Charlie Bartlett (2007)

I caught Charlie Bartlett last night and really enjoyed it (official site). The best way to describe it is an edgy, darker Ferris Bueller. It’s an indie film, a comedy, part social commentary. That sort of thing.

The theme of looking for acceptance and the abuse of common psychological drugs and counseling prevail. It’s told with a light and breezy wrapper (hence the Ferris Bueller flavor) makes the fairly serious subject matter entertaining without diminishing its weight.

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I would recommend it, but only if the R rated content (which isn’t pervasive, but is present) doesn’t bother you.

iPhone wallpapers

Love these iPhone wallpapers. I have the first one on right now.

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Brainstorm Tools

I’ve been in an all morning brainstorm session preparing for an upcoming message series and to help better prepare for our time together, I did a little preparatory work pulling together some brainstorming and creativity techniques. Here are a few resources I found helpful. Maybe you will, too.

How to run a good brainstorming session
Coaching tip: random creativity
Random input – a useful lateral thinking tool
Google search of “Random input”

Of the ideas found, this morning we utilized an unrelated 10 minute warm up brainstorm and a random input brainstorm with a dictionary (take two random numbers, first is the page from the dictionary, second is the word number on the dictionary… ours led to the work cuckoo).

What did this session accomplish. Well, you’ll just have to tune in over the next several weeks to see.

CalDAV support comes to Google Calendar

This is another step in the right direction.

Follow me?

Twitter. I love it. You’ve heard of it (or you live under some sort of digital rock and haven’t heard of it, and if that’s the case, why are you reading my blog?). I love it because it forces brevity and it makes it easy to get info out there (post, text, use an iPhone app, use a desktop app, etc.). I follow some, some follow me, and that’s how I keep up with a small circle of my world. In realizing that everything I commit to absorbing (read, RSS, email, etc.) takes a fraction of my time, I par down my Twitter to follow just a few, a few that have to succumb to my personal Twitter rules.

Conversely, I try to adhere to these rules myself, too, in posting. It seems only fair.

Not all of these have to be met, but for each one that is met, it increases your chances that I’ll follow you:

1 – be interesting. I’m not concerned with what you eat for breakfast unless that food sang to you or is from some fascinating foreign country.
2 – post enough to make it worth my time. At least once per week is a good lower limit. Once per day is better.
3 – don’t post so much that all I see is your name. I learned this lesson myself after I attempted to “live twitter” the C3 conference. I annoyed a lot of my friends. So, I adopted twitter.com/avclubbreakout as a “live blogging, media” channel for that type of thing.
4 – be my wife, boss, or close personal friend
5 – don’t string along a conversation for more than 1 or 2 replies… unless it’s interesting trash-talk.
6 – speak in English (I wish I could accommodate foreign language Twitters but alas, I only speak English)
7 – ask me to follow you. Usually in-person works well.

So there it is, my Twitter code. I wish I could follow and interact with everybody but my time is finite and too much Twitter ends up diluting things. So that said, consider following me?

Welcome, Michael, and something different

This weekend we decided to do a little something different with the welcome. The footage of Michael was provided and I had this little idea I’ve wanted to run with. Here’s how it turned out.

The audio track is “Tokyo” from Hexstatic’s “When Robots Go Bad!”

Welcome, Michael Brown, NewSpring Church from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

Thanks to Kris Meade for providing the footage.

Rainey, year 2

Good morning fair blog readers. I’m sorry, but this post isn’t for you. It’s for Rainey. **

Rainey, two years ago you made your debut into this world a cute, swishy bundle. You cried, you cooed, you intrigued Gardner, and you forever changed our family. From a family of three, you won our hearts and evened the genders that day you arrived.

And life if more sweet just knowing you.

It’s been an amazing year. You’ve discovered your name, new foods, the ability to scream, and you’ve perfected the sweetest hug I’ve ever seen given. We love you so much, happy birthday my beautiful daughter.

Rainey, year 2 from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

** That is, unless you can enjoy the sappy ramblings of a dude who loves his family. In that case, just enjoy.

Robokill

Need to waste, like, an hour or ten. I recommend Robokill, a flash game that’s not unlike my all-time favorite game Smash TV.

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Yes and no.

Yes (Gardner read this to me tonight) and no (but it’s really cool… just freaky).

Rumor: MacBook touch Coming in October

Please, please, please be true.

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(via Jared)

OpenMoku iPhone competitor

This is disturbing, especially as it costs $400. Wow. Apple fanboy love aside, seriously why does this even fall into the same class as an iPhone and cost double?

OpenMoko Train Wreck from Dave Fayram on Vimeo.

iPhone mobile wordpress

I’m posting this from the new iPhone WordPress app. Not bad. Seems to be simple and clean, can’t complain. Wonder if I can insert images from the iPhone camera? (well yes, just found that option).

My weekend tech project

This weekend, I set aside some time, some brief time, to lock in on a solution to find the final piece of my iPhone / GTD / productivity problem. I’ve been plagued with a defunct calendering solution. I want it all. I like the iPhone’s native calendar well enough but it will only sync with my desktop computer via a hardware connection. Why, oh why am I paying for this wonderful data accessibility if I have to physically tether my phone to a machine to sync it up. No, that won’t work.

So I’ve been living in Google calendar for years. It is my calendar of choice not necessarily because of its online appearance, but because it can go everywhere. I have it running through Thunderbird (with a few choice plugins) to give me that old “Outlook” feel. Sometimes I’m nostalgic. I have it running on all Macs as a desktop widget. I have it at home, I have it shared with my wife’s calendar so she can keep tabs on me, I have my Vitalist to-do lists running through it.

It’s the perfect solution, save the fact that the only way it lands on my iPhone is through the mobile web browser. In this scenario if I find myself at, say the dentist and I’m “checking to see if I’m free” I have to go to the web, hope I’m getting a good signal, and patiently wait to page month to month.

But that’s all over thanks to iPhone 2.0 and nuevasync.com. This site sits as an intermediary between your Google calendar and your iPhone by way of the new Microsoft Exchange support. Most of us non-major-business-types don’t have Exchange and even if we did, it wouldn’t afford all of the great features that Google offers (previously mentioned). No, this fits the bill like a glove.

One strange catch I had to do to get it to work, in their instructions when they say “* Your Apple device will display a message “Verifying Exchange account information” for a few moments.” I had a failure to verify. I had to click “CANCEL” and was then prompted to enter the server name. “* When it has finished, it will display a new field, “Server”. Enter “www.nuevasync.com” as the value.”

From there it was cake, they just didn’t mention that you’d have to hit cancel and then you’d be presented with the opportunity to enter the server. So, it works like a charm, my calendars are now in sync, and all is right with the world.

I’d like to mention we discussed this in June of this year and it was mentioned in the comments. Thanks! Also, some of you may say “hey, what about MobileMe? Why can’t you use that?” Well, (1) it doesn’t support Google Calendar to my knowledge and (2) I’m already paying for an iPhone and data plan. I don’t want to take on another $99/year charge when this level of functionality should be included with the phone. And (3) I need a hobby.

Mark passage

This weekend we featured 5 new video elements. This is a simple scripture reading element that we featured directly after the open, just before Perry walked onstage.

“You asked for it” Mark scripture reading from Ken Wilson on Vimeo.

cool stuff to make you appear smarter and good looking and stuff

From the bowels of the web today:

(1) a reason I wish we had subways in Anderson
(2) eat your heart out, Dark Side of the Moon, this shirt is sweet
(3) formerly called Summize, this is a great Twitter search feature recommended for judging what techies everywhere are currently discussing.

Star Wars on the iPhone

Saw this the other day and thought (1) what a cool way to demo the power of the iPhone and (2) I’m not convinced I’d enjoy touching the screen so much.

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Super Mario Bros 3D

I’m really digging theseSuper Mario Bros. images. See another one here.

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Lunch randomizer

This makes me smile. Created by Justin-the-intern, it’s clever and useful. But only if you live in Anderson. I may have to view it frame by frame to pull out all of the remarks.

Lunch Randomizer from Justin Beam on Vimeo.

Spore Origins for the iPhone

TUAW’s thoughts on Spore Origins for the iPhone don’t make it as exciting as I’d expected. Sigh.

House of cards | Radiohead

If you haven’t seen it yet, take a glance at Radiohead’s House of Cards video. No lights, no camera, all action. It was recorded with laser 3D capture technique. The behind the scenes video explains it all in more detail.

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