You are browsing the archive for 2008 August.

A Project Transitions

August 31, 2008 in Blogs

As I have mentioned before, I publish a daily Bible study under the auspices of the Christian Gamers Guild, being its chaplain.  It is not your run-of-the-mill study, more on the order of an undergraduate course in Biblical Studies; and its subscribers include a fair number of ordained clergy and educated laymen.  At present we are working our way through I Corinthians, and you can learn more about the list on my site, if you’re interested.

The study began several years ago with Romans, for which I have copious notes which I have been editing.  The originated as preparations for a course I had hoped to teach which never materialized, but when I had finished the postings on the Bible study list I was encouraged to put them into book form.

Over the weekend I reached the end of the editing of the last chapter of those notes.  The edits need to be incorporated into the text, but that is more than half finished at this point.  The text will then have to be reformatted for printing, but in all it looks like the exegetical and logical study of Romans might well go to print before the end of the year.

Of course, I still have to get Do You Trust Me? in print, and I don’t have the cash to launch that formally at the moment (I don’t have the cash at the moment for a family barbecue, and am not certain how I’m going to get enough gas to get my mother-in-law to the store tomorrow, but that’s the way it is sometimes).  It won’t be that way forever, though, so I’ll line up the books and see what works.

I’m also giving serious consideration to doing an abbreviated study in Romans, something which covers the structure of the book without going into the sort of detail the full study does.  That’s a bigger project, though.

–M. J. Young

Cold Continuation

August 23, 2008 in Blogs

I spent the last chunk of time doing some work that I’ve been neglecting for some time–partly because it’s really volunteer work, and partly because I had forgotten how time-consuming it can be.  I have read, or in most cases skimmed, all of the articles that were published on this site in January of 2000.  I have added tags to them, cleaned up a few bad links, and put reviews in the proper category.

None of them were mine, although one was an interview with me.  It was an interesting read, reminding me where we were back then.

So that’s how I spent the better part of my evening on my day off.  There were several other options, but none which appealed so much as getting that done.  I’m trying to work my way through to the end of 2001, so I can pick up the Game Ideas Unlimited series for the next volume to be printed.  I could, of course, just jump ahead and do those, but I want to help straighten out this site as much as I can, and someone’s got to do the articles.

–M. J. Young

Lateral Solution

August 12, 2008 in Blogs

I was talking with drummer John last night.  Actually, we were very nearly arguing about equipment for Collision, as I was trying to explain to him that if I could not find an eight inch four ohm fifty watt speaker to replace the one that burned out in the nice compact PA columns I wanted to use, this did not mean that I had to replace the entire sound system.  John is a drummer, and although Animal does not capture his personality, he is mildly technophobic and quite justly uninformed about amplifiers.  However, it proved to be a rather productive argu–er, discussion–as in making my point I was reminded that maybe a year ago my sound wizard Grey Vanaman of Audio-clear dropped off a pair of tall columns he had ripped out of a church where he was doing an install.  They had these weird mounting brackets on them and were painted white, and although I checked them briefly at the time to see if they worked I stuffed them in the attic pretty quickly.  But I figured with the compact boxes I really wanted to use out of commission, these four foot narrow columns would have to do.  Turns out they’re pretty decent speakers–Electrovoice Radiators–and so my PA system is now up and running.

I’ve also been loaned a solder iron, so assuming I also can find some solder I hope to repair the Hartke speaker tomorrow and get my instrument amplifier up and running.  Maybe if things go well I’ll put together the effects boxes I’ve intended to construct.

Today things did not go so well.  Fortunately, last week I made a decision to put an end to my participation in the Lutheran forum.  I kept inviting Lutheran friends of mine to participate there, and they never do; and some of the new members of that board weren’t really keen on having input from some weird multi-denominational Baptist when they were really hoping to have their own opinions confirmed by others who shared them.  More to the point, I needed to free up some time, and even though I was visiting them only once a week, it was tending to be a long visit that needed shortening.  I’ve now cleared some time on Tuesdays for other projects.

Today, though, did not go particularly well.  Most of the problems lay in the personal problems areas, and outside the purview of this blog; however, one thing that was a bit vexing is that I attempted to e-mail eight files (attached to separate letters) to the radio station to be four episodes of the Quick Word radio show on Faith and Gaming.  Since I still can’t convert to mp3, these are rather large files, and it seems that once seven were moving I was unable to connect to anything else on the Internet for several hours.  This definitely put me behind schedule, and I really ought in future to send fewer at a time and make sure to do so when I go to bed.

It’s getting late, but I’m not tired, so I’m going to attempt to get through a few forum posts at least.

–M. J. Young

Speaking of Progress

August 11, 2008 in Blogs

I’m sure I’ve done a number of things since I last posted; I’ve not posted primarily because none of them really are completions, just landmarks along the way.

I’ve written, recorded, and sent a number of episodes in the Quick Word radio show’s Faith and Gaming series.  I still have not found a way to convert them to mp3 format, but I’ll manage.

I’ve made some progress on the equipment for Collision.  I’ve got two obstacles at the moment, one easily remedied and the other not so.  The easy one is that my solder iron seems to have wandered off–as my tools often do.  I will pick up another at my first opportunity.  I need it for a number of projects, but most specifically because a couple wires are loose on one of the speakers I’ll be using for my instruments amplifier, and I need to reconnect these.

The more difficult and frustrating problem is that I’ve burned out a speaker and need to replace it.  This is difficult and frustrating because I can’t find anyone who sells a speaker that will do the job. It must be 8 inches in diameter, and round, and it must be 4 ohms, and it must be rated at at least 50 watts.  I’ve found a few speakers promoted as being able to handle more power than that, but they’re generally rated 15 to 25 watts and then stated to handle more in peak power.  My best hope at the moment is to find something designed for car stereo use–not ideal, but seriously it’s gotten impossible to find anything in the nature of an electronics hobbyist’s store.  I will probably hit Best Buy sometime for that.

I’m sure there’s more, but that’s all that comes to mind.

–M. J. Young