Ken Martin's Blog

The traffic was just burying my server. Heh heh.

No, I just realized that the podcasting plugin I was using was tagging everything on the site as though it was a podcast. But really, I didn't even really record Intermediate Greek since it just wasn't a lecture-style class. Most of what would have been recorded would probably have been me mistranslating something, thus discovering fresh new heresies.

So, TTFN to the exciting world of podcasting.

Last Friday (I think) I heard a long interview of Christopher Hitchens concerning his latest book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. He is a well-spoken and witty man, but during the interview he failed to progress much further than anger and weak logic, all with a dogmatic yet inexplicably founded moral tone.

There's a fairly recent editorial about Hitchens' book (and the "new atheist" trend overall) by Peter Berkowitz on the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal titled "The New New Atheist" that's well worth a look.

From the editorial:

They contend that from the advantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist and organized religion is a fraud. The disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing.

Here's a 3D panorama I took during our trip to South Carolina. It's of us visiting a tiny little island in Lake Wylie.

Click and drag in the image to look around.

Various members of our family have labeled it Martin Island and Shell Island. The naming issue was hotly contested while we were there, and so by a one vote margin the name "Shell Island" was upheld.

Until next time, I'm sure.

The thunderclouds rolling in were an afternoon staple of our visit. It was very warm and humid, and every evening spotty, strong storms would roll through with some of the oddest thunder I've ever heard.

I listen to a lot of old time radio shows; Johnny Dollar, The Shadow, Superman... things like that. They're often very good little dramas, and they don't require my visual attention.

They were the mass media of the time. And unlike today, there weren't thousands of choices for content, and there was little freedom concerning when you could listen in. Just a few choices played nightly or once a week. Listen or miss it.

They are also very interesting time capsules. Phrases we don't use any more. Politically incorrect characterizations. Positive, hopeful national identity (a refreshing break from modern American recommended self-loathing). Even an occasional hat tip to that religion which the vast majority of Americans at least acknowledged as common and useful (which was Christianity, as it is now).

And sometimes there are just these odd little facts...

Unto Death Do Us Part, a "The Shadow" episode from March 6th, 1949, had an announcement in it for CARE, and something you don't even see on their history page was there. In soliciting support for a particular CARE initiative, the announcer said "CARE, the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, proposes to help meet that need..."

CARE is an acronym? Hmph. Never knew.

Though the organization has now a much broader scope, I just found it interesting where it started: a movement of Americans voluntarily helping European (and later Asian) survivors of WWII.

We're just back from our family vacation driving to South Carolina. It was very nice. It was a long drive. More later, but I just wanted to say hello.

Note for next time: I will not actually be able to get a hotel room on the Sunday evening before the Fourth of July. Anywhere.

I got myself another Koine Greek grammar book. This one was on the church discount new-but-scratch-and-dent cart, so I at least got a good deal on it. It's been fun finding so many additional Koine Greek resources lately (like the free iTunesU classes I noted earlier), but it can be a little confusing.

Each of these authors and teachers brings their unique perspective to understanding the language, and sometimes their little memory trick or their explanation serves to mess up something I had solid in my head.

But far more often it just reinforces "Oh yeah, I know that," and sometimes there's just a little turn of the phrase that gels something together I hadn't had together before. Which is nice.

The grammar is coming along pretty nicely for me, and I think I have charting mostly figured out (both grammatical and syntactical), so the big thing I'd like to nail in the next months is vocabulary.

Big news!

Today was my first day at a new job! Two weeks ago I resigned my position as VP of Production and Technology at Simply Retail, where I'd been for over two years. I hadn't been actively looking for a new job, but one day about a month ago I got an email from a friend and former co-worker saying "we find ourselves continuously saying 'we want to find someone like Ken Martin.'" (It's nice to hear you've left a reasonably nice impression.)

Well, we had lunch and talked and it turned out they had what seemed like a nice possibility. We continued through the process, and voila, it turned out to be a very nice opportunity. And I said yes.

So I'm back at Digital Cyclone! I wrote about them a few months ago noting that they'd been bought out by Garmin. I'm now a Garmin employee, as Digital Cyclone is a Garmin subsidiary.

My job title is Web Application Developer. Why would I go from a VP position to a developer position? Well, there are a few reasons, but the basic summary is that I'll have better compensation in a familiar company, in an industry I find interesting, with people I enjoy, in a technically challenging environment. I will miss interacting daily with the folks at Simply Retail, and there are parts of my leadership role that I will miss, but I plan to apply what I've learned in that role and blow the socks off folks at DCI. :)

What a blessing it was to be presented with the kinds of challenges I saw as VP, and to find that, previously unbeknownst to me, I could meet those challenges. That's probably the biggest thing I'm taking away from Simply Retail.

Simply Retail has been wonderful in many ways. They, too, are in an interesting industry (healthcare retail), and I worked with fantastic people there whom I will miss. It was nice to leave on pleasant terms, and it's likely I'll be doing a little freelance work here and there for them. And it will be great to watch from afar as they continue to grow.

So there you have it! See, there really was a reason I've not posted much lately. :)

Pedantic note: Though the Who allusion was kind of a fun post title, in the song it's a sad reflection that once the "revolution" came, nothing really changed. That's not how this change feels. Web technology, mobile apps, weather, aviation, and now GPS... this geek is going to have fun. No negative reflection on either company intended. :)

Apple's iTunes Store announced today the availability of iTunes U: free college classes from places like MIT and Stanford. Audio and video. And among the offerings are Greek classes from Concordia Seminary.

I've downloaded a few. They seems really good. So far, it's stuff Pete's already taught me, but nevertheless, I'm sure I'll be downloading and listening. It's often useful to heard things explained in a different way.

And a whole lot more. :)

http://www.redeemerbaptist.org

I've finally switched on a group of changes I've been thinking about and working on for a long time. We had a site up, but it was basically straight WordPress, which just didn't work well for what we were looking for.

Well, it's still WordPress, but with a much more customized approach.

I decided to separate out what we did on our server and what we leveraged from somewhere else. Now, instead of trying to do our own calendars or use a pay service, I'm using Google Calendar and a nice plug-in for WordPress (which I've hacked slightly to serve my purposes). How wonderful to be able to add an event by typing "send Ken a check every second Thursday of the month at 10:30am" and have the system understand it and add it.

I've pulled together what I think is a novel use of static pages and categories into a pretty unified navigation system. The overall design is tableless, and (last I checked) valid XHTML and CSS. The CSS is virtually hack free with the exception of a conditional CSS inclusion for older IE due to their hideous treatment of overflow:visible. I can remove that later if I want to do a bit of a rework; we'll see. I think I'd like to add a pre-IE6-era css file for simple display for folks with very old browsers; I'll be keeping an eye on traffic stats to see if it's worthwhile.

We'll be podcasting Sunday messages shortly; just a plug-in and some set up. I have the audio already. The hardest part will be tracking down titles, references, and descriptions. (But it won't be that hard.) Video is being served from and stored at Google Video (their server space, their professionally maintained cross platform player).

I'll post a more detailed technical rundown on that site with links and comments. Time will tell, but I think we've landed on something we can really do some good stuff with.

If you have comments on the new site, I'd love to hear them. Use the email address on the site, or the comments here.

That's what Anna told me about my new haircut. Not "nice hair." "Nice hairs."

And one of my co-workers put this plant on my windowsill thinking it might inspire something.

Think my life is easy? :)