Saturday Flower Blogging

It's too darn hot to get out and work in the yard, so I thought I'd post some garden pictures. A friend of mine has these very unique flowers in his backyard. They're called Passion Flowers. The different parts of the flower supposedly tell the story of the Passion of Christ, but I think it's a little bit of a stretch. It's still a beautiful, unusual plant. It's a climbing vine, FYI.



Here's another view.



And here's a close-up.




UPDATE: Rick Lee has many more photos of plants.

Musable Musings from a Muser

Well, this is sure to offend somebody, so my disclaimer is that it is not my desire to offend, only to observe. I never really read blogs regularly until last year about this time, during the presidential campaign. News was fast and furious, and I loved the instant analysis/opinions etc. I was hooked after several blogs took down Dan Rather's fake Texas Air National Guard memos. I knew that a new media world was upon us, that power had been wrenched from the powerful.

Of course, the number of blogs by normal people like you and I has exploded over this last year. With so many people trying to think of clever titles for their sites, there are bound to be redundancies. This leads to my question: When did we as Americans start to do so much darn musing? As I look over titles of blogs, I think "musing" comes up more than any other, right in front of "random" (sorry Becky), "rantings" and "notes" (sorry Erich). I'm not denigrating anyone who uses these words. They're all fine words, good words, words rife with meaning. It's just that I never heard much about "musing" before blogging came en vogue.

Me: "Hey, what are you doing."
You: "Oh, just musing."
Me: "Cool. Muse away."
You:
Me:
You:
Me: "Anything?"
You: "Nope, still musing."

I find it interesting.

My second observation is this. When did seemingly normal people start to think of themselves as lunatics or relatively unstable. You've seen them. "Ravings of a Certified Crazy Person", or "Stark. Raving. Mad." It's not socially acceptable to publicly identify yourself as a little off your rocker, so why is it cool to be nuts in the online publishing world?

Anyone? Feel free to muse about it in the comments. But take your prozac first, please.

A Nominal Question

Dawn asked a question in the comments of another post, to which the answer deserves its own post.

"I have a random question. In college I (and others) called you Phil. I notice you seem to go more by Philip now. Do you prefer I call you that?"

Short story long, my full name is obviously Philip. Since my parents wanted a Biblical name, the spelling is from the Bible, which is one L. All of my life, I've dealt with people mis-spelling my name, adding a superfluous L. Now, I'm not so hung up on my name that I can't deal with mis-spellings every now and then, but when the digital age began, and I needed to choose an e-mail address, I chose Phil because it cannot be misspelled. Well, not easily anyway. Also, during high school, my friends (yes, I had friends) just started calling me Phil, it's quicker, not as pretentious sounding (I think the name sounds pretentious. Imagine a british accent, "Philip, would you like a spot of Earl Grey with your biscuits?"), so I stuck with it and never corrected anyone.

This caused great distress to my mother. She named me Philip, not Phil. So out of respect for her, I've been calling myself Philip for the last few years, although I've kept my e-mail addresses as Phil, for practical reasons. My business cards also say Phil Putnam, but only because my business e-mail is phil@doesyourmediapop.com, and I didn't want to create confusion. But if someone asks me my name, I say Philip.

It is confusing, I admit, and I do have to answer the question periodically, of which name I prefer. The answer is, either one. I don't really notice when someone uses Phil or Philip, I answer to both. The one exception is when my dad calls me "Phil". It sounds strange coming from him, and I think he does it to antagonize anyway.

So I hope that clears things up.

Daycare Shmaycare

Dawn has an interesting discussion going about daycare.
I'll have some thoughts about a 60 Minutes article on the same topic coming soon.

Meanwhile, Erich gives some suggestions to help you round out your Nazi and Communist Propaganda music collection.

Time Flies

I was looking at Katiedids Blog today, and she has a nice "Today in History" script. Today's included the Olympic Park bombing in 1996. Nine years ago, I had finished my third year of college. Man, I'm older than I thought I'd be at this age.

Anyway, that event stands out to me because I was there. I had been at the Olympic Park the night before the bombing. I was working on the broadcast of the games, working some looong hot days. I learned of the bombing in a rather exciting way. I was staying at a friends house about 40 minutes from my venue (which happened to be swimming and diving), and had gone to bed as soon as I got home that night. Most days I worked about 18 hours, so I was exhausted after several days in a row. The next morning, I was driving back after a few short hours of sleep. As was and still is my habit, I was listening to a CD as I drove, instead of the radio. I still remember the CD. It was this one. I realized after a few minutes I hadn't heard any news for awhile, so I switched to the radio.

There was much discussion of a "bomb" of some kind. I thought they were talking about another country somewhere, and I wasn't that alarmed. It took me a little while to figure out that they were talking about a bomb in Atlanta! Literally seconds after the realization sank in, I passed a bus on the side of the freeway...in flames. I had a momentary panic of "what the heck is going on!??", certain that I'd awakened to a war zone. Everything was well though. It was an isolated incident, and Eric Rudolph will be sentenced next month for the bombing.

So that's what I was doing on "This Day in History".

Trackbacks

Well I added trackbacks to my blog. Why, you may ask, did I do that?

I don't know.

Seriously, I know the basic concept, but I read a tutorial about it, and it seems awfully complicated to me. If someone knows that they're incredibly helpful for some reason, and different than referral links like I have on my sidebar through referer.org (which nobody's done either), then please let me know. Otherwise I'm afraid every post will just say Trackbacks (0).

Baltika Update

In an earlier post, my friend Erich recommended I try Baltika Beer, brewed in his favorite country, Mother Russia. He said it might be hard to find, but I checked out my favorite shop up the road, the one that has every beer I've ever looked for, and they did indeed have 4 varieties of Baltika, numbers 3, 4, 7, and 9. So I've now sampled all 4 of them. All of them had a very nice, smooth taste. My favorite was number 4, a dark beer. Even the lighter lagers had a nice flavor. I'll probably stick with the number 4 in the future, although I'm on the lookout for number 6, a nice dark porter. In the meantime, Joe 6 pack of the Beer Can Blog has inspired me to try a few more American Microbrews, and not always buy British, which I've preferred thus far.

Happy Birthday to my sweet bride.

Yesterday was Holly's birthday. There is no logical reason I should be married to a woman this beautiful.

Saturday Morning Gardening

My wife and kids enjoying the cool time of the day, when its only 95 degrees.

A Political Exercise

In case you needed any proof that the Media and the American Political Left (sorry to be redundant) hate everything about President Bush, this brilliant body of thought by Jonathan Chait is published in the LA Times. I was going to post some rebuttal thoughts, and might still, but it really would be too easy.

Ok, ok. I'll comment. But only a little. You've read it, right?

Here's a key paragraph:

My guess is that Bush associates exercise with discipline, and associates a lack of discipline with his younger, boozehound days. "The president," said Fleischer, "finds [exercise] very healthy in terms of … keeping in shape. But it's also good for the mind." The notion of a connection between physical and mental potency is, of course, silly. (Consider all the perfectly toned airheads in Hollywood — or, perhaps, the president himself.)

It is, of course, not silly to make a connection between exercise and mental health. A quick google search will disprove that. Note the sentence suggesting the President is stupid. They can't have it both ways. Either he's an evil genius with plans to take over the world, or he's a mindless numbskull who can't find the bathroom without Karl Rove taking him. But he's one or the other. Of course, he also fails to note that John Kerry had worse grades at Yale.

At the same time that the left is constantly harping on the obesity problem in the US, they hate Bush so much that they mock his dedication to one of the primary solutions to it. Contradictions abound. I haven't even mentioned Clinton yet. I don't recall similar articles when he jogged daily (and stopped in McDonalds on the way). See, I said it was too easy. I'll stop now.

Read it.

UPDATE: Independent Sources has more.

Speaking of pictures...

I'm trying out a service called Exposure Manager for my photos. You can see my photo page here. I was looking for a good service to print my images from the last couple of years. I don't like the one-hour places, and the web services give you virtually no control over how your image is printed. Exposure Manager allows complete control. It even allows me to sell my pictures and apply my own prices to my images. So go ahead, buy a couple of 20 x 30 prints for your collection. They could be worth something someday!

But really, photography is a hobby for me. I make my money with video and producing marketing campaigns, so pictures are just a side outlet for me, and exposure manager is really designed for pros and event photographers, but I like the pro features that are available. I'm just trying it out right now, so feel free to let me know what you think as you navigate the site.

Picture Perfect

If you like photography, I recommend you bookmark Rick Lee Photo. Instapundit links to his work occasionally, which is how I first came across him. He's a commercial photographer in West Virginia...wait, don't go just because he's from WV, give him a chance! (Sorry, a little prejudice from my past. When I lived in Kentucky, that's how we made ourselves feel better. "It could be worse. We could live in WV.") OK? Ok...where was I...oh yeah...a commercial photographer from West Virginia who regularly posts images from his shoots (which are excellent), but what I love about his site is that he keeps a tiny camera with a great macro function with him, and takes various shots he comes across during the day. It's a great way of looking at the world during the day, always keeping your mind looking for a neat shot or unique perspective, such as this. It's also a great reminder to me that I can hold off buying that Canon 20D that I've been drooling over. My Canon Powershot G3 has a pretty decent macro, and I can get good pictures with it. It's not the camera, after all. It's the photographer. It reminds me of a story about Chet Atkins I think. Someone came to him after a show and said, "That's a great sounding guitar!" Chet set the guitar on the ground and said, "How's it sound now?"

One of my favorite ongoing series that he does is Produce Blogging (because Thursday night is grocery night).

Anyway, check him out frequently because he posts new images frequently. Just scroll down his page. It's chock full of great images and has provided me with lots of inspiration to just get out there and take pictures.

If you're a Mac lover, stand up and holla!

I've noticed a few of my readers are using Mac OS X and Safari to navigate to my site, so here's a little survey.

Who among you is using a Mac, what hardware is it, and what version of OS X are you running?

Secondly, why do you have a Mac? Is it for work? Is it at home?

I've got 6 different Macs that I use throughout a week. My main computer is my 17" PowerBook G4, my main edit station is a dual 1 gig G4. It's 3 years old now, so I'd like to upgrade soon. I also have 3 G5's that I work on occasionally at other people's studios. My favorite workstation is a dual 2.5gig G5 with 4 gigs of RAM and a 30" Cinema Display.

What about everyone else?

Because I'm around many different Macs, Apple's .Mac service has been a godsend. I can sync all the computers together and carry my bookmarks, address book, etc to any other Mac very easily. If you use a Mac, you should consider the .Mac service. If you'd like to sign up, let me know and I'll refer you, which will give me credit for next year.

HTML Bleg

Anybody with more html knowledge than I know how to change the color of my links in my template? I think they're kind of difficult to see, and I'd like them to be a nice soft blue or something. But if possible, I'd like to keep the sidebar links the same color that they currently have.

Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

I'm a published photographer!

I stumbled across this article which is about a project I've been documenting for the University of Kentucky for the last 2 years. I didn't realize it had been published. The professor in charge of the project is a good friend of mine, Dr. Brent Seales. So like a good friend, he stabbed me in the back, and used some of my photos from the trip without giving me photo credit. That's ok though. I'm glad to see the project getting some exposure, it's a very interesting and worthwhile subject. It's a short article, give it a read if you've got a couple of minutes. You can see the article as it was printed here.

You'll notice my wife Holly is in the pictures. This particular trip was May 2004, and it happened to coincide with our 5th wedding anniversary, so she came down for the week and we stayed a little longer than the rest of the team. It was a very wet week, but very sunny for our vacation portion. Anyway, I highly recommend Puerto Rico as a vacation destination. It's always around 80 degrees, the water is so incredibly blue, it's not nearly as dirty as some caribbean destinations, you can get by on english, and the currency and electricity is US. There's also a lot of culture and history, so you're not just limited to the beach, although the beaches are incredible, especially on the island of Culebra.

If you're still not convinced, here are some pictures I've taken on a few of my trips there.

When we go, we usually stay at the Caribe Hilton which has its own interesting history, not to mention the only private beach on the island, and is the birthplace of the Pina Colada.

Worship Education

My friend Erich has an interesting post dealing with attempts to instruct visiting worshipers at his church in the proper protocol of the procession (he's orthodox. Not that there's anything wrong with that.) It got me thinking about what I think is a glaring problem in our more contemporary worship, which is lack of training. At our church, if you want to join, you just walk up to the front during the altar call, profess your faith, get baptized (if you haven't already been), and you're a member. We do offer classes to learn more about the church, but they're not mandatory.

My business partner recently completed almost a year of classes to join the Catholic church. A full year. He learned about doctrine, history, church structure and polity, and came out the other side with the ability to know why he believes what he believes, as well as the proper place to hold his hands during the procession. Erich makes a good point, that it's too much to ask a visitor to know and conform to unwritten standards, but I think our protestant churches should require more of their members, keeping in mind that it is by grace that we are saved through faith, not by works, lest any man should boast.

My wife has joined the fun...

Of blogging that is. For those of you that know and love her, be sure to check out Holly's Place.

Saturday Evening Post

As part of my discipline to regularly update my blog, I decided I should post something today. Tonight I took my sweet wife out to dinner (for some mediocre italian) and then we went to get Starbucks at Barnes and Noble. It's actually been a very long time since we've been out on a date, due to the difficulty of getting away from the kids. We love our kids, but those of you without them yet, enjoy your ultimate freedom of going out easily on a whim. I know we took it for granted.

Bloglines. You should use it.

Seriously. You should use bloglines if you're not already. Bloglines is an RSS feed collector. It's very easy to configure and update. You basically create an account, then start adding the URL's of all the blogs you like to follow. Most people have RSS feeds already for their sites. You should take advantage of this powerful feature.

When I first discovered blogs, there were several I liked to read during the election season, and at least twice a day I would go down my bookmarks list and see what was new, because news came fast and furious. If I didn't keep up, it would take forever to read everything I wanted to. Bloglines eliminates that. I can just go to my bloglines page and see at a glance what has been posted since my last check. It's been a major time-saver, as well as has enabled me to keep up with friends that don't post regularly. After a couple of weeks of checking back with nothing new, you eventually stop checking back. Bloglines just lets me know. Also, bloglines is available from any browser, so no matter where I am (and I'm on several different computers throughout a day) I can keep up.

One more thing for Mac OS Tiger users out there. You can download the bloglines notifier widget that will show you on your dashboard how many new posts are on you bloglines account, so you don't even have to keep checking bloglines to see if anything new has posted.

If you need the URL, let me know.

Summer Fun for Abraham

Abraham LOVES the water. Here's a recent picture I took after a little game of "spray Abraham" went a little too far and became "soak Abraham". Click on photo for larger image.

Time to get a move on...

OK, I've got plenty of time to do this. I just have to make it. Blogging is easy. I really hate the word "blog" though. Perhaps that's why I'm hesitant to plunge in fully, and join the ever-growing group of "bloggers."

Question: "So do you have a blog?"
Answer: "Why, yes. Yes I do have a blog. I'm a blogger. I blog."

Blog. It's such an un-elegant word. It sounds more like a sound effect than anything else, like in the old Batman TV show, when they're fighting, "Whap! Zoppo! Blog!"

Oh well, the impetus for my new motivation to really try this is finding lots of blogs by many of my Asbury friends. A LOT of them are doing this, and doing it well, and I want to join the fun, keep everyone up to date on my great kids, what's going on in Texas. A lot of them live in the North East, and I think they might need an occasional dose of good old-fashioned Texas conservatism to keep perspective.

Anyway, I'll figure out how to get my blogroll updated with many of their sites, and you can keep up yourself, if you happen to be an Asbury alum.

So here we go. I'm going to dig in and figure out how to do this and get my page customized. In the meantime, before I start spewing...I mean enlightening the world with my wit and wisdom, I'll post some more pictures of my kids.