WordPress is one of the most amazing blogging platforms/CMS on the market today. I’ve been using WordPress for almost seven years, and I have to say that in all of that time I’ve never looked for a replacement. And honestly, nothing about WordPress is currently pushing me on to greener pastures.
However…
This. Is. Awesome.
This will be the third time (the first and second time) that I’ve written about Doctor Who and the show’s occasional forays out of science fiction and into theology, but this is the first time that I’m really going to criticize the theology presented to the audience. With that said, allons-y and beware of spoilers as we examine the recent episode entitled “The Rings of Akhaten.”
Apple’s WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) takes place in San Francisco every summer, and it might just be one of the biggest tech events of the year. Only 5,000 tickets are made available every year, and they sell out immediately! Last year, it took two hours. This year, it took two minutes!
Clearly, many people want to be at this event at which Apple routinely unveils major software and hardware updates. Plus, since it’s a five-day event, there are also tons of ways to learn more about developing from the very people who created and now maintain the platform you’re developing for. Awesome, right?
My question to you this: Could the Church benefit from something similar?
No, we don’t have a platform that requires such a massive conference/PR event, but what if we tweaked it just a little.
Sometimes, I feel like the Church tries to be “epic,” but it comes out like this:
[via YouTube]
That was Patton Oswalt performing a rather hilarious-if-ridiculous improv bit for a recent episode of Parks and Recreation.
Maybe it’s just me being cynical, but I feel like the Church does stuff like this sometimes. In an attempt to hype something up, to make it the absolute best, we overcomplicate it. We stuff the Gospel with so much “presentation” that we smother the truth of the Gospel and dilute its power.
So there I was, looking for an 8-bit themed image for a ChurchMag post, and I stumbled upon this wonderful website:
What can I say about this site that the name can’t already tell you? It is what it says on the label:
In 1999, the Web was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world by Timothy Berners-Lee, a physicist working at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
Over twenty years later, the first ever website is currently being restored to its Web 1.0 (or maybe Web 0.9 Beta?) glory! Super cool!
I wrote a while back about “cyber space fossils” and the need to clean up the web, but as our society shifts and becomes more and more reliant upon the Internet, maybe it would be good for us to keep some pieces of the past alive. For nostalgia? Yes. But also for educational purposes.
**Update**
One of our astute commenters, Eric J, directed us to this wonderful YouTube video that quickly answers the concerns presented here. We highly recommend that you take a look. Thanks again, Eric J!
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Adobe Creative Cloud isn’t a new topic for ChurchMag. In fact, we’ve actually found a few things that we like about it. However, the thing I liked the best was the ability to choose.
But now that’s gone.
It seems that Adobe has decided that the future is today, and so they have announced that they will no longer be selling their Creative Suite software. Instead, all further development will only be released as a part of Creative Cloud, their online offerings.
I have two basic problems with this:
For over two decades now, I have dreamed of publishing a book. When the Kindle and iPad burst onto the scene, I knew that my dream had changed. Getting published on paper seemed daunting; however, getting published digitally seemed so very simple…except for the actual formatting of the book.
I tried to code and compile my own Kindle book several times. It took so much time to edit, proofread, and then recompile the book to only have to do it again the next time I see an error. Then, for Valentine’s Day, I made a book for my wife using a simple Amazon’s Send to Kindle app. That worked fairly well, but again, I had to go through several drafts before I found the formatting that worked best.
Into this malaise of formatting errors, a hero has emerged, a hero named PressBooks.com!
I used to do a lot of impressions when I was younger, but then I had to have surgery on my vocal chords, resulting in the loss of my powers. Thankfully, a few years post-surgery, I was taken in by a burgeoning movie franchise that boasted a wonderfully imitable character. That franchise was The Lord of the Rings and that character was Gollum, the creature formerly known as Sméagol.
Anyway, I’ve always had a soft spot for that creepy little guy—maybe he’s ripe for a “Science Fiction/Biblical Reality” post?—so when I saw this video, I had to share it.
Prepare yourself for a Gollum cover of Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble.”
Copyright 2013 · ChurchMag
