Archive for December, 2009

City on a Hill – I Heard The Bells / It’s Christmas Time

// December 31st, 2009 // No Comments » // Music

I love all of the selections from the City on a Hill series that I’ve heard so far, but especially this one.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

MuseScore and ScoreRender

// December 31st, 2009 // 6 Comments » // Music

A friend recently told me about open source music composition and notation software called MuseScore. I’m impressed! I’ve used a few closed source (and generally expensive) products and this one provides all of the features that I need with none of the cost. Although some functions could be easier or more readily apparent, I’m learning quickly and the basic stuff is easily understood. Very nice! It can open many formats (including MIDI and MusicXML) and saves to many formats (including MIDI, PDF, various image formats, and even audio files). It comes bundled with a piano SoundFont (meaning that the audio output is far better than the standard MIDI output of the lower-end notation software that I’ve used) and allows the user to supply other SoundFonts. Yes, you can compose music using a WYSIWYG editor, print the sheet music, and provide an audio demo (which can be burned to an audio CD using separate software) from within this free product.

This evening I came across something else that’s pretty neat: ScoreRender, a Wordpress plugin for rendering sheet music fragments into images. Although some special set-up was required (installing a binary on my blog’s web server), the install still took less than 15 minutes. Now that the hard part is done, I can display music fragments within blog posts by typing or pasting special markup (I’ve chosen to only use LilyPond markup) into a blog post, enclosed in special Wordpress tags. Nice!

What I find really cool is that MuseScore will save into LilyPond format. So, anything that I write in MuseScore can be displayed inside a blog post very easily. To try it out, I opened Net Hymnal’s MIDI version of Silent Night in MuseScore, made some adjustments, and saved the result in LilyPond format. Then I opened the resulting file in a text editor and pasted it below. Very easy (at least for a geek like me)! Perhaps an entire carol is a bit much to display in a blog post, but I think it demonstrates the software nicely.

True, I could have saved the sheet music to an image file from within MuseScore and then uploaded it to display in my post, but by using ScoreRender I don’t end up with an entire page of sheet music (including margins) in my post, plus I can make slight adjustments to the sheet music from within Wordpress by editing the LilyPond markup, rather than having to go back to MuseScore, make my changes, save as an image, re-upload, etc.

MuseScore is definitely something I’ll use on a regular basis and I imagine I’ll find uses for ScoreRender as well. Thanks, Ray, for the tip!

Let me know your thoughts on these applications and/or other open source music composition and notation software.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Toy Packaging by Sara Groves

// December 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music

I heard Sara Groves perform this song at a Christmas concert last year and fell in love with it. I’m not a fan of anime, but this was the best video I could find with the song.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

“Will We Have To Leave?”

// December 30th, 2009 // No Comments » // Faith

I came across an interesting post on Internet Monk a few weeks ago and want to share it with you. It has led to interesting discussions among my family members and caused me to question my own reactions to certain behaviors. The post is entitled “Will We Have To Leave?” and relates to cohabitation and other sinful lifestyles and how the church responds to them. Here’s a snippet:

Nothing really works in this situation. People are broken and looking for something to glue themselves together. Religious people are accumulating morality points and abandoning the Gospel. The possibilities of a community of Christians to show what it means to love people as Jesus did and in their own weakness get lost in drawing lines and pretending there is such a [thing] as justification by having never [cohabited].

The possibility of seeing someone repent of sin, come to Christ and move toward true gifts of forgiveness and marriage is apparently less appealing than the Pharisaic joys of letting sinners know they aren’t welcome with us or the God we worship until they clean up their mess.

Read the entire post here.

It’s confession time. I actually have avoided inviting people to church because they were cohabiting and I wasn’t sure how this fact would impact the people’s experience at my church. You can probably imagine the thoughts that were going through my head: “What will people say if they find out? Will they still be welcoming and be a good testimony?” The good news is that when I’m being honest with myself I do think that those in my church would do the right thing. Most of them, at least, would join me in welcoming any guest, regardless of the areas of sin in his or her life. That doesn’t mean that my church would be accepting of the behavior, but sensitive to the fact that while the behavior shouldn’t be approved of, the person should feel welcome. The behavior should change if/when the person forms a relationship with Christ. If, at that point, the behavior continues, then we have a problem that needs to be dealt with.

Time for self-examination: how do I really feel about this? Would I participate in gossip about this individual? If it weren’t my friend, would I feel comfortable with the situation? Would I be a good testimony? I would like to think so. I pray that I wouldn’t gossip, that I would feel comfortable enough to make the visitor comfortable, and that I would be a good testimony. I also pray that I wouldn’t be so accepting that I inadvertently show acceptance for the behavior.

How about you?

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The Christmas Can-Can by Straight No Chaser

// December 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music

You may recall that I love The Twelve Days of Christmas by Straight No Chaser. Well, here’s a new song by the a capella group. Enjoy!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Santa Fe Fajitas

// December 29th, 2009 // No Comments » // Health and Fitness

My diet died at some point over the past few weeks. Thanksgiving went well, but sometime after that things fell apart. I’m not giving up, though – I’m jumping back on the horse…

I took a look at what’s new on the Full Plate Diet web site and they’ve added a lot. I especially like the recipes! Check this one out: Santa Fe Fajitas. They look delicious and provide 15.2g of fiber per serving. I’ll definitely be trying them at some point in the near future. If you try or have tried them, let me know how you like(d) them!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Mary’s Boy Child / Oh My Lord

// December 28th, 2009 // No Comments » // Music

Love this song!

Thus begins my week of music. Five days, five songs. Four days of Christmas music, then a non-Christmas piece to start out the new year. Let me know what you think!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

PubSubHubbub

// December 28th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // Technology, Web Development

For the past few months, my blog has been participating in something called PubSubHubbub. Other than “something with a cool name,” what is PubHubSubbub? It is “a simple, open, server-to-server publish/subscribe protocol as an extension to Atom and RSS.” Using the protocol, servers are able to get near-instant notification of feed updates (feeds are used by blogs and other sites to notify subscribers of new content). Using traditional technology, feed consumers (such as feed readers) periodically poll servers (such as a blog’s web server) for feed updates. This process works, but it wastes bandwidth and other resources since checking is done whether or not updates are available, while also causing delayed notification since polling occurs infrequently. PubSubHubbub fixes this by allowing feed consumers to receive near-instant notification of feed updates. It turns the traditionally-pull-based feed technology into a push technology, so that bandwidth and other resources are only used when actual updates are available and subscribers receive updates almost immediately. PubSubHubbub is a distributed system that is free and decentralized, meaning that no company is at the center of controlling it and anyone can run a “hub,” the component that sits between publishers (such as servers running blogs) and subscribers (such as Google Reader). As you can see in the demo below, this technology enables services to provide a greater level of real-time notification.

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

A new friend, an old friend, and two new blogs

// December 27th, 2009 // No Comments » // Random

There is little point in this blog post except to tell you about a couple of friends, one old and one new, who have started blogging recently. One, Joanna Hoyt, is a fairly politically liberal quaker with whom I grew up. Just today she started her blog, Living as if the Truth was true. The other is a fellow UMA Computer Information Systems student who is quite politically conservative (her religious views are currently unknown to me). She started her blog, The Maine Conservatively Liberal Democratic Republican, in November. Although we don’t always agree (probably often do not), I look forward to reading what they have to say and encourage you to check them out!

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Kindle book: Chicagoman

// December 20th, 2009 // No Comments » // Portfolio

Chicagoman cover
Chicagoman title page

I created the Kindle edition of this book by long-time client Rejoice Marriage Ministries. By the way, you can now read Kindle editions without a Kindle! Just download Kindle for PC.

see the book on Amazon.com

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”