Ministry and Meteorology? » Podcasts

Hearing God…an explanation

jeff — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 05:19:00 +0000

Here is a remark I made yesterday on Twitter:

Second time today that God has said don’t look at your feet while listening to a sermon.

Where upon my brother-in-law responded:

Without context, may I gently point out just how crazy this makes you sound? – Brendon

I agree it sounds quite weird. However, after working my 9 hour shift, I don’t always communicate what I’m thinking in a clear way. Not to mention that I’ve always had a bit of a crazy streak, just ask my sister, my wife, my kids, and former roommates.

Okay, the explanation.

Toward the end of the shift, I was listening to Rob Bell on the Mars Hill Bible Church (Michigan) and he mentioned that there is a rabbinical tradition that says and I’m paraphrasing, you need to keep your head up and see that God has parted the sea for you, or else if you constantly look at your feet you’ll begin to complain that the mud is getting all over your feet.

Then while I was in early service at Gaylord Community Church, Pastor Steve made a remark that you need to keep your head up and not stare at your feet.

I took that as a gentle reminder from God that I need to remember to keep my head up and look to where God is taking me, rather than looking down at my feet, i.e. my current situation and grumble about it.

Actually, now that I thnk about it, I’m supposed to tell that to somebody else, but that’s another story.

So no, I’m not hearing voices in my head.

Pre-production has begun

jeff — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:54:00 +0000

Well, with a mere $549, I will own an Eee PC. On this pc is a built in Web cam and I think a microphone. Because of this, I may take a stab at a few things for podcast/vidcasting. It may not be pretty, but it will get me to see what I need to do to get everything rolling for my audio and video productions. So I have opened a Ustream.tv account . So keep watching the blog for new stuff.

Create your own Timeline with Dipity

jeff — Tue, 27 May 2008 07:33:00 +0000

While listening to net@night with Leo Laporte and Amber Macarthur, they interviewed one of the founders of the site Dipity.com. Basically, you can create a time line of you by merging your feeds from Flickr, Blogger, WordPress, YouTube, etc. While I have been blogging for about 4 years and had a Flickr account for about as long, my time line only goes back about one year, but once you start it will continue so that your time line will grow for as long as you contribute to it or the site remains up and viable. I might recommend that Mary do it for her new business so that people can see the time line of how and what she does. I’ll talk to her about it when I see her in the morning.

A great quote from a podcast today

jeff — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:13:00 +0000

“I wonder how many people in the Body of Christ are grouchy, just because they don’t spend time with God.”

Twitter, Common Craft.com, and podcasting

jeff — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:50:00 +0000

I recently found this on Geek Brief TV, a video podcast that I watch/listen to. CommonCraft. com has found some great ways to explain some of the web 2.0 things out there. Between my wife, my brother-in-law, and the CommonCraft.com explanation, I got on Twitter. This is really cool with Mary’s and mine new phones, instead of texting what I’m doing, I go to the mobile version of the site and type in what I’m doing.

I often mention that I listen to podcast instead of terrestrial radio. If you don’t know what this is then watch this:

My Podcast report

jeff — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 15:51:00 +0000

I’m always listening to podcasts. If you don’t know what they are, they are nothing more than independent (mostly) producers making audio or video broadcasts and making them available over the internet generally for free to be played on your mp3 or mp4 player (obviously the video (mp4) broadcasts need a video player). With the iPod Nano that I got for Christmas, which plays video, I have subscribed to a bunch of podcasts both audio and video. I have gotten pretty cynical about most of the radio and even most tv stations out there. Most radio, especially up north here, just doesn’t have the programming I enjoy. So with the help of Podshow, Itunes, and my iPod, I have created Radio Jeff.

To see what I listen too go to my Podshow page.

The way I listen to my collection is like this:

Pray-as-you-go – this is the only podcast not on my Podshow page because individual day’s mp3s come in weekly. Then I listen to my Today channel – which is mostly my daily podcasts. Then I listen to the rest of my channels.

If you are near my truck (which is a silver F-150) you can receive my broadcast. Some of it is religious stuff. Some of it you will say, “You listen to that?” because of the language that is used from time to time, but not regularly enough or I would drop some of them. Some of it helps me wrap my brain around popular culture and popular youth culture, so it is more like information and attitudes, rather than enjoyment.

New Cool stuff

jeff — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 00:25:00 +0000

As most of you know, I’m a computer geek always looking for new things that can help me do more, with less. In this case, I’m always looking for new ways to add new podcasts (to me most radio is worthless, and not just in northern Michigan) and manage my content. I’ve been a subscriber to Podshow, and they have been making changes that make it easier to create and manipulate your channel feeds.

Recently, I have been making a channel of episodes, of cool things that I have listened to recently. Right now, it has a couple of Mars Hill episodes, a couple Imago Dei episodes, and a Lifespring episode. I’m hoping to put some more new stuff over the coming weeks. The neat thing about the channels that you create is that you can play them right from the website, through Windows Media, Real player, your mp3 player, or subscribe through an RSS reader to the RSS feed that is available.

So check out my collection of podcasts in the channels. You might find some stuff you like.

Blogger’s test bed site has podcast and video things

jeff — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 03:19:00 +0000

I’m pretty psyched. Blogger has added enclosures and video to their Draft Blogger. This is kind of their test bed or beta test or something. I tested placing video on a post here. I’ll probably still put stuff on YouTube, but I’ll probably put some of the stuff here with pointers there. We’ll see where it goes. However, the thing that I am really excited about is the ability to put links to enclosures so that people can subscribe via RSS and listen to a podcast. I already have a Podshow account where I can upload the shows. I also have a Feedburner account for Mary’s and my various blogs that can be used for a universal RSS feed. So, another piece of the puzzle comes into place. I’m just short a decent microphone and a computer that will allow me to record well. The current computer is beginning to show its age (it is Jan., 2001). In computer age this is getting a little old and it is beginning to slow down due to memory and it is maxed out.

Also in other news, a friend of ours who needed a place to live will begin to rent the old house from us. This will help out immensely. He moves in this weekend. So hopefully, the financial problems of the last month or two will be easing a bit.

My Sundays when I work

jeff — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 14:13:00 +0000

Being a meteorologist that has to work on rotating shifts, there are a few weekends when it is my time to work. Some people would ask how I do church. For one thing, I have found that my first day off from work is my sabbath. I tend to not do a whole lot on that day. Next, while I miss our church worship on Sunday, I listen to the podcasts of two other churches, Mars Hill Bible Church in Grandville, MI and Imago Dei in Portland, OR.

This last Sunday was interesting as I find myself evaluating how am I being part of the priesthood of all believers, fulfilling Isaiah 61, Acts 2:42-47, and wondering what more can I do. The reason that it was so interesting, was due to the fact that Mars Hill and Imago Dei had almost the same teaching with the difference being their geographical areas and the Lifespring podcast the hosts wife shared how they are trying to share God’s peace with kids who don’t have any peace. Coming from a Methodist, who tries to knows a little bit of the life of John Wesley, I find myself wanting to emulate Christ better.

My mornings

jeff — Sun, 20 May 2007 01:46:00 +0000

It’s been a while, but things have been moving along with a new dog and family things.

My mornings, as of late, have been set into a routine that helps me for the rest of the day. I get up and shower(that really helps me wake up), get dressed, then take the dog for a 15 minute walk (this has been really good, because I wouldn’t get up early to work out like I wanted to), then I spend the rest of pre-drive time fixing something for breakfast, finishing the download of my daily podcasts and reading the news from overnight.

Once it hits 700 am, I am out the door and I begin my “quiet time.” My drive is 35 minutes to the NWS office, if I drive direct, so I use the time listening to: 1. The Lifespring Family Bible podcast, 2. Pray-as-You-Go podcast, 3. NBC Nightly News (audio), 4. The Daily Breakfast podcast.

The Lifespring Family Bible podcast is a read through the Bible in a year podcast. Steve Webb, the host, has been skipping around some with the Book of John being first then Genesis, Matthew, and now in Exodus. I usually hear this one between Boyne Falls and Elmira.

Elmira to Hayes Tower Road is usually the Pray-as-you-Go podcast. The Jesuits from a monastery in England put together a meditative podcast that runs about 12 minutes or so. They began this podcast last year for the Lenten season and then kept on going since it became pretty popular.

From somewhere along Hayes Tower road, ususally about the time I pass Lake Arrowhead, The NBC Nightly news kicks in. Face it, I’m a news junkie and they did the main thing I was looking for, and that was put their nightly news into an Audio podcast (they now have it in video as well). It helps with a news summary that I was looking for. This usually takes me into work.

I listen to the Daily Breakfast, next. This is done by a almost 40 year technogeek of a RC priest in The Netherlands (no I’m not converting to be Catholic). He mixes religious and secular and technical things to have a pretty decent podcast that runs about 40 minutes.