Jenn and I started attending a new church on April 6th 2008.  Since then I have been busy working on their website.  In the meantime there is a splash page with basic who, what, where and when info at redeemerchurchonline.com.  You can also find them by clicking the link in the side bar on the right side of this page. - Sean

I have spent a lot of time thinking about television and it's impact on society. It is no secret that I feel Americans waste too much time watching inane television shows instead of producing something worth while, but I have never been able to crystallize my thoughts on the subject. Enter Clay Shirky. In a post titled Gin, Television, and Social Surplus Clay delves into a comparison between our cultures addiction to TV and England's addiction to Gin at the turn of the century.

I was recently reminded of some reading I did in college, way back in the last century, by a British historian arguing that the critical technology, for the early phase of the industrial revolution, was gin. The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

Today's society is at the tail end of another revolution, the free time revolution.

Starting with the Second World War a whole series of things happened--rising GDP per capita, rising educational attainment, rising life expectancy and, critically, a rising number of people who were working five-day work weeks. For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time. And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV.

Now that we are waking up from our television bender we are finding ways to use our free time that don't include watching TV.

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

I find this line of thought refreshing. For years I have thought myself weird for disliking television. I would expound for hours to my friends and family on TV's addictive nature, it's time wasting ability, and it's overall mind destroying lineup of shows, only to have them nod numbly then happily return to their addiction once my rant was over. (I should note there are a few people who agree with my thought process and have actively sought to reduce or eliminate TV from their lives, but most of them don't.) After reading Clay's post I see that I am not weird. Instead I am one of the next generation who don't see TV as cool or even entertaining. They see it as broken. Why? Because TV is about consumption only, whether it be thoughts, ideas or products. Whereas the other great medium of communication, the Internet, is about consuming, producing and sharing those same thoughts, ideas and products.

I was having dinner with a group of friends about a month ago, and one of them was talking about sitting with his four-year-old daughter watching a DVD. And in the middle of the movie, apropos nothing, she jumps up off the couch and runs around behind the screen. That seems like a cute moment. Maybe she's going back there to see if Dora is really back there or whatever. But that wasn't what she was doing. She started rooting around in the cables. And her dad said, "What you doing?" And she stuck her head out from behind the screen and said, "Looking for the mouse." Here's something four-year-olds know: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken. Here's something four-year-olds know: Media that's targeted at you but doesn't include you may not be worth sitting still for. Those are things that make me believe that this is a one-way change. Because four year olds, the people who are soaking most deeply in the current environment, who won't have to go through the trauma that I have to go through of trying to unlearn a childhood spent watching Gilligan's Island, they just assume that media includes consuming, producing and sharing.

If this is true, if our culture is shifting from a consumer mentality to a sharing and producing mentality, then I am no weirdo, I am an innovator. I like the sound of that, innovator. I can proudly say I am innovator instead of some weirdo who doesn't watch TV. ;-) Are you ready to be an innovator and forego some television time to produce and share your creations? - Sean

I have added WP-Cache to the list of plugin's installed on SeanDareOnline.com.  This new cache plugin allows regular visitors to load pages quicker.  This is especially nice for those of you with slower Internet connections. Your welcome.  ;-) - Sean

Our Church owns a new MacBook Pro for presenting song lyrics and video's during the service. As I am volunteering in this area I got to take the Mac home for a week to familiarize myself with the controls. After 10+ years as a Windoze...er...Windows user I decided to list the first three impressions I had of the Mac. Wouldn't you know it all three are positive impressions. ;-)

Speed

I clicked on the Apple icon in the menu bar and chose "Shut Down" from the drop down list. A second later the ubiquitous "Do you really want to shut down?" window popped up in the middle of the desktop. I click "Yes" and start counting. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three, one thousand four...the screen goes blank. I lift the MacBook to my ear. I don't hear anything. I move the mouse, nothing. I look for the light in the Apple logo on the cover, nothing. It is off. Really. OFF! Four seconds! My Dell, which is comparably equipped, except it is running XP Pro, takes something like 30 seconds to shut down! WOW! I turn it back on, expecting it to take at least a minute. 21 seconds later the Mac has booted and I am opening Safari. TWENTY ONE SECONDS! My Dell takes two minutes! WOW again! I can't speak for the other bench marks, as I don't own any benchmarking software, but the start up and shut down sequences are incredibly quick. If you are anything like me you get frustrated every time you turn Windows on or off, which you have to do frequently, because of the boot up and shut down times. You also know that you have to wait for a Windows machine to shut all the way down before you leave it because sometimes Windows freezes during shut down. I don't like waiting around for a computer to finish shutting down, and with the Mac I don't have to.

Installing Programs

Even though I didn't install any programs to the MacBook itself, remember it isn't mine, I did install some Mac versions of my favorite portable apps to my USB drive. In particular I added Portable versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, Keypass and Gimp (I later removed Gimp to free up some space) to my USB drive. The process was so simple that I didn't think I had actually installed anything at first. Here is how you install a portable app in the Mac world. 1. You download the program. 2. You copy the program to a specific folder on the USB Drive that the Mac thinks is a disk image (easy to set up), 3. Well...you're done. That's it. You don't have to run an installer, you don't have to choose a directory for the files out of a archaic list in the installer program, you don't have to worry it was installed to the right place. Once you copy the files you are done. Finished. Kaput! :-D Cool!

Backlighting

Unfortunately this feature isn't available on all the Macs, only the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. When the ambient light drops a sensor on the Mac not only adjusts your screen brightness automatically, saving battery life, it also turns on the keyboard backlight! If you have ever used a laptop, or any computer for that matter, in a dark room you know how hard it is to see the keyboard. With the Mac you don't have to worry, the keyboard lights up from underneath. The best part about the way Mac does this, compared to say Dell's keyboard illumination, is how the backlighting eliminates shadows from your hands when you position them to type. I can't wait to get my own Mac. How about you? Will you look at a Mac the next time you are shopping for a PC? - Sean

Found this gem while waiting for WordPress 2.5 to extract Saturday morning. My Dad and my Brother are engineers. Never owned a cat. The result? Laughed myself silly. :-D - Sean httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHXBL6bzAR4

Saturday

I woke up at 8:30am Saturday with the expectation that I would spend 2 hours updating my blog from WordPress 2.3 to Wordpress 2.5, then I would spend the rest of the morning writing about how easy it was. Instead I spent the next five and a half hours scratching and clawing my way through the WordPress 2.5 install. It wasn't difficult per say, it was just looooooong. I left the process with a headache and no inclination to write. One of the sure fire ways to rid myself of a headache is to take a nap, which I did starting around 1:00pm. Jenn and I woke up from the nap around 4:00. Had set up to hang out with Tom and Brandi Brown from 4:00 to whenever we all got tired, so needless to say we were running late. Got to Tom and Brandi's around 6:00pm. The four of us went to a small, family owned restaurant called The Pasta Bowl. The truly amazing thing about The Pasta Bowl is that the italian food served there is actually made by Italians. I can't even begin to describe how fresh the food is, and how wonderful the staff is, at The Pasta Bowl. If you are in the mood for friendly authentic Italian food, and you aren't up for the drive to The Hill, then you can't do much better than The Pasta Bowl. Check out their website for more info. After an amazing dinner we drove around for a bit then hung out at Tom and Brandi's visiting until we all were yawning. Jenn and I finally crawled into bed around midnight.

Sunday

Woke up late...again. This time we didn't make it to Church in time to set up. That frustrates me as we are still a portable church that has to set up and tear down every week and I don't like letting the other members down. On the plus side I did get to sit at the back during the service and learn how to use the new MacBook Pro we use for putting music lyrics on the screen. Additionally I got permission to to take the MacBook home to learn how to use Pro Presenter. Unfortunately I couldn't take it with me when we left church because they were still using it for a fellowship event after church. I had to make arrangements to pick it up later that evening. After church it was off to Game Stop to pick up our pre ordered copy of Mario Kart for Wii, which we still haven't played yet, and then off to Illinois for our friend's son's birthday party. We hung out, ate BBQ, watched the birthday boy open his presents, hung out again, then headed home. Had to stop by Jason K's house to pick up the aforementioned Macbook Pro. Jason and his Wife Laura invited us to sit down and chat. We ended up spending a wonderful evening laughing and swapping stories with them. Didn't fall asleep until almost 1:00am Monday morning. All of that to say that my weekend was packed and I didn't get a chance to do any writing. I will try to get something down tonight. I wonder if I will have time what with Mario Kart calling from the Wii in the living room. :-) - Sean

Game Stop just called to invite me to a Mario Kart for Wii party this Saturday at 11:00pm! It appears that Mario Kart for Wii will be released at Midnight Sunday and they are inviting all pre-order customers to a party starting at 11:00pm Saturday night. If you show up for the party you can finish paying for your copy of Mario Kart for Wii before Midnight so you can take your copy home as soon as it is released! Jenn and I are getting older (32 and 35 respectively) and often find ourselves asleep at 11:00pm, but we also want to get Mario Kart as soon as possible. We have decided that if the store will allow us to bring in our cots and sleeping bags we will definately go! :D I might not be posting much next week as I am sure Jenn and I will be locked in an epic battle in the combat mode. (Wario Rules!) - Sean

Ever since I returned from the camping trip I have had writers block. Every time I sit at a keyboard to write it feels like I am beating my head against the wall, nothing seems to flow for me right now. I am stalled on The Father Part 3, and all the other topics seem to fade away as soon as I sit down. Argh! I once read a great way to beat writers block is to write about something other than the blocked subject. No matter what you have to keep writing something. You can't let yourself get out of practice. So, since I can't seem to think of anything else to write about, I decided to write about how I can't write. (That last sentence made sense in my head! ;-) ) My goal is to ease myself back into longer and longer writing sessions. Hopefully by this weekend I will be back in the writing zone so I can clear some of these ideas out of my head. Until then, pray for me. - Sean

Our Tuesday night small group has just finished up Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. If you don't know about FPU then I suggest you check out Dave Ramsey's web site. He offers practical financial advice in a funny and informative way. I highly suggest everyone go through his course. Now that we are done with Dave we are in need of a new lesson topic. Last night someone suggested we watch Louie Giglio's Indescribable video. As you know from my previous post on this topic I am a big fan of this video. This morning I ordered Indescribable from Louie's web site, and as soon as it gets here we will watch it in our small group. Why am I a big fan of Indescribable? Because it shows how the heavens reflect God's enormity. One of my favorite lines talks about how the universe is too big for only one civilization, e.g. humans, but it is just about the right size to show off God's majesty. Louie takes you on a guided tour of the known universe demonstrating how various cosmic features glorify God. If you haven't seen it, and you want to, check out the free streaming version of Indescribable on Louie's web site. - Sean

Mario Kart Wii will be released this weekend and in the spirit of the occasion I have tracked down a video demo of the game that shows many aspects of the new game. Enjoy! - Sean httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PzYr7jZdzI