andrew dodson

It’s Monday after Thanksgiving.  I’m dreading being back at work.  So, before I start back to work, I figured I’d wrap up my holiday weekend.

There were no bible study activities at The Point last Wednesday evening, so I enjoyed being able to have praise band rehearsal a little earlier, and get home a little earlier.  I spent the rest of the evening working on the Georgetown College Symphonic Band recording from last Monday night.

I went home Thursday to eat Thanksgiving dinner with my mom, dad and brother.  As always, it was great.  Thanks mom!  I spent the rest of the day lounging around the house, playing with Bailey, and watching TV.  I went back to my place around 10 that night.

Friday was spent working on the Lexington Brass Band website.  I finished formatting it to a Wordpress theme, after working through several bugs in my CSS code.  Once this was done, I packed up and headed to Centerfield, KY (LaGrange) for a JMB gig.  Doug wasn’t able to join us, but the gig still went well.  We debuted a new song titled “Clumsy Believer.” 

Saturday was spent working on the Georgetown band recording a bit more and watching UK lose to UT in football (they just can’t get over the hump and beat UT).  Once again, I had to pack up drums and head to a JMB gig – this time in Brandenburg, KY. 

The Brandenburg gig is one of my favorites, simply because it’s a nice venue and sounds great.  The crowd was fairly sparse because of the holiday weekend, but it still went well.  We showed up an hour late, so it was a bit of a mad rush to get everything set up.  I later explained the whole evening as a whirlwind.  Highlights of the evening included our annual rendition of “White Christmas” (last played at Brandenburg last year), and the second performance of “Clumsy Believer.”  The crowd responded very well to “CB” both nights, so we think it’ll be a popular song for us.  We’ve also revamped the outro to “Sweet Embrace.”  It rocks.

Sunday was church day, of course.  It was tough because I didn’t get back from Brandenburg until very late Saturday night, but I still made it to church on time.  After church, Brad O. and me headed up to Lexington to visit the new Guitar Center.  It’s fairly nice, but nothing to write home about.  I’ve been told it’s one of the smallest Guitar Centers people have seen.  If anything, it was nice to get Brad out and about and enjoy some time away from work.  Once we got back home, it was time for our weekly bible study, and then unwinding with some Sunday night football.  I had a headache, so I called it an early night, and that ended my Thanksgiving weekend.

Fairly busy, but always enjoyable to be off work for so long.  I’m now looking forward to Christmas and having an entire week off.  It can’t get here soon enough.

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I’ve entered into “concert season.”  Bands that I record are having their fall and Christmas concerts, so it keeps me busy.  So far, I’ve recorded the Lexington Brass Band, Georgetown College Chorale, and Georgetown College Symphonic Band.  This week, the Josh Martin Band has two concerts.  In the coming weeks, I will record another Georgetown chorus concert, LBB concert and a Central Kentucky Concert Band concert. 

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Is it possible to break your own rules?  Well, if it is, I’ve done that.  I purchased Third Day’s Christmas Offerings CD today, and couldn’t resist listening.  Normally, I have a rule of waiting until after Thanksgiving to start listening to Christmas music.  I noticed the bank was playing Christmas music today, so I guess I’m not the only one.

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As I blogged about previously, I’ve been hard at work creating my own Wordpress themes for a few of my sites.  I’m pleased to unveil the first of these projects.  I’m overhauled the Distinct Impressions site using Wordpress and my own design/theme.  Go check it out:

> Distinct Impressions

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First – an apology to my faithful blog readers, for a lack of recent posts. I’ve actually been hard-at-work on some fairly exciting web development stuff. I wanted to hold off on posting until I was sure of myself.

As of last week, I accomplished one of my biggest goals of the year. Yes, it is a very nerdy, geeky goal, but I promise you it’s pretty cool in my corner of the world. I finally figured out how to make my web designs fit into a content management system.

It started with modifying a Wordpress theme for my new personal website (which is still drastically unfinished, but oh well). I then did the same thing for Capital Church of the Nazarene’s website. After doing both of these, I starting figuring out more of the ins and outs of Wordpress, and how their themes worked. I began coding two of my websites into Wordpress themes, and to my amazement, I figured out how to make it work. Neither site is complete yet, otherwise, I’d provide the obligatory link to both sites. I’ve already started coding my other sites into Wordpress themes. It’s a lot of work right now, but it will pay off drastically when I’m done.

For those that have no clue what I’m talking about, here’s all of what you just read in a nutshell: I figured out how to make my websites really easy, quick, and efficient to keep updated.

Confetti

Originally uploaded by AndrewD300.

Last Friday, Jeremy and me went to a MercyMe concert at the Louisville Palace Theatre. As is usually the case with MercyMe, it was an awesome show. I was glad to hear them play “Hold Fast” – an amazing song off their newest album. If you ever get a chance to see MercyMe, I strongly suggest you go see them.

I need to vent.  Maybe it’ll make me feel better.  For those that may not know, I usually record the service each week at The Point.  Mainly, I do this to be able to post the audio from the sermon to the church’s media site each week.  My hope is that people who weren’t in attendance can still hear the sermon.  I also view it as an outreach tool to those who are lost that may stumble upon our church’s website.

This morning, I started the recording.  Since I also play in the praise band, I needed to go to the stage and get ready to play.  As I walked away, I saw the recording was rolling along like it should.  I next checked it after the service, when I came back to the soundboard to stop the recording.  This is where things go downhill.

After one minute and forty-nine seconds, the recording stopped.  For some unknown reason.  I know my equipment, and I know my software.  It will not stop unless something or someone stops it.  I’m not putting the blame on anyone, but no one around the equipment knew why it may’ve stopped.  No one saw anyone around my computer, or pushing any buttons or anything.

Needless to say, there’s no recording of today’s service.  It a shame, too.  Rick preached a great sermon on the roll of husbands and wives and their relationship with each other and God.  I’m sorry that others won’t be able to enjoy this sermon.

You win some.  You lose some.  You don’t worry about the rainouts.

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As most everyone who knows me knows – I spend a lot of time on a computer.  I spend a lot of time on the internet (either working on websites or browsing).  Over the past several months, I’ve fallen in love with Firefox.  Here’s several reasons why I love it, and why I think everyone should use it:

• Mac and Windows compatible.  I’m a user of both, so it’s cool to have the same browser available on both machines.
• It’s open source and free.  The glory of open source software is that it gets updated often, and it’s always free.
• It’s customizable – thanks to add-ons, plugins and themes, I can customize Firefox to my liking.  The next several bullet points will explain some of my plugins and themes.
• FireFTP – perhaps the coolest plugin I use.  When updating websites, I use FTP to upload and download files.  With FireFTP, I can work on websites on any of my machines and always have the same FTP tool available.
• FoxyTunes – I don’t use this too often, but it’s still cool.  It’s an audio player controller that sits inside Firefox.  I can adjust volume, change songs and more without going into iTunes.
• Performancing – a blog editor.  I don’t have to sign into my blog to publish posts.  Very quick and efficient.
• Download managers – there are several download managers available for downloading multiple files.  I prefer DownloadThemAll.  FlashGot also seems to be popular.
• PDF plugins – there are a couple of PDF plugins that make viewing PDF files from websites a breeze.
• Sage – an RSS feed manager.  I know that Firefox offers it’s own RSS feed managing tool, but I prefer Sage.
• Foxmarks – a bookmark synchronization tool.  I can have the same bookmarks on any computer I use that has Firefox.  This means my iBook, PC and work computers can always have the same bookmarks.
• Themes – I really like the look of Mac’s Safari browser, so I prefer to use themes that are based on Safari.  But, there are tons of themes available (“skins” is another term for “themes”).  You can make Firefox look however you want.
• Website rendering – as a web designer, I find that Firefox accurately renders my designs, so they look as they should.  I find that I have to make adjustments to my designs due to other browsers (mainly Internet Explorer) being quirky in how they render sites.
• Search bar – I find myself using the built-in search bar more and more.  I can search Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary.com, eBible and more all from the search bar.  I don’t have to physically go to these sites to search.

Microsoft just released Internet Explorer 7.  I have to admit that I’m very pleased with  it – a drastic improvement over the previous version.  However, I still don’t find enough good in IE7 to make me stop using Firefox.  I also find Mac’s Safari to be a well-done browser, but it still lacks the features Firefox offers.  Overall, I find that Firefox makes my web browsing experience very quick, clean and efficient.  If you’ve never used Firefox, I strongly suggest you give it a try.  It’s free!  What do you have to lose?

> Mozilla.com 

Georgetown played an exhibition against Louisville tonight.  As it turns out, we gave them more of a game than we gave UK last year.  The Tigers came close, but lost 94-92.  I just watched highlights of Rick Pitino’s press conference and was NOT a happy coach.  Georgetown has played several NCAA Division I schools in the past several years, and has given all of them a good game.  Go Tigers!