Archive for April, 2007

One Day Blog Silence

We are starting to nibble at the Apple. Our volunteers that work are ready to move to Macintosh and thanks be to God, we just got a new Mac Pro sponsored. Hopefully, we will get it outfitted with Pro Presenter 3.0 and Final Cut Studio 2. Knowing that I’ll have to start supporting Macs, a friend of mine kindly gave me his old Mac Mini (PowerPC based) to use. I hooked it up this evening and it is working great. The Mini is setup as my left side workstation, Ubuntu 7.04 is running on the two monitors in the middle and Windows XP on the right. Synergy allows me to control all three from a single mouse and keyboard.

Home Office

Recently, a lot of spam comments are sneaking past Akismet. The comments are usually on very old posts so I decided to install the Comment Timeout plugin. I have it set to disable comments when posts are more than 120 days old or haven’t had a comment for more than 60 days. Hopefully this will help.

Tried to fire up Google this morning and found this:

Google Scrubbed

I had to change our DNS back until they allow Google to work, my guess is someone added Google to a blacklist that ScrubIT subscribes too. They need to make sure certain critical domains are whitelisted no matter what. Hopefully they will update us on what happened soon.

JoostI just got three invites that I can hand out for the beta trial of Joost. Joost is new Internet TV service from the founders of Skype that gives the user a “high-quality full-screen picture.”

At St. Mark’s, online video has taken off – from live streaming to posting videos on demand with Google Video or Light Cast Media – time and time again we have found out that users are thirsty for more. Joost is one way that we could deliver better quality content to our users by taking advantage of peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. Hopefully we will see good Christian content on there soon (maybe even our own)!

I’ll email out invites to the first three people to comment.

Bill Seaver on Joost:
MicroExplosion – Tech Review: Joost – online video’s next step?

Update: NewTeeVee and Joost have developed a special landing page for invites. All you have to do is click here, and fill out your information.

We just got back from an amazing week long vacation in Aruba. Thank God, it was a very relaxing time, I got spend some quality time with Christ, my wife and catching up on a lot of reading. Unfortunately, I did have to miss the Church IT Roundtable (this was the only week Sherry and I could get away), but I do look forward to catching up on all the posts.

Sherry and Andrew Lounging in Aruba

A couple weeks ago, our altar nave went from a plain white wall to a magnificent icon of Christ on the Throne that is around 15 feet high. It’s not an original oil painting (that would take weeks/months to finish), rather it is printed on canvas using a special printer, glued on to the wall and then touched up by brush. God bless the guys who put it all together, it came out great!

Christ on the Throne - The Altar Nave at St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church

Icon of the Resurrection of Christ

We spent the entire night yesterday in the church praising our Lord Jesus Christ, ending with the Divine Liturgy at dawn. Throughout the week, the church was teaching us through the prophecies, gospels and sermons but last night that all changed. All the readings, hymns and prayers were focused on praising our Lord Jesus Christ as we “pass over” from death to life. We also read the Book of Revelation in its entirety. Truly it is a glorious day.

By reading the Book of Revelation, we are reminded of the Lord’s coming. We remember His amazing resurrection from the dead and His second coming. This mysterious book also encapsulates the entire Bible into one. As the entire week of Pascha was full of prophecies from the Old Testament, this last day is full of prophecies from the New Testament.

This is perhaps one of the most powerful books in the Holy Bible, for it was given from God the Father, to Christ, to an angel, to John. It is a book of symbols and mystery, a book in which the past, present and future unite. There is victory, death and pain.

Taken from page 495 in the Treasures of the Fathers.

To him who overcomes I will grant to sit with Me on My throne, as I also overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne. “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” - Revelation 3:21-22 NKJV