i think i’m going to try something new on sundays, as SOME of you complained about the What Has Your Blog Been Saying post series.

so, in an effort to provide a higher level of content on everyone’s least internetted day, i have decided to share a post that i ‘starred’ in Google Reader sometime this week.

today’s inaugural starring highlights a Lifehacker post from saturday entitled: 50 Swanky Icon Sets For Macs.

i’m a sucker for icons and, frankly, any glossy graphics that i can stare at for hours at a time.

head over and check out these swell drawlings, then customize your desktop! you’ll be the envy of your cubicle!

so, it’s saturday. a rare saturday where the Mrs. and i are not hanging out together.

in fact, my dear wife is like…90 miles away…which is a drag, but will soon be over.

in the mean time, i do have a simple saturday question for you mac users (sorry everyone else…) – what secret apps do you love on your mac?

example: a while back i mentioned InstantShot, a screen capture program, in a post. i was talking to Mr. Belmont yesterday about how useful it is and how he was glad that i had mentioned it because now he uses it all the time.

a different Mr. Belmont recently posted and introduced me to Bruji, which has some serious useful potential.

so what mac apps do you love using?

i’ll spill a few gems from my applications folder:

InstantShot (free)

Caffeine (also free)

HandBrake (yes, free)

Dock Library (…free)

Wallet (sadly, not free, but maybe worthwhile security)

so there you go, 5 of mine. let’s have 1 of yours!

here’s a few friends i’m going to be working with today:

what have i learned from this exercise?

well…seems like i gravitate toward companies/products who use blue in their logo.

what’s your company color?

ok. so…i don’t actually know him.

but let me tell you how i had my mind blown by an internet sidebar ad for the first time ever…

i am not a big facebook user. i have one because…well…seems like you should have one if you’re an internet type of person.

that and people kept hassling me to get one.

earlier this week two friends of mine introduced me to a facebook game called Word Twist.

this morning when i logged in to see how badly they had beaten me the night before (i’m really, truly bad), i was struck by the sidebar ad you see at the top of this post.

mr. belt started his musical career (according to said ad) in 2001.

about that time (1999-2001) i was working at a small, local coffee shop here in hanford.

said coffee shop was quite beloved, though not well supported, by the people of our little city.

my employer had purchased the cafe from the original owner and had moved it downtown to the quite lovely civic center.

when you wanted a good cup of coffee, you drove down irwin street, stopped at the Bastille complex, walked around the courtyard and down the steps to the sub-level Wired Angels Coffee Shop.

there, you would be met with a generous menu and a bunch of gangly teens behind the register (my gangliness was legendary and second to none).

yes, this story seemingly has no point.

but, here’s the thing…the owner, my employer, was Jay Belt. the father of the gent in the ad above these words.

i remember hearing rumblings of Jayson’s career starting to take off.

i remember finally getting a copy of Jayson’s album: The Red West.

i remember his father beaming when Jayson opened for Dave Matthews.

i remember thinking, ‘i think this guy is going to be somebody sometime.’

now, it’s 7 years later, and whilst looking at the pummeling i received in Word Twist, i see that mr. belt has a sidebar ad on facebook.

just struck me as cosmic.

of course i understand that a sidebar ad doesn’t mean you’ve arrived at the utmost eschalon of reknown, but i just thought it was really cool.

so congratulations Jayson. i’m glad you’re still making music.

and congratulations Jay. i’m sure your son has made you proud.

if you’ve never heard The Red West or Jayson’s other music, you should go check it out.

listen in

blessings

we got you something…

come and get it

i love managing our church website.

recently i changed our entire site over to the wordpress platform and have been really excited about the expansion that is now possible.

that switch also came with an upgrade to a new hosting company (um, yeah, dreamhost gives free hosting to non-profit organizations).

this also affords us a lot of convenient, easy-to-manage possibilities of growing our web presence.

one of the things i’ve been thinking about is implementing a church-wiki.

the reason being that there’s a lot of potential information that is useful but doesn’t really fit into the regular navigation of a church website.

my two biggest complaints about church websites are that you either don’t have much meaningful content or the content is just so mismanaged that you can never find anything in a reasonable amount of time (or clicks).

at least that’s my opinion…

i’m starting to think that a church-wiki could be really useful, as well as being a great way to bring another element of web interactivity to some of our people.

it would include things like more detailed accounts of our church history or staff, explanations of different outreaches or annual events, descriptions of various ministries/volunteer positions, reports of previous missions trips, etc.

so, the questions are as follows:

first, what do you guys think about a church-wiki? useful? ridiculous? interesting? tacky?

second, what kind of things would you put in the churchipedia?

third, do you know of any other churches that use a wiki for information?

love to hear your thoughts…

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the advent of the internet has allowed for a sort of acceptable narcissism. i for one think it’s fun. we can google our names without seeming utterly arrogant or self-involved.

i mean, can you think of picking up an encyclopedia 50 years ago and saying, “well, gonna look up my name in here and see what they have to say!”

well, today i put my name in the youtube search engine.

a couple recognizable videos came up…

…and so did this:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-lOk7Aj53g[/youtube]

…um…what?

ps – the video is uber-evolutionary/humanistic, which, obviously, is contrary to the truth. so…hope you’re not offended.

what happens when you youtube YOUR name?

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i was pretty excited about this today…my first posted video cover.

go check out john’s other videos and say hello.

blessings

having your own domain makes it very easy to track how people got to your site. it’s usually fun, but if i’m honest sometimes i feel bad because i think people occasionally get here under false pretenses.

for example, in the past month, people have made it to this blog by typing (among other things) the following words in search engines:

1. photo scavenger hunt list
2. a $60,000 car
3. stop motion jesus
4. df2d2d2b1301ba0de30b64c24eab2a9a

these searches may bring people in to Jesus Is Extravagant, but they certainly don’t learn too much about their query, and i decided to try to remedy that at some level.

so, this series will be a sort of nuts and bolts set of information about topics or people that bring visitors into this site that i don’t currently have a lot of information about.

our first Who Are Those Guys? entry is for pastor tim chaddick. every week i get people landing on JIE looking for info on him, yet there really isn’t any on here.

so here we go:

WHO

tim chaddick is the pastor of reality los angeles. that church was a plant that came out of reality in santa barbara. he was also a member of a christian band named Smithfield who released an EP and was featured on the worship generation compilation Revive Us. chaddick also had an original song recorded on the worship generation compilation Heaven Sings It.

tim teaches at various calvary chapel camps and conferences throughout the year, most recently at the calvary chapel senior pastor’s conference, where he taught a workshop session on the emergent church.

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WHERE

you can find pastor tim online at these places:

his Bible studies and some others
his podcast
his facebook
his myspace

so there you go. all you people who are getting here by searching for tim chaddick, i hope you are a bit closer to what you want.

i’ll leave you with a study tim gave at a worship conference a number of years ago.

it’s called The Power Of Praise In The Midst Of Trials.

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blessings

–
today was my day to post as part of this event:

one side-effect of being a part of the 40 Day Fast is that a number of new people will suddenly be exposed to this blog.

for those that might return once or twice, i thought i might briefly explain the site title.

firstly, i like when blogs have titles. in truth, i’d rather have the site known as ‘Jesus Is Extravagant’ than simply ‘genepensiero.com’, because when you leave this blog i want you thinking about how much Christ loves you, not about how my last name might be pronounced.

second, for the last few years my pastor (and dad) has been pointing out the romantic nature of God’s love for us. that idea causes you to look at studying the Bible a bit differently, and, the deeper i get the more i find it to be true: that Jesus Christ loves us with an extravagant, romantic love.

one example is creation itself. there in the opening chapters of Genesis we find God creating heaven and earth, light, animals, plants, the expanse of time and space, the laws of physics, all that amazing stuff, and all of it is simply a backdrop for God to interact with man. for Him to speak with His adam and take walks with him in the cool of the day.

the principle is true today. God sustains all of time and space so that He might interact with me (and you) and reveal His awesome love and power and plan for my life.

another wonderful example is the description of the New Jerusalem in the Revelation of Jesus Christ; a city gilded and adorned with the most precious gems imagineable, presented to the Church as a beautiful engagemet ring as it were.

think of the tabernacle, the priestly garments, the life of the disciples, the promises made to God’s people…all of it points to (among other things) the extravagant love God has for mankind.

so, if you’re wondering what this site is about…it’s about my life, which is enveloped in the extravagant love of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lover and Commander and Friend.

blessings