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I heard a great interview early this morning on NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. NPR’s Liane Hansen interviewed Charlie Hunter, a jazz musician who plays an instrument unlike any I’ve ever heard of before, a modified eight-string guitar. I’m given to understand an eight-string guitar is usually nothing more than a regular guitar with a slightly extended range, adding one string to the top and one to the bottom. However, Hunter has his guitar modified and tuned in such a way that his three bottom strings are genuine bass guitar strings and the other five are regular guitar strings, though he notes in the interview that he’s recently removed his top string and prefers to play without it since he felt it got in his way. Eight strings or seven, though, what’s fascinating is this guy is simultaneously playing the bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and solo guitar parts in real time! My dad plays both guitar and bass (though not simultaneously, of course), so I thought he especially would get a kick out Hunter’s unique instrument and style.

Hunter’s latest record has a nice jazzy, upbeat feel with the 7-string guitar plus a couple trombones, a trumpet, and drums. The few song clips they aired during the interview were really fun to listen to. Besides talking about his unique instrument and playing style, they also discussed his practice regiment, why he chose to record the album in mono instead of stereo, and how he is learning to play the drums because it informs the way he plays the guitar, so the interview was generally entertaining for all these reasons. I’m going to be looking around online for Hunter’s albums now.

You can listen to the article on NPR’s website: “Charlie Hunter Has ‘Neglected To Inform You’” (listen).

I got an invitation to Google Wave today (thanks, Cory!), so I’ve been playing around with it a bit. One of the default welcome messages that popped into my shiny new account included the following YouTube video. It’s a good overview of the system, and much shorter than the original 80-minute presentation, so I thought I would share it with you all here.

Right now I only have three contacts with Wave accounts, none of whom I really collaborate with much, so I don’t know if I’ll get much use out of the system early on. If anybody out there has a Google Wave account and wants to chat, click here to see my address. Oh, and you, my dear readers, will be the first to know if/when I’m allowed to invite other people to the party. Stay tuned.

I just finished reading God’s Passion for His Glory, which is not a new book, but a reprint of a book by 18th-century philosopher and theologian Jonathan Edwards called The End for Which God Created the World, with a new (nearly book-length) foreword by John Piper. I greatly enjoyed this book. It has challenged and even reshaped my perceptions about God, the world, and scripture. I recommend this book to every reader. If you’d prefer not to read Piper’s foreword, at least pick up some edition of Edwards’ book and give his claims the careful consideration they are due.

Continue reading “God’s Passion for His Glory” →

After using my Kindle for four days, one (admittedly small) thing is already bugging me. There is a feature of the Kindle store called “Save for Later”. As I’m browsing the store on my Kindle device and see something I might want to buy later, I can save it. Later, I can access my list of saved items and easily purchase any of them right from that list. Sounds generally useful, right?

The problem I have with this “feature” is that it doesn’t integrate in any way with Amazon’s already existing Wishlist feature. Items I add to my Save for Later list do not appear on my Amazon Wishlist and vice versa. Consequently, there’s no way to access or add items to my Amazon Wishlist from my Kindle, and no way to access or add items to my Save for Later list from Amazon’s website on my computer. This is frustrating for a number of obvious reasons, and I can’t help but feel that Amazon has made a major marketing blunder here. By not allowing me to see my own Wishlist on my Kindle or my Save for Later list on my computer, they’re actually decreasing my access to the things I’ve already decided I eventually want to buy from them. It’s as if the grocery store were to search my pockets at the door and steal any grocery lists they find. That’s an extreme analogy, to be fair, but not entirely far from the reality here.

Now, to cut Amazon some slack, a Kindle book is different from a physical book, and physical books and other items that exist on my Amazon Wishlist would not be very useful to me if I attempted to download them to my Kindle device, so I can see some rationale behind keeping the regular Amazon store and the Kindle store separate from one another. However, since I can browse the Kindle store on my computer and even purchase items and send samples to my Kindle device from my computer, is it really too much to ask for me to be able to add items to my Save for Later list and view that list on my computer?

Update: In December 2009 Amazon enabled support for adding books to an Amazon Wishlist from the Kindle device, effectively merging the “Save for Later” feature with the true Wishlist feature on Amazon.com. I still cannot view non-Kindle items on my Kindle, but I can now view my Kindle book wishlist either on my Kindle or on my Macbook and add/remove items from either place. This is of course much better than before, though I still question the marketing wisdom of not allowing a user to purchase physical items for shipping right from their Kindle. My credit card is on file, Amazon. Why not let me shop your entire catalog from wherever I am using a device I purchased from you?

Version 2.5 of the LDS Linker plugin for WordPress is now available from the WordPress plugin repository. Version 2.5 adds support for using en-dashes in passage references (hooray for typography!). Additionally, you can now cancel the linking of any passage reference by preceding it with an exclamation mark. This is mostly useful for when you accidentally trigger a reference link where you don’t want one, i.e., “the Omni 2 digital camera is an improvement over the popular Omni 1.” Lastly, you can now set the hyperlinks to open in a new window if you prefer. Version 2.5 also fixes a number of bugs related to how certain characters, such as ampersands, en-dashes, and em-dashes, can be encoded.

Continue reading “LDS Linker 2.5” →

My lovely wife, with help from my parents, her parents, and her Granny, bought me an Amazon Kindle 2 for my birthday. This is the best gift I’ve received in a long time (which is what Janene was going for, since, after all, this was a milestone birthday). Thanks, everybody!

One aspect of the unboxing experience impressed me. You know how most electronic devices come with a thin clear plastic film over the screen to protect it in transit? And you know how sometimes the manufacturer prints something on that film that approximates what the display might look like when turned on, or includes instructions for using the device the first time? Well, keep that in mind and check out this picture of a Kindle 2 fresh in the box (this is not my photo, just a random one I found so I could show you what I’m talking about).

Well, I started peeling the film off and noticed right away these helpful directions weren’t printed on that film! This gave me pause for a moment, wondering if there was a second film I needed to remove, or if Amazon had done something really stupid and printed permanent ink on my device before applying the film, but then I remembered an interesting aspect of e-ink displays: they don’t have to be continuously powered to keep something visible on the screen. Power is only needed to place the ink; whether the device is powered or not, the ink will remain until you replace it or clear it away. As a subtle but impressive touch, Amazon had placed these getting started instructions on the display before it was powered down in the factory. Brilliant!

I have just finished listening to the second (and most recent) sermon in an excellent new series being preached by Pastor John Piper of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It’s an expository series that will take an entire year to go verse by verse through the whole Gospel of John. The first two sermons have been fantastic, and I would encourage—no, it needs to be a stronger word than that: exhort? urge. impel!—you, whoever you are, to watch, read, or listen to them yourself.

To that end, here is a link to the series: The Gospel of John. I’d love to chat with you about these sermons, so please please leave a comment if you do check them out.

My mother-in-law gave me $20 in nickels for my birthday (that’s 400 nickels if you’re counting with me at home), along with a jar that counts coins as you drop them in through a slot in the top. If the jar is accurate, I have 490 nickels in there currently. Add to that the 21 nickels I have in my PayPal account, and I’m up to 511. Only 31,489 nickels to go. Sweet!

If you’re paying attention, the number of nickels in my PayPal account hasn’t changed at all since my last update. Is a nickel too much to ask? Come on all you PayPal users out there! Click the button. I dare you!

What’s all this about, you ask? Check out the original post for details.