I follow a lot of people on Twitter.
It seems only fair to me that if I follow you and you follow me back, I’ll continue to follow you. There are some exceptions, however, that I think are fair and ought to be adopted by most people.
I thought I’d share them here; let me know what you think.
Here’s how to get unfollowed on Twitter:
Sometimes people ask me how to set up a simple projection system for their church. The obvious answer seems to be HDMI. That’s what you use to connect your BluRay player to your TV after all, so why not use it? DVI and VGA are just relics of the past, aren’t they?
The answer is more complex than you might think.
A little while ago, I wrote this post on self-publishing. In the comments, Peter asked, “May I ask you what you do in order to market your book and get more sales for your published books?”
I directed him to a presentation I gave that I put on Slideshare called “10 Ways to Grow Your Platform in the Internet Age,” but I thought that since so many of us are trying to get the word out about ways that we help the church, I’d write a longer post about the successful steps I’m taking.
I’ve been shooting video with a DSLR for a little over a year now. It’s great to have the type of control that DSLRs are famous for without the price tag and weight of a ENG camcorder. The form factor isn’t perfect. I wish my T3i could shoot longer shots. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone asked, “Wait, are you shooting still pictures or video?” None of those things are the that big of a deal though.
What is a big deal is audio. I don’t know if every DSLR has such horrible microphone preamps, but Canons certainly do. Everything recorded on the camera, whether through the built-in or an external microphone just sounds bad. The frequency response is okay, but the noise floor is too high. Said another way, there is a fairly loud hiss that’s recorded at the same time as the good audio.
There are three ways to fix this problem. You can either fix it in your audio editing software, record audio on a separate device syncing it during editing, or replace the mic preamps.
My wife bought a netbook. She didn’t buy it yesterday, but a couple of years ago she bought a small, underpowered Windows XP netbook.
Most people (not people who read this blog, but most others) do just a few things with their computers. They surf the net, check email, and use office programs like word processors and spreadsheets.
Back to my wife’s netbook. It’s needed a reinstall of Windows twice. The problem is that it doesn’t have an optical drive, but came with a restore disc. The first time, I got a friend to fix it. The second time I tried everything I could think of before I gave up and decided for a radical new approach.
I’ve been following the controversy around the topic of “4G.” A 4G connection is faster than 3G, but that’s about all we know for sure. When the standard was formulated, it must have lacked specificity. AT&T started calling their HSPA+ service “4G.” Sprint started using wimax and called it 4G. Verizon’s service is based on LTE which seems to be more like what the 4G standards committee had in mind.
Now, AT&T and Sprint are both rolling out LTE, replacing their earlier efforts with this technology. This presents a problem. You can buy a device for a network that’s 4G, but that won’t be updated and will be replaced by LTE.
So, it’s the Christmas season and if you haven’t had a power struggle, you will. No, I’m not talking about a struggle with Aunt Edna over whether you watch her favorite movie. I’m talking about how you power the stuff that you’re given.
Let me start with a disclaimer. I don’t have a degree in electronics. These are just things I’ve noticed from working in tech for years, not what you’d learn in school…necessarily.
Sometimes you need to do things that will void your warranty or that you might not do under ideal circumstances. That’s what this post is about.
Also remember that electricity isn’t something to play with. If a toy requires 9 volts DC, you might be able to safely choose some alternatives. If you’re trying to run a dryer or an electric car from something you hacked together, get your last will & testament in shape first. I know I wouldn’t do that and neither should you. Stay safe.
Now, on to the main event.
I’m a big fan of adding or clarifying meaning in worship with the use of video.
I enjoy abstract videos, but there’s something about a video that has meaning.
Look at the visuals that Lacrae uses in his concerts.
You might think that publishing a book on Kindle is just as easy as taking a MS Word file and uploading it. Well, you’d be half right. You can upload a Word file, but you’d probably regret it.
Amazon supposedly takes “Word (DOC or DOCX), HTML (ZIP, HTM, or HTML), Mobipocket (MOBI), ePub (EPUB), Plain Text (TXT), Rich Text Format (RTF), Adobe PDF (PDF)” files, but most of these will either have formatting problems or won’t take advantage of Kindle’s ability to change font size. I’ve personally used html, mobi, and ePub and have had the best results with mobi.
So that begs the questions, “How do you get your draft into a mobi file?” There’s no “save for Kindle” option in either Word or Pages.
I’ve been asked a number of times if I’ve tried to get my books published with a traditional publisher before I self-published them. When I say, “no,” they seem surprised.
Don’t get me wrong. I might sign with a publisher given the right circumstances, but for my first two books, I thought the niche was too small to even try. They weren’t general books on using technology in the Church, they were books on using very specific technologies in the church. I looked around and didn’t see any books written on such a specific issue with the possible exception of The Blogging Church.
I really didn’t want to try time and again to get a publisher to approve my book, especially since it was such a narrow subject, so I decided that self-publishing would be the best way to go.
Having done it, here are a few things I’ve learned.
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