So the next question is, what feature will replace it? I still want to publish something interesting every Friday, and I don’t want it to be super-spiritual since I’m already doing that every Tuesday and sometimes Thursday. If I had my druthers, I do some podcasting — audio or video — but I definitely can’t make that sort of time commitment right now.

I’ll have to think about it some more. In the meantime, I hope you have a great Friday tomorrow and in the near future!

Here’s the cover art:

Yesterday evening, we had an album release party and invited a bunch of our friends over to check it out and take a look at our studio (sorry, didn’t get any pics). That was a load of fun, although trying to launch a Web site and get the word out at the same time as putting a party together was pretty crazy! Kids, don’t try this at home.

We’ll upload a video tour of our studio at some point, as well as some other musical tidbits down the road, so when that happens, I’ll let you folks know. All right, that’s it for my advertisement — now you know why some of my blogging has been erratic in previous months!

Have a great Sunday…Jared

I’m thinking about doing things differently for next week. Every time I read something or see something on the Web that interests me, instead of bookmarking it for later evaluation, I’ll add it directly to a work-in-progress Speedlink post. That way, when Friday rolls around, all I have to do is edit and publish, rather than write, edit, and then publish. We’ll see how that goes!

Hey, if you have any feedback regarding different tricks to help blogging go more smoothly, I’m all ears!

Hey there. Nice to see ya. Glad we could have a chat. Yeah, gee whiz, got lots of catching up to do. Let’s see…man, life’s just been nuts the last few months. Thankfully I have a lot to be thankful for! I’m still working down in San Francisco as a contractor at BabyCenter — yes, I know, it was originally going to be a three-month stint. I still have the journal entry where I was talking about hanging in there with the commute and all. That was back in May 2007. Funny how the more we do something we think is going to be a huge deal, the more it becomes old hat. It looks like I’ll be continuing to make the trek down there for the next few months at least, and beyond that, Lord knows?

Been doing lots of blogging lately. That’s been a bucketload of fun, though hard work at times. It’s tough to discipline yourself to write theologically meaty posts on a regular schedule when you’re already so busy. That’s probably why it was such a good idea to implement the schedule — otherwise, I just wouldn’t be writing anything at all! Do I get lots of traffic? Well, to be honest, I’d be happy with plenty more, but the fact is that the principle audience of this blog is none other than yours truly. So I write stuff that I enjoy reading and leave it at that.

Something that’s been a major drain on my time/energy for the past year+ is FINALLY coming to an end. I say major drain like it’s a bad thing, but it’s actually a wonderful thing. It’s the album project my brother Shayne and I have been doing under the auspices of Binary Sea. We’re so-o-o-o jazzed about it. It’s been one of those things that always seemed like no matter how much work we got done, we still had –>that<– amount of work still left to do. Thank God we’re on track to finish up all recording/mixing work this week and then next week we’ll be wrapping up the final CD master. In the immortal words of Howard Dean…YEEEEAAAAAHHHHGGGGUUHHH!!! Album name/cover art/release date/etc. coming very soon!

I guess that’s about it. Just kidding! I’m just getting warmed up. I also hiked to the top of Mount Everest and went deep sea diving in the Mariana Trench. Haha, fooled you. No, seriously, I have been preoccupied with some other major things going on as well. Some of it I’m keeping close to the vest for the time being, but I’m happy to talk about the rest of it. Like the outreach small group I’ve been helping to lead with my friend Kathy at church. Every Sunday at 1pm we meet to study the book of Acts and talk about ways to be the light of the world and the salt of the earth in our local community. In case you hadn’t noticed, the era of expecting people to come to church automatically when they need help with life’s problems is over. If we want to be able to minister the grace and love and healing of Jesus Christ to folks with deep needs, we need to go where they are and communicate in a language they understand. I think the early 1st century Church got a lot of things right. They got some things wrong too — after all, the Apostles were only human! — but the thing they knew is that living the Christian life wasn’t a club or a mantra, it was a community and a lifestyle. Oops, I’m preaching aren’t I? Anyway, we’re having a blast. Shayne and I also play regularly every Sunday morning on the worship team, so our church days are pretty action packed.

Hmm…oh yeah, I knew I was forgetting something. How about, like, my dad is, like, GETTING MARRIED!!! Yep, my dad Christopher is engaged to be married to our good family friend from church, Kathy. Uh huh, the same Kathy who’s leading the outreach small group. Isn’t that just sick? When they say that God works in mysterious ways, they ain’t kiddin’ brother.

Well, that really is just about it. For now anyway. I’m coming to expect that in another month or two, everything will be radically different and life will be totally crazy and nothing will make sense anymore and yet everything will be amazingly cool and all that jazz. Never a dull moment, hehe. Heh. Heh.

Heh.

The Monday Light weekly photo series has been a great success, both in terms of being a creative challenge as well as requiring a higher degree of blogging professionalism as I have to post something interesting every single week on the same day no matter what’s going on in my life. The downside that I’ve discovered however is that as my time for blogging has been so limited, I’ve tended to put off writing any actual posts since I think “oh, the blog’s sort of up to date, I got that photo up on there a couple of days ago.” Well that’s just silly. I’m sure most of you became readers of this blog due to my spiritual and philosophical writings, so photography, while fun, can’t take the place of that. And I’m also feeling frustrated myself that I’ve run out of steam on the writing angle.

I’ve been praying about this, and I feel like with the Lord’s leading I’ve got a great solution in the works, so without further adieu, here it is: everything I post henceforth will be part of a weekly blogging schedule that I will never, EVER deviate from. Well, almost never. The idea is that, just as I’ve committed to posting one new photo a week on Mondays, I will commit to posting one new entry on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Here is the final rundown of what I’ll be doing each and every week starting next week:

Monday: Monday Light — Photo series. You already know what this is.
Tuesday: Emerging as God’s Children — New series! Each week I will share a short thought or scripture about our relationship with God and the authority we have in Christ as fellow sons and daughters of the Father and heirs to His Kingdom. I was inspired by a column written by Ché Ahn of Harvest Rock Church on this very topic, and it’s exciting to me that I’ll be delving into this regularly for the foreseeable future.
Thursday: (rotating series or one-off posts) — I’ll use this day to post either the continuation of an ongoing monthly (ish) series on a particular topic, or I’ll post a one-off essay of some kind. Next week, for example, I will be posting the next installment of my series God is the Ultimate Travel Agent.
Friday: Speedlink Friday! — A whirlwind tour of the blogosphere courtesy of yours truly. By popular demand!

So there you have it. A new blogging schedule that I’m absolutely certain will infuse new life into the blog and give me a solid path forward as a new era of Finite Calls Infinite begins. I hope you enjoy the festivities! And as always, I welcome your feedback wholeheartedly!

If you like, you can fill out your name and e-mail in the survey (that’s an optional step) and e-mail me your Web site or blog, and I’ll prominently mention you in my next feedback post! Obviously in that case you would have you leave your name and e-mail or else I wouldn’t know if you actually filled out the survey.

Anyway, thanks in advance for your feedback! Have a great day!

Big ol’ link to the survey

The award in all its pearlescent glory:

Actually, the sad truth of the matter is that I received this award on February 5th. Five. Numero cinco. In case you hadn’t noticed, that was precisely a month ago. Yeah, I’m that on top of things around here.

But you know what, my friends? Time wounds all heals, as they say, so in order to avoid further pain and tragedy, I will now endeavor to continue the meme of the Thinking Blogger Award that was started here and expanded upon by others such as Justin Jordan who tagged me.

I hereby tag:

• James Laws and Kevin Stover at Verge (Blog of LifePoint Church)
• Andrew Conard at Thoughts of Resurrection
• Peter Smyth at The Real Faith
• Denyse O’Leary at Mindful Hack
• Trevin Wax at Kingdom People

To continue this award meme, which you surely must to avoid abject embarrassment, simply follow these rules:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ image.

And if you don’t know what that expression means, here you go. Sometimes I actually look up stuff I write to make sure I’m not saying something totally absurd!

Anyway, here’s the scoop. I originally started this blog as a hobby — in fact, it was basically something I threw up (um, not that kind) on the Web in a hurry because I felt that if I didn’t have an avenue for my thoughts, I would explode! That was in January 2007. In September 2007, I relaunched the blog with a new custom theme (and unlike most of my design work, I still like it!), and have tried to be more diligent in posting regularly and treating the blog in a professional manner.

Now I’m beginning to feel some stirrings in my spirit that I’m about to enter a new season of prolificacy in regards to my online endeavors. Part of it is this blog, part of it is my new weekly photo series, and hopefully down the road I’ll be adding video to the list. And then, later this year, will come my super-secret-amazing-earth-shattering-world-changing project that has never before nor will ever be equalled. Or not. At any rate, I got my work cut out for me!

The reason I’m telling you this isn’t to toot my own horn, but to ask you a serious question. Will you help me? Will you give me your feedback and let me know what you’d like to see more of or less of? I’m really just wasting my time if I’m not actually providing a service that blesses my readers, so I want to make sure I make the most of the opportunity to share with you.

If nothing else, I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer these two questions:

1. Do you like blog series (i.e., a number of posts over a week or two on the same theme) or one-off, spontaneous posts better?
2. Do you feel the quality of this blog would be greatly enhanced with an accompanying picture for each post, or is the writing alone sufficient?

Thanks so much for your feedback! If, God forbid, I don’t get any comments or e-mails, that’s OK. I’ll just repost this message until I do. Ha ha!

Well, I found it, and it’s called MacSword. It’s just a Mac frontend for public content released by the Sword project, which is pretty darn cool actually. I was able to pick up my favorite translation, the ESV, along with some good commentaries, concordances, and so forth. I’m very excited to start digging into some studies for my upcoming series called God: the Ultimate Travel Agent.