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God is in Control
Prayer works. When I am felling angry at someone or about something I can give it to God and he will take my anger from me.
Sometimes I harbor bad feelings. Whether or not the anger is justified I feel like I have the right to feel this way. Often, I do not want to be relieved of this feeling because it is my way of showing that I am hurt. But, I know this will keep me from being as close to The Lord as possible and He convicts me of this through my conscious.
When I get down on my knees and honestly pray for my God to take these feelings from me and heal me of my contempt, anger, bitterness or what other ill feelings I may have, usually by the time I arise, He has done just that!
God is good. He listens to and answers our prayers according to His will. Praise God!
| Comments (2)Holy Hip-Hop
Lately I've been experiencing an increasingly growing appreciation for contemporary Christian music. For the most part it's not for the music I hear on the Christian radio stations or at church, but rather for hip-hop.
I'm the last person that I would have ever thought would like this genre but at this point in my life where many worship songs are not speaking to me, I find that the rap and hip-hop groups preach the gospel in a very full and un-watered down way.
There are some very talented artists out there in the Christian community right now. All genres seem to be becoming more refined and professional sounding. The sad truth is that many are also selling out to become popular in the crossover community. I have found many bands on Christian labels that have watered-down lyrics. With many of them, if you weren't informed beforehand you wouldn't even know they were Christian. This doesn't seem to be the case with Christian Hip-Hop.
With my new iPod and ever increasing mp3 collection on my computer I've been focusing lately on building an inspirational music library. Where my ears seem to be falling mostly are on the classics and hymns with their heart felt lyrics and moving music and also on hip-hop with the deep lyrics preaching the full gospel. Don't get me wrong, I still like a lot of stuff in between -- just not as high of a percentage in the other genres.
iPod Nano
Christmas has come early. My wife was lucky enough to be given a new iPod Nano from her employer. I was lucky enough to be the one it was re-gifted to. It is the black 4GB model and is very sleek and stylish. Since opening the box last night I have had my first experiences with iTunes. I now wish that I had tried it before. As with all things that Apple does, it also is very sleek in design.
The only drawback I have found with using iTunes is that to import my existing WMA format music I first have to convert it to Apple's AAC format. This means either keeping a copy of the song in each format on my computer or deleting the WMA files. I chose to cancel the import for now. I may go back and convert the WMAs that I have into MP3s. This way I can import them into iTunes and still keep them in a format that provides the most portability.
What I like most about iTunes are the Podcasts. A Podcast is simply a topical recording, like a radio broadcast without the broadcast. I have subscribed to several technology and Christian sermon Podcasts. They are downloaded very quickly to the iPod during docking whenever a new episode is released.
There are thousands of Podcasts that can be subscribed to on just about every topic imaginable. This is a very practical way to stay informed. For the Christian on the go there are many teachings available. Even Calvary Chapel, the church I attend, has many fellowships providing weekly Podcasts. Just be careful that the teachings you are listening to are doctrinally sound. By knowing the Word you'll be able to know when a teaching is true.
The iPod Nano is very slim. It is only 3.5" tall x 1.5" wide and only .25" deep. It can hold up to 1000 songs, less if you store other information with them. The iPod also can store digital photos, Outlook Contacts, and calendar entries. All of which are automatically synced when the unit is docked with your computer.
Playback quality is excellent. Songs sound crisp and full. It is amazing how much sound can come out of such a small unit. The battery life is claimed to be at about 14 hours per charge. I have yet to verify this.
Over all the Nano is a very fun gadget. I would recommend it to any Audiophile. The only problem I'll have with mine is finding a good time to listen to it. Maybe I'll listen while I'm working out or bike riding. Other than that, maybe I'll plug in some powered speakers to it so I can listen at work.
Is it worth $250? That depends on how much you like music and Podcasts. If I had the cash I would have probably bought an Asus Pocket PC instead. But since it was a gift -- it was worth it!
Can you teleport a soul?
Quantum Mechanics has always fascinated me -- that is, what little of it my mind can comprehend. I was recently looking through Wikipedia on various Quantum Mechanic topics and came across an entry for Quantum Teleportation. It is an interesting theory about being able to teleport the state of particles into other particles at another location.
In essence, you would then have an exact copy of something in another location. Not the original, but an exact, atom for atom, replica. I then wondered about teleporting a person this way, purely hypothetical of course.
If you could take every particle that makes up your body and teleport their states into 'blank' particles in another location you would have your complete physical body, brain, synapses' and all, in that new location. Would your soul follow it?
I don't think so. I believe that our soul is what separates us from all other species.
And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
Our soul is what makes us self-aware. It's what drives us to do the things that make us human -- because we know we exist. And it is our soul that is outside of our body -- connected somehow in a divinely miraculous way!
By changing the state of the physical building blocks of a person in another location you would make no connection to the essence of what makes that them human. Would it work with life that does not have a soul? Could you teleport your dog this way? Maybe. What do you thing?
It's here
The new website is finally up and running. I spent the last half of this year changing all of my code to be CSS compatible. This proved to be a much more time-consuming task than I had originally thought.
First I had to manually go through every page and strip out the tons of garbage that Microsoft Front Page had decided to add in. It's unbelievable when you see what a mess Front Page can make out of the HTML code. I have now switched over to Macromedia Dream weaver and have started hand-coding everything. Having control of the code is nice.
After the garbage was stripped out, I then went about placing all of the content in div and span containers and then applying the CSS styles to them. Now the code is efficient, easy to read and most important of all, Web Standard Compliant. All pages will pass CSS and XHTML validation.
The next step was getting Moveable Type installed and integrated into the website. This was most difficult, but after a week I am now ready to start using it. This is my first official post!