Baggas' Blog

Another test post, this one. I just downloaded the wordpress app onto my iPhone, which is cool. Now I can write or edit blog posts, check comments and much more from anywhere, even my bedroom where I am now. The photo below is of my bedside table – posting it only for the reason of testing this app… Hope it works… If you can see this I guess it means it does

Spent the first part of the evening playing with Apple GarageBand – such a fun and easy piece of software. The new version makes recording guitars so much better as it gives visual representation and control over virtual amps and stomp box effects. I also added in some nice clarinet and organ sounds. It took 2 clicks to send it to iTunes and now I have the fruits of my labour on my iPhone. Very cool. I could easily waste a lot of time on this program…

Anyway typing on an iPhone is a little slow and I have stuff to do so I’ll end this now.. hope it works

As part of my renewed blogging vigour over the last few weeks I’ve been updating my blogroll – getting rid of some dead links and adding a few fresh ones.

Let me just draw your attention to a few of the ones that I read on a regular basis

1. Scot McKnight – this guy is a theology professor in the US who was written some good books and blogs about a heap of interesting religious topics. The problem with his blog is he makes so many book recommendations that I just can’t resist so my amazon.com account, and subsequently my credit cards and bookshelves, become overloaded.
2. Hello Internet – Ben has his own video show, and also posts a lot of stuff about movies, music, books, and comics so if you’re into those sort of things (and most of us are into at least one of them) then check it out.
3. Slacktivist – another Christian blog and one of my favourites. This guy has a prophetic voice that I tend to agree with most of the time. In a well reasoned, often humorous and occasionally scathing way, he examines some of the excesses and inconsistencies of the Christian Right/fundamentalists (mostly in the US but still somewhat relevant to the rest of us). Recent examples include those crazy anti-rock & roll Christians who think U2 is satanic, the misguided creationist Ken Ham (who I’m sad to admit is from Australia..), the kooks claiming universal health care will lead to mass euthanasia, and of course his ongoing brilliant step-by-step demolition of the Left Behind series. Check it out if you think you will resonate with that.. otherwise maybe best you don’t.. but he does post on a lot of other interesting stuff as well.
4. Guitar for Worship – my mention of U2 in the last section inevitably leads me to Karl’s blog which is based on guitar and worship (nothing like a nice obvious blog title) – not only does he love The Edge but he also writes humorous yet insightful posts on guitar, tone, worship, and gear. Biggest problem with this page is it fuels my gear and gadget habit. Every time I read his page I have to fight the urge to immediately go on eBay and hunt for pedals (often unsuccessfully). But I just can’t stay away (from both ebay and his blog)…

Was going to write some more but I can smell a nice curry cooking and wanted to get in some GarageBand time before dinner, but with those 4 blogs you’ll have hours and hours (or longer) of material to keep you busy… enjoy!

Interesting piece on Slate here about ebooks and the Amazon kindle, a devide we are yet to see here in Australia but which has started to take the US reading market by storm. For the first time, after several unsuccussful forays by companies like Sony, ebooks are starting to get some mass traction.

I can see the advantages of eBooks, especially from the point of view of not having to carry books around, copying and pasting notes, purchasing books instantaneously etc. Especially for students the benefits are potentially huge.

However I’m still sold on the idea of “one-device-to-rule-them-all” – phone, book reader, media player, computer, camera, video recorder etc If only we had such a device so we don’t have to carry all these other things around… the iPhone is the closest we have (although it’s camera/video functions remain grossly inadequate) and there are some good ebook readers available for it. The best I have tried is Stanza, which links to a lot of free and commercial online catalogs to download books. You can also sync with your computer for books you’ve downloaded elsewhere. I’ve found it to be quite usable for novels – quite easy to read and navigate. At present I have the Stainless Steel Rat on there which I am slowly reading when I get a spare moment, plus I’ve downloaded a load of classic literature as well. The biggest downfall of the iPhone for book reading is that it’s small screen makes it unusable for textbooks…

Perhaps the rumoured upcoming Apple Tablet computer will be the ideal device for book reading – smaller and easier to carry around than a laptop, but with full computer functionality (in contrast to the Kindle and other ebook readers) and with a touch screen please! I digress but imagine if they make it so you can use your nifty iPhone apps on the Mac tablet as well, thus bringing the coolness, utility,  and diversity of the App store from the smartphone world to the computer world! Now that would be cool. And I’m only guessing but it probably wouldn’t be too tough on the programmers as the iPhone and OSX are built on the same basic core anyway (or so I’ve been led to believe…) If you haven’t already thought of that Steve Jobs and crew, you can thank me for the idea… (I’m sure Steve’s a big reader of this blog so he’s sure to take notice…)

[take a look at this concept picture.. how awesome does that look. I want that!]

Anyway back to eBooks… there’s still a big big reason why I’m not sold on the whole idea – I love books. And not just the content of books. I love the physical cardboard and paper things which sit in my library and cause me the constant challenge of shuffling them around to make room for new books. I love just sitting in that room surrounded by them looking at all the cool ones I’ve read and have yet to read. I love having a book on my lap, with a led pencil handy to underline useful or witty insights or quotes (still haven’t come up with an effective solution to remember my underlinings though…) I like collecting and hoarding books that I think one day I might find interesting, or fancy well bound ones from the Folio Society. I love big books with hard covers. I love all my leather bound bibles. If I had more time and money (mostly time) I’d be one of those people who likes looking in secondhand bookshops trying to finding classic antique books. If I had more money I’d be buying classic guitars, but that’s another story.

SO the gist – ebooks are a good idea; still need the right device to be released (c’mon Steve!); but will never replace the charm of actual, physical books for me..

I posted this on the Warnbro worship blog but I love it so much I’m gonna put it here as well (plus I wanted to test that posting YouTube Videos works with my new blog install..)

The music is inspiring and I like the comments he makes at the end… Enjoy.

Partly I’m just doing this post to test my blog after I upgraded to the newest version of WordPress today at work (where are all the sick people?), but to make it at least slightly interesting for some people, here’s a useful link I discovered : 25 (Most Wanted) Tips For iPhone 3G

Some of these tips are genuinely useful, like switching quickly between alphabet and punctuation keys. If you’re an iPhone user take a look – you might discover something you didn’t know. I did.

One of my guilty pleasures in life is that I really like country music. Don’t know why that feels like something to be ashamed of but it does – maybe because Perth is decidedly not a country music city (although it sometimes feels like a big country town but that’s another issue..) I never was much into it until 2007 when we visited our friends over in Nashville in the USA. As Nashville is the Mecca of country music I decided to acquire a taste for it – started listening to Keith Urban, Alison Krauss and a heap of others and discovered I loved it. I think if you set your mind to it you can acquire a taste for just about anything – for example this year I decided to acquire a taste for beer. I’ve never been a beer drinker my whole life but decided to give it a try – so while spending a couple of weeks in Queensland for Uni with nothing else to do except lie on the beach and skip classes I made a concerted effort to learn to like beer and was successful… but I like country music more. In addition to the above artists another one of my favourites is Brad Paisley – that guy writes some great songs and is an amazing guitarist!

One of the other things I am into (aside from country music and beer) is playing worship guitar in our band at church, but I’ve never found a way to combine the two (country and worship that is – hard to combine beer and worship…) until now…

Wash Away is a recently released album from a guy called Don Poythress who is a top songwriter in the Nashville scene, having written for quite a few big names in country music. He is also a worship leader at his church.  I really like this album for a number of reasons, and not just because it has a strong country flavour.

Firstly the songs are interesting. Often with worship CDs lately I find there’s 3 or 4 songs that grab my attention and then a lot of more mediocre, less memorable ones. On this CD almost every song has something interesting about it, even the songs I am less keen on still hold my attention. There is a creativity in the music that grabs me – partly it’s the lyrics, partly the song structure, and partly the instrumentation. Every song is different. They don’t all sound the same. There is plenty of musical space – but also plenty of moments of musical virtuosity (for want of a better word) that inspires me as a musician. For example the mandolin introduction on “The Faiithful Love of Jesus” is exquisite – I really must pick up my mando more and put more effort into learning it. And there’s plenty of nice slide guitar, acoustic, and of course distorted Telecaster licks on the album also.

Lyrically the album is good also. I think it’s probably hard to be original as a worship songwriter but Poythress does a good job of creating some fresh and inspiring songs which range from up-tempo country rock to more hymn like songs. Some of the ones I like best are Expectation, Fill Me Up (greater slow song – powerful lyrics), and A Thousand Generations (up tempo but interesting lyrical theme…) The title track is really good as well.

If you haven’t yet acquired a taste for country music, try not to let that put you off this CD. The songs could easily be reworked to de-countrify them for any sort of worship setting. I’m glad I thought outside the box of the usual suspects for worship music, and I would encourage you to get on your boots and do the same – it’s well worth the ride…

Ever wished there was an easy way to save YouTube clips on your iPhone or iPod, or even to have them download automatically?

Here’s a great website I’ve discovered : http://www.rsshandler.com This site allows you to enter the details of a YouTube Feed or Playlist, and then creates a URL which you can use to subscribe to a “podcast” of the clips in that feed. That might sound a bit complicated but the instructions on the site are very easy to follow. Once you’ve generated a feed URL on the website, open iTunes – go to the ‘Advanced’ menu, then ‘Subscribe to Podcast’.. copy the URL into the box that comes up and Bob’s your uncle.

It works great. You can susbcribe to YouTube’s feeds (eg Featured, Most Popular etc) or create your own playlists (for example I’ve created a Humour, Music, and Family playlist. The only drawback is it seems not all clips can be successfully converted into iTunes format, but most can.

Give it a try! If you need any advice about it send me an email and I’ll try to help.

Cheers

This book, published in 1994, is one I’ve had on my shelf for some time but only just got around to reading. It is one however, that I’ve often seen referenced by other books, and it seems that has become somewhat of a classic, albeit one that is already a bit dated.

Noll looks back at the history of American evangelicalism and the factors that led to the failure of the movement to contribute to, or engage meaningfully with, ongoing intellectual discouse in the fields of science, philosophy, politics, the arts, and academia in general, which has resulted in the lack of any contribution of Christian thought and principles in these areas.

Some of the historical factors which Noll pin-points as having a negative effect on the evangelical mind are

• the influence of revivalism and individualism
• the wholesale adoption of some elements of Enlightenment philosophy such as the “Scottish common-sense philosophy”
• an emphasis on primitivism with almost complete ignorance of Christian thought since the first century
• the destructive inward looking theologies of fundamentalism, including premillenial dispensationalism and to a lesser extent Keswick Holiness (“let go and let God”) and pentecostalism
• along with these theologies a jig-saw puzzle approach to scripture and a pre-occupation with prophecy
• the development of creation “science” and further marginalization of evangelicals due to a refusal to engage constructively with scientific data relating to the biologic and geologic history of our world

Noll examines the effect of these factors leading to the effective marginalization of evangelicals from public debate; or of isolated pockets of political activism spurred more by populism and erroneous theology rather than serious intellectual engagement with the issues.

“evangelicalism has remained a deeply populist movement, the most visible forms of political reflection have still been intuitive – carried on without serious recourse to  self-conscious theological construction, systematic moral philosophy, thorough historical analysis, or careful social scientific research.”  p 169

The sad part of the book is where Noll, in 1994, is seeing some rays of hope for renewed evangelical intellectualism. He mentions the decline of the Religious Right and the waning influence of traditional premillenial dispensationalism (with “progressive” dispensationalists such as Blaising and Bock articulating a theology that is increasingly convergent with traditional Christian orthodoxy)…. sadly this was all before the unbelievable popularity and influence of the “Left Behind” novels and the history of the Religious Right’s relationship with the Bush presidency. Would be very interesting to see how Noll would revise and update this book in the light of the last 15 years…

Now this just goes to prove that you don’t have to have a tidy worskpace in order to be Vice President of the USA or win a Nobel Prize…

Love the massive multiple monitor setup he’s got happening there, and the flat screen TV playing music videos off to the side, but I don’t know how he would ever find anything on that desk.

Taking a break from the mass hysteria that is swine flu to write yet another blog post – my third for the month. Already on track to be my best blogging month for 2009!

Things are super busy at the moment – work is busy, home is getting busy, out 4/7 nights this week with church related stuff, trying to fit in study for my new course in Diving medicine as well as get started on an assignment for my other unit, and of course fit in all the other things I want to get done – family time, get through some of my mountain of unread books, play my guitar etc etc. Oh and Owen seems to have come down with flu today quite badly 

So my plan now is to try and do a little bit of every thing every day so I don’t get to the end of the week and look back at all the things left undone. Part of that involves maximising my time at work so that when I have down time between patients (who inevenitably don’t show up or are late) I can do some blogging or study or whatever.

During one of those quite patches today I rediscovered this awesome page that I want to now link to for  future reference : A Study of The Edge’s Guitar Delay. This brilliant site examines in detail how The Edge achieves his sound. Worth looking at if you are a guitarist and a U2 fan (and in my mind there should be no guitarists who are not) – check it out.

And now, for your entertainment, here’s a song I used to like when I was a kid. I often chide my friend Gav for being a big Petra fan (he even bought 2 of their guitars even though he’s a keyboard player!), but I do have a history of listening to some dodgy Christian ‘metal’ myself… Unlike Gavin though, I moved on from that phase about 15 years ago… but this is one of the songs I used to like : X-sinner – Living on the edge

Now this is an area where I think I’ve only barely scratched the surface yet, but the iPhone is a veritable treasure trove of useful apps for musicians and music lovers. Here’s a few of the ones I’ve tried so far…

Shazam

This is one of the Apps that iPhone users love whipping out to impress their friends. And there’s a reason for that – it’s just cool. Basically if you hear a song playing and want to know what it’s called and who sings it, Shazam listens to the song through your iPhone’s microphone, processes it, and then gives you the answer – as well as the option to purchase the song for yourself on iTunes or search for it in YouTube. Seems to work about 90% of the time. I’ve used it in the car, and even in a crowded restaurant, with surprisingly good results. Definitely worth downloading.

ooTunes

This is an internet radio program which you can use to listen to streaming radio stations from around the world. I first downloaded this when I wanted to listen to the JJJ Hottest 100 live instead of our usual 2 hour delay here in Perth, but have since discovered plenty of other cool stations from Australia and around the world. There is something cool about being able to tune into country radio live from Nashville, plug my iPhone into my HiFi and enjoy. Some stations are very high quality and even support listing of the currently playing song, lyrics display and links to buy the song. Other stations are poorer quality and some don’t even work so it takes a bit of experimenting to find the best stations. Also a warning this is probably an App you’d only want to use when connected to a WiFi network as I’d imagine this would use up your 3G download quota pretty fast. But keeping that it mind it’s well worth downloading.

Y! Music

Another app suggested to me by Deano, this is a similar program where you can tune into a range of radio stations. Seems to be less range than ooTunes (though still huge) but in general the stability is better with less drop outs and fairly good quality. I’m just tuned into a Reggae station at present. This program offers the ability to skip forward tracks so must work differently somehow. Free, and very useful.

Guitar Toolkit

There’s a myriad of guitar related apps out there. This is a paid one which I think was $9.99 – you can probably get much of the same functionality by getting a few different cheaper ones, but I found this to be the most elegant and powerful one I saw. It combines the following features :

• Tuner – accurate, works well, allows alternate tunings
• Fretboard / Scales – playable fretboard where you can display a huge range of different scales in different positions along the neck
• Metronome – Set your bpm and time signature (from a large selection) and off you go. Very useful
• Chord library – extensive chord library showing a large number of inversions/positions of just about every chord you can imagine. certainly more than I would ever use. And you can strum them all too.
• Instrument – this app can be used for 6 and 12 string guitars, 4 and 5 string basses, and includes a huge library of alternate tunings, as well as settings for left handed players

As I said, this is not free, but it’s an incredibly versatile and powerful app that I would recommend to all guitarists…

I still need to find a similar app with chord library and scales for my Mandolin. Must add that to my to-do list.

MiniPiano

Free single octave piano keyboard. Works fine, but very simple.

Piano Sharp

Similar to mini-piano but allows you to switch to higher and lower octaves. Also includes a library of classical tunes that it will play for you, and you can record your own compositions. Worth investing a few $ if you’re a keyboard player.

My Songbook

This is a very cool litte program, which basically stores a library of songs with lyrics and chords on your iPhone. Perfect for sitting around the campfire or a small group singalong or if you just feel like playing some music (I always keep a spare guitar in my car boot for such an eventuality…) It includes a built in search function so you can find songs on Google or Chordie.com, which has a large database of user submitted songs. You can also add your own songs but the uploading process is a little convoluted. There is an auto-scroll feature so you can use it hands-free while playing, and it will also transpose for you so you can find the perfect key to suit your voice. Definitely a great app to have. I’ve got 100s of songs ready on my iPhone for whenever I need ‘em

iPod

Ok, so this is not an App you can download in the store, because it’s a standard part of the iPhone, but I had to mention it because it’s just cool. This is about my fourth iPod to date, but it takes things to a new level. I love having my music constantly in my phone in my pocket. I can play any song in an instant and don’t even need to carry headphones around (although the sound is so much better with them – the in-built speaker is not too bad). Navigation on the iPhone (and iPod touch I guess) is a vast improvement over the classic iPods – I can find what I want so much faster. Also scrubbing within a song to find a particular part (eg a guitar solo I’m trying to learn) is easy and efficient. Cover Flow is just cool, like flipping through CDs on a shelf – great for getting ideas if I’m not sure what to listen to. And I really like the Genius feature – pick a song and it will create a playlist of related stuff – and the playlists are really good. Having access to the iTunes store on the phone is nice too in case I ever want to purchase a new song when I’m out and about.

This iPod is becoming much more a part of my daily experience than my old ones. The only limitation is that it only has 32Gig or less or space, but I still have my 160 Gig iPod classic for when I want to carry a more exhaustive music library around (or when I want to save my iPhone battery) – look forward to a 64 or 128 Gig iPhone in the years to come perhaps?

Been very busy since getting back from Queensland just over a week ago, and this week promises to be even busier with work, study (picked up an extra unit – studying Diving & Marine Medicine now), church (out 3 nights this week), and family things to fit in.. but I want to keep this blog ticking over and work is mercifully fairly sedate at the moment so time for a quick post about iPhone games.

I’m not what anyone would call a serious gamer, but I have found since getting my iPhone that I’ve been playing games more than usual. Perhaps it’s just having quality games constantly at my fingertips which load instantly on my 3GS and can be played for just a minute or two… or for much longer. So here’s a few of the games I’ve played around with so far.

Fieldrunners

This is a brilliant little game, recommended by deano and ob1. Basically you set up defenses against invading forces to stop them getting across a field. Lots of fun, starts easy and then gets more challenging. An easy way to waste hours of time. Owen loves this game too.

Real Racing

Excellent car racing game. Brilliant graphics and sound. Amazing that such a high quality game can be played on a phone! Works like any other console racing game – you work your way through a tournament with a series of progressively harder tracks and better cars. You steer by tilting the phone side to side like a steering wheel. It offers internet league races and local wi-fi challenges with your friends as well. Definitely the best graphics I have seen so far on the iPhone and well worth a few $$.

Waterslide

I just downloaded this one yesterday for free. Another game where you control the movement of your character by tilting the phone. In this one you are sliding along these massive waterslides which arch above a city landscape, trying to earn points, avoid obstacles like crabs, and not fall off. Reasonably good graphics and fairly simple fun for a few minutes here and there. And it’s free! You can’t beat that.

Paper Toss

This game was number 1 on the iTunes games list I think. Not sure why. It’s harmless enough, reasonably good graphics. You just flick a paper ball across an office trying to get it into a bin, taking into account the wind speed and direction from the office fan. Kinda amusing for five minutes or so at a time. Once again, it’s free, so you might as well get it.

Galactic Gunner

This game is a crack up. You are a gunner in a space ship shooting bad guys by touching the screen where they are. Think Star Wars or Battlestar Galactica. The graphics aren’t bad but the funny thing is the dialogue. Your commander has a strong Aussie accent and uses a lot of slang, which seems kinda weird in the context of a space battle. Once again, reasonably fun for a few minutes at a time. Worth getting just so you can laugh at the dialogue.

TowerBloxx

Another cheap game with nice graphics. You have to build skyscrapers by dropping blocks onto them with a crane. Sounds boring but is actually quite amusing. Also involves some planning as to where you are going to build towers within your city to maximise profits/population. Quite good if you like that sort of thing.

Bejeweled 2

Surely I don’t have to explain this game to anyone? If you’ve seen this game on consoles, or PC, or facebook then you know what to expect. This version seems just the same. As always I love the encouraging voice telling you when you’ve done something good or excellent. I even caught Jenni playing this one last night … yes, we’re a two iPhone family now

Pac-Man lite

Didn’t want to spend $7.99 for the full version so I went for the free-lite version to try it out, but this is a pretty faithful rendition of the old classic. I love the little joystick graphic at the bottom. Very retro.

And I’d have given anything
To have my own PacMan game at home.
I used to have to get a ride down to the arcade;
Now I’ve got it on my phone.

~ Brad Paisley “Welcome to the Future”