the response was slow because those most affected are poor.

Many also are black, but the lawmakers held off on charging racism. - Fox News

Many others are now noticing the same thing I have noticed.

I still need at least one person to sign up to earn a free iPod shuffle so I can get mine.

Words of Wisdom from Me

2005-09-01T00:19:00.000-04:00

Your vision is not nearly as important as the out come.

Earn a free iPod

Exciting stuff

2005-08-29T21:39:00.000-04:00

All kinds of exciting stuff is happening as of late.

I just finished watch an incredible video on FoxNews.com click on 'The Scary Level' on the left of the main page. It has Harrigan trying to stand up in 135+ mile an hour winds.
Google has announced Google Talk. Its a IM chat program based on the Jabber open source standard protocol, but it also does voice of IP like Skype. So you can talk to any body in the world that that has Google Talk and a Gmail account. It even imports your gmail contacts. I haven't tried it out yet up I'm sure its pretty cool. I'll review it once I get to try it play around with it some.
I almost died on the canoe trip this weekend. I spent the night on the side of the road, and hitch hiked 45 minutes at 4 am. It was crazy. More on this to come as well.

Why does scratching an itch make it stop?

2005-08-26T11:31:00.000-04:00

hmmm I've wondered that before. And now there's an anwswer thanks to Ask Yahoo!.
If you haven't ever read any Ask Yahoo!, you should, you'll like it. Somebody (like you) submits a question to Ask Yahoo!, and they answer one every day. They get questions about everything under the sun and they usually seem to know what they're talking about when answering those questions. :)

So, Why does scratching an itch make it stop?
"the general theory is that scratching provides a "counterirritation" that distracts the brain from the original itch" - Ask Yahoo!
Huh, who would have though. Amazing really.

Bout that time again

2005-08-24T18:15:00.000-04:00

Looks like I've been slacking a little bit with my posts regularity. There must be a pill for that...
school has started back up and between kayaking and badmiton I think I'll have a enjoyable and informative semester. The latter coming mostly from the classes actually in between the two previously mentioned course works.

I don't think I could have written a more complicated sentence if I tried... :)

So anyway, I'm a little hungry right now, and that's mostly what I thinking about. I'm also thinking about the sweet hook up that my workplace is giving me. They're giving me a laptop to work from home with flexible hours, and maybe a promotion. That's pretty awesome!

The only other thing I'm really thinking about right now is that I'm going bowling for free with the BCM tonight. yeah... that will be good. I think we're meeting at 8:30 at the BCM if you're interested in coming then I'll make it worth your while. Mostly just b/c you'll be graced with my presences. ;)

Time to go eat.

P.S. I still need at least one person to sign up to earn a free iPod shuffle for me to get mine.

I thought about posting something today

2005-08-19T19:46:00.000-04:00

....
but then I didn't.

Can I really win a FREE iPod Shuffle?

2005-08-16T11:24:00.000-04:00

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it 'free', you do have to work at it a little bit, but its not hard and it is considerably cheaper than going out and buying one, especially if you have some loyal friends.

Here's what you have to do.
Go to this website. Sign up for just one(1) of the offers and then refer 3 other people to sign up for one of the offers. If you get 3 other people to sign up for one of the offers then they'll send you a "free" iPod Shuffle.

I know, I know, you're saying to yourself that the offers must be ridiculous. Well they're not.
Here's a list of some of the offers:
Columbia House DVD
Blockbuster Online
Comcast Cable
BMG Music
and 15 others...

Well I've completed one of the offers for a friend and figured that I might as well try to get one myself. If you'd help me win an iPod Shuffle I'd appreciate it. :)

Oh yeah and go read the Terms & Conditions just to ease your mind. You can double check everything I said.
You can also watch this video on G4 Video Game TV to see it in action.

Where to blog?

2005-08-15T15:41:00.000-04:00

A New Record

2005-08-11T17:48:00.000-04:00

welp I think that's a new personal record.

Auto Trackback from IceRocket

2005-08-11T17:47:00.000-04:00

I added Trackback from holascan to my site a while ago, but have since taken it off due to complicated pinging and nobody ever referencing me. All it ever did was take up room.
However, IceRocket has released a fantastic service called LinkTracker. It is effectively the link at the bottom of every post that says "# LINKING POSTS". If you would like to see it in action, just look at my IE7 Sucks post. You can see that 2 other blogs have referenced mine. I know (!) isn't that amazing. Oh yeah, I hope you can read Spanish too because apparently the only people that will ever read this post happen to type in Spanish.
Its not perfect, actually the first Spanish blog to reference mine was Minid.net. IceRocket doesn't acknowledge this blog for some reason. Oh well, it can't be perfect if its free, right? I would recommend putting it on your blog if you ever think that maybe, somebody, somewhere, sometime, might reference your blog. Because, then you'll know who they were. :)

oh yeah, IceRocket also has this fun new thing called Trends. It tell you what is more popular in the blogophere between any two terms. Give it a spin if you like: Bush VS Blair.

mobiBLU 1GB mp3 player at Wal-mart

2005-08-11T16:38:00.000-04:00

These little things are awesome! Sure, iPods are kind of cool but nothing beat the total cuteness of the mobiBLU 1 GB Cube Digital Audio Player. Ok ok, it doesn't exactly hold 50 GBs or anything but it is super tiny. That's got to count for something doesn't it?
It even comes in six wicked awesome colors.

If only my fingers were small enough to press the buttons...

Coolest T-shirt on Threadless

2005-08-11T16:05:00.000-04:00

This has got to be one of the coolest shirts I've ever seen!I almost bought it as soon as it became available for sale but then I wasn't sure I was ready for making a commitment to actually buy a shirt online. It still makes me a little quezzy. I finally mustered enough courage to ask out this wonderful tshirt, but alas I was rejected. It seems they are "All out of stock" or at least that's the line they're feeding me. The shirt probably just doesn't like my facial hair. This is one of the sadest days of my life...

Theology with Brian

2005-08-11T11:36:00.000-04:00

I first meet Brain in my racquet ball class at UTC my freshman year. He's a pretty smart guy and recently started a series of posts about theology on his blog. I would recommend reading what he has to say if you are interested in this kind of stuff. He has laid out this handy-dandy list of topics that he is planning to discus.

1) Authority of Scripture: How reliable is the Bible? Should we use words like inerrant and infallible to describe it? Are there errors?

2) The canonization of the Bible: Is it reliable? Should we have a canon? What about the Apocrypha? Why is it included in some types of Bibles and not others? Is that okay? Is it "scripture?"

3) Core Truths: What are the core truths and principles Brian talks about in his articles? Do they really matter? What about the "little matters?" Are they insignificant or unwaverable?

4) Propositions: Should we make claims about the Bible and/or Jesus and/or theology? Is there an absolute truth? Can we not just love people? Can we love people without propositionalizing the gospel? Is there a such thing as a "depropositionalized love?" "Why can't we all just get along?"

5) Love: How do we define love? How do we reconcile God's love with the concept of wrath? Can God still be a God of love with all the evil in this world? Is there a possibility that God might actually still be in control of all these "destructive" events? Can there be love without hate?

6) Division: Why is there division in the church? Are there beneficial aspects of a "divided" church? Are we really divided, or are we "divided, yet together?" How can we show the love of the church within the church, and see that flow to outside the church?

7) Conformity: Has the church sold out to the world? Have we abdicated to culture in order to be relevant? Should we look different? How? Why? What does it mean to be "in the world, not of the world?" Isn't all this rules stuff just legalism? Can you be sold out to Christ without the "rules?" How did Jesus accomplish the goal? Did he care about the "rules?"

8) Relevance: What does it mean to be relevant? Can you be "set apart" and still relevant? Can you make the gospel relevant without "looking" different? What does this mean: "looking" different? Have we been approaching the culture correctly?

9) Open or Closed Theology: Should we be open to other worldviews to use for the church? Is there danger in mixing ideals? Can it be beneficial?

10) Be or Look: Are we supposed to look like we are holy, or actually be holy?

11) Identity: As Christians, where is our identity? Is it in Christ? Is it in deeds? Is it in both? Is one a part of the other? Can you separate the two? Does the grace emphasis of Romans and deeds emphasis of James contradict?

12) The Emergent Phenomenon: What about Brian McLaren, the "emergent church," "open source theology," the deconstructionist movement, postmodernism, and others of this "emerging" culture? How does the Christian respond effectively without bringing dishonor to Christ's name? Is this phenomenon new, or is this an old hat?

13) History: What were the Councils of Nicea, Trent, Carthage, etc? Why do they matter? Who was Athanasius and why does he matter? Who were the Arians? Why on earth would Brian include this?

And yes Brian is pretty good at racquet ball too. ;)

Time to Update?

2005-08-11T10:50:00.000-04:00

Well recently I've had a lot of ideas about what to blog about, but as you've probably noticed I haven't updated all week. This is mainly due to me having problems fleshing out my ideas. To make up for it I'm going on a posting rampage (Rampage, man that was a great game!) . I'm going to see if I can post more posts today then posts I've ever posted before posts in one day posts... posts.... posts... Which I think is four. So expect lots of updates today :)

Homosexuality in the Church and are we Missing the Real Issue

2005-08-05T13:29:00.000-04:00

This seems to be a touchy subject among society today. With recent developments in this on going battle for human rights, I figure it was time to give my humble opinion. The recent events I am referring too are mainly, a Methodist Pastor being fired over not allowing a homosexual to become a member of the church and the United Christ church approval of gay marriages (you should really read this article even if you read nothing else. Its from the perspective of a former homosexual from Exodus International).
You should know by know that I usually don't just run my mouth on here without at least doing some research to back it up. The first site that comes up in google, and a fairly informative site when starting my research is www.religioustolerance.org The site gives both "Religious liberals" and "Religious conservatives" points of views on most every verse in the Bible containing controversial topics, as well as an overview of each topic. Even though the site offers both points of view it is painfully obvious which view the other holds. With a name like Religious Tolerance I'm sure you can figure out which side of the fence they lean towards.
Religious Tolerance does however state,

"We have been unable to change the beliefs or actions of any of these hundreds of people on even one point related to homosexuality."

and

"The Bible refers to specific homosexual behaviors in a few passages. All references are negative."

The article tries to argue that the Bible "may be totally silent on consensual homosexual relationships". However, I think they are missing the boat completely.

"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, will inherit the kingdom of God. Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God." - 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

Some people would like point the finger specifically at the effeminate and the homosexuals and how they will not inherit the kingdom of God. But I would like to point out that they are listed right in the middle of sins that most everyone can relate to. Is the church being as condemning of all these other sins as much as they are homosexuality? For example, would someone be denied membership to the same Methodist church if they were open fornicators/adulterers? I'm not sure. It has become quite the norm for couples to live together before they get married. Some might dismiss this as 'common-law married', however I can find no support for this in the Bible. They should be treated the same! Right along with anybody that's stolen anything, drunkards and cheaters.
However there is good news! As the second part of the passage states there is hope for those that commit these sins. These sins can be washed away through Jesus' sacrifice for us. I think it is worth pointing out that Sexual orientation is a fairly new idea and that 'homosexuality' in scripture here is relating to acting on homosexual tendencies. Struggling with same sex feelings is not a sin any more then any other temptation. I can't help but think that the church is growing soft on sin as a whole. Nobody likes to be accused of sinning but sometimes we need to be corrected where we have turned from the way God would have us to live.

Look what I made for my girl

2005-08-04T16:30:00.000-04:00

Note: This post is very long so if you don't what to read it you can just look at the pretty pictures.

Since my favorite person in the whole world moved to Chattanooga recently, I decided to make a sign as a welcome gift. After going over several ideas about what to get her I decided a sign with her name on it would be appropriate.
I'm still not sure what she'll do with it but that's for her to decide not me. I'm exactly sure where I got the idea for burning wood. I do like to burn things though, so maybe that's part of it.
Anyway, after burning some test wood I decided it was worth the effort to make go for it. I figured that if I used aluminum foil to cover parts of the wood then it would sufficiently block the heat from the flame and leave the wood under the foil (did I mention that I like the word 'foil'?) and I was right.
First I started with a beautiful looking piece of hardwood. After I cut it to the right size I drew an oval where I would put the name, 'Roxie'. If I would have been smart I would have used two small pieces of tape a sting and some simple mathematics to draw the oval, but I thought of this after I had a decent looking freehand oval, so I decided to stick with it.
The main purpose of the oval is provide some boundaries for the rays that would eventually encircle my girlfriends name. Next, I scored the oval and the rays, which radiate approximately perpendicular to the oval, with a chisel. My chiseled rays test on some pinewood was rather disastrous, but I felt confident that hardwood would work better. However, I was not completely convinced that it would not shed my board into chaos. After some searching I finally found a tool that would work better than the standard flat chisel that I had been using. The tool is actually designed to be used with a lathe but with its rounded edge, as opposed to the flat square chisel head, it worked better than I could have ever hoped. It made beautiful rounded grooves.
After this I printed "Roxie" in as big a font size as would fit a piece of paper. After backing with aluminum foil, I cut it to the size of my oval and taped it to the wood. I gently cut out the letters in the paper and aluminum foil with a hobby knife. Before I removed the excess aluminum foil I tacked each letter down to the wood in strategic spots with finishing nails. The result looked a lot like a pin cushion. I then very carefully removed the extra paper and foil, leaving only my aluminum letters tacked to the wood.
In my burn tests I used a candle with decent effects, however I needed something bigger and hotter to burn this much larger piece of wood. So I went to Lowes and bought a butane torch. It did the job without too much complaint. I did have to go back buy some more butane as I ran out before I was finished burning stuff. The torch worked rather well as it was much more focused then a candle and didn't create as much smoke. I was also please how well the foil did at keeping the wood beneath it from burning. After I removed all the nail and foil I stopped to examine how things were going.
I started to have some doubts. It looked very burnt. I couldn't see the rays at all and I started to think that it looked better as a pin cushion than a burnt piece of wood. But I didn't give up. I had tested enough of my theories to know better, there was still hope. I started sanding it by hand. I noticed some black dust begin to come off it, but still it was very black. I started to doubt again. Maybe I should use some power tools I thought. The first thing I tried was the detail sander. That went less then well.
I remembered that we had a vibrating sander somewhere and after a little searching (like all workshops ours is a little bit of a mess) I found it. It worked a lot better. It began to take off the top layer of wood once again showing the beautiful hard wood. The plan all along was to burn the grooves and then sand away an black on the surface leaving mostly just the grooves burned. After a lot of sanding, and I mean a lot, it started to take the form of the idea that was in my head. I then decided that the letters definitely needed to be outlined in copper wire. I had played around with the idea before then but had actually decided to do it up until this point.
I figured that it would be cool to have the wire raised a little bit from the wood to give it a third dimension. This turned out to be a very good idea indeed. I decided that each letter would be anchored to the wood in two opposing corners to increase stability. Half of the wire holes I drilled with the drill press, the other half with a cordless drill. The cordless was actually easier to my surprise. I had previously bought some copper wire which Wildcard and I had stripped at Red Lobster. It took a lot of patients and a couple nights to get all the wires bent into the right shapes but with the help of my Leatherman, some small needle nose pliers, and my nimble fingers, I got them all bent into shapes that at least resemble letters.
After this I put two coats of spray on polyurethane on it. At first I was going to use some old brush on polyurethane that we had, but upon opening the can I found that it had a solidified layer on top of it. I broke though the layer but not before get polyurethane all over my hands. Needless to say, after I made a mess, I went out and bought some in a aerosol can.
As you can see I think it turned out well. Roxie seems to like it, and that's what matters most. I'm sure you probably didn't read this whole post but hopefully you looked at some of the pictures, and if you ever plan on burning some art maybe this post will help.
For more pictures go to my photoblog.
I love you Roxie.

First cloned dog

2005-08-03T12:57:00.000-04:00

Today South Korean researchers have announced that they have successfully cloned a dog. What's the big deal you might say, we've cloned all kinds of animals from mice to horses. Apparently dogs are much harder to clone,

"Dogs have such an unusual reproductive biology, scientists say, that the methods that allowed them to clone sheep, mice, cows, goats, pigs, rabbits, cats, a mule, a horse and three rats, and to create cloned human embryos for stem cells, simply do not work with them." - NY Times

The ramifications of the research supposedly go beyond cloning pets, as the says that they will not. However, they spend $19 million dollars to research dog cloning so what do they plan to do with there latest 'product'?

"Dogs get many of the same diseases as people and have long been used to study human diseases." - NY Times

But one of the companies main goals is the ever so popular stem cell research.

"Eventually, the team hopes to make dog embryonic stem cells and test them as treatments in the animals." - NY Times

What I find most interesting about all of this is how LiveScience manages to spin this story. The article first points out that there are ethical concerns with cloning dogs. I agree, its always kind of scary when they clone an animals that are increasingly harder to clone. Eventually we will be cloning humans, and for what purpose I am not sure I want to know. But then the article takes a hard left.

"Yet given that President Bush is trying to block human stem cell research, the success raises the possibility that dogs will live longer while their owners die of diseases that stem cell research aims to cure, said the Executive Director of the Genetics Policy Institute, Bernard Siegel, who was not involved in the research." - LiveScience

"While the White House would prevent new lines of stem cells being used for research, scientists around the world are aggressively pursuing the work. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who had sided with Bush on the issue, last week jumped ship and backed House-passed legislation to expand federal financing for human embryonic stem cell research." - LiveScience

neither of these claims are true. What do you think about cloning? How far is too far?

I think TBN 'needs' another boat

2005-08-02T11:39:00.000-04:00

Sure you get a fancy dancy picture frame for you hundred plus dollar donation, but does it really go to support ministry? Looks like you might have just bought a really expensive picture frame, and helped Mr. & Mrs. Crouch buy a brand new boat.

"• TBN refuses to release consolidated audited financial statements.
• TBN spends shockingly little on its charitable programs. TBN’s 2003 program expenses are extremely low at 43 percent,
when compared to the MinistryWatch.com database average at about 78 percent. Additionally, TBN’s 2003 savings rate is
high at about 39 percent compared to the MinistryWatch.com database average of around zero.
• TBN presently has cash and short term investments of $341 million. This represents money that could be deployed into
ministry work but instead is sitting idle on the ministry’s balance sheet. Meanwhile, the ministry continues to implore donors
to give it even more money.
• TBN executives Paul and Jan Crouch espouse a skewed view of the Gospel, embracing the “health and wealth” or
“prosperity” theology, often portraying an unorthodox accounting of the life and teachings of Jesus.
• Mr. Crouch and his family live a life of luxury, the full extent of which remains unknown. The Crouches refusal to be
transparent raises questions as to whether their exorbitant lifestyle is financed by the sacrificial giving of well-meaning donors.
• Matthew Crouch, son of Paul and Jan Crouch, controls a for-profit company that has received approximately $32 million
from TBN corporations during the past five years to produce movies such as “The Omega Code.” Due to a lack of transparency,
donors are unable to determine if this was a sensible use of their money or what amount of compensation Matthew
Crouch and/or others closely aligned with the Crouch family may have taken from this and possibly other related party
transactions.
• TBN’s board of directors is made up of just three Crouch family members, preventing independent oversight needed to
protect donor interests and in contrast to the best practices utilized by many other excellent ministries.
• A former employee, Kelly Whitmore, said that ministry funds were used to indulge the personal tastes of the Crouch couple.
• At least one television station has dropped TBN from its lineup after viewers complained that their promised blessings
never occurred.
• In 1998, a former TBN employee, Enoch Lonnie Ford, was paid $425,000 for agreeing not to publicize Mr. Ford’s allegations
that he and TBN founder Paul Crouch had a homosexual tryst two years earlier.
• TBN vigorously worked to keep the information regarding the settlement with Mr. Ford private and questions remain regarding
the source of those funds." - MWDA_031805_TBN.pdf (application/pdf Object)

Wired News: GOP Wants to Help Fight Disease

2005-08-01T15:08:00.000-04:00

I've recently read two very interesting article on ethical concerns and new exciting technology. I would, of course, recommend that you read them both. They aren't very long and they are both informative.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/tonyblankley/... - birthing babies from machines and how it could kill abortions
Wired News: GOP Wants to Help Fight Disease - stem cell research alternatives to killing babies.

I'd love to hear what you have to say about these two fascinating articles.

Good news and Bad news

2005-08-01T14:46:00.000-04:00

Good News: My lovely girlfriend just moved back to Chattanooga.
Bad News: My hands smell like polyurethane.

hmmmm I wonder if these are related....

IE7 beta is available and it sucks

2005-07-29T13:24:00.000-04:00

Well after wait for a much better browser from Microsoft, they deliver mostly crap. The only thing they really improved is that it now has tabs, slightly better security, a build in search box and alpha PNGs. Not very much considering how far behind IE compared to... well any other browser. I don't think this new browser will be putting Firefox under any time soon. Speaking of Firefox... You do have it doesn't you? What?!? You're not using Firefox? Well, it you like popups and viruses than by all means have fun with that. Oh yeah, by the way, all the new features of IE7 are currently available in Firefox. So what are you waiting for? Go get Firefox!

Update: Microsoft says that they are going to include a lot more standard compliance for the final version of IE. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

Googlism: Chattanooga

2005-07-28T11:17:00.000-04:00

Some interesting things that you might not have known about Chattanooga according to Googlism.

chattanooga is in for colder weather
chattanooga is gator country
chattanooga is a wonderful place to live
chattanooga is a upgrade of the akira
chattanooga is not home to major scientific
chattanooga is a pioneer city in the establishment of greenways
chattanooga is a convenient two
chattanooga is pygmalion
chattanooga is $105
chattanooga is approximately 152
chattanooga is divided into five stratigraphic units
chattanooga is one of many hot springs found along the middle fork of the boise river
chattanooga is very user friendly once they get here with amenities like the aquarium and i
chattanooga is a green roofed building on your left next to northern equipment
chattanooga is conveniently located across the street from hamilton place mall
chattanooga is like north
chattanooga is at the junction of i
chattanooga is open to anyone with an interest in pursuing clock or watch repair
chattanooga is the perfect site for southeastern wilderness medicine
chattanooga is actually the world's electric bus capital; it exports the 22
chattanooga is a perfect spot for a romant
chattanooga is a shining example of apathy
chattanooga is a boom waiting
chattanooga is the first city in tennessee to purchase the csr system
chattanooga is first major test of the year
chattanooga is was gathered using an ho
chattanooga is a lot better than their record indicates
- from Googlism: chattanooga

Google Maps Pedometer

2005-07-27T11:34:00.000-04:00

Ever wonder just how far you ran this morning? Or how many calories you'd burn talking to the grocery store instead of driving there? Well, now you can! (said as much like that guy on all those infomercial as possible) With Gmaps Pedometer you can measure distances with ease. Click the Start Recording button and then double click two locations on the map. It will tell you the distance between them. Double-click a third location and it will tell you the total distance and the distance between the last two places you clicked. If you turn on the calorie counter it will even tell you how much you burned. :) Simply amazing.

195,888 hours

2005-07-26T17:05:00.000-04:00

I've been alive for approximately 705,196,800 seconds
wow.

Hezekiah who?

2005-07-25T12:01:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday I was in Sevierville visiting my lovely girlfriend and attended church with her. This marks the 3rd time I've been to this church and I almost always have questions or something I really disagree with come up during the sermon. This time the sermon was on following passage concerning Hezekiah.

⁵^(G)He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel; ^(H)so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him.
⁶For he ^(I)clung to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses.
⁷^(J)And the LORD was with him; wherever he went he prospered And ^(K)he rebelled against the king of Assyria and did not serve him. - 2 Kings 18

The sermon was pretty good for the most part. He started off saying that we shouldn't add or subtract anything from the Bible and that he wouldn't preach anything that wasn't from the Bible. I heartily agree! Unfortunately, in the past I've heard extra Biblical teachings from his pulpit. Namely "sex, drugs and rock n' roll", but I'll save that rant for another time.
OK, now re-read that passage again. What jumps out at you? What questions would you have that you might expect to be answered in any form of teaching on this passage? Here are some of the things that caught my eye. "so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him." He sounds like an awesome dude. Nobody like him before or after his reign. He's a one of a kind. A man that stands out in scripture. So what's so great about this guy?!? Why is he so special? Well if we read on we might find something that helps us understand. "For he clung to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses." Wow. Hezekiah had his act together, but what does that mean? " kept His commandments" Was Hezekiah perfect? It also says, "did not depart from following Him". Does that mean he never sinned? Did he always follow God all the time? Obviously not. "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God". But if Hezekiah wasn't perfect than what makes him so special? And if there has never been any one like him since how does his story apply to my life? Obviously I could never be like him. I haven't read all of the surrounding passages yet (I'll update you the more I find out). I've come up with these questions with just about 5 minutes of study. How much more did this pastor study this passage and never come up with any of these questions. It astounds me how none of these things were mentioned.

A side note to Roxie: verse 4 says "He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the sons of Israel burned incense to it" So I was right when I thought I heard him say that he tore down the idols that Moses erected. However, the bronze serpent is not the golden calf by any means. Moses was so angry about the golden calf that he broke the first set of the ten commandments. I don't think that most of the people attending the servers know what he was talking about. He has a terrible habit of incorporating nearby scripture and assuming that we have read it already.

So if you have any answers to these questions or comments I'd be glad to hear your take on them.

I want a sonos audio system

2005-07-22T13:01:00.000-04:00

Sonos is a super cool anywhere in the house sound system... with a swavy remote control too! Pretty much it takes the music you have on your computer, and if you're like me then you have a lot of it, and pumps it to any room in your house. Yeah its pretty much awesome. You should watch the flash demo.
If you happen to have $1199.00 laying around you should buy me one. ;)

Game Paused

2005-07-21T15:25:00.000-04:00

An art project incoperating video games. How fabulous!
Weargame

Johnny Depp is my hero

2005-07-21T12:35:00.000-04:00

I try to make a habbit of not doing these little quizes but come on, its Johnny Depp. You can't go wrong with such a hot guy great actor.

You Are Edward From "Edward Scissorhands."
You are very shy and often misunderstood. Innocent, sweet, and artistic, you like to pass your days by daydreaming and expressing yourself through the arts. You are a truly unique individual. Unfortunately, you are quite lonely, and few people truly understand you.
Take The Johnny Depp Quiz!

This is probably my favorite movie of his.

The morning of 7th July 2005

2005-07-20T11:20:00.000-04:00

I've been meaning to post it for a little while now. This is a interactive map of the London Bombings: The morning of 7th July 2005. You can click on the red markers to read more about each point. This map was created by a student that lives very close to London, and details where he was when the bombs went off. You can also read his account of the tragic events.

Ice Shelf Collapse Reveals New Undersea World

2005-07-19T15:10:00.000-04:00

An Ice Shelf recently broke off from Antarctica, probably due to global warming ;)

"Seeing these organisms on the ocean bottom -- it's like lifting the carpet off the floor and finding a layer that you never knew was there," said Eugene Domack of Hamilton College.

Domack hopes to find new species and that this discovery will open the door to future Antarctic expeditions, specifically into Lake Vostok, a freshwater lake that sits two miles below the surface. - Ice Shelf Collapse Reveals New Undersea World

I think it is super cool that we might find new little creatures in the ocean. The ocean is huge, I mean huge gargantuan! I've recently had a renewed respect for just how large it is by using Google Earth. And let me tell you, if you don't think its that big then go download Google Earth and just look at it. Anyways, I've always been fascinated by creatures the ocean, which is kind of funny because I'm not really the biggest fan of the beach. Don't get me wrong I like the sun, wind, water, and general relaxation, but I'm not that crazy about sand or saltwater. I just don't like them. However, I love the little creatures of the ocean, some of the most amazing animals that God created life in the ocean. They're so different than anything else that is on land. Lake Vostok also sounds pretty cool. I didn't know such a thing existed.

Church Is Not an Institution OR Why we should meet in smaller groups with fewer buildings

2005-07-14T17:05:00.000-04:00

I'm participating in a very interesting conversation on NonNobis2005's blog about how "the church" looks right now and what it should look like instead. I would encourage you to read it if you have time. It is a lot of reading, but its well worth it, and by all means please join us in the discustion. I'm sure we could use your input as well. :) The basic idea is that the church is suppose to a group of much smaller groups (consisting of maybe a dozen people at most) that meet multiple times a week, and perhaps all the groups meet in a larger setting a couple times a month. The smaller group meetings (for lack of a better term) would primary meet in peoples houses, and each group would have a different focus, one worship, another fellowship, and still another ministering to the poor. If you find this interesting I would suggest you read the rest of discustion on: NonNobis2005's blog.

I like Cookies

2005-07-13T12:39:00.000-04:00

I really like cookies. They're just great. I like crunchy ones and soft ones, chocolate chip and sugar and even macadamia nut. The only type of cookies I don't like are peanut butter cookies, because I don't really like peanut butter at all. I even like JavaScript cookies and you should too. ;) You don't need to know how they work, just know that they are making my site even better. If you notice all of the categories on the right are now closed. You can open any of the you want and now my site will remember which ones you've opened. For example if you were browsing though the archives you no longer have to open the achieves category on every page. It will stay open until you close it. I hope this will make the site more convenient for you.

PS right now you have to click twice to get a category to open the first time, after that it works fine. I'm working to fix this.

PPS if you want to know how cookies work try reading this article.

Update: I've now fixed the click twice problem. It should work with just one click now. :)

that was a nice car...

2005-07-12T23:27:00.000-04:00

too bad I wrecked it.

I can see my house from here

2005-07-12T23:01:00.000-04:00

ok so maybe I can't see my house very well... But I can tell you where to find it.

You can get a pretty good idea of where its at by all the optional land marks. :)

Nazca Lines in Google Earth

2005-07-12T21:07:00.000-04:00

everyone likes to talk to elephants

2005-07-11T16:40:00.000-04:00

I'm wearing a strangely appropriate leisure suit.

Not so crapy

2005-07-08T16:42:00.000-04:00

Today I spent making my blog look not so crappy in Internet Explorer. Tell me agian... Why are you not using Firefox.

Is Global Warming Always Bad?

2005-07-07T14:25:00.000-04:00

According to the Official G8 website there are two topics that are going to be in the forefront of this years G8 summit: Africa and climate change. I think we can all agree that Africa needs some help. Thousands of people are dying from AIDS in the countries of Africa and most of the countries are way behind development wise. Not only is what's happening over there terrible but its an open wound for the rest of the world too, when the world community tries to move ahead technologically and agriculturally, but Africa is holding us back. We might not agree on how to help Africa but I think everybody agrees that they need help.
But what about this Climate Change business? Is the globe really warming? They say that its risen 0.6° over the last 100 years. "Wow, that's not very much. Why should I care", you might say. Well,supposabley one or two degrees is enough to melt a lot of the ice caps and cause water levels to rise flooding port cities and causing a whole host of global weathercatastrophe'ss. But are all the affects of global warming bad? Is there perhaps some advantages to global warming? Some seem to think so. This article, Is Global Warming Always Bad?, provides some interesting insight into global warming. Here are some quotes:

Alarming news often leads to government funding... Good news threatens that arrangement.

How could there be such a disconnection between a computer simulation and reality? Why don't scientists check for this before they publish their papers?

In the first warming, 45 percent of Kilimanjaro's ice cap disappeared. When the planet subsequently cooled, it lost another 21 percent. In the recent warming, another 12 percent has gone, the slowest rate of loss in the last 100 years.

The fact is that Kilimanjaro's glaciers vary greatly, with or without global warming.

While I don'tnecessarilyy thing that we shouldn't consider that global warming could be a treat, its always good to look at things in a balance perspective.

Bare Breasts, Dead Guy and some Poker.

2005-07-07T12:53:00.000-04:00

Sounds like a cheesy guys movie doesn't it?
I ran across these news articles today and I thought they were amusing.
all stories can be found at: FOXNews.com - Foxlife - Out There - Bare Breasts Lead to Man's Arrest

"He's a guy. He's real tall, and he's got a full set of breasts," ...Jerome Mason, 23, six feet tall and 200 pounds, was charged with indecent exposure after going topless..." - story #1

Smith's feet were crossed; a pack of cigarettes and a six-pack of beer were at his side..."I couldn't stop crying after looking at the Steeler blanket in his lap,"... - story #4

and finally this touching story.

"When I won, I let out a big 'Yes!"' Guinther said. "I just thought I had won $11,000, but then my son told me over the phone, 'Dad, you've just won a seat in the World Series of Poker!' - story #5

Well London was attacked today by some terrorist the largest attack on the UK since World War II. So I thought I'd post something a little light hearted today to boost our spirits. Please pray for the people of London.

Mmmmmm brain freeze

2005-07-06T13:55:00.000-04:00

I really like ice cream... Especially Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.

That is all for now.

What's in a name?

2005-07-05T15:24:00.000-04:00

GodsMoon. Yeah it sounds pretty and all, but what does it mean? When I originally created it, I had a complex story behind it, a story that I have hence forgotten. For some time now I have been using the shortened explanation: "reflecting the light of the Son". Its a play on words. The moon reflects the light of the sun, right? Well in this case the 'Son' is referring to Jesus Christ. I hope and pray that what I blog about in some way reflects the light of my creator. He designed me and made me who I am. I cannot repay Him, the least I can do is try and give him the credit for all the good stuff that I do. Not only did he create me but I screwed it up and haven't done what He's asked of me. He told me to follow the 10 commandments. I have not. I lie, steal, lust, dishonor my parents, and put a host of other things in my life before God. Breaking these commandments has consequences. The Bible says that if you break any of the commandments you are not good enough for heaven. Heaven is a pure place and no one is worthy of a perfect place unless they themselves are perfect. I am obviously not perfect and must pay for my breach of the commandments. If a crime is committed somebody has to pay for it. Justice demands it. Thankfully I didn't have to pay for my crimes against God, someone else paid my debt for me. God made a way for someone else to pay the penalty in my place. Jesus substitute his life for mine. Jesus was the only perfect person to ever live on this earth, thus the only one deserving of heaven and the only one that could pay for another's sins. He paid for my sins when he died on the cross. I wasn't even born yet, but God knew the sins that I would commit and assigned their penalty (which is death) to Jesus, instead of me. Jesus gave his life in place of mine. This is why I have chosen to honor God with my name and try to reflect a little bit of Him in everything I do.

Adsense update

2005-07-05T11:15:00.000-04:00

I said I'd update on how much I've made with google adsense so here's the update. So far I've made: $3.54. Not very much and I don't get paid till it accumulates to $100 so that might take a while. If you notice I've changed the format of the links ads a little. Its something new that google is trying. Don't be afraid to click on it and try it out. :) If you click on the ad it won't take you directly to the advertisers website instead it will take you to a list of advertisers. Think of the links on my site like categories of advertisements. I hope some of the ads will benefit you and I really hope that maybe one day I'll have accumulated more than $100 so I can get paid. That would be nice.

update: They seemed to have changed things around on me. You can now search for any type of ad you'd like to see. So try it out.

update: It seems to be back to normal now so I don't know what happend exactly. oh well...

Interesting things I've run across lately

2005-07-01T12:51:00.000-04:00

"The majority of Americans don't accept a natural origin of life... To effectively educate children about life, therefore, science standards must be readjusted so that exposure to evolution is commenced in kindergarten, when it might better counteract the creation mythologies that kids are getting at home. Waiting until high school to detail the meaning of life is, as polls show, not so effective. The projects above are my futile attempts to propagate and support this opinion." - Colin Purrington on (www.swarthmore.edu)

"Although scientists worldwide view evolution and natural selection as completely uncontroversial, popular support in the United States is waning, especially with respect to the origin of humans. Without more public displays of affection for the theories of natural selection and evolution, it is likely that more and more schools will allow or even promote the teaching of evolution "alternatives" that invoke dabbling by supernatural entities. To provide some of the needed visible support for science and reason, please consider stickering something with his image. Sure, these efforts are probably completely futile, but wouldn't you sleep better tonight knowing that you've done your part to delay our slip into Dark Ages II?" - www.swarthmore.edu

I believe it is true. Charles Darwin does have a posse, and they want your children.

Another bit of news that you probably haven't hear about.

"They refuse to accept, because of their political ideology, that he has actually done more than any American president for Africa. But it’s empirically so.”- Geldof

"The most important and toughest nut is still President Bush. He feels he’s already doubled and tripled aid to Africa, which he has. But he started from far too low a place. It’s hard for him because of the expense of the war and the debts. But I have a hunch that he will step forward with something. And it’ll take somebody like him.” - Bono (both quotes from www.progressiveu.org)

It is certainly a change you hear any rock star praise Bush for anything. I just those quotes were interesting. Feel free to leave your opinions.

Tags: Charles Darwin Evolution school kindergarten Colin Purrington Geldof Bono Bush

Yahoo My Web 2.0 vs Filangy

2005-06-30T15:24:00.000-04:00

So yesterday I kind of got excited about My web 2.0 and while I still thing its cool I'm leaning back towards filangy again. "What?" I hear you say. I know that didn't make any sense to most of you so I'll explain. First off I'll explain what they do. Have you ever wanted your bookmarks on every computer you use? Have you ever wanted to find a page you've been on before but forgot to bookmark it. Do you find yourself scrolling through your bookmarks trying to find the one you want among the long list. Have you ever thought to yourself, "I bet GodsMoon has done some research on this, If only he were here!" Or "Man that was hard to find, I wish I could make it easier for my friends to find!" Of course, I have an answer to all those questions. Several company offer most or all of these features. The list includes: del.icio.us , Furl, A9, Yahoo's My Web 2.0, and Filangy. All off them have there pros and cons. But for the moment after trying out most of them I'm sticking with Filangy. It does all the great things that you hoped for above plus other great stuff. Filangy is also a rapidly growing developing service. Its super easy to use. Just sign up, download the toolbar (or don't download anything and just use the bookmarklet) and your good to go. It will now index every page you visit so if you want to find it again you can just do a quick search with one of 2 words that you remember from the page and it will bring it right up :) If you really want to find something easily than you can bookmark it (or 'Webmark' as they call them). Once you bookmark something you can tag it, like gmail (if you don't have gmail you need it, just ask me), and add notes to it to remind you why you bookmarked it ;) Once you have something bookmarked then you can share it with other people, like me. So while I may not be right there to tell you exactly how to fix your terribly annoying ad popup problem you can just search through my webmarks and find the article that I use when I try and fix your laptop. Isn't that amazing! If you would like to view and search my webmarks you can. I've provided a link just under my site search box on the right of my site. While you're at it you mine as well sign up for filangy yourself (though you don't have to) and start sharing what you what to remember with me. For a minute yesterday I got excited yesterday because yahoo released something that was similar but after using it a little bit I find that it is not as good as Filangy and I think I'll stick with them until I find something better. I'll let you know if I do.

OOOHHH NOOOOO, Spam!

2005-06-29T14:20:00.000-04:00

"86 percent of the addresses posted to web pages received spam. It didn't matter where the addresses were posted on the page: if the address had the '@' sign in it, it drew spam. " - Email Address Harvesting: How Spammers Reap What You Sow

"Outdoing most analysts' worst predictions, spam accounted for 82 percent of all U.S. email last month." - May 5, 2004

Wow that's a lot of spam.
So what do I do? Obviously I shouldn't post my email with an @ sign in it.
First off: don't post your email where you don't have to. It is recommended that you post your email on your blog for people to contact you privately though. So here's several solutions.

You can write you email like this: GodsMoon [at] gmail [dot] com This takes a lot of space but it works.
you can Make an Email Image like this one This is my preferred way of doing it at the moment. The Email Image Maker lets you choose from all the most popular email domains.
If your email address is @yourwebsite.com or something like that then you can use this image creator.
Another possible way is to use JavaScript. Most of the techniques I've seen on the internet I wouldn't recommend. Most of them seem to leave the @ sign in and thus would not work. This one seems like it would work and it seems reputable.
I'm not sure if this one would work or not but its worth mentioning. It simply encodes your email. The site has a page rank of 7 and is listed in dmoz.org so it probably works but I'm not sure its full proof.

flickr Photographer

2005-06-28T12:33:00.000-04:00

you can make your own flickr badge at: http://flagrantdisregard.com/flickr/badge.php

Looking for some quick entertainment?

2005-06-27T13:09:00.000-04:00

If you can read, visit this absolutely hilarious ingenious random fictional blog from a guy that I sort of know. www.xanga.com/nonnobis1963. You should probably start at the beginning of the story though.

If you cannot read, please visit this little piggy... go on... click on him.

I hope you are entertained.

Free Web Hosting

2005-06-24T16:30:00.000-04:00

So I found this page:Free Web Hosting. Its all about free webhosting. I really wanted to start a server of my own but if somebody will give me a decent on for free, then I could settle for that. Eventually, if I get enough money earned from my google ads on the left, I'll move this site to www.godsmoon.com but right now I'll have to make due with what I have. If you would like to help me out click on one of the ads. :)

Riverbend Festival 2005 Day 9 Report

2005-06-24T11:28:00.000-04:00

Day 9 was the final day of the Riverbend Festival and might I say it was one of the better days at Riverbend. I got there late but got to see most of Gaelic Storm and they were awesome. Some of the best drinking songs I've ever heard and they were making using of the drinking part of 'drinking songs' for sure. The whole group was very talented and several members of the group played multiple instruments. For instance, the guy that played the crazy handheld Irish drum thing (help me out here, you know what I'm talking about, right?) also played the didjeridoo. I don't know how I know what a didjeridoo is but I can't think of the name of that Irish drum. Oh well. After Gaelic Storm and played their encore my group split up with everybody going to see Pat Benatar except for me. I went to go see PaPa Mali. Papa Mali was quite good but I didn't stay for long because I remembered that I left my cell phone in the car and there was no way for me to regain contact with them. Luckily I found them before they had picked out a final destination in the middle of a very crowded lawn. On my way to find them I passed the child talent search stage and at first I thought I heard somebody playing the radio. I heard songs by Ozzy and Metallica but suddenly realized that it was 2 kids off to the side of the talent show stage rockn out. These kids must not have been more then 12 and yet he was soloing on the guitar better than several of the artist I had seen previously at Riverbend. This was followed by a drum solo that was equally as good. I was impressed but had to find my company so I didn't stay long here either. Pat Benatar was alright. Nothing to get too excited about, unless you absolutely love the 80's, in which case it was a dream come true. ;) The fireworks this year were pretty decent. I think perhaps they were better last year and they were about on par with the fireworks they had for the grand opening of the pier.
In conclusion to Blogging Riverbend Festival I must say that I had a good time, even though I got behind a little there at the end. I would have to say the best act that I the 9 days was Gaelic Storm followed closely by Phat Phunktion. Both of which were on the UnumProvident Stage. I hope you enjoyed reading the reports about Riverbend. If I feel like it, I'll probably blog Riverbend again next year. But for now I'm back to the exciting life of a college student that occasionally has something exciting happen to him. :)
more pictures

Chattanooga Riverbend Fireworks 2
Originally uploaded by mdunmore.

Riverbend Festival 2005 Day 6, 7 & 8 Report

2005-06-18T14:01:00.000-04:00

I didn't get a chance to make it to Riverbend on Day 6 due to the fact that my car was in the shop overnight. However, I did manage to catch a ride to see Batman Begins. I must say it was incredible. Anyway, my car is now fixed and running better than ever, as it should be for the price I paid.
Day 7 was somewhat disappointing with nobody noteworthy at all. They only moderately exciting thing that happen is my interview with the classy miss Rue.
Riverbend Day 8 was much better with the highlight being Colin Hay from Men at Work. He was surprisingly good. I especially liked his new stuff. He brought his somewhat English speaking wife along with him and she danced crazy like on the stage the whole time. Motor City Josh played before Colin Hay. I only caught they tail end of their act but it was quite good with a lot of variety. Afterward I when to go see the old folks of the Cumberland Trio. The Trio had about 8 members... so I guess that makes sense. Anyway they played some good folk music and even had somebody dress up in a very huggable lion suit and sit down front with the little ones. After that it was off to the bluegrass sounds of the Biscuit Burners. They were a young group with a female lead singer. I enjoyed listening to them, but it was not enough to keep me awake so I had to go before the end of the set. I took lots of picture. Go check them out.

laughing with Peggy "anne roth" Rue

2005-06-16T21:29:00.000-04:00

This was suppose to be an interview but mostly its just laughing.

Riverbend Festival 2005 Day 5 Report

2005-06-15T12:16:00.000-04:00

Day 5 was Family/Faith based night at Riverbend. What does that mean exactly? It means the Rock 105 closed their booth, but lots of churches where giving out free stuff. It means that the daily pass is only $5 but the bands are mostly crappy. It means that there are lots of and lots of little kids, but free Little Debbies. Over all it wasn't too bad. The only show I wanted to see was Newsboys, and as usual they put on a great show. They definitely had the crowed involved more than any other group that has play as of yet. Not having any particularly good bands to listen to I was left to take pictures and talk to friends mostly. I took a lot of pictures and I hope you enjoy some of them. The days interview was of Super Dave. He was super nervous and almost backed out on me, but I managed to sucker him into talking with me.

Tonight's recommendations will be few...

Interview with SuperDave at Riverbend

2005-06-14T20:32:00.000-04:00

Riverbend Festival 2005 Day 4 Report

2005-06-14T11:25:00.000-04:00

Day 4 of the Riverbend Festival was the Bessie Smith Strut. Its hot, crowded and free. Oh yeah... and there's usually good blues music too. This year was decent. I think it was just the mood that I was in, or perhaps it was the fact that I had eaten every little, but all good music seemed to be lounge blues. Not really having a good place too lounge while listening to lounge music just makes me what to lounge all the more. This, of course, left me wanting food in a nice sit down restaurant. We first tried going to BW3's but after not getting any service at all, we swung over to TGIF, which I must say was quite delicious.
I did manage to hear some of the groups before I left though. The Black Diamond Heavies were very good. However, they don't have a bass guitarist, and since I play bass guitar, and happen to really like blues bass guitar I found there music missing... bass. The lead singer/guitarist of the Black Diamond Heavies is a large man and can be rather scary at times too. So that was a little creepy. The Rockin' Jake Band was not so much Rockin' as I thought they'd be. Disappointing really :( They sounded like zydeco, but they too were missing something. Tinsley Ellis, on the other hand, was very good, but after listening to him only a little while I ran into the lounge dilemma mentioned above and left to find refreshment. Over all, it was a hot day at Riverbend.
See more pictures

Interview with Merlaak at Riverbend

2005-06-13T19:47:00.000-04:00

You must excuse the long pauses, he gets easily distracted.

Riverbend Festival 2005 Day 3 Report

2005-06-13T10:45:00.000-04:00

Day 3 was not too exciting music wise. Most of the bands were either country or not good. But there are other things to do at Riverbend than listen to music like sign up to win all kinds of stuff and eat really over priced food, which is exactly what I did. I finally broke down and bought some tokens, cause I was craving a corn dog. I like me a good corn dog. This particular corn dog was not exactly fantastic but it did sustain me enough to continue on my journey from one end of the festival to the other.
I didn't get to play my day out completely because the riverbend website was down and it takes me a while to compile all those audio links. It turns out that there really wasn't anybody that I wanted to hear until Michael McDonald with the CSO. We set up our chairs early on the front row of the non-VIP section. We had pretty good seat, but the way they have things arranged I still felt like I was half a mile away from the stage. I guess that's why they have the projection screens every where. The CSO opened with some music from Phantom of the Opera (I love that music). Michael McDonald was pretty good. He had a female drummer that could sing and play the drums very well. She was awesome. Michael McDonald played several Motown songs along with some Doobie Brothers songs. I was getting a little tired tired from signing my name to so many entry forms to win stuff and figured I should go check out Coalition for Peace before I left. Coalition was decent even though I was tired. Its just too bad they were on the Budweiser stage. It has the worst sound quality of any of the stages at Riverbend. On the way back to the cars I interviewed my good friend Anne.
I almost forgot. They're is a nice group of photographers at riverbend called JoePix. They'll take your picture for free and then you can go to their website and send the picture to friends or do whatever you want to do with it. Its cool, free, and today is their last day at Riverbend so if you haven't have you picture taken yet, look for the guys in the purple hats.
More Pictures from the day
Tonight it the BESSIE SMITH Strut down on MLK. Its free and always has great blues music. Even if you don't have a pin come on down.
Recommendations:

Black Diamond Heavies - 5:45-7:00 PM They return for another great show. MP3 play whole song, hi-fi (broadband)

The Rockin' Jake Band - 7:15-8:30 PM They have a great sound Baby What You Want Me To Do

OR Tinsley Ellis - 7:30-8:30 PM listen in flash

black diamond heavies and The Rockin' Jake Band are both playing at the Miller Plaza. That's where I'll be hanging out all night, so come join me. On a side note I would strongly recommend that you leave then its over. Its been known to be not a great place to be after its over, but don't worry about anything while its going on there are police every where.

Interview with Anne Roth at Riverbend

2005-06-12T23:39:00.000-04:00

Riverbend Festival 2005 Day 2 Report

2005-06-12T15:46:00.000-04:00

I got called a "Mother F@#$%*!", but I had a fun time so it wasn't so bad. Right before BOYZ II MEN when on this larger lady in a black tank top starts yelling and cursing at this elderly couple because the rain had become much lighter and they still had their umbrella up. Their umbrella was apparently blocking her view of the stage that nobody was playing on at the moment. I, for some slightly offended and felt compelled to stick up for the elderly couple. So, I politely suggested to the anger woman that she could stand up if she couldn't see. Well, that set her off. She started calling me, and anybody with in shouting distance, ugly names. She was obviously not a happy person and would probably have complained if I had just handed her a 20 dollar bill. I know I should have but she made me laugh a little bit to myself. I really wanted her to come to this site and leave me a comment telling me how she felt. Perhaps I'll make some business cards to pass out to people.
Well on to the music. I met a friend to see Sean Smith shortly after she had been attacked by a drunk man's umbrella (umbrellas just cause problems, go buy a rain jacket). Sean Smith was alright, however not fantastic. After he finished, nobody that was worth seeing was playing so I decided to go get some ice cream. I'm trying to go as long as possible without buying tokens (Riverbend uses tokens instead of money to help cut down on theft) so we went outside the gates to Ben and Jerry's for some fabulous ice cream. After that we went mark our territory for BOYZ II MEN. After the above mentioned fiasco and the group had started we noticed that a lot of excited looking people were walking into the VIP section. We quickly discovered that they were letting people with out $5 passes into the VIP section so we got in line. Anne got in before me and I made it in shortly thereafter. Apparently they had plenty of extra seats so they were letting people in for free. I feel a little sorry for the people that were standing next to me because they had just wasted $5 on a ticket but was rather pleased to get such good seats. I am a guy so I can't say that BOYZ II MEN was 'good' but I can say they were quite the showmen and not feel emasculated. They even through roses into the fans... 50 feet below them. I didn't really know any of their songs but was rather impressed by the show. The last show of the night was Up with the Jones. They were insane. The lead singer was wearing a gown from Erlanger hospital and did a very good job of looking unstable. Needless to say the rockers managed to keep my attention despite me being very tired. I definitely need to park closer next time.
Recommended list:

Jessica Lynn Thommason - 5:00-5:30 PM She's the only one playing at this time so you should go see her.
Noaxident - 6:15-7:30 PM
Roger Alan Wade - 8:00-9:15 PM
Michael McDonald with the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera - 9:30-11:00 PM
Coalition for Peace - 11:00-12:00 AM

Pictures from day 2 uploaded

2005-06-12T01:24:00.000-04:00

While you're waiting for me to post about day 2 you can go look at the days pictures. By the way if you want to join me at Riverbend you can always look for the guy wearing this hat. I'll be wearing it everyday.

Riverbend Festival 2005 Day 1 Report

2005-06-11T15:07:00.000-04:00

So yesterday was a great first day of Riverbend and as I predicted, Phat Phunktion was great. To start the day off I was going to meet some friends to get some food and to get my pin. I got downtown a good while before anybody else did. So I took a trole with my camera. Took some pictures of the contruction of the new park next to Coolidge park from Market Street bridge. I thought since I didn't have a pin yet I'd go to the nearest enterance to Riverbend and pick up a program so I wouldn't have to remember which bands where playing where. The nearest gate happend to be the new one beside the new aquarium and the water flowing over the stairs. The gate was completely unmanned. I was rather dissapointed that they didn't have a program but I got to walk right in without a pin so I thought I'd go to another gate and see if they had programs at a gate that was possibly staffed. The Am South gate, and the main gate were staffed but no programs. :( I've been walking a round for about 20mins now, right next to the gate people that are suppose to be looking for pins, and nobody has said a word. I walk out yet another gate and go eat with my friends. After supper we all, with our pins, went back in the new gate that I went in and it was still not staffed. We didn't get there in time to see Rhonda Vincent, like I had hoped but we did catch the end of Saphire's first act after a brief and somewhat painful stop at Roy Harper (the yodling cowboy). The woman of Saphire were very talented and knew there stuff. They're the type of band that doesn't bring a playlist with them they just play what ever comes to mind and the moment. They were a bit racy but I suppose that's to be expected from woman that play the blues. Nevertheless, they were quite good and we stuck around to watch most their 2nd after Phat Phunktion. Phat Phunktion was a full of energy and played some great funk of thier own as well as some of the classics. I love big groups bands and they had 8 members that jammed well together. If you missed it, I told you so...
So here's the recomended list for tonight, along with requested audio clips when I could find them. (I'll organize these later but for now I just wanted to publish this for yall before it gets too late) hopefully this will help some, sorry I didn't get my schedule worked out just yet.

Sean Smith: "skillful artistry and musical style, Chatanooga-based (and UTC alumni) Sean Smith has captivated the ears and minds"
Mint Condition: R Listen
Freekbass: Really funky bass guitarist mp3 sample
Radio Daze Big Band: Big band of course, not too bad Boogie Boogie Bugle Boy 3.4 MB
Jonell Mosser: ok female contemporty/country vocalist Listen
Rob Russell & The Sore Losers: "American Roots music that encompassed bluegrass, country, blues, swing, and punk"The Score well this song isn't too bad but not sure about the rest of them. Go see Boyz II Men instead.
Jennifer Daniels: "earthy folk rock"Listen (you've probably hear this song) a staple at Riverbend and always worth seeing.
Lauren Ellis: "multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter, especially known for her slide guitar playing" listen
Garret Tucker: guitarist that tries to hard website listen if flash
Up With The Joneses: "Chattanooga’s straight ahead, hard driving Rock n’ Roll local favorites" Always a good show.
Brad Passons: good local acoustic singer/song writter listen
Rodney Crowell: "leader of the new traditionalist movement of the mid-'80s, his ambitions extended far beyond the movement's parameters." Don't Get Me Started I have no idea what that means, but it sounds mostly like country too me.
Capt. Soularcat:" With their roots deeply embedded in Blues and Rock & Roll, Rome, Georgia's Capt. Soularcat combines the old and the new to create an incredibly unique sound." listen in flash funny name but sounds pretty decent
BOYZ II MEN: you should know how this is. Listen

Blogging Riverbend Festival 2005

2005-06-10T13:29:00.000-04:00

I will be blogging Riverbend Festival 2005. This will be my first attempt to blog a large social event and I think it will be fun and informative. For those of you that don't know, Riverbend is an annual music festival in Chattanooga, TN that goes on for 9 days and has 1 main stage, 4 side stages, and a kids music contest stage (I won't really be paying attention to is stage at all). I plan on being there every day and taking plenty of pictures each day. It starts tonight and since I've been to Riverbend a couple of times now and know my way around I feel I can give a pretty good account of what happened. I've also done some research on the bands playing tonight and will give you my recommendations.

5:00-5:30 PM - Brady Hughes: is the only one playing at this time so you mine as well see him. I won't be there till later.

6:15-7:30 PM - Mindy Smith: Good guitar but slow country worth checking out.
OR 6:30-7:45 PM - Peacemakers: 'Chattanooga's best veteran Rock n Rollers'. I couldn't find anything else out about them. They might be decent.

7:45-9:00 PM - Rhonda Vincent: really good bluegrass mostly really fast bluegrass
OR 8:00-9:15 PM - Saffire: blues trio that's all woman with funny lyrics

Instead of Kid Rock at 9:30-10:45 PM - Phat Phunktion: in your face new sounding funk. I'm really looking forwardrd to this group
OR 9:30-12:00 AM - Jon Cleary: gripping, intimate guitar with drums

If you happen to stay late Saffire is playing again at11:00-12:00 AM
OR 11:00-12:00 AM - BLAZE: classic heavy metal band

So that's what I think will be good tonight. Tomorrowow I'll give you a full report on the evenings events and give you recommendations for that day. I'll also have lots of pictures so don't forget to check them out. :)
See you there.

I still don't have a server

2005-06-09T10:29:00.000-04:00

If you've been reading this blog since the very very beginning you'll know that one of the things I was trying to do was start my own server. Well as you can tell from the word 'blogspot' in my address bar up there I was unsuccessful. Sad day really. I was beginning not to miss a server that bad with the great photo uploading service of Hello, and uploading other files(markably flash files) with myfilestash. However, today I, once again, am missing having a server. *Tear*. As you may have noticed the flickr picture that I have in the far right side bar are now faces of random people, and are not my own pictures. I kinda stopped using flickr ever since I started uploading my pictures to there own photoblog, just because it was a hassle to upload them to more than one place... and I'm lazy.
So, I had this really cool idea of replacing those flickr images on the side there to my pictures from my photoblog. I found out how to do this with SSI. Unfortunately, I have to have a server other than blogspot to run SSI or any server side scripts. This blog is also an experiment with what all I can do for free. I haven't spend a penny so far on this blog.

If you would like to help support development of this blog you can always click on my google ads to the left or alternately you can donate a large some of money to me with paypal or something. All money received will go back into this blog in one form or another, so your investment will be worth it, I promise.

PS this is day 2 of using Head & Shoulders shampoo and I still have dandruff. hmmm how many days to I have to use this stuff for it to start working?

I like crunchy things

2005-06-08T14:53:00.000-04:00

I discovered the other day that I like crunchy foods. As I write this, I'm eating a small bag of Gardetto's. I like toast, fried stuff, and crunchy candy. I don't really like gummy worms but I love oreos. French toast is good stuff, and crunchy bacon is the way to go! None of this limp bacon stuff. I also really like corn chips, or any type of chip. The fairly new Ritz Chips are by far my favorite chip. Man, those things are good. Perhaps its just a dislike of chewy things, but if it crunches chances are I'll like it. I hadn't really payed much attention to food texture but with my good friend Roxie I discovered that I seem to have a certain affinity for crunchy food, not that other foods are bad, its just hard to beat that crunch.

For more information call: 865-GeoFurb

Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries

2005-06-08T14:50:00.000-04:00

I find this most fascinating.
HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries
I hadn't ever really thought of books in terms of degree of harmfullness. I haven't read any of the books on the list, though I've heard of most of them. Maybe I should read some of these sometime. I'm sure on the surface most of these books seem very harmless if not down right peaceful. But the devil too works in mysterious ways.

For now just remember that, "repetitions is the key to learning... and brain washing".