As I walked out to my car today, I noticed that it was no longer straight in the parking spot like I left it… for a moment I wondered if it had been taken for a joy ride… I was very puzzled until I got closer and discovered why my PK Crusier had moved over in his spot….
…he had fallen in love with the car parked next to him!
I sure hope they behaved themselves!
As I write this I am at One Way Street’s iFest Conference. (International Festival of Puppetry & Ventriloquism) I’m here for just two days of the week long conference to report on this event for Kidology. I will be publishing a full report on Kidology.org soon in the Kidology Reports Zone, but here are a few teaser pictures and an EXCITING VIDEO at the end!
iFest is a great place to meet other people who love puppets!
And BUY cool new puppets!
(I will be posting my favorites!)
And bring your puppet team (these teens are from Texas!)
And eat great food!
(Chicken Sandwhich and fries, TWO pieces of pizza and TWO cups of Dew…. Oh Yeah, I love this conference!)
The highlight of the evening was getting to see the Black Light Competition in the evening. (There will be highlights via video in the Kidology Report on iFest)
But then I got a big surprise! I was invited to compete in the Sport Stacking competition in the dark by Norm Hewitt, and won the first stack meet with four contestants, and then later, there was a second “semi-final” with four more, who all turned out to be kids. The average scores were 20-30 seconds and I average 12 and under, so I was getting nervous. As much as I like to compete with Speed Stacks, and prefer to win (come on, its ok to admit that!) I was not looking forward to beating a little kid in the “Finals” in front of some 600 plus people. I had images of being booed off the stage and having puppets thrown at me if I beat a kid on stage… but letting him win too obviously wouldn’t give him dignity either… so what to do?
Watch the video and see what happened:
NOW AVAILABLE IN FLASH:
Yes, this is Luke with his laptop… granted, an old dead one, but he loves to sit and play with it… I wonder who is trying to be like? (picture is months old, fyi)
Well, tonight as I was putting him to bed, I told him the following bedtime story, and thought others might like it as well, this is the short blog version. His version was drawn out and had the benefit of character voices! ENJOY!
The Tale of the Three Little Piggy’s and Big Bad Wolf Hacker
Once upon a time there were three little pigs who all worked in the Internet industry. One day, they heard a rumor that a terrible hacker, known only as the Big Bad Wolf Hacker, was sending out a virus that could do critical damage to a personal computer! The three little piggies were scared!
“I’ll download a free virus protection tool!” said the first little piggy.
“I’ll install Norton Anti-Virus!” said the second little piggy.
“I’ll buy a Mac” said the third little piggy.
And sure enough the Big Bad Wolf Hacker hacked and he hacked and he broke into the first little piggy’s computer and deleted all kinds of important files! The devastated piggie ran to his friends house, but just as he got there he heard his cries! Yes, the Big Bad Wolf Hacker had hacked, and and he hacked, and to got access to the second little piggy’s computer, and not only did he delete critcial files and steal important data, but he installed spyware and adware and slowed the computer way down. They ran together to the third little piggy’s house and as they entered they heard laughter! He was busy making a video in iMovie, burning it to a DVD with iDVD while listening to music in iTunes and surfing the Internet, and although the Big Bad Wolf Hacker hacked and he hacked and he hacked, but he just couldn’t hack into the Mac, so he tried to climb into the house to install a virus manually (even though he would need the administrative password to do so) but as he climbed in the chimney, he fell into a boiling pot of stew, and the three little piggy’s ate until they were full all playing on the Mac into the wee hours of the night, because, well, Macs just work, and they never get viruses, or spyware, or adware, not by the hair of their chinny chin chins. And they lived happily ever after.
The End.
Luke playing on a PC that the Big Bad Wolf trashed!
What could this possibly mean?
OK, my dad sends out these pictures to family with no explanation. I know the easy assumption would be that this is his wife’s new car… but that is far toooooo obvious, it can’t be that!
What do YOU THINK is the meaning of these mysterious pictures? I think she must have just gotten a new job at Rocky Mountain Auto Brokers!
Over on Kidology.org there is a hot discussion that was started by a brother “down under” who asked:
Why do American Christians see the need to teach patriotism? Doesn’t God love all nations equally? (see full question and discussion here)
I’ve been watching the conversation, discussing it with family and friends, and waiting to post my answer until I could really give it some thought, and decided to answer it here on my blog rather than just in the Kidology forum. I’d love your feedback here or there.
My short answer would be, I have never taught “Patriotism” to kids in church, but I certainly have modeled it. They see my flag ties and my red-white-n-blue converse shoes I only wear on US holidays. There is no secret I love my country, but I don’t teach “patriotism.” What I have taught is gratitude to God for our blessings, many of which are being American, and civil responsibility, both which are not USA dependent.
“nation” not “America”
I can go on and on about what a good and amazing country this is, but that is beside the point. I think the Kidology discussion got off on that rabbit trail, which is easy for Americans to do. We LOVE our country. We quickly take a challenge to patriotism as a challenge to our country, and we are very defensive now as we fight a war against those whose aim is to wipe us out. So forgive us if we are quick to “brag” about why we are good! I certainly have blogged about how wonderful America is before, so you may read those if you need to. (that’s four different links!)
Not Many Countries Make This Claim
But question posed by our Australian brother was not is American worthy of patriotism, but should we be teaching patriotism in our children’s ministry. That is a good question even if we weren’t worthy of it. Patriotism (or nationalism as it is usually called in other countries) is certainly taught to kids even in countries we would not think worthy of it.
The best definition of Patriotism I found was:
Patriotism is your conviction that this country
is superior to all other countries
because you were born in it.
– George Bernard Shaw
While intended as humor, I find this definition fascinating because it illustrates the point that Patriotism has nothing to do with how good a nation is, it has to do with our feelings toward our nation. Americans have a hard time separating how good we are from thinking we are the best, and I think that rubs non-Ameicans the wrong way. I apologize for that, but we can’t help it. We truly believe that America is unique on the globe in many positive ways, and struggle to understand why others don’t see why we are so fond of our country. We don’t see millions of people sneaking into other countries, and we think we know why. It’s a wonderful place to live.
America is great in a long list of ways… but as our critics abroad are quick to point out, with our prosperity and freedom has come a moral cost as well. We have some serious issues not seen in other countries, so it is difficult to give an overall “fair” or objective evaluation of a country. In the end, people will focus on the aspects that support how they already feel, rather than base their feelings on facts. We who love this country will quickly say our good outweighs our bad (and I’ll admit, that’s me!) but our enemies or critics who already hate or simply dislike us will say that the bad outweighs the good. (and I’m resisting defending how wrong this is!)
A Heritage That Makes Us Proud
I can’t think of another nation that has done and continues to do as much for the rest of the world, despite it’s shortcomings. I do believe that America has enjoyed God’s blessing and I think our heritage is why – but not a guarentee of lasting power or impact. For those who doubt or don’t realize the Christian heritage (it certainly isn’t taught anymore, or is glossed over or minimized) should watch these online videos, they are powerful:
So we as Americans have plenty of reasons to be proud of our country – but teaching pride for country misses the point. We shouldn’t teach kids to simply love and be proud of their country. What about when the country violates Scripture? What about abortion? Do we love that? Are we proud of the innocent we kill? What about racism? Do we love that? Are we proud of it? What about high levels of crime, drug use, and immorality? Love it? Proud of it? Of course not!
Instead, we ought to teach our kids to appreciate our blessings and to recognize that “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17) But we also need to teach them what God hates, and the role God’s people should play in correcting those wrongs. We need to teach kids to be a light in a dark world, and there are dark places in America that need that light!
God is Supreme Over ALL Nations
Having said that, however, there is a place for Patriotism/Nationalism. The quote above is holds a nugget of truth – we are in the country we are in, because God placed us there. Even on the mission field American missionaries will teach the locals to honor and support their country. My father in law founded a mega church in Manila, Philippines, and when Filipinos would come to the USA for education he would encourage them not to just stay in America but to return to their own country and help there. America is a wonderful land of opportunity but if everyone came here the problems in other countries wouldn’t be helped. It isn’t un-American for an American to encourage someone in another country to love their country and be a part of making it a better place. America is not heaven on earth – but it is our country, and therefore we love it, even if we don’t love everything in it.
What I would teach kids in my church is the same thing kids can be taught in every country. NOT “America is Best”, but love your country, be thankful for the blessings of your country, and be a part of making your country better and more pleasing to God.
That applies “down under” as well as “up top”, and all the “sides.” And sorry for assuming that we are “on top” – its a sphere and Jesus died for every “side” of it. Someday we will have One country and One leader, the King of Kings, but until then – love your country, but love God first!
Just want to post some pictures from the park for family, friends, and Luke fans!
Luke moves up to a bigger bottle!
Luke’s first time to see bubbles! He was fascinated!
Luke learns to swing! Only his second time in one!
Couldn’t choose between these pictures, so putting both!
BUT THEN THE MOST AMAZING THING HAPPENED!
You MUST SEE THE VIDEO to believe it! After setting Luke on the slide and holding him from behind a bunch of times, and then keeping my hand behind him several more times in case he fell back, he finally pushed me away as if to say, “Let me do it alone.” So I nervously put him at the top of the small slide (it has hight sides, which was nice) and then video taped his first decent down a slide solo… and you won’t believe what happened!
OK, I figured out how to put flash video on my blog, here is the first:
Sunday afternoon we went on a picnic with some family friends we haven’t seen in awhile. Their dad wandered off at one point and returned with a GIANT dandy lion for his daughter. I have never seen one so big!
Here is a ‘very dramatic’ girl holding the bundle of seedlings. (taken with my iPhone by the way, and edited in iPhoto) As I had fun do doing some effects to this picture, I couldn’t help thinking how much the dandy lion and my little friend have in common. Both are full of tons of potential that won’t truly be discovered until they are set free to go wherever the Lord blows them.
Once blown way, this beautiful puff of seeds will soon give life to many others once it finds its place and begins to grow, though right now, there is no way to know where those plants will be.
Likewise, this beautiful girl will also someday produce fruit in ways and places that only God knows right now. I know mom and dad aren’t eager for the day she is ‘grown up’ (neither am I!) but it is comforting to know that when that time comes, wherever God may take her, she will blossom as well.
Train a child in the way she should go,
and when she is old she will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6
As you may know, I waited in line for about four hours on June 29th to get one of the first generation iPhones. (Links: eager to go, in line, ten minutes to go, first review)
Reviewing the iPhone will be an ongoing process, so rather than post multiple posts, I will just keep updating this post when I have new information, feedback, or gripes. So far, I am so incredibly impressed, I know that some will ignore my review as being too positively biased… but I will try hard to find bad things to keep the skeptics and Mac haters happy, as much as I can. As I have often said to my Mac-attack friends, I am a big Mac fan, but I am an honest one. I have ripped on my Mac online, so I don’t only say the positive – it’s just that there just is so much more positive than negative. And that is the truth.
REVIEW OF FEATURES: (will update)
TEXT MESSAGING: Not only does it look sweeeeet, and typing easy with the intelligent keyboard, looking people up is a snap, but there is a COOL feature. If you get a Text Message, and the phone is off. Not only will it notify you that you have a message, but it will simply give you the message and the sender in a pop-up so that you can see the message even without unlocking the phone and going to the SMS area to read it. If someone is sending you a quick answer, with a glance you can see the message and you are done.
CALENDAR: Scrolling through events is easy and visually wonderful. Day and month views are great too. Setting reminders and alarms is nice, especially the secondary alarm. For an appointment to meet a friend this week at a movie at 4:45pm, I set a reminder for 3:45 and a secondary at 4:00pm – the first I was in the middle of a conversation and hit ‘ignore’ – but on the second one, dismissed myself to make the appointment. That was cool.
PHOTOS: Man, this is amazing. The images seems a clear as a monitor. You can flip through with a flick of a finger, and the image rotates ALL FOUR ways if you turn your iPhone this way or that. Zoom in, or e-mail the picture you just took in seconds. I sync my favorite albums on my laptop, as well as “Last Roll” so I always have the last roll I imported with me.
CAMERA: Obviously, with no flash, it is best outdoors or in a well lit room, but it takes nice pictures at 2 mega-pixels. The shutter is slow, so blurs are easy to get:
HERE ARE SOME PICS TAKEN WITH THE iPHONE WITH COMMENTS: (click images for larger view)
Takes nice outdoor pictures.
Shutter is slow, so fast moving objects can get distorted.
The button to take the picture is visual on screen, not a “real” physical button, so it is very touchy (pun intended) and accidental pictures are common, and if you aren’t very careful, you push the iPhone when you push the button, and get a blurry picture, so you really have to concentrate on lightly touching, not pushing the button, keeping your finger close the button so you won’t tap, but not so close it senses your finger and takes a picture. Not dificult, but takes more concentration than a camera with a physical button. The location of the button so low on the screen makes it a little uncomfortable to hold and click, but that’s minor.
Lighting can be a bear, even in the sunshine, without a flash to fill in, but easily fixed in iPhoto – here is a picture as the iPhone took it (above) and here it is after iPhoto lightened it in one easy click:
YouTube: Wow, this is a time waster. Fun, but you could quickly lose a lot of time watching videos, but hey, if you are stuck somewhere, its like having a TV you can turn on and search for something fun.
Positive: you can easily and quickly find and watch YouTube videos on your iPhone and bookmark the ones you really like.
Negative: the audio doesn’t seem to always match the video, but I’m not sure if that is an iPhone issue, or YouTube issues, as I don’t use YouTube much even on a computer. The search also seems limited, I searched for “Conan Late Night ILM” on the iPhone (after a friend recommended it) and it said no results on the iPhone, but on YouTube it comes right up.
It also makes me nervous having so many kids with iPhones, as the content is often a concern – but then, I know kids are online viewing YouTube, it is a fact of culture, but now kids can watch stuff on their phone when no one is around to filter or supervise.
YOUTUBE UPDATE: (from Apple article) To achieve higher video quality and longer battery life on mobile devices, YouTube has begun encoding their videos in the advanced H.264 format, and iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the H.264-encoded videos. Over 10,000 videos will be available on June 29, and YouTube will be adding more each week until their full catalog of videos is available in the H.264 format this fall.
STOCKS: Looks cool. Google is selling at 530.38 (up 7.68) and Apple at 121.26 (down .78!) but that’s all I can tell you, not a feature I’ll be using unless I have stock someday! I only have time to invest in my family and the Kingdom.
MAPS: Simply incredible – and screaming fast! Put in your address and see your house from space, and zoom back to the whole earth. Then zoom into the middle a Africa and look for some huts if you want. I showed my gramma the Great Wall of China this evening. When I showed her how I could zoom into her house she said she will have nightmares tonight! Downside is, it only saves the places you typed in, you can’t navigate to somewhere and then bookmark that location. That is a little frustrating. But basically, it is Google Earth on your phone, and no slower than on the computer. This is the best thing to show kids. My nephew wanted to wave and see himself from space!
WEATHER: easy, simple, sharp and updates within seconds of going to view it. Six day forcast at your fingertips any time. not bad.
CLOCK: World time with the ability to have multiple times, I have Chicago, Manila and Melbourne on mine. If that wasn’t cool enough, it adds Alarms, Stop Watch, and even a count down timer and of course, choose your alarm sound from the ring tones. (too bad you can’t pick a song in your iPod music!)
CALCULATOR: simple, so surprises or perks… M+,M- and MR/MC is as fancy as it gets. Oh, well.
NOTES: These note pads look neat, yellow lined pads. (Text doesn’t line up with the lines) The font is friendly and casual. But no formatting at all, and your notes are displayed most recent (or recently edited) at the top. I wish I could rearrange the order of the notes. If all you need to do is write a note, this works. The only real “feature” is a nice one though, click and it will open as an email ready to send to yourself or someone, so you don’t have to copy and paste into an email. (which is good, since you can’t copy and paste anything – see CONS)
SETTINGS: You simply have to poke around in here, lots of features and settings, I’m still experimenting!
NOW, THE BIG FOUR:
PHONE: I heard lots of negative about AT&T, but other than having to change my cell phone number after eight years, I find nothing to complain about. My calls are clearer, my signal stronger, and merging two calls is a snap. I can stay on the phone and still use all the other features. (I was on Verizon)
My bluetooth works perfectly, and connects instantly. (My family and friends hated my bluetooth – my wife says my greeting was, “hi, this is karl, hang on, I’m trying to get my bluetooth to connect) Now if I have the headset on, it pops up three choices: HEADSET, iPHONE, SPEAKER, and if I choose headset, it is just there, instantly in my ear!
The EDGE network, while slower than the G3, is SCREAMING FASTER than what I had on Verizon on my Treo, so I feel like it is light years ahead of what I had before. If G3 is faster, I’ll be impressed, because this is fast! I got no signal in an elevator in the center of a building, but other than that, I’ve had to signal issues, and since it dropped AT&T and automatically connected to any trusted WI-HI networks, at home and work and many other places, it is on the wireless Internet anyway.
MAIL: This is my favorite! View, read, delete, respond as quickly and as easily as on the laptop. Typing is a little slower, but I expect it to get faster as I get used to it. And I set my settings to delete from server if I delete from Inbox on iPhone, meaning it will never end up on my laptop, so I can do email when I am out, and won’t have to delete twice. If it is something I need to do on laptop, just leave it alone on iPhone and it will come into laptop. And you can limit your mail to 25, 50, 75, 100 or 200 messages so they will disappear as time goes on with the ‘real’ messages being on your computer. But nice to have that reference with you. I won’t have to take my 17″ laptop with me so much now.
SAFARI: FINALLY the actual real Internet on your phone. Zoom, rotate, and surf easily. Have multiple windows open, and keep them open all day if you want. There is no flash player so Kidology.org header doesn’t appear or the welcome screen to my novel site, or other flash sites, but that is minor, and usually not needed. I can blog, and log into admin sites as well. Still need to see if I can blog a picture using the iPhone. If I can do that, I will really be excited for the reporting I’ll be able to do on the road.
iPOD: This just rocks. For one thing, finally an iPod with built in speakers! And if you have an iPod, you just have a cooler one now. I have 984 songs and 23 videos (two are full length movies, and a few TV shows).
==================
CONS (what I don’t like)
NO TASKS. My biggest disappointment with the iPhone is that they completely left out any tasks, or to-do lists. I LOVED that on my Palm and it is a part of iCal, so I don’t get why that was left off. My guess is because it has to work PC and Mac, and I know my Mac and Palm struggled with syncing tasks. I am really hoping a widgit or third party solution comes soon. In the meantime, I am using the web-based TaskAnyone.com and finding it very helpful, and easy enough to do on the iPhone.
NO COPY / PASTE This is a huge oversight in my opinion, many tasks take longer because you can’t copy and paste. Palm had shortcuts which were awesome and you could make them anything you wanted. They need to find a creative way to allow users to have their own keyboard short cuts and copy/paste is really needed!
NOTES: They need to beef this up. I’d like to be able to change the order of the Notes just like you can the order of your Favorites in Phone.
TWO / THREE CLICKS TO DO A PERIOD - I wish period and comma were on the main keyboard, but you have to hit symbol key, then period/comma, and then symbol key to get back to typing, so a period is three clicks. UPDATE: if you hit space after a period/comma it goes back to ABC automatically, but it is still a paid do to puncuation. They should just make the space bar smaller and put period and comma on the main screen.
DOESN’T WORK WITH ALL iPOD SPEAKER SYSTEMS. The iPhone does not work on my car iPod player (that goes through the radio), at all, even though it will dock and charge, just won’t play above a marely audible level. Also, it gets a “this isn’t supposed to work with this” message in the one in my bathroom, but works fine after I put it in airplane mode. (at it’s suggestion)
RESOLVED ISSUES: (will update)
NO CAPS LOCK – found a way to enable it in Settings.
Oh, and let me end with this. Someone posted a picture of a smashed iPhone on Kidology (with the screen still working, fyi) – but I must tell you this, at a picnic this week, I took my iPhone off and put it on the blanket with my keys, etc. to protect it, and later an upper elementary boy stepped on it hard, and it didn’t hurt it a bit. (the boy, therefore, was allowed to live) So, it is a pretty durable device! Not that I want to test that, but I was impressed!
PS: Wow, me and my iPhone got blogged about Down Under!
==============================================
BUGS/CRASHES/ETC.
Here I will log actual problems that I experience with my iPhone:
# = number of times this has happened.
3 / Google Maps “Crash” – not sure if it is a crash, interuption in wireless service, or what, but sometimes when you are in the middle of map surfing the iPhone just suddenly returns to the main menu. The first time I thought I must have bumped something, but the next few times I could tell I didn’t. And it doesn’t ‘remember’ where you were, so if you want to return to that place, you have to start over. Rating: annoying
1 / Safari Crashing /Freeze – one occurance, but happens 3 times. I was loading my blog to show my wife my iPhone review, and ironically, the page would get 80% loaded and then go to home screen. On my fourth attempt, it froze, but restarting the iPhone fixed it. (hold down both buttons for 6-7 seconds, like resetting an iPod) Then the page loaded quickly. My Wi-Fi was on one bar at home, so it might have been a slow connection?
Rating: concerning
1 / Freeze and Scorch! - This was new. I plugged it into the syncing/charging cable and attached to the computer to sync and charge, and then set it down and forgot about it. After blogging (the one above this one!) I picked up the phone and about burned my hand! It had frozen, screen still on, and was HOT. A reset did the trick, but ouch, it was overheated big time. Possible causes, it was playing music when I plugged it in, I was curious if the music would stop, it didn’t at first, but then I got distracted, so I’m not sure how long the music played. (Actually, I stepped away for a bit.) After the reset, there was a 20% battery warning pop-up. Maybe that popped up when I plugged in with music playing? Anywy, just reported when things go weird. Rating: Ouch
So far, these are not alarming – it is a computer, and they are prone to need a reboot occasionally. It seems “go to home screen” is it’s default, which beats a freeze or error message. Kinda funny, because it makes you first assume human error.
Posts
Comments
Kidology.org
BeTheDadToday.com
YosemiteSummit.org
Kidologist.com
ToyboxTales.com
