andrew dodson

Sad reality sinks in for New Orleans music scene – Yahoo! News

Tech-savvy extraordinaire and all-around-good-guy Tim Chase has directed me to the world of open source content management developers Drupal and CivicSpace (related companies, but slightly different).

Seemingly, my vision for a community-based church website will end up being driven by one of these pieces of software. At this point, I’m leaning more toward CivicSpace. I’ll be spending most of my free time this week (which won’t be much!) investigating and brushing up on how to use & install both. I’ll probably do test installations on one of my websites (though it will be ‘hidden’ from public view) to test myself.

Once we select a name for the church, we’ll be able to proceed with purchasing a domain name and get the ball rolling. At the pace things have been moving to this point, I’d say this will be sooner than later. Please continue to pray for this whole process, as well as the continuation of God’s work at Crestwood! More to come…

The Herald-Leader has an interesting article on the Intelligent Design debate in classrooms. For the most part, it’s not much of a debate in Kentucky, but the article sheds some light on what’s going on in our classrooms.

(oh yeah, an employee of where my mom works is also quoted)

Lexington Herald-Leader | 01/15/2006 | ‘Intelligent design’ gets little class time

I have a feeling that I WON’T be purchasing a pair of these…

My only question is, how do you go about washing these?

Levi’s Designs IPod-Ready Jeans: “RedWire DLX Jeans, available for both men, women in fall, will have iPod docking cradle, retractable headphones.”

(Via FOXNews.com – Technology.)

Last September, I had the opportunity to go to Florida to assist in the clean-up efforts from hurricanes. It was an amazing experience, and while I never hoped to see devastation like that again, I also knew that’d I’d do it again if I got the chance.

Now that Katrina has done her damage, I’ve realized it would be nearly impossible for me to go down to help out. September is the busiest month of the year at CLS, and we’re short an employee for the month (maternity leave). Not only is September the busiest month of the year, but we’re expecting September 2005 to be the busiest month in CLS history.

Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about going to Louisiana to help out. It seems victims of Katrina are coming to us – right here in Kentucky. Crestwood will be extremely busy over the next (insert amount of time here). We’re hosting at least one family, and possibly more. Churches all over are partnering with the Red Cross and local businesses to find families homes, jobs, schools, transportation – the works. We still don’t know a lot of the details, but we know people will start arriving to Kentucky at some point this next week. I know that I’m planning on helping out as much as I can.

Kentucky Baptist Assemblies has also offered up two of their properties – Jonathan Creek & Cedarmore – as a place for victims to stay. The Josh Martin Band is scheduled to perform at both of these places in the coming month, but I’ve yet to hear if the events will still take place.

I’d love to hear how others are planning on reaching out to help victims. If you’ve got a story, please post a comment and let me know.

Ok, where to start?

It seems that Saturday is a good time for me to blog, since I’ve been free the last few Saturday afternoons.

I’m planning on spending the rest of the afternoon listening to music and working on websites. We had praise band rehearsal this morning, where I worked click tracks in to our in-ear monitor mix for the first time.

I noticed after listening back to our concert from last month that I took almost every song way too fast. Since then, I’ve worked on loops that I can play through my in-ear monitor mix. The improvisational/jazz musician side of me is thoroughly against this, but I’m not playing improvisational music at church. I’m using Apple Loops through GarageBand (just another example of Apple saving the day). Now, every time we play a certain song, it’ll be the same tempo. Eventually, we’d like to run the loops through the house mix to add a new dimension to our sound. I have to say that I’m slightly nervous about using the loops for the first time in a service tomorrow morning, but this morning went well.

The Josh Martin Band has a fairly busy fall coming up. We’ll be playing a couple/few dates per month for the next few months. I’m almost positive more dates will be added here and there. We started working on new material this past week, which I’m pretty excited about. Since I’m the newest member, it’s fun to be there during the creation of the songs. We’ve worked up one new song that we’ll probably play at our next gig, and touched a few others. There’s one that I’m really excited about working up – it’ll be a great live song – lots of energy. I can also tell that Josh is becoming a much more mature songwriter. It’ll be a while before we start recording these songs for the band’s next CD – in the mean time, we’re still mixing & mastering our live recording from a few months ago. It will probably be out before the end of the year.

I finished mixing & mastering the orangewhip recording from late July. I’m very, very pleased with how it turned out. Should the band decide to release the album (which I don’t believe is their intentions – they just wanted a recording of the show), I would be happy with the results.

I’m off to grab some lunch and start working on sites. I have a few more things I’d like to post, but this should hold you over for now!

Sorry for the lack of blogging this week. My internet has been down for the last few days. The Frankfort Plant Board did a software update, only to discover it wasn’t completely compatible with my modem. They took care of the details on their end, and I came home today to find I was back up and running. For any of you that own a Linksys cable modem that may’ve experienced trouble this week with FPB cable modem service, now you know why. My internet withdrawal is now over.

I went to Georgetown College with the intentions of becoming a sports journalist. Thank God that idea changed pretty quick (although I stuck with my major and enjoyed it very much). I’m growing very tired of the media. Local, state, national, world. It doesn’t really matter.

In particular, I’m quite tired of the Karl Rove fiasco. How many people truly care about this? Democrats care because they consider it another black mark on President Bush’s tenure as our head hancho. Republicans care becuase they want to prove Democrats wrong, since the war in Iraq isn’t quite living up to its billing.

The only redeeming factor of the media? If it’s on TV, I can change the channel or turn it off. If it’s in the newspaper, I can put it down and open a book. If it’s on the internet, I can come to my blog and get on my soapbox.

*steps down*

Thanks, Jesus. Never make it easy on us, do you?

Last night while enjoying Gangs of New York with some friends from church (and my landlord’s son), I get a knock at the door. I open it up to see one of Frankfort’s finest there to greet me.

Policeman: “You been playing some loud music up here?”
Me: “No, we’re just watching a movie.”
Policeman: “Well, might want to keep it down a little bit.”
Me: “okay.”

This is the second visit to my apartment by the FPD (not including Chuck stopping by one night for a visit). The first time was a few months back when I was practicing drums a little too late at night, shortly after she’d moved in.

I’m gonna have to disagree with her on this one. Justin says it may’ve been a little loud. Now, I’m a drummer, so I’m sure I’ve lost a bit of my hearing over the years. I would say it was above average volume, but by no means loud enough to be paid a visit by the cops. That’s just low on her part.

It gets better…

A couple weeks ago, I was leaving my apartment. She was in the driveway getting some things out of her car. I proceeded to get in my truck and pull away. NOT ONCE did she look up and acknowledge me. Not a, “hello,” not a, “how are you?” Nothing.

I’ll just keep forgetting all the times her two-year old goes running around the apartment, or starts jumping up and down. Or the occasional thuds from time to time that I still can’t figure out. I’ll just keep thinking about

Matthew 19:19 Listen

19 Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

.

I ain’t movin’.

Ever since giving a verbal commitment to take the new apartment, I’ve had second thoughts. I’ve yet to have a good, solid, 100%, “this is the right thing to do” feeling.

As wonderful as the apartment is, here’s my reasons for staying put:

1. My current apartment is the best deal in Frankfort.
2. I have great landlords.
3. I can think of plenty of smarter things to do with the extra $125 per month.
4. They’re not going anywhere – I can always move later if I feel like it.

My bank account is happy. Dave Ramsey would be proud. Cari – I didn’t lie to you after all.