Vision

We know where you are… all the time!

-US border guard referring to the new RFID-enabled passport cards

I traveled up to Canada today with my bro and a friend to take in the Abbotsford airshow. Here are some snaps I took.  If you’d like to see the whole album, go HERE.

Search and Rescue

“Bombing” the airstrip.

World’s Shortest Runway

9 G’s on that turn

Vertical flight

Just under Mach 1

50 years flying together

Straight down

Holdeman?

American Thunderbirds

Canadian Snowbirds

I love photography, though I don’t dedicate much time to it anymore.  There are a handful of photography RSS feeds that I subscribe to.  Wikipedia’s Picture of the Day happens to be one of them.  Today’s POTD is an amazing classic.  My favorite aspect of this photo is the fact that in spite of its vintage, it is in color!  You don’t see too many colorized photos from the late 1800’s and especially not in such excellent condition.

I’m actually a bit surprised that an event that attracts over 500 young people has so little coverage in the blogosphere. A quick search of of a few keywords brought up only a handful of the usual Xanga, Blogger, and Wordpress blogs. Interestingly enough, I discovered quite the collection of photos HERE and HERE from last year’s event on the website of a Slavic Missionary Church down in Sacramento.  Also, Altar of Praise recording studio has made the choir singing from last year available HERE.

This year’s event (occurs in November) is open for applications (Charity Ministries’ site is down at the time and has been down quite frequently lately making me wonder what their traffic must be like with all the audio recordings they provide).  Anyway, this is an interesting alternative to some of the longer term Bible Schools out there in the Anabaptist world, though in such an intensely spiritual environment for the brief period of one week, it is easy to “ride the wave” and come crashing back down on the beach of “reality” when you get home :-)  I found it a very encouraging and uplifting experience with long term effects on my day-to-day life, and hope to go again this year if all goes as planned.

In the world of information technology before 1’s and 0’s, another revolution occurred. I found this brief documentary about Gutenberg’s printing press quite fascinating.

STEPHEN FRY - THE MACHINE THAT MADE US

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

And here’s one for laughs comparing their time and ours.

To the degree that we try to partake of the world, we diminish our brightness.   - Bill Gothard

I’m going to share my current method of recording the audio for church sermons and special events that I currently employ as one of the audio/tech guys for our church.

For sound amplification, we currently use a wired microphone on a stand, hooked up to a powered mixer with a built in amplifier. Basic 12″ speakers are wired directly to the amplifier. That takes care of the “live” sound.

Recording the sound turned out to be a little trickier. For years, we recorded with a line level feed directly to a 20+ year old audio tape recorder. When it came time to switch to a digital work flow, I did a little research to find the best solution. Recording direct to CD was one option, but what if the message went over 80 minutes? A line running to the sound card on my laptop was another option, but that could prove to be a little too complicated for my liking. I ended up going for the Olympus LS-10, a digital voice recorder that records at 24bit/96khz direct to either the 2GB of built in memory, or an optional SD card. The bonus with this recording unit is that it also has directional stereo recording with the built-in electret-condenser microphone which is great for recording live singing or family sharing times.

For standard sermon audio recordings I

1. use a line level direct connection to the mixer
2. copy the resultant digital .wav file to my laptop
3. down sample to a mono .wav file from the LS-10’s stereo file
4. record to audio cd and label it for lending out
5. “rip” the cd with iTunes (gets better quality sound with a very low bitrate for some reason) to .mp3 for the podcast
6. enter all the meta data for the ID3 tags and upload to the website

That’s it. There are a few steps that I haven’t mentioned related to podcasting, but wanted to focus on the recording aspect, mostly. So, what methods does your church use for recording sermons?

Firefox is trying to create a world record of the most software downloads in 24hrs with their release of Firefox 3. I’ve been using Firefox almost exclusively (except for testing sites I design, since 2005). Join the crowd by clicking the graphic.

I read this today: “We are all just plagiarists of a real artist, and her name is Mother Nature”.

It needs modification, I think: “We are all just plagiarists of a real artist, and His Name is God”.

Inspired by others who have taken some amazing HDR or High Dynamic Range Imaging photographs, I’ve decided to jump in and try my hand at this. Below are some photos I shot this morning. Comments and critical analysis are welcome.

Telephone Pole

St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church - Arlington, WA

St. Andrew’s Orthodox Church - Arlington, WA

Bridge on Highway 530 - Arlington, WA

Bridge on Highway 530 - Arlington, WA