Year / 2009

by Greg

Six Years of Blogging

Hello faithful (and unfaithful) blog readers! Believe it or not, it has been six years today since I began this conglomeration and elaboration of all the stuff that goes on inside my head! As we begin year number seven, there may be some changes to the appearance of the site, but as far as I can tell, you can expect to see a continuing stream of thoughts, links, opinions, fun stories, and even questions to you the reader all posted here at GregsHead.net.

Thanks for reading along, and commenting along the way. Always fun to interact.

Today might be a good day to scour the archives for some of your favorite posts and leave a link in the comments. I’ll start off with a few here…

The Extras
My Computer Had a Heart Attack
Living in Perfect Harmony
Alex’s Fish Story
Stopped on a Dime
Don’t Go to Church?
God Saved Our Bacon

Enjoy!

(Don’t forget, it’s fun to click the tabs across the top of the content, too… those help categorize the posts and make for slightly less random and wandering thoughts from Greg’s head…) 🙂

by Greg

Deposit @ Home: Electronic banking the way it should be?

While listening to an episode of MacBreak Weekly, one of their frequent tangents took them to a service offered by a bank that I hadn’t ever heard of: deposit from home.

As a self-employed web design guy, I often get payments in the form of checks. The craziest thing in the world to me is that in this electronic age, I have to wait up to four or five days after I deposit those checks to received the funds for them. Really? That’s the best you can do?

Clients also pay me via PayPal, which is cool because the funds are instantly available via PayPal’s debit card option. I appreciate that, but there are limitations and fees that make some instant access to my money, well, bothersome. Why can’t I just have my money?

Well this bank, USAA, offers a service called Deposit@Home that allows you to scan checks, submit them with your deposit via the website, and… here’s the kicker… the funds are available to you instantly! Really! Isn’t that how it should be?

Needless to say, I am intrigued. I will be looking into this bank’s services for that feature alone. Fantastic.

by Greg

A World Without Skype?

SkypeIn other news… the amazing little internet telephony app Skype could be in serious trouble. With a court date set for June 2010 according to this article, there is a good possibility that there may be no Skype after that date.

There appear to be questions as to who owns what. Hopefully they can be resolved in the courts or before the two parties get there. I like Skype…

by Greg

Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6) : Available August 28th!

Apple announced yesterday that their latest version of Mac OS X will be available for purchase this Friday, August 28th! The OS dubbed “Snow Leopard” will mostly streamline the current OS, Leopard, even down to the start up and shutdown time. Also, it takes up much less space on your hard drive. The software will only work on Macs that have Intel processors (so, sadly, not on the computer that is posting this information…). Up until Mac OS 10.6, every release of Mac OS X has had the architecture for both PowerPC and Intel processors. Snow Leopard will be the first release exclusively for Intel-based Macs.

The coolest and craziest part of this release is that along with the standard, stand-alone $129 price, Apple is also allowing current Leopard users to upgrade for only $29! A great deal that should greatly improve the performance of our Intel Macs.

So, visit your local Apple store on Friday and get your own copy! (Or, you can order via the Apple store online!)

by Greg

The American Form of Governement [Video]

An interesting overview of various forms of government throughout history, focusing on what our nation’s founders created and what we have today.

A woman asked Benjamin Franklin what the writers of the constitution had given them to which he responded, “A republic, Ma’am, if you can keep it.” Current events may suggest that we are losing (or perhaps have already lost?) that form of government. Watch the video and see what you think.

Link credit goes to my dad, who is often passing along such videos and other web links. 🙂

by Greg

The Church Is The Fruit, Not The Cause

I’m catching up on listening to some old podcasts while I work today, and just thought I’d take note of (and share here) something that was “just” said on The God Journey podcast.

“You get the idea that this didn’t begin with management. It began with life. And that life expanded among a group of people. And that’s how I see it now. I think what the church is is the fruit of something, not the cause of something.”

That was from the show titled, “The Wonder of Real Community” posted on Aug 7th. The discussion centers around life together as the church and how many things can get in the way of open, honest relationships with other people living life with Jesus. Good stuff as always.

I think the part that stood out to me was how quickly we took something that came out of real relationship with the real God (in Jesus) and have attempted to build it, manage it, control it, reproduce it, etc. The problem lies not only in the verbs previously used, but in the word “it”. I’ve said before, as soon as whatever we are part of becomes an “it” then “it” starts to become the focus rather than the life that is found in Jesus, and shared with his church.

I’ve been encouraged by reading through the stuff I wrote a few years ago now in my There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church book, and the guys who do The God Journey podcast have also been an encouragement along the way. Check out either of those links, I think you’ll enjoy them.

by Greg

The Itch

It’s happening again. I never really know why. It just happens.

It’s time to change up my websites.

All three of my main websites. For some reason I have new ideas for this blog (cool ones, actually!) and my web design site, and our music site. All three will actually be a bit simpler (maybe not this one…) and cleaner, and more web-standards-compliant (you may not care about that part much…) and utilize some cool web technologies.

And it’s just time for a new look.

Bloggiversary number 6 is coming up next week… and I’ve had this look for a few years now as well… time to make a change.

I’ve been dabbling with WordPress for some clients… anyone want to weigh on on whether I stick with Blogger, or delve into the WordPress universe? I could go either way… as long as the export/import of my six years of posts isn’t too painful. (I don’t imagine it would be.)

So… stay tuned. Changes to come!

by Greg

Calling All Product Marketers and Salespeoples

After re-reading another composition (titled, “Substitutes“) that was compiled into the book There’s The Steeple… Here’s The Church that I published in 2006, I am again pondering the ways in which we can get the various products sitting in our storage areas into the hands of people who would be inspired by, be made to think by and just enjoy them.

The main way people “discovered” our creative works before was when we were touring the country and performing our music (and even speaking on occasion) at various events. This was certainly the best way. But with the addition of a child or two (or six) we have taken a major break from that and such venues are no longer an option.

We have websites. (Here and here, primarily.) We have sold our music via iTunes. That’s cool. But sitting here in my attic office are boxes and boxes of CDs, tapes (yep! we have tapes!!) and books.

So how do we get those out of storage and into grateful hands, hearts, and minds? Any ideas?

I’d be willing to listen to any ideas as I really do think people will still enjoy any and all of our products. We have 5 different albums of our original music (well, one is a Christmas CD with mostly original arrangements of familiar songs) and I have three books of collections of writings that are mostly short anecdotal writings on various life topics that will make you smile, and often make you think.

If you are a marketing or sales wizard, please drop me a line and let me know what you think might work. You can leave a comment here at this post, too. Any and all ideas are welcome 🙂

If you’re interested in getting your own copy, click the links above, or you can search for our stuff at Amazon.com as well… usually better to just buy from us at basicmm.com or, for just the books, here at gregshead.net/bookstore.

Thanks in advance for your help!

by Greg

Tivo for your Radio: radioSHARK by Griffin

Today I wanted to bring you another product recommendation. I don’t do that very often, so hopefully that gives a little more weight to my recommendations.

For a few years we have enjoyed the benefits of a Tivo DVR for recording, pausing, rewinding and really all of our television consumption. It’s fantastic. Really. Can’t recommend it enough. (They could use a few tweaks to their software, but … overall, fantastic.) For a few more years than that, we’ve been enjoying the same service (but, for free!) with our radio consumption.

We saw the radioSHARK from Griffin Technologies at an Apple store many years ago (I’m pretty sure that’s where we discovered it) and we were intrigued because we like to listen to local radio shows (especially during football season!) but were never near a radio (or able to listen) when the shows were on. radioSHARK lets you schedule recordings, pause live radio, rewind/fast-forward recorded content… it’s fantastic. Works really well. There are tons of features. Have a look at the page at the Griffin Technologies website.

I’ve just really enjoyed how easy it is to use (it even automatically exports the recordings to a playlist in my iTunes library!) and thought perhaps some of you might enjoy it as well. It’s available through Amazon (see widget to the right), or directly from Griffin … or probably lots of other places.

If you like radio … I’m guessing you, like me, will really like the radioSHARK. Check it out.