I finally uploaded several sets of photos I took during a vacation in 2005, and a group of photos from Manhattan when I was playing tour guide for a relative of mine.  It looks like my hard work finally paid off:  I wanted a personal gallery in-house to keep my photos rather than a relying exclusively on a third party service like Flickr, but now I can have the best of both worlds.  I installed a module that allows me to export my in-house photos to Flickr while still retaining its descriptions and tags, which makes photo uploads and synchronization so much easier now.  I really need to start using my cameras again, and with this headache out of the way, you should finally start seeing more photo uploads on a semi- regular basis now.  Do I not rock? 

One thing I need to get off my chest:  Gallery2 is the crappiest crapola craptastic crappy dappy pile of chewy mooseballs I’ve ever seen pass off as a photo management system.  Ok, I’m being a little harsh here, but really, when it comes to offering features likes ratings, comments and so on, it is a thing of hell.  Captcha wouldn’t work, I couldn’t get email notifications of comments, the ratings systems was primitive and pointless, and the slideshow is so basic I suspect it’s still using the same code from 1997.

Still, it’s the only gallery that I could successfully embed into WordPress using this theme, so I’m pretty much stuck with it for now.  It’s one saving grace was being able to export my photos to Flickr, so if you want to comment or fave my photos you can do it there easily enough.

One extra thing about Flickr: my photos get MUCH better exposure there.  So much that a map guide requested my photo of the Lincoln Memorial for use in their Washington edition.  They didn’t pay me a dime though, but still, it’s nice to have a little recognition.  You can see it here.

And before I forget, I also added a link in my sidebar where you can easily chat with me in real time (if I’m around.)  You can find the link in “My Current Status” right above my Twitter widget.  Tres awesomeness, dude. 

Enjoy!

Tags: chat, flickr, gallery, gallery2, personal gallery, photo, photo management, photo uploads, Photos, real-time, slideshow, theme, wordpress
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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BOOYAH!

It’s time to not only celebrate my blog relaunch, but my two year blogging anniversary!!    And dude, the video totally captures the moment here.  I’m talking a blog wrecked to death, only to come back stronger, sleeker, and totally badass with some badass music cranking in the background and leather jackets and cool black vintage cars cruising the highway and let us go have a throwdown and kick some serious scum of the earth hellbags because baby,  I am back!

Yeah, I’m a little excited here. 

But really, what I just pulled off was a miracle that only God could have given me, and I now have the latest version of WordPress along with a new Who-is-your-DADDY theme that is all kinds of awesomeness. 

I still need to work out a few kinks and decide on a new photo gallery to use, but for all intents and purposes the site is now live, with a sleeker, faster look and a few new bells and whistles I think you’ll all enjoy.   For an idea of what’s new, see the little oval thingie jiggy to the right of each post title?  Go give that a click.

Cool, huh? 

In addition, you’ll now be able to edit comments as well.  I also dropped a few plugins, added a cache system and went with a 2 sidebar look again to reduce clutter.  Yes the ads are still there, but they are no longer as obtrusive as they used to be.  To be honest I got tired of having a larded up ad block embedded inside my posts, partly because I couldn’t quote or post any media content on the fly.  The ad would jam it up and I’d have to manually remove it in order for the post to show cleanly.  Not cool.  But I still need the ads though, since the 50 cents I’m making a day is paying for my newspaper, and I just don’t know how I could live without those two quarters a day, ya know?

As for the dark theme, I’m working on creating a white backdrop just for the posts and comments for easier reading (while still maintaining a dark look), so stay tuned there.  I might have gotten it done sooner but the theme kept overriding my color settings.  Regardless, let me know what you think.

It wasn’t easy though, but I got through it, and now I can finally enjoy the fruits of my labor…. except of course, Google just had to rain on my parade by dropping my pagerank from a 4 to a 3 while I was busy upgrading.    Really Google, why don’t you just suck my ass times a thousand?  Dweebs.

But meh, whatever.  I finally made a leapfrog in upgrading without having to spend a fortune to have a designer do it, my sleek black car will get a nice facelift and wax job by the end of the summer, and in a few more months I’ll be out of debt,  cruising the road and enjoying my new lease on life.  All I’ll need then is a weathered black leather jacket, and my life will truly be complete. 

Tags: anniversary, back in black, blog, blogging, css, google, music, pagerank, theme, update, upgrade, vintage, wordpress
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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“Let me just update this one file here….”

Sigh.

I had to go update a plugin last night because of a security hole, but unfortunately that update caused another plugin to break, so I had to go upgrade that plugin as well, which of course caused yet another plugin to break, so I went to upgrade that too, and before I knew it my spam blocker goes down in flames, I can’t preview comments anymore, my images no longer show up, my sidebars suddenly disappears, and then finally my entire blog goes up in smoke, the only thing left in its place being some cryptic error message telling me what an idiot I am and hahaha I suck.

Mother*&^% technology.

Things seem to be ok now, but my goodness, I was up till 4AM last night and had to work through the better part of today before things finally calmed down.

You know what, I think it’s time I gear up for a major revamp. I was gonna just say screw it and have a professional designer do it, but I think it’ll probably be better to set up a test blog closed from the public so I can play around with the latest blogging toys without tearing my hair out and spitting at people, and then when it’s stable enough I can release it for prime time with little fuss. That should also keep me busy enough so I don’t waste my time pining for a girl to love me since that’s never gonna happen because women all suck the ass of a hairy moose and should die in some horrible nuclear explosion bunch of monkey-faced harlot whores they be.

*ahem* Except my beloved womenly readers of course, who are all the very essence of perfection, virtue, and beauty.

See how I suck up to you guys so you’ll continue to love me and read my blog despite my crazy wild women-hating rants? I am so awesome.

Tags: blog, plugins, revamp, security hole, update, upgrade, women suck, wordpress
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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I realize my heathen audience just went “Uhhhhhh???” upon reading that title, but every now and then I like to discuss a Christian topic on my blog, so like it or not it’s par for the course.

One of my beloved readers recommended that I give the “worship artist” Jason Upton a listen, hoping his music would inspire.

Listening to his music did in fact inspire me with hope: hope that he never releases another album. I keed, I keed…. ok not really.

In all seriousness, I think Upton means well, though I was kinda hoping he would be the real deal, another Keith Green in the making, yet when I started giving a few of his songs a listen, something just seemed… off.

And here we go again. As soon as my spirit gets disturbed about something I know I’m about to step into a pile of fecal matter and start knocking over sacred cows, but then again, it’s what I do, and dude, I do it oh so well.

On the surface, Upton’s music and lyrics would appear to be alright and God-focused, but quite a few of his songs also seemed vague and cryptic, their meanings hidden in obscurity. I also noted the absence of any overt call to repentance and living a life free of sin, two of the most common themes found not only in Keith Green songs but in most of the Psalms as well. It might not be a big deal, but Upton’s musical words presented a rather incomplete gospel to me. Curiosity compelled me to do some digging into his background, and what I learned (so far) pretty much confirmed my suspicions about him.

Upton’s musical career began with his album “Key of David,” which according to Wikipedia was a series of prophetic worship sessions, over half of which were “spontaneously inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

Right away I knew some Christian dweeb in love with Upton must have written this. How did they know such sessions were inspired by the Holy Spirit to begin with? Did they ask Him? Did they test the spirit as the Bible instructs us to do? Did they compare their experiences to what Scripture teaches to see if it lined up? Or was it all mushy gushy feelings and since we’re all happy shappy dappy here it must be of God? And what makes his worship music prophetic anyway? Are we insinuating that Upton is not only a musician, but a modern day prophet as well? Sigh.

Things just get more bizarre as the same Wiki entry suggests Upton was able to stop a tornado with his music, and that one of his tracks contained the voices of actual angels singing.

Sure, and I’m Mickey Mouse.

I checked out the lyrics to the song that supposedly had this heavenly choir singing in it:

I declare over you, God has given you the air!
So fly, it’s time to open up your wings,
To shake off the things that hold you down (to leave the things…..)
It’s time to spread out your wings and fly!

Do you see what I see?
Do you hear what I hear?
Do you know what I know?
Do you want what I want?

Angel: (“…undiscernible… I want you to fly …undiscernible… Fly….” )

Do you see what I see?
Do you hear what I hear?
Do you know what I know?
Fly!

And of course, someone from the audience later claims to have seen one or more of these angels, so we can now accept without reservation that a brigade of angels from heaven just decided to go on tour with Jason Upton.

Really people, can you stop taking everything at face value here? There’s no doubt in my mind that fans have now used this as unequivocal proof that Upton is anointed of God. “Never mind what the Bible says. We heard angels sing! That’s proof enough for us!”

One of the failings of the charismatic crowd today is that they rely too heavily on emotions and experiences for evidence that a movement is of God, rather than on what Scripture teaches. So they never test the spirits, they never scrutinize their experiences according to God’s word, and of course the net result is that they fall away to heresy.

Is there anything overtly heretical about Jason Upton though, other than the fact that he seems to be an ignoramus? It’s hard to say. Reading his website, I noted what a pastor wrote about his first album, Key of David:

The Key of David is mentioned in Revelation 3:7 to refer to the absolute authority of Heaven in Jesus’ hands to open the doors that no one can shut and to close the doors that no one can open. But the Key of David is first mentioned in Isaiah 22:22, where it denotes a fatherly authority, a pivotal place of opening up the riches of the House of David-God’s blessing, God’s presence, and God’s glory-to God’s people. I believe the Lord is going to use worship like this to birth whole generations into His Kingdom in fire.

The Youth in our churches and campuses are going to catch fire quickly and intensely, and they are going to take back for God what the enemy has stolen-they are going to take back the churches, the universities and campuses, and the cities that we, the older generations in the Church, have longed and prayed for in spite of the fact that we have not yet seen the widespread, reclaiming revival fires from heaven that we have prayed and wept for.

Again with this fire thing. Fires and revivals, they’re all the new rage these days, and yet I wonder if any of them even know what they’re talking about. When God’s fire is referred to in Scripture, it’s always in the sense that it consumes sin. Fire purifies and burns away all that is displeasing to God, and it is without exception, a PAINFUL experience:

1 Peter 1:7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ…

Faith is always described as a precious metal that’s been purified by fire (trials), so if a Christian grounded in the Word asks for an anointing of fire, he is in essence asking God to purify his faith (regardless of how painful that process might be). Yet from the quote above it seems readily obvious that such fire is being defined in a different context, that it instead signifies some sort of vague mutinous takeover of churches and cities by today’s Christian youth.

The more I read, the more I wondered, “What the blue flipping dip are these people talking about?” Then I read about Upton’s strong association with yet another “Christian” movement called The Call, which was founded by Lou Engle. You can see a video of Upton performing for Engle here (what’s with this weaving and bobbing crap by the way? What are we, Hassidic Jews?)

As for Engle himself, he’s a bit of a weenie, obsessed in raising up an “army” of young believers who can help turn back the “black moral morass” that has plagued America since the Beatles, mostly by doing lots of praying, fasting and worship (and a wee bit of political grassroots action.) Some of his bizarre antics have been shown in the anti-Christian documentary Jesus Camp, where he gives a sermon espousing on the evils of abortion and the need to have conservative judges on the Supreme Court… to KIDS. Seriously. Because you know, nothing is more important than making sure children understand the need for having constructionist judges on the bench by the time they’re ten years old. Chuckie Cheese? Pffft, that’s for godless atheists. We’re doing God’s work here.

In spite of this flaming stupidity, some of Engle’s rhetoric still seemed to ring true. Here’s a synopsis of what his movement “The Call” is supposedly all about:

TheCall is a divinely initiated, multi-racial, multi-generational, and cross-denominational gathering to corporate prayer and fasting. We believe that our nation is in desperate need of the mercy of God and a great Spiritual Awakening. TheCall is committed to mobilizing people from all across America to gather together to petition God for His undeserved mercy for our nation in 12-hour solemn assemblies. Just as in the days of Joel, we believe that now is the time to blow the trumpet across our land, to fast, to pray, and return to the Lord with all our hearts.

Sounds all well and good right? Until you start delving into Engle’s background and you start to realize, “Holy cow, this guy’s batsh*& insane!”

It seems Engle’s ultimate goal is really to take America back for Christians, and this “call” is basically a hyped up, Promise Keepers style movement based on the notion that if we just pray really really really hard enough, magical things will happen (and the U.S. Supreme Court will instantly be filled by 9 ultraconservative judges who all graduated from Regent University and are diehard fans of Jason Upton.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with getting involved in the political process, but Engle’s problem is that he apparently thinks God specifically told him to start this movement, in spite of the fact that there’s no Scriptural support for doing such a thing.

The Bible clearly tells us what constitutes a true revival:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. – 2 Chronicles 7:14

Revivals are a call to individual repentance. It’s not the world God is concerned with in this regard, it’s His people. Any revival movement then should always have this as its primary focus: that we as a Christian community have sinned before God and it’s OUR ways we need to change, not the world’s.

Engle’s movement though is not about that. He makes mild overtures about returning to the Lord and all, but what his movement is really about is changing the socio-political climate of an entire nation. His emphasis is on reforming America, not on reviving the church itself, despite the fact that the Bible clearly indicates things are supposed to get worse, not better, as we move ever closer to the end. He and his followers also don’t seem to realize that before God judges the world, He is going to judge His church FIRST:

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? – 1 Peter 4:17

Knowing this, doesn’t it make more sense that we clean up OUR house first before we start trying to save the world? Unless of course, you’re so absolutely mind bogglingly obtuse that you think the church today isn’t facing any serious problems, in which case I’d like to invite you over to my place so I can stomp your face in with my spiked boot.

The fact is, we don’t need a revival in America. We need a revival IN THE CHURCH. The time will soon come when God is going to judge a completely unprepared Christian church before He does anything with the rest of the world. We’re going to be weighed in the balance, and at the state we’re in today, we are going to be found severely wanting.

We are so screwed.

Tags: album, america, angels, apostasy, bible, christian, Christians, church, criticism, critique, falling away, God, jason upton, Jesus, judgment, keith green, lou engle, lyrics, music, repentance, review, revival, Scripture, sin, song, thecall, wordpress, worship
Categories: Christians Gone Wild
 
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My server is having a temper tantrum here, so if you’re subscribing to my feed you may have seen a few duplicate and wonky posts lately. Sorry about that. Stupid stupid stupid WordPress. It’s like my own blog is conspiring to keep me from blogging here.

Tags: blogging, duplicates, errors, log, server, wordpress
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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I’ve been using Hostgator to host my blog for a little over a year now, and I think it’s finally safe to say they’ve proven to be a reliable shared hosting service, so much that I decided to become one of their affiliates. Although I’ve never received hordes of traffic to see how well it could hold up under heavy load, I’ve never had trouble with my site during those times it’s gotten stumbled either (where it’s received hundreds of visitors within a short period of time). My highest peak was when I had about 130 active visitors to my blog at once (and still the server merely yawned). Tickets to help support for one reason or another have always been promptly answered, but my best experience had to be when I was having trouble logging into my WordPress admin one day. I first spoke to someone via live support, who tried his best to resolve the issue on his own before having me open up a ticket so a sysadmin could look into the problem. In the space of about 20 minutes, a systems administrator named David had me up and running after learning that a problem with my Akismet plugin was causing my blog to lag. After I deactivated Akismet and replaced it with a newer version, I was up and running again.

Customer support that’s responsive and knowledgeable, a shared server that remains fast and suffers virtually no downtime, all for an easy 10 bucks a month. I really can’t ask for anything more. They also offer a semi-dedicated solution that’s still shared but where you’ll only share a server with 3 other users, but for some reason they don’t offer any VPS solutions (yet). Regardless, they offer excellent packages for your hosting needs, and in fact mine recently enjoyed a free upgrade (due to Hostgator adding new hard drives to the server I was using).

Word to the wise though: the web hosting industry has had a history of embellishing the bandwidth they claim to offer to potential clients, but what many people don’t know is that such bandwidth will be limited by the server’s CPU and memory resources. Unless you have a vanilla site, you’ll likely never be able to reach the high bandwidth ceiling many hosting services provide because your site will be shut down long before then, due to using too much of the server’s resources. How much you can actually use will depend on the service, and such info is usually buried somewhere in the terms of agreement. Read Hostgator’s Terms of Service and then compare it to other hosting companies for a better idea of how much freedom you’ll have when purchasing a shared hosting account. Regardless, based on the report of other customers, even people who have been slashdotted or dugg have never had a problem with taxing too much of the server. Just make sure you build a good site that’s optimized well (with caching abilities if possible) and you’ll likely never have a problem with Hostgator.

Sign up for a Hostgator account today!

Tags: affiliate, akismet, bandwidth, blog, customer support, downtime, guide, hard drives, hostgator, hosting, hosting service, period of time, review, server, short period, sysadmin, systems administrator, traffic, website, wordpress
Categories: Blog Fog
 
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