There are several reasons for this experiment. The biggest factor is probably the budget. We were evaluating our spending and trying to make some changes because of the increased expenditure of seminary. Turns out we're giving over $100/month to Mediacom. Another factor is that we watch entirely too much television. It's the easy evening activity - we'll watch reruns, bad reality tv (Sarah is obsessed with anything in the Idol franchise), and other pointless content. My guess is that we'll read a lot more without the ability to flip through channels. The DVR has helped focus our TV viewing, but even when there's nothing we really want to watch recorded we'll still watch something. The most interesting factor for me though is the social experiment of trying to stay up-to-date with culturally significant programming without cable/satellite. 

I think we can get everything we would want to watch from iTunes, Hulu, network sites with streaming video, Netflix, and video podcasts. Netflix is the only traditional media we'll be receiving, but I imagine that will change when their watch it now feature is available on the Xbox 360. Our initial plan is to watch content legally without purchasing it whenever possible. When that doesn't work we'll buy content from iTunes.

Our setup:

• HD LCD TV
• AppleTV
• XBOX 360
• DVD player
• PC to be rebuilt into some type of media center
• 6mb DSL

I'm pretty confident that this setup will work. We won't have the PC reconfigured immediately, so there will be a period of hooking one of our laptops up to the TV or just viewing on the laptop. There's a possibility I'll hack the AppleTV so that we can use it as much as possible.

The only thing I'm aware of not being available in any of these formats that I watch regularly is Good Eats from Food Network. I'm wondering what it would take to get Netflix to add the DVDs to their library. As far as we know most of the call-in shows (Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, America's Best Dance Crew, etc) aren't available in any type of digital format. It doesn't matter a lot to me, but Sarah will miss this programming.

Has anybody else made this sort shift?  Anyone have suggestions for content sources? AppleTV hacking tips?

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog is what happens when a bunch of talented people who can't work get together to do something to fill the time (and make a point about the last year's writers' strike). During the the strke Joss Whedon teamed up with a group of people and have put together what I'm guessing is a great 44 minutes of entertainment. I guess because I've only seen the first act (which went live today). Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog features Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion, and Felicia Day.

It's also a musical! Joss Whedon generally gets geek points but he's also very musically talented. One of my favorite episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the musical episode. Having Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day (also a trained singer) doesn't hurt.

Dr. Horrible is so popular that the web site has been down most of the day. I was lucky enough to watch it before beginning a day of writing. I kept going back to the site in hopes of watching it again. There is a scalability issue here but hopefully it will be solved soon. Whedon obviously has relationships/connections that let him pull together the cast/crew for this piece. There is some budget behind it, but I'm guessing the budget is still substantially below that of a standard 44 minute television episode.

So Dr. Horrible is fun, looks great, is full of talent (both on screen and off), why isn't all television this way? I really wonder if the future of entertainment might be this type of production. Each act will be available only until Sunday, released a day apart on Hulu and in iTunes. Felicia Day has been writing and starring in The Guild for the past year and it shows the other end of the web entertainment spectrum. The Guild is entirely fan supported and is distributed on YouTube. I wonder how long it will be before I can get rid of cable. The time is coming soon when services like Hulu, YouTube, Netflix, etc. will eliminate my need for cable/satelite/broadcast television.

A few cycles back the siblings decided they'd trade off coordinating the family reunion in birth order (it's going to be a long time before Sarah's mom is in charge). This year we're headed to Smith Mountain Lake in Virginia. From everything I've read it will be a nice location, although I fear it may be the Branson of Virginia. I'm looking forward to getting some open water swimming practice before the triathlon in a few weeks. I'm also looking forward to my first four day break from work/school related activities since last October.

I am taking several books with me to help pass the time. I'm planning a sermon series for the fall based on Leonard Sweet's 11 (going to read it again). I'm also taking Lois Kelly's Beyond Buzz. I'm also taking The Shack and a couple of magazines. I've got rips of Labyrinth and Across the Universe to keep me entertained on the plane.

The Flip cam is packed and I'm hoping to get some video that's actually editable. We'll see what happens. Regular updates on Twitter.

You can't really see it in the first picture, but the second shows the lake by our upper patio nicely. There's also a great little waterfall pouring into the river that runs from the side of our house to the street. The standing water is about 4" deep much to the dog's dismay. 

So here are some leadership lessons I was reminded of last night:

1. Be Specific - I made the mistake of asking people to help coordinate the event without asking them to do specific jobs. When I asked people to help I also let them know when we would be starting setup before the event. I neglected to tell people when they needed to arrive. If people don't know when you need them to be someplace they'll get there when it's convenient rather than when  you need them. 
2. Confirm Commitments - I had several people tell me they would help us when we initially asked, but I didn't follow up on the day of the event. That leads to a lot of unneeded stress. I think most everything would have been resolved if on Monday or Tuesday I'd asked people to confirm they would be at the event to help and if I'd have repeated their confirmation, "We'll see you at 4 tomorrow night."
3. Plan Redundancy - Realistically, sometimes people don't show up to serve. Sometimes there are legitimate reasons for not being there, sometimes people forget, sometimes you get a lame excuse. In any situation though the work needs to get done. My redundancy plan last night consisted of frantic phone calls to get people to fill in for various slots. In the future I'm going to plan to have a couple of people scheduled to fill in when an unexpected need arises either because of an unplanned circumstance or additional people requirements.
4. Overcommunicate - Vision leaks. It has to be repeated. This is probably one of my biggest failures recently. I make the assumption that because I know the vision and I'm passionate about it that everybody else is as sold out for what we're doing as I am. Honestly the leadership team is behind the vision. Where I need to improve is to make sure that I effectively communicate how the vision relates to every ministry opportunity.

All things considered last night went off well. I didn't get to hang out and chat with folks as much as I would have liked because I was paying attention to last minute details. Thankfully Sarah, the Soles, and a couple of other people came through at the last minute to take care of things I wasn't able to do. I'm especially thankful that Sarah puts up with so much of this sort of stuff from me.

This week however, neither of us is a big fan. We wanted to use some design elements that can be easily handled by a Photoshop brush. The problem is that the workflow for using those brushes in Fireworks is horrible. We would LOVE to use Photoshop .abr brushes in Fireworks, other apps too.

Here's the current workflow:

1. Start a design for a web page in Fireworks
2. Realize your banner would be better if you used a couple of Photoshop brushes
3. Discover that FW doesn't support add-in brushes
4. Open PS, design a banner graphic in Photoshop using brushes
5. Import the banner into Fireworks
6. Update the page layout for the new banner
   
7. Realize the banner needs an update
8. Go back to PS, update the graphic
   
9. Reimport into FW - basically starting over with the banner in FW
10. Repeat as needed
11. Slice up your design to convert to HTML
12. Go back and make tweaks based on feedback - leaping back to step 8

Here's what I'd like (either of these would work). Easy solution might be for editing capability in a similar fashion to what Illustrator will allow for a linked/embedded image. Ideal solution would be for .ABR brushes to be supported in as many Adobe apps as possible. Who wouldn't love to have PS brushes available in Flash, Fireworks, Illustrator, and maybe even After Effects in addition to Photoshohp?

This ideal solution has prompted this graphic and shirt designs.

I knew it was going to be cheesy - heck we wanted it to be cheesy. After about five minutes the cheese quota was pretty well covered. The only part of the movie that really felt like an Indiana Jones movie was the classroom scene at the start of the movie. It had the right look, the right type of editing, the right dialogue. The rest of the movie was just off base.

I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't suffered through it yet, but the entire premise is a but too much for my tastes. I'm a SciFi fan, I'm an action/adventure fan, I'm a historical thriller fan, but they can't all go into one movie. It felt as if the plot was composed of a series of brainstorming sessions thrown together. "I wonder if..." and nothing got left out of the plot.

My friend Lisa joked about it sucking until they blew the world up at the end. That probably would have been an improvement. 

A group of us went out last night to Japantown in San Jose.  It is one of only three such communities left in the US (there were more than 40 before the internment of Japanese during WWII). At a tip from Rob Brooks-Bilson we went to Kubota for dinner. 

Several of us ordered the chef special sushi, which is essentially all you know before it shows up. This is a picture of my plate, although I'd already eaten a couple of pieces. One measure of good sushi is whether or not you need to use soy sauce and/or wasabi. I'd poured some soy sauce into the little bowl, but after lightly dipping the first piece realized it wasn't at all needed. Each piece had a different amount of wasabi that provided varying levels of heat to each piece. The toro and the hokkigai were easily the best two pieces. We finished the dinner with mochi ice cream, always a treat.

We took the light rail to Japantown but by the time we left it had finally cooled down enough to walk back. This evening, the group of people and the sushi, was one of the highlights of the week. 

We had some of the best worship at Schweitzer we've ever done on Easter weekend. There was an outstanding drama, a huge tomb built for people to walk through, and great music. Should have posted pictures and some video from the flip cam, but I never got around to it.

After Easter I got to go with a group of 15 students from our college ministry to Port Arthur, TX. During that week the group leveled and refloored a house and reframed the back of a house with a new door and a covered back porch. It was a great week.

Last weekend we were given the check from the college ministry grant we were awarded. We also had our second worship on the Missouri State campus. We're opening the Green Room as a second site ministry in the fall - worship every Sunday night at 9pm directed at college students and young adults. Our goal as a college ministry is to plant an arm of the church that genuinely builds relationships with students on their turf. It's culturally relevant (secular music, movies, tv, etc), media intensive, there are lights that change colors (ooooh), and so far it's been a lot of fun.

Sunday night I set up a camera in the back of the room to capture the action. I like the way this song came out - there are a few glitches, but overall a great experience. We're doing monthly services this spring on campus, hopefully outdoor services over the summer, then every weekend starting August 24. Here's a video from last Sunday:

We started the college ministry here last fall as part of an expanded view of our age-specific ministry strategies. It's been pretty low key up until this spring. We've been really blesssed by the Missouri Conference in supporting this new ministry. As a conference they've made the shift to ministries that local congregations lead from the traditional Wesley model. As part of this we've been dreaming about what a new ministry from Schweitzer would look like. Last fall we were awarded a one-time grant from the conference to help us expand the ministry (see my previous college sound gear post). This winter we applied for another grant to really expand what we're doing.

I'm really excited to say that we received the second grant we requested. It's going to fund this ministry dramatically, essentially matching the investment Schweitzer is putting into my role as a pastor. All of our pastors wear several hats. The two core areas of emphasis for me will be college ministry and creative arts leadership. The title is a bit clunky, pastor of creative arts and college ministry, anybody got better suggestions? It's not officially my title until July 1, so there's some room to play.

The approach we're taking is to plant a second site on the Missouri State campus.  Right now our college worship is a monthly event. Starting in August we'll be opening a new campus at MSU with a weekly Sunday night worship service. Our worship offerings will be Saturday night (5:30pm), Sunday morning (8:30, 9:45, & 11am), and Sunday night @MSU (9pm). Obviously the focus of the site will be college students, but we've got a great group of older folks that are going to be working with us on the worship and other ministries. We've been using the Big Idea worship planning model for about a year now which will let us coordinate the messages I preach at MSU with the weekend on our main campus. Obviously there will be some differences because of the group, but generally we're going to try to keep on the same message.

My favorite part of this approach is that rather than being a traditional campus ministry we're part of a church. Our goal is to offer campus ministry like options with all the depth, opportunity, and community that happens within a local congregation. We're going to be connecting students to service opportunities, leadership development, small groups, discipleship, etc. We really believe that the local church can dramatically impact student's lives.

I'm having a blast planning and working with students for the future of college ministry. The shift to being a multisite church is really challenging. It's taking a lot of work, training, and prayer. I'd really like to talk with some folks doing portable multisite ministry. It's going to be a fun ride and I can't wait to see what God does.

Our biggest hurdle was the time it took from getting all of the gear in the room to being setup and ready to run worship. We're going to have to do some substantial training/practice on the tech/band setup. We did okay - we were ready to do worship about two hours after we met at Schweitzer. I'd really like to get that under 90 minutes.  

We're going to do the worship on campus monthly for the rest of this semester to get us ready for the fall.

Justin & Gear

Unboxing


Basic Setup


M400 Boxes

Last fall we received a grant to help us fund buying a portable audio setup for our college ministry. We're going to be moving our college worship to the Missouri State campus rather than doing it here at Schweitzer.

As far as our research (and a lot of students) have told us we'll be doing the only full-band worship within walking distance of MSU. I'm incredibly excited about the possibilities.

We finally got around to ordering the equipment and it showed up yesterday. I figured it would be fairly big, but I didn't expect what we received. For some perspective on the size I made my friend Justin stand next to the wrapped pallet. It really isn't all that much stuff, but the packing to ship it is ridiculous. 

Several people have been giving me advice about the system so I thought I'd post a basic list of what ended up in our gym yesterday.

• 2 RCF Mains - 12" drivers, 350w
• 2 RCF Subs - 15" drivers, 800w
• 4 Mackie SRM 150s (for monitors)
• 2 ART headphone amps for wired in-ear
• 4 Shure SM58 mics
• 2 Shure SM57 mics
• 2 Shure ULX wireless mics (one Beta 87 and one Countryman headset)
• Bags, cases, and a pile of cables 

I'd had a couple of people tell me that they really liked the Kaltman Cable Coiler, so I decided to give it a try as well. Quality cables are expensive, and if this can make sure they always get coiled properly and can do it quickly it will be an absolute win. 

You'll notice that what's lacking in this setup is any type of a mix console. I'm really torn about that purchase. We decided that we wanted to go digital for a lot of reasons, but that's a different post. I've got experience (as do a lot of people) with Yamaha consoles and been pleased with them. While I was talking to our rep at Full Compass (we love them by the way) he suggested looking at the Roland M-400 system. 

The M-400 is a new console from Roland which raises some issues with me. It's built around the digital snake (40 channels over cat5) that Roland has had out for  awhile and I know many people who have been using it and are happy. We've got a demo unit for the next week so we can evaluate it before making the purchase. Initial impressions are good. We're doing a more thorough review with a full band this weekend so I'll write more later.

More big announcements related to the college ministry next week. 

We had a great Ash Wednesday service last night. We had a short acoustic worship set with Kathy and Stephanie. It was also our first attempt at any type of architectural projection. I love the stuff Cameron Ware is doing at Irving Bible Church and been planning something of our own. Ash Wednesday is a good service to do this type of experiment - it's not Sunday and the crowd is generally pretty flexible. We set up an Optoma EP1691 projector at the back of the sanctuary about 10 feet off the ground pointed at the front wall. We used imagery from Awake Images, a large celtic cross. The throw from the projector to the wall is about 85 feet at the farthest point. I love that this is possible with a $1,000 projector and a laptop. We're going to do a similar set up for Good Friday. I'm hoping that we'll be able to incorporate a more permanent setup to establish this type of atmosphere more often. in the not to distant future.

NB: Something went arwy with the publishing of this, it's actually from last Thursday.