Monthly Archives: March 2007

Bad Website Names

March 22, 2007 – 4:46 pm

I just stumbled across a Christian alternative to MySpace called DittyTalk. Read that slowly. The first time I read it (on a Christian site), I thought it said something completely different. Do people think about such things when choosing a website?

Obviously not.

(The above link, by the way, is not for the faint of mind. Although all of the websites are fairly normal, the names they chose to use are very much abnormal and may not be safe for viewing in some countries). I may need to find some addiction treatment from lists like this on the internet. Seriously, you can’t get away from them, because I know I’ve seen the above list in my inbox multiple times.

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Funny

Possible Band Names

March 20, 2007 – 3:11 pm

My first college roommate, the inimitable Mr. Belk, began a list of possible band names that would trickle out of our oftentimes strange and varied late night conversations. Sadly, this list met its demise when his computer decided to sing the songs of eternity. I intend to resurrect said list now. First entry, from an online conversation with my wife (because it’s important to know a band name’s origin):

Automatic Dog Whupper

If there are any bands that happen to stumble upon this post or any others, I’d be honored if they decided to use any of the names that might grace these pages. I’d only ask for a free CD, some attribution, and maybe tickets to a show.

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Funny The Church Websites

The Church is a Funny Place

March 19, 2007 – 2:12 pm

Pastor Bryson Butts catches flak for "Church Doesn’t Suck" billboard
Pastor Butts? Really? And they’re upset about the billboard?

Moment of Silence for Church Turkey Greeter
Most faithful attendee tries to be like chicken, crosses road, doesn’t make it. Seriously.

Techno Churches, on "snagging aspects of the wider culture"
QOTD: "Martin Luther is said to have written a few hymns borrowing music from drinking songs."
99 bottles of communion wine on the wall, 99 bottles of wine, take one down, pass it around, 98 tiny cups of grape juice on the wall…"

All links found via Christianity Today’s Weblog

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Movies Television

The Unreliable Protagonist

March 18, 2007 – 10:36 am

It’s become de rigueur for television shows, movies, and books to feature unreliable protagonists or narrators, the people who tell you the story, but for whatever reason you know you can’t quite trust their interpretation of the events. One of the earliest and most blatant cinematic portrayals of this is the classic film Rashomon, where the same story is told from three very different perspectives. The stories are not the same, but they’re all true. In the end, the viewer is left to decide what actually happened. This was groundbreaking for its time (1950), but the latter half of the 20th Century exploited this plot device so much, in my opinion, that viewers seldom believe what they see. We’ve lost trust in the narrator. With more than half of the movies or shows I watch, I have to suspend my disbelief every time a new character is introduced (LOST, anyone?), anytime a good guy turns bad or vice-versa (Jericho), or anytime I’m told one thing and shown another (I am Jack’s smirking revenge).

Is this indicative of the culture at large? Of course it is. Television either tells us what to believe or shows us what we already believe about ourselves. Either way, it’s a mobius strip. Our culture has lost trust in its own narrative. Cynical is the word. Are we being told the truth or just what we want to hear? Can we decipher reality for ourselves or does a talking box or a talking head need to do it for us? Where are the people that say what they mean without false pretense?

I’m tired of disbelieving.

[Ironically enough, this has been brought to you by rosaries, beads on a string that help some to believe in a Reliable Narrator.]

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Websites

Flickr vs. Picasa

March 13, 2007 – 3:03 pm

Almost as soon as I had typed the last period of my last post (regarding the benefits and wonders of Picasa), I decided to delve into the upgrade pricing of Picasa versus their inimitable pseudo-rival, Flickr. I knew about Flickr. I have friends that use Flickr. I never used the free option for Flickr because I have far too many pictures and would use my monthly allotted bandwidth very quickly, so why bother? Picasa allows upgrades, the only one of which I could entertain using was the first level upgrade, something like $25/year for 6.25 GB of storage. You’d think that would be enough for me, right? But no. I checked my photos, and we currently have almost 7 GB of photos. Crazy, I know, but it is what it is.

Then I looked at Flickr’s pricing. $25/year for unlimited uploads and unlimited storage. So, even though I liked the Picasa integration with their photo organizing software, Flickr’s plan was much more palatable. So I took the dive and bought a pro account at Flickr. I couldn’t be happier. Their online photo management tools are a breeze to use, some would almost say fun. Most of my pictures are marked private, for the eyes of only those I deem worthy, but a few of the goofier ones are available for public viewing. For the most part, I’m using my account to store all of our priceless images on a different hard drive than my own in case mine decides to randomly bite the dust (a la my transmission in my car a couple of weeks ago).

The funny thing is is that I did not want to spend money to store my pictures, even the seemingly trivial amount of $25. But, thanks to the fine folks at north carolina furniture and a few other places I’ve been posting on behalf of, I had $25 to spare. The choice was made for me. I had to acquiesce. Count me one of the millions that love Flickr.

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