Groovy Sputum

Wired

I have spent considerable amounts of time planning the electrical system of our new home and have decided to go with 2 breaker boxes for my circuits. The first will be a 200 amp panel that will feed the majority of circuits and the second will be a 100 amp panel with essential circuits housed within. My furnace, lights, well, sump pump, and septic aerator are all on this smaller, essential panel. I purchased a back feed safety switch that will allow me to use my generator to run this smaller panel when we have a power outage. The switch will only allow one power source to be active at a time. Either I am drawing from the grid or I am drawing from my generator. The switch won’t allow both. I know the linemen at Ohio Edison will appreciate that!

The other wiring that I have been pondering is the communication, data, and media wiring. Initially, I had thought about running a bunch of Cat6 network cable and RG-6 coax to every room, but as I have considered things more, I am leaning toward not installing any of this. One of the things that Valerie and I look forward to with our new home is a return to a simpler, less complicated life. We also have every intention of having our home be a haven for our children. I am not sure we can accomplish these things if we have tv & internet at the house. Let’s face it, the things of this world are invading every aspect of our culture (one need only try to take your children through the checkout line at Meijer to see what I mean) and I fear for the spiritual and moral development of my children if my own home has evil available at gigabyte speed.

One nice thing about not having media on demand is that hopefully we will be more judicious about choosing what we want to watch rather than having it chosen for us (I am referring to commercials and channel surfing). Nightly tv is already a common activity at the Burton home, but rarely do we watch live broadcasts (the Superbowl this year pretty much set me over the edge in terms of allowing my children to watch commercials anymore). We normally will pop in a DVD of The Waltons or Andy Griffith and enjoy an episode or two. I know it is old fashioned, but it is enjoyable nonetheless.

There are obvious things that will need to be sacrificed, however, if we are not to be a thoughtfully modern wired family. Email, news, research, and blogging will need to be done elsewhere, which obviously will be a bit of an inconvenience. Valerie and I had a short conversation about that, though, and we both agree that a short trip to a wi-fi hot spot (there are several withing a few miles of our home) would allow us to import our email and blog feeds to be read at home and email responses and updates to our personal blogs can be composed offline and simply sent/posted live the next time a connection is made. I know Valerie would probably enjoy her daily trip (read: time alone) to a coffee shop to sip an exotic tea and get her internet fix. It would probably help with time management as well if we had specific times that we were online. As it is now, we are free to surf anytime and many times that turns into all the time. Not good.

Technical Literacy

I am working on a project for an educational technology class that I am taking that deals with the Ohio Content Standards. Basically, these are all the things that the State of Ohio says a child needs to know or be able to do at each grade level.

One of the things that I am doing is setting up vertical progressions with the Ohio Technology Standards. A vertical progression is a map of all the things a student needs to learn about a specific topic from kindergarten through high school graduation. Many teachers only look at what needs to be taught/learned at the grade level they are assigned to teach. That is fine, but it doesn’t show the whole educational picture. A vertical progression is a better way of looking at content standards because it shows not only what is to be learned at the current grade level, but also what has been learned (or should have been learned) at previous levels and what will be taught in the future. If the student is struggling with the new material, a teacher using a vertical progression needs only to go down the progression to a previous level, reteach what wasn’t learned, and then proceed back up the progression.

As I have been working, the thought came to me: how technically literate are you? I thought it would be fun to list a few vertical progressions and let you do a self check of your technical literacy. I am starting with an easy topic: basic operations. Take a look at the list below and see if you can do all the things. You can check out what grade level you were supposed to have learned it, too.

• Grade 5: Select the appropriate device to store needed information and independently save and access stored information from portable devices (e.g., how large is the saved information? do others need to use the information? what device will best store this information?)
• Grade 4: Demonstrate ability to login and use basic network services.
• Grade 4: Discuss different software programs and what they do.
• Grade 4: Discuss image formats (JPEG, GIF, TIFF).
• Grade 4: Save, transport and access stored information from portable devices (e.g., portable hard drives, universal serial bus-2014;USB devices, memory sticks).
• Grade 3: Identify and use input and output devices to operate and interact with computers and multimedia technology resources (e.g., scanner, digital cameras).
• Grade 3: Discuss networks and their use (e.g., how computers connect to printers, servers and the Internet).
• Grade 3: Identify and use a variety of software programs.
• Grade 3: Use technologies for particular content areas (e.g., calculators for math, computerized microscopes for science and books on CD-ROM for language arts).
• Grade 2: Know that software is necessary to operate computer technology.
• Grade 2: Use a variety of computer and multimedia technology resources for directed learning activities (e.g., computer, VCR/DVD player, audio player, camera).
• Grade 2: Identify and use input and output devices to operate and interact with computers and multimedia technology resources (e.g., scanner, digital camera, video camera).
• Grade 1: Discuss software and why it is necessary to operate computer and multimedia technology.
• Grade 1: Start, use and exit software programs with teacher assistance.
• Grade 1: Use input (keyboard, mouse) and output (printer) devices to operate computer and multimedia technology tools with teacher assistance.
• Grade K: Identify and use input (keyboard, mouse) and output (printer) devices to operate computer and multimedia technology tools with teacher assistance.
• Grade K: Use software programs with teacher assistance.

Facebook

My mother-in-law started using Facebook a few weeks ago because her church choir director said she needed to be on there so she could keep in touch with her choir cronies. I kind of gave her a hard time because all of her virtual friends are people she sees pretty much every day. She gets on FB and plays with her virtual dog (Pokie, I think it’s called) and changes her mood and such, but I am not sure how much critical communication she actually does. I may have made some comment about not needing FB because I blog. After all, that is a better form of communication, right? I tend to think of IM, texting, and social networking as shallow communication with fake words, ykwim? A contest to see how many “friends” one can acquire. Blogging, however, is REAL communication. Deep thoughts written out in REAL words.

Then my brother calls me and says he signed up on Facebook and was able to find a ton of his friends from Liberty there. This got my attention because I have been trying to get in touch with some of my Liberty friends for awhile without success. I posted earlier about my desire to repair some of the relationships that I damaged a decade ago and I have (slowly) been able to at least open some communication up with a few people. There are a few, however, that have eluded me.

So, I swallowed my pride (don’t tell my mother-in-law) and signed up on Facebook. I have been pleasantly surprised with the outcome. There is a Liberty Track & Field from the ’90s group and many of the people I have been looking for are there. I also found my friend, Keith, who is long overdue for an apology from yours truly.

Yeah, I only have four friends, but I am ok with that. I am not in this to meet new folks, really. I just want to find a few people, catch up, and perhaps rebuild some relationships that are in need of repair. I just hope I haven’t burned too many bridged with some of them.

The Year In Science

Valerie stopped by the library the other day and picked up a bunch of magazines that were being thrown out due to space issues. Apparently, our local library only keeps one year’s worth of periodicals. Actually, they must keep the current year and throw out anything that has last year’s date on it because she came home with the Science News 2007 Year In Review. Science News is a neat little summary journal for science geeks like myself. Rather than reading 20 content specific journals, you can just read the excerpts from them all in one place. Convenient.

Anyway, this particular edition listed the top advancements in science that occurred in 2007. There were a few that particularly caught my eye and I wanted to share them with you.

Astronomy

• Five planets were discovered circling the nearby star 55 Cancri. Is anyone out there?
• Eris, a dwarf planet in the Solar System, was discovered to be larger than Pluto. Poor Pluto has had a couple of rough years.

Medicine

• A vaccine against multiple sclerosis passed an initial safety trial and is now in clinical trials. That’s amazing!
• There is a new way to re-grow corneal tissue in the human eye. I’m sure Valerie is glad to hear that.
• Research shows that babies born to HIV-positive women have less chance of being infected with it if they are breastfed. It doesn’t make any sense, but I am glad to hear it.
• People who have smoked all their lives have about half the chance of getting Parkinson’s disease. I’ll take my chances, thank you very much.

Biology

• There was a mysterious vanishing of worker bees in the U.S. in 2007. I hope this doesn’t affect my Honey Nut Cheerios.

Chemistry

• Two words: carbon nanotubes. All I am going to say is WOW.
• A chemical adhesive was made from geckos and will stick, re-stick, and stick again, on all kinds of surfaces even if wet. Say goodbye to duct tape.
• Graphene (the stuff carbon nanotubes are made of) were made into transistors, paving the way for carbon based mini-micro-supersmall computer chips.

Physics

• Scientists discovered that if you put a rope in a dryer and turn it on, it will knot up. REALLY. And our taxes are paying for this kind of work?

Technology

• Scientists were able to transfer electrical power wirelessly across a room using oscillating magnetic fields. Better put some copper wire in your scrapbook so that you can show your grandkids what things were like in the old days.
• Particles were created that were able to stick to micro objects and drag them toward a magnet. This has applications in water purification and decontamination of air.

The Blog That’s Not A Blog

Sunday was supposed to be our launch of the new church website, but due to many things, it has been put off until March 2nd. I think that date is pretty solid, mostly because Pastor Mike announced it from the pulpit on Sunday, gave out the web address, and said it would be up on that day. I figured that I would spend some time explaining a few things about the site that I think are rather unique.

When you think of a blog, even a church blog, you typically think of a Blogger or WordPress layout: a header image that changes with the seasons, one large column with the 5 or 6 latest posts, and a side bar filled with widgets and such. This is fine for a personal blog, but it’s not what I had in mind for our church site. I wanted to have an area where we could put static data (like service times, a map, statement of faith, etc.) but reserve the majority of the page area for posts. Here’s the catch: I wanted to display a number of posts from a variety of categories on the page in a way that readers could see them all.

After investigating many themes available for WordPress, I found that 99% of them don’t separate posts based on category nor do they display posts in multiple places. Then I discovered the phrase magazine style theme. After a Google search with that phrase, I found a number of themes that would do what I wanted. They all are built primarily for newspapers or magazines that display their info in separate categories. Some of my favorites are The Morning After, Mimbo, Structure, and Grid Focus. Others I found are Gridlock, Visionary, and a number of themes by Upstart Blogger.

After trying a few, I finally settled on the Mimbo theme due to it’s classic styling and use of custom fields. If you are a Seinfeld fan, you will recognize the name. Funny stuff. Anyway, I made a few changes to the sidebar and the CSS file, but not many. The first thing you see when you go to the site is the latest post from the pastor. Below it are the three latest testimonies as well as the latest post from the children, youth, and adult categories. The announcements are in the top right corner and are actually posts with only theirs title showing. The nice thing about this is that they show up on the page as bulleted lines, but are sent as posts via the rss feed.

When visitors come to the site, they have access to 12 posts from 6 different categories as well as navigation and special event banners. This is exactly what I wanted. A traditional blog format shoves all of the content to the bottom or the archives and the viewer has to search for the content they want. With a magazine style format, the viewer always sees the latest post from each category, regardless of when it was posted.

The static info that rarely changes is confined to pages and can be accessed via the drop down navigation bar at the top. The titles showing are the parent pages and the drop down choices are children of those parents. The only pages that will change much will be the events. I am planning to create a new page for each special event we have and then link the side banner ads to them. When the event is first presented, it will be written up and categorized into either the children, youth, or adult areas as a post. As the event approaches, I will create a post in the announcement category so that a reminder is sent to any one subscribing to the site feed.

So, that’s it. I think the overall visual appearance is nice (conservative, yet modern in a techie way) and it functions the way I had it in my head. I would love to hear what you think about the concept and design. We haven’t gone live yet, so who knows, maybe something you suggest will be worked into the final product!

T-Minus 5 Days

I met with Pastor Mike last week and showed him the initial build for the CFAC web site and he really liked it. I thought about providing a link for you to check it out, but because the content is just gibberish, I decided to wait until the site is up and running to reveal it.

Some of you may be wondering why I appear to have an obsession with WordPress. Well, when I first investigating CMS (content management systems), I realized that there were many to choose from. I had a list of criteria that the CMS needed to have, and as I began to investigate the possibilities, a few platforms really stuck out. Here is what I was looking for:

1. Open Source (i.e. free)
2. Well supported and tested
3. Large community of users for support and the sharing of layouts & customizable features (because I an not that creative)
4. Built on an open source database (again, free)
5. Easy to use login and user interface (if it is too difficult to change, the site will never be updated)
6. Blog ready, but not necessarily blog only
7. Able to be self hosted with my domain name (I didn’t want third party ads or logos on the site nor did I want my domain name to be whatever.blogityblogblogblog.com)

Based on these criteria, I narrowed my choices to Joomla! and WordPress. They are nearly identical platforms and fit my criteria to a tee, but I eventually chose WordPress because of the out-of-the-box blog features. Although Joomla! can be used as a blog, there is much more set up and customization involved to get there.

The more I have used WordPress, the more impressed with it I have been. It uses MySQL as it’s database and runs on Linux servers. It uses the scripting language php to access the database, although some programmers have complained that it is not a true php, but a modified version of it. I honestly don’t care because it is fairly intuitive and anyone with the slightest bit of scripting background can figure out the syntax. WordPress also has a huge following of users and that means tons of extras like themes and plugins (a small program that provides an extra service not normally preformed by the CMS). The main WordPress site also has a large resource area to assist people like me in customizing.

In my research leading up to our church web site, I came across many churches using all kinds of blog software. In my opinion, those running Joomla! or WordPress were by far the nicest. They just seemed to strike the right balance between and online billboard and an online community. I think that is really what I am going for. Too much of either and the site becomes a static ad or simply a church forum. I am not interested in either of those.

So, we are set to go live on Sunday. When you see it, I hope your reaction is, “Wow, that doesn’t look like a WordPress blog.” I am planning on explaining what we did with the layout in a future post, so stay tuned for more!

Free Tax Service

I have been filing my taxes the last few years with a free online service called Tax Act. I saw that Turbo Tax is now offering a free online service so I thought I’d give them a shot this year. I am glad I did. Sure they try to sell you an upgrade every so often, but overall, the interface was very easy to use and much less confusing than Tax Act. I usually do a dry run on paper before I start my online return so that I have a rough idea of what it should look like and Turbo Tax’s results were strikingly similar to what I had figured. There are a few tricky parts in my return and I am glad to know that even if I had filed myself with a pen, I would have done it properly.

One such area is how to apply tuition to a return. One option is to us it as a deduction. The other is to use it as a credit. In my case, the deduction was the most beneficial.

Another area of concern is with my children. There are a number of credits available to families and I always dislike having to work my way through the worksheets to see if I qualify for them. “If line 4 is greater than half of line 5 multiplied by 15.75% (0.1575), enter the lesser of lines 4 and 5 on line 6 and subtract it from line 38 on your 1040.” Turbo Tax did these for me.

I also sold my house this past year and I had no clue how to figure my capital gains. Once again, Turbo Tax made it easy.

One final perk to using TT…they will eFile your return for free! How nice! I always hated trying to order the gazillion pages correctly and making sure all my w-2s, 1099s, and 1098s were in order. I spent maybe 3 hours working on my Fed this year. It works for me!

We’re Online

I recently got the ok from Pastor Mike to build a website for our church and last night I got the ball rolling with the purchase of a domain name. I also loaded WordPress onto the server and set up the MySQL database, so we are ready to roll. At this point, we just have to settle on the content, layout, and overall look of the site. Since we are going with WordPress, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

I also discovered a little plugin that is handy if you use WordPress. It is called Maintenance Mode and when active, it takes your site off line and replaces it with a customizable front page. As the name implies, this tool is used when you are doing maintenance on your site. It is nice to be able to quickly take down the site and put up a temp page. It is also nice for visitors to see a real page while you are working and not get one of those nasty “server not found” message. Check out the site and see what I mean: clearforkalliance.org. I just put up the church name, location, and meeting times. It will work for now and we can be working on the build behind the scenes and as soon as we are ready to go live, we can deactivate MM and BAM!…have an official web presence.

I thought about putting a spinning gif of a stick man digging with a message that says “under construction” (demo), or simply this icon (I like the backhoe), but I thought the simple page was more appropriate. The sad thing is, even in my 10 minutes of work getting the site up, it is probably better than 90% of the church web sites out there right now. I particularly like this site (check out the dancing Jesus) and am thinking of contacting the web master for some design tips.

Useful Plugins

I hope you have enjoyed reading my Top 5 Greatest OSU Moments the last few days. I have been doing some research about the WordPress platform and wanted to share some of the useful plugins that I have discovered and am using presently. I have found that these plugins really help me as I am blogging.

• Simple Tags: this is a great little tag manager. You can rename any of your tags globally (great for the times you misspell a tag and end up with 3 of the same thing, i.e. word press, Wordpress, and WordPress), have tags automatically generated for each post, or get tag suggestions from Yahoo and the web using the click tag feature.
• All in One SEO: this is a search engine optimizer, hence the name SEO. This will generate unique meta information in the header of each page of your blog based on the content of each page. For instance, instead of every page having the top 10 tags and basic blog description, each page will be tagged with the tags you created for that post and the page description will be the excerpt of your post.
• CyStats: logs just about every data you might want about your blog. Number of unique hits/visits, number of bot hits/visits, search query returns (both internal and external), page usage, trackback data, and on and on.
• WP-Polls: my latest plugin addition, this little guy enables internal polls and is very customizable. I am not a huge fan of external blogging services for things like polls, calendars, and galleries. I just don’t like to log in to a gazillion sites to do something simple.
• Search Everything: this extends the search capabilities of the standard WordPress search bar. The default WordPress search form only searches post content (as far as I know) but this plugin expands that form to tags, categories, image titles, post titles, comments, and more. Basically, it allows your viewers to search everything, hence the name.

If you have never used plugins on your WordPress site, I highly recommend trying them. They are easy to use, easy to install, and very helpful. One thing to note: it is a good idea to get your plugins (and themes, for that matter) directly from the WordPress web site. There have been reports of malicious code being inserted by third party download sites and that is no fun. Get the genuine stuff here.

My Obsession

If you know me at all, you probably know that when an idea gets into my head, I tend to go overboard thinking about the details. I can’t tell you how many times I have dreamed of starting a coffee shop, a racing team or business and have literally spent hours thinking about any and every little detail of the project. From color schemes to shoe sponsors, font styles to floor plans, I planned EVERYTHING. I used to just write my ideas on scrap paper or napkins, but when the technology revolution happened, I began to use graphic editing programs to “flesh out” my thoughts. I particularly enjoy creating logos or icons to “brand” my ideas. You know, make them more marketable. Right.

I thought I would list a few of these thoughts and ideas for you so that you’d have a glimpse of how I think. The more recent ideas may have a logo that have I created, while the older ones don’t. Now, keep in mind, many of these are quite old and have been gurgling in my brain for quite some time.

• The Mud Puddle

This was a coffee shop idea that hit me while I was trying to stay awake during my Tuesday / Thursday afternoon Educational Philosophy class back in college. Or was it Philosophy of Education? Who cares. All I know is that it was…(yawn)…a very interesting class. The concept for The Mud Puddle was based on John 9:6 where Christ spits, makes mud, and puts it on the blind man’s eyes. The tag line of the place was going to be “Opening the Eyes of the Blind” and the place would be all the rage with teens and singles…a place to turn troubled lives around. All of the menu items would have “dirty” names. You know, cup of mud, dirt pudding, gravel latte, etc.

• Groovy Sputum

This was going to be the monthly newsletter for the coffee shop mentioned above. It would contain poems and thought provoking proverbs from local writers as well as a list of the upcoming live entertainment that one could hear on the weekends. Raw acoustic, of course. “Where’d you come up with the name, Luke?” Glad you asked. I was taking microbiology the same semester The Mud Puddle hit me and at one point were running sputum cultures. I realize that sputum and spit (which Christ used in John 9) are not exactly the same, but they are close enough in my book to make a connection. Besides, Groovy Sputum just has a ring to it. As you know, Groovy Sputum has morphed into my personal blog.

• Extra Mile Racing Team

This idea here was to merge racing with ministry. I planned to round up some Christian runners & cyclists to travel around on the weekends with me to local races and triathlons. We would set up a tent / booth and, after the race, share our faith with people. We would give out water bottles, socks, and t-shirts with our logo and web site on it. I had even thought of giving away “In Quest of Gold”, the autobiography of Jim Ryun. The concept for the team was not to just race, but to go the extra mile and tell people about Christ.

• Intelligent Web Design

The now defunked web design studio, this idea actually existed. I purchased my first domain name and had absolutely zero people visit the site for a year. Eventually, I changed the domain name to lukeburton.us but the result was the same. Darn you, WordPress! Just like Wal*Mart, you have kicked the small business owner to the curb.

• myCathedral

This was my original blog. Chris Rice’s song and Apple Computers inspired this idea. You know, we have the iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iBook…why not have myCathedral. Work with me here, people. I actually did the layout and styling myself and intended to use it as a spiritual journal. This took place during a time when I was just learning web design. I wanted to try out my new found knowledge of CSS (table-less design) and see if I could create my own blog. I quickly discovered that it is nearly impossible to archive and hyper link a blog without a well written scripting language and database.

So, come on, members of Extra Mile Racing. Let’s go down to The Mud Puddle, get a mud mocha, read Groovy Sputum, and save the world. Later, we can write about it on myCathedral…