Do All You Can

October 6, 2009 | Leadership | Life

scaffolding

So, what happens when you are in the midst of a struggle?

You do all you can.  You fight for it.

This can be said of any struggle really.  At least any struggle that truly matters.  (Figuring out the difference between important ones and unimportant ones is another matter)

When the job is on the line, you do whatever it takes to make it work.  When a life is at stake, you do all you can.  When you see something that needs to be changed, you do all you can.

As someone once told me, “Just take the next step.  Do the next thing.”  You may not know where you are going.  But you can see where you’ve been and where God looks like He’s taking you.  Go that way.  Move towards that.  Keep getting better at your craft.  Keep refining yourself.  Even when the road looks like a dead end, there is something you can do.  Sometimes that something is to wait, but there is always something.

Go forward with confidence, and go with God.  He can tell you where to go, but He doesn’t make you do it.

Time to step up.

[ Image by rbrwr ]

Awareness is Not Enough

September 30, 2009 | Leadership | Life

contemplating

One thing I’ve been realizing lately is that awareness by itself is not enough.

It is not sufficient to just be aware of a problem.  If I am aware that I have cancer and yet do nothing to kill and destroy it, the cancer will still kill me.  Only when I take action against the cancer does it ever go away.

Raising awareness is good.  Knowing your enemy is good.  These things will prepare you for the battle.

But there is still a battle.

As it says in a song I like, “How can you expect to win this war if you’re too afraid to fight.”  And the fight will be hard, but it is better than not fighting at all.

Be aware.  But also take right action.

[ Image by mendhak ]

Who Ministers to the Ministers?

September 15, 2009 | Church | Leadership

the_shepard

Sad fact: leaders in the church don’t always get fed.

Who leads worship leaders into worship?  Who preaches to and teaches the pastors and teachers?  Who mentors the mentors?

Burnout is a very bad thing.  But we too often do so much for the sake of the kingdom that we forget to rest and be filled.  God created the entire universe and He still got a day of rest in there!  There’s a reason.

Leaders, don’t be leading so often that you forget to be filled by God or forget to learn from other leaders.  No one can do it all by themselves.  Look for new perspectives or better methods from other leaders.  Take a day to sit and talk with God, or just to enjoy the day with your loved ones.

This isn’t to say that you should neglect responsibilities, but be sure you don’t overdo it.

Balance, my friend.  Balance.

[ Image by a4gpa ]

September Wallpaper

September 5, 2009 | Art | Fun

TO_WAR11_by_theregisteredoneThought I would share my current desktop image.

I’ve been finding some cool space art online and this one I decided to use for my desktop.  I love science fiction scenes, and have ever since Star Wars caught my attention when I was a kid.

Found anything cool for your desktop image?

[ Image can be found here. ]

Sometimes You Just Have to Do It

September 1, 2009 | Church | Life | Music | Worship

pathway

Sometimes the way forward is just that; forward.  Sometimes the next thing you need to do is the thing that you should have been doing all along.  Most times, we know where the next step is, we just don’t want to take it.  We feel like we can’t, or aren’t allowed, or shouldn’t.  We just need to start walking in that direction.

I play music.  It’s something I’ve loved since I was in grade school.  I’ve played in bands at church before, but recently I haven’t been playing.

Here’s the thing: I have been given a talent from God to play music.  It’s something that I am passionate about, and I love playing music.  But lately I haven’t been using my gifts.

Now, for a time, taking a break is fine.  But to not use the gifts God has given you is bad.  You lose something about yourself when you don’t use your gifts.

This past month, I started using my gifts again by getting involved in a new band at my church.  And it feels great!  I don’t know why I waited so long to get back into playing.

So here’s the point.  You all have talents and gifts from God that you can use.  Are you using them?  You can’t keep your gifts and talents to yourself and stay whole.  You have gifts and talents for a reason.

Move towards using them.  Move forward with your task.  Take the next step.

[ Image by carnavalet ]

Twitter Groups in Tweetie (or Anywhere)

August 17, 2009 | Productivity | Technology

tweetiegroup1

For those of you trying to create groups in Twitter on the Tweetie Mac app, I found a solution.

It’s almost a little too simple, and isn’t the cleanest thing around, but it gets the job done.

So the solution?  Use the search.  Here’s how. [Continue reading...]

3 Productivity Tips for Your Mac

August 1, 2009 | Life | Productivity

dock

In the last few weeks, I have been trying to improve my cluttered Mac environment.  My dock had gotten quite full, and to make room I’d have to make the dock so small I wouldn’t be able to read any of it.  And, I’ve been doing a lot of developing WordPress lately so I’d been trying to use OS X’s Spaces to help.  So, after chatting with my brother about our organization skills, I came up with a few tricks I thought I’d share.

Uber Spaces

spacesMac OS X’s Spaces is a great organizational tool.  Apps can be confined to a single space so that your view isn’t cluttered with 10 open programs each with 3-5 windows each.  Cool idea.

Well, take that to the logical ultimate.  16 spaces each with its own app focus.

Each space has a “theme” that governs what should appear in the space.  For example, I have individual spaces for my browsers, my social media apps, my chat apps, and my music apps.  I have the spaces set up for only those apps, as well.  So, when I click on Seesmic in my dock, it jumps to the social media space, keeping my browser separate.  It keeps everything in a logical place. [Continue reading...]

Open or Closed, Part II: License and Free(dom)

July 10, 2009 | Art | Technology

sourcecode

I found another portion of the open or closed question.  What about open and closed software licenses?

Here’s a quick rundown of the license categories (check here for more details):

  1. GNU GPL type licenses.  Very open.
  2. Liberal Licenses (i.e. Creative Commons type, Mozilla Public License). Mostly open.
  3. Closed source (i.e. proprietary license).  Closed.

The more open your license, the more innovation you generally have.  WordPress is licensed as GPL.  Anyone can see and edit the WordPress code, and thus, a very diverse, dynamic, and versatile platform has emerged.

The problem with the GPL type licenses, that I see, is the return.  I can’t really reap the rewards for my work when anyone else can make a tweak and give it away.  Also, if you were to combine a GPL licensed work and any non-GPL work, according to the license you’d need to release the whole larger work as GPL.  Effectively, you’d have to release your closed source code to abide by the license.  It doesn’t sound very “free” to me.

The liberal licenses form the middle, allowing open source innovations but with the option to combine works or the option to redistribute with different licenses.  They tend to play nice with GPL (as in the work can be licensed under GPL without breaking the other license), and might allow greater return.

In recent times, closed source hasn’t had the best run.  Just take a look at the state of the music business to see what happens when you overuse the “closed” idea.  But yet, closed source still generates the revenue.

I’m not an expert with these licenses, nor am I a lawyer.  But this I do know: forcing people to use a particular license is not freedom.  That part of the GPL rubs me the wrong way.  I do understand the desire to not be ripped off, as in the case of a closed source project essentially stealing open source code.  That isn’t right either.

So, where do you stand?  I don’t know at the moment for myself.  As a content creator, I want return on my investment (or at least control of it).  As a content user, I want to be able to use and improve what is there.  Is there an answer?  Let me know what you think.

[ Image by acme ]

Is Twitter the New RSS?

July 8, 2009 | Technology

twitter_logo

I have been thinking about this lately. Is Twitter replacing RSS? I mean, I seem to find my articles via Twitter, not my Google Reader.

Ok, here’s my line of thinking.  Twitter is the real-time communication tool of the moment.  The idea of RSS is that you don’t have to run to each site every 20 minutes to see if there’s something new.  Well, Twitter and FriendFeed and the rest all make that insanely easy.  You follow your favorite news sources, magazines, and blogs, and their new articles get sent to you in real time.

But there’s one problem.  If you follow more than 75 people on Twitter, then you don’t get every tweet you follow.  If you follow over 500, you pretty much only get like 5 minutes of history.  So what happens when you’re at work and you can’t check Twitter?  Well, you miss that great post.

Ok, so Twitter won’t be replacing RSS feeds and Google Reader quite yet.  But it could happen.

Do you find yourself neglecting GooReader for Twitter?  Do you think Twitter can replace feeds?

Notice for WordPress Theme and Plugin Developers

July 4, 2009 | Technology

themespluginsdbJust wanted to pass some info along to all of you budding theme developers.  Your themes need to be licensed under GPL.

Well, okay, part of them.  According to this article from WordPress the php and html in your themes are GPL because WordPress itself is under the GPL.  However, the css files and any images in your theme do not technically need to be licensed under the GPL.  Talk about a monkey wrench!

What that means is technically you could pull off a case where you can hold all the rights to your css and image files to control the php and html.  Now, I’m not a lawyer by any stretch of the imagination (and the only area I know something about is music copyright law), but that seems to be really tricky.

As an aside, this is really only a problem for premium themes and plugins.  Because the php and html are derivative works of WordPress, you must follow the GPL.  That does not mean that you cannot charge for your time, effort, and distribution of the themes or plugins.  But you have to allow for the provisions of the GPL; namely, your code must be available, and anyone else can modify and/or distribute the code without permission.

Ah, the new world of copyright and license.  For me, I’ve spent a good amount of time coding, tweaking, and testing my WordPress Creations.  And while I do agree that open is better, I would like the option to get something back for my effort.

Do you all have any thoughts?  Any arguments for or against?

Edit: Well, it seems the crux of the argument is what constitues a derivative work of WordPress.  This article details the problem.  Thanks to Andrei from Softblog for the link.

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