Author: Glen

Media Shout 3.0

I final­ly got my upgrade copy of Medi­aShout in the mail yes­ter­day.

Wow.

This release fix­es every­thing I’ve ever dis­liked about Medi­aShout and adds tons of new fea­tures I’d nev­er con­sid­ered.

The three best upgrades:
* You can play just a spe­cif­ic, cus­tom clip from a DVD. So you just want to play from 1.54.36 to 1.57.12? Done.
* All songs now have per­ma­nent for­mat­ting stored in the data­base. No need to refor­mat every stink­ing time you use the song!
* You can edit text cues direct­ly from with­in the program–no more ran­dom RTF files lying about.

Also, it looks like they’re try­ing to break into the VJ market–the new ver­sion includes bet­ter sup­port for mix­ing video feeds on the fly. Still, it just does­n’t com­pare to Arkaos in that depart­ment.

The one thing I real­ly wish they had done was include the Greek & Hebrew Bibles (they include the Latin Vulgate–why not the orig­i­nal text?).

Over­all, I’m thrilled.

Happy Birthday, Paula Kay!

For the record, today is Paula’s birth­day. Feel free to email or call her with good wish­es.

I love you, Paula–have a great day!

In-Laws

My in-laws are on a cruise to Hawaii, and their cruise ship is cur­rent­ly on a day excur­sion.

Where do they go?

Wal-Mart.

For the record, this is not an aber­ra­tion. Once we were all in New Orleans togeth­er and they decid­ed we would go eat at Den­ny’s.

Wal-Mart in Hawaii and Den­ny’s in New Orleans. My in-laws ARE red-state Amer­i­ca.

Google Earth

If you have broad­band and a fast enough com­put­er, you’ve got to vis­it http://earth.google.com/ and down­load their soft­ware.

Absolute­ly incred­i­ble.

On The Facebook

I don’t know if I’ve ever men­tioned this on my web­site, but I’m on the Face­book.

I bring this up for two rea­sons:

  1. If you’re a new stu­dent com­ing to Stan­ford feel free to scope us (Chi Alpha) out online. Also check xaStanford.org and Chi Alpha on the Face­book. Feel free to join our Face­book group with­out any sense of long-term oblig­a­tion.
  2. If I’ve met you at a con­fer­ence or some­thing you can feel free to add me as a Face­book friend. Just do a glob­al search for Glen Davis at Stan­ford (the glob­al search link is at the top of the page under the fa in face­book).

Superfluity of Naughtiness

I rarely look at the King James trans­la­tion, but today I hap­pened to glance at it while prepar­ing for a con­fer­ence:

Where­fore lay apart all filth­i­ness and super­fluity of naugh­ti­ness, and receive with meek­ness the engraft­ed word, which is able to save your souls. James 1:21, KJV

That’s right: we are to avoid a super­fluity of naugh­ti­ness.

What beau­ti­ful phras­ing.

Half Blind In Bangkok

I’ve been mean­ing to men­tion this for a while, but my broth­er is half-blind in Bangkok right now. He’s on a mis­sion trip and got some sort of infec­tion behind his eye­ball (yuck).

It sounds like he’s going to be A‑OK, but I’m sure it’s quite dis­turb­ing to fall ill in anoth­er coun­try. Espe­cial­ly a non-West­ern one.

On the plus side, he had trav­el insur­ance and so every­thing is paid for. It’s far bet­ter for him finan­cial­ly than it would have been in Amer­i­ca. And what­ev­er he has isn’t some­thing he got in Thailand–it was devel­op­ing before he left.

Any­way, he should be com­ing back this week­end. Until then, I’ll keep think­ing about Mur­ray Head­’s One Night In Bangkok.

Absolutely Amazing

I lis­ten to MP3s when I bike to cam­pus. Not music, as I real­ly don’t like music all that much; rather, I soak up lecture/seminar/sermonic stuff. I get a lot of them from Dis­ci­ple­ship Library and I’ve recent­ly start­ed down­load­ing some from IT Con­ver­sa­tions.

Any­way, I recent­ly lis­tened to Ben Saun­ders’ amaz­ing sto­ry. He made a solo expe­di­tion to the North Pole and real­ly knows how to spin the tale. I was agog. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

Campus Ministry at the Ivies

One of our alum­ni, Eliz­a­beth, emailed me this fas­ci­nat­ing NYT arti­cle: On a Chris­t­ian Mis­sion to the Top. It’s an arti­cle about min­istry at the Ivy League schools focus­ing on a group called Chris­t­ian Union

. There’s a relat­ed NPR sto­ry.

I real­ly appre­ci­ate their vision. I’ve often thought that some­one ought to estab­lish evan­gel­i­cal min­istry cen­ters at the top tier uni­ver­si­ties, so I’m glad to see that they’re run­ning with it.

Any­way, this para­graph leapt out at me:

By the 1970’s, Assem­blies church­es were sprout­ing up in afflu­ent sub­urbs across the coun­try. Recent sur­veys by Mar­garet Polo­ma, a his­to­ri­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron in Ohio, found Assem­blies mem­bers more edu­cat­ed and bet­ter off than the gen­er­al pub­lic.

I’m speech­less.

The Assem­blies of God and edu­ca­tion are not two con­cepts that are often linked in the minds of the pop­u­lace at large (with rea­son, I might add: I’ve actu­al­ly heard these words uttered at a min­is­te­r­i­al gath­er­ing with absolute­ly no hint of humor, “The prob­lem with the Assem­blies is all this eddikashun.” More­over, I saw sev­er­al heads nod in agree­ment). Per­haps that instance has unfair­ly taint­ed my per­cep­tions of the move­ment as a whole, but I’ve nev­er been par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with our intel­lec­tu­al prowess in the Assem­blies.

On the flip side, one of our AG min­is­ters in San Fran­cis­co is a Har­vard grad who lives in a bus and min­is­ters to the home­less. And of my three dis­trict offi­cials (bish­op-equiv­a­lents) one has his doc­tor­ate and anoth­er just needs to fin­ish his dis­ser­ta­tion. A pas­tor I know in the San Joaquin val­ley was once nom­i­nat­ed for a Pulitzer. Come to think of it, I know lots of sharp, well-edu­cat­ed min­is­ters and even more sharp, well-edu­cat­ed laypeo­ple.

I just always assumed they were a minor­i­ty. I should real­ly rethink that.

Trailer for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Shaowei just emailed me the link for the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe trail­er

pathol­o­gy divx movie online

.

It was stun­ning. I can’t believe how good it was from a pure­ly cin­e­mat­ic per­spec­tive.

And from a the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tive it looks as though they’re keep­ing way more of Lewis’ sym­bol­ism than I thought pos­si­ble. “In this house there are many rooms” “only one door leads to anoth­er world”… those are explic­it­ly Bib­li­cal allu­sions.