Hollywood (and Independent filmmakers) would have us believe that violence is entertainment. Some films are so convincing in this regard, that some of their scenes are so graphically convincing that the images are burned in your mind for days. Ok, I am the first to admit that these action scenes are enthralling. I would not say realistic – that is beside the point. The point or the question I want to ask is: Does Violence have a place in Christian [...]]]>

Hollywood (and Independent filmmakers) would have us believe that violence is entertainment. Some films are so convincing in this regard, that some of their scenes are so graphically convincing that the images are burned in your mind for days. Ok, I am the first to admit that these action scenes are enthralling. I would not say realistic – that is beside the point. The point or the question I want to ask is: Does Violence have a place in Christian Film?

The argument for

There are enough examples of intense violence in the Bible, so there is no argument that Christians are generally pacifists. Especially in the Old Testament; Read about Moses and the Midianites (Num 31:1-54).
Depending of the story you want to tell and how events are motivated or how they transition, you can’t always avoid using it. Lets face it we are quick to anger, we get frustrated. It may be righteous or not, either way it is part of our nature.

The argument against

Overuse can not only sickening, it can distract people from the story and the message/theme.
It is not a good idea to encourage people to be violent by advocating it through your film.
If it is not done properly, it can lower the quality if the film. For example when it looks too obvious that punches are being pulled or that the motivation is not evident in the action.

Enough of my opinion. What do you think? For? Against?

Kendra Fleming, Tom Shefchunas and Donnie Joiner from the North Point Leadership team came over for a visit to Southpoint Church in February. They had a whole to offer in terms of creativity, leadership and the wow factor. While I did not engage much, I was certainly impressed. However, Kendra, has written quite a pertinent post about her visit to Camp SonShine in Maitland Garden Village.

While Southpoint Church [...]]]>

Kendra Fleming, Tom Shefchunas and Donnie Joiner from the North Point Leadership team came over for a visit to Southpoint Church in February. They had a whole to offer in terms of creativity, leadership and the wow factor. While I did not engage much, I was certainly impressed.
However, Kendra, has written quite a pertinent post about her visit to Camp SonShine in Maitland Garden Village.

Real Life Heroes: You can get involved and make a difference. Find out how!

While Southpoint Church is in partnership with Alison Smith – through the Intersect project, I feel that anyone can be involved in helping to build 2 classrooms for them.
If you want to find out more then read Kendra’s post from the link above. There she offers the opportunity to contribute through NorthPoint Ministries GlobalX Giving page. It is quite easy. If you are uneasy about making an internet payment then you are more than welcome to either contact the Northpoint Community Church or Southpoint Church.
But you know, I am a bit challenged by this. While Southpoint as a Church in involved in community projects (through what we call Intersect), why does it take external influence to mobilize action. Suddenly there is urgency. I am not saying that it is bad, just that – maybe – it should not rely on it.
Anyway, why don’t we go ahead and get these 2 classrooms build and then some,
it’s only $4000
There are enough people out there who can contribute small sums that will quickly add up. So, spread the word.
Lets do this thing.


[Photo by: Kendra]

Less than 100 days to go and all officials; government and not are pushing for more excitement.

There seems to be a worry that we are not excited enough. I used to be an avid soccer fan; loved to play and loved to watch. Not so much nowadays, sorry. However, I am super amped that South Africa is hosting the world cup and I [...]]]>

Less than 100 days to go and all officials; government and not are pushing for more excitement.

• Play soccer in the parks
• Play it in the streets
• Put soccer balls in shop windows
• Spread the excitement

There seems to be a worry that we are not excited enough.
I used to be an avid soccer fan; loved to play and loved to watch. Not so much nowadays, sorry.
However, I am super amped that South Africa is hosting the world cup and I hope we will do well as a team – but that is where it ends, on hope. Because that seems to be about it for Bafana Bafana, that is if they don’t surprise us.
I guess that is where my excitement is lacking – in our team.No amount of misplaced confidence (on my part, or any other fan) will make them play better. Everything is in the players hands (or feet) and heads – and the hope I have is that they play well as a team, listen the the coach and make us excited and proud.
Unfortunately it all hinges on their first game.
What do you Think?

[Photos by: mikkelz and shine2010]

I have been trying to gt this right for months. Ok, granted, I am not an expert web programmer but I am a programmer so I was dead set on solving this. It was like there was some secret brotherhood trick, I was thinking like Battlefield Earth kind of thing. You know where the aliens hid the real technology behind a facade of dummy circuitry. I searched an search and found a lot of sites saying stuff about it but [...]]]>

I have been trying to gt this right for months. Ok, granted, I am not an expert web programmer but I am a programmer so I was dead set on solving this. It was like there was some secret brotherhood trick, I was thinking like Battlefield Earth kind of thing. You know where the aliens hid the real technology behind a facade of dummy circuitry. I searched an search and found a lot of sites saying stuff about it but not actually implementing it, and those that did must have been doing that Battlefield Earth facade thing. Well I use it (as of March 2010) and I aint gonna hide how I got it to work – here is what I did (feel free to slate me if it does not work for you):
This got a bit long so I put this in two parts; Part one, this post is kind of the back story and how I got to what I wanted, and part two will be the how to (what to download, php, css, etc)

The Beginning
I really liked the way tabs was implemented on the 8Bit Network (ChurchCrunch ChurchCreate ChurchDrop, ChurchIT and ChurchLoop) and much of my digging around started with looking how it was implemented there. I used FireBug quite a lot but even though I learned much; I could not figure it out – must have been because wooTabs was used and I think that’s a component of a paid theme (don’t quote me on that, I could be wrong). And of did I Google the phrases half to death to find good examples I could learn from.

First Steps
The first sign of progress was when I stumbled upon idTabs. It was fantastic. It was just what I needed and the examples were independent of any theme. http://www.sunsean.com/idTabs/ is a plugin for jQuery that is supported in wordpress 2.9.2. All that I needed to do was download the js file, follow the instructions and all would be set. Right? Wrong. Nothing is ever that easy.

Objective
I wanted to use the tabbed widget because it would allow we to offer more information in less vertical real estate in the sidebar. In fact it could be used anywhere to save space; post footer, blog footer, even expandable menu links in the navigation bar. I wanted to display the popular posts, categories and maybe in future – archives.

What is to Follow
Obviously I got it working. Ok, I am a nut – it took me a few months – a few hours a week around midnight to finally figure it out. Which will be shared next week

Moving on
I really need to improve both my Post footer and blog footer, so I think I will start taking a look at how I can further implement the tabs in those areas – maybe when you read this it will have already been done; if not – flame me The nice thing about the tabs and the css uses to style it is that I keep the look the same with minor adjustments in the different regions.

This one is on my wish list, especially fully speced at 16TB, 2GB cache. Surely a great solution for both the Mac Pro and the Mac Book Pro. I would love to see how well it handles RED 4k 4:4:4 footage with and without a RED Rocket.

CalDigit has been providing premium storage solutions to creative professionals for years. CalDigit was the first company to provide blazing fast external PCIe storage solutions with the HDPro. Today CalDigit unveils the HDPro2, [...]]]>

This one is on my wish list, especially fully speced at 16TB, 2GB cache. Surely a great solution for both the Mac Pro and the Mac Book Pro. I would love to see how well it handles RED 4k 4:4:4 footage with and without a RED Rocket.

CalDigit has been providing premium storage solutions to creative professionals for years. CalDigit was the first company to provide blazing fast external PCIe storage solutions with the HDPro. Today CalDigit unveils the HDPro2, the next generation of the extremely popular HDPro. The HDPro2 has all the features of the original HDPro, but with nearly double the speed, over 700MB/s sustained with RAID 5 protection.

The impressive speed of the HDPro2 makes it an incredible addition to any edit suite, but it also adds support for 8 SATA-II 3Gbs or super fast 10000~15000RPM SAS drive modules. It features a next generation Intel XScale processor to accelerate the RAID engine. The HDPro2 also has a new environmental monitor and control system which communicates with RAID Shield, CalDigit’s easy to use RAID management and monitoring software.

The HDPro2 provides hardware RAID 0, 1, 5, 6 and JBOD support, using the next generation RAID engine accompanied by high speed, upgradeable ECC cache. The HDPro2 features Active Sustained Transfer Technology (ASTT) which ensures that there is always a constant throughput. Ideal for massive files like uncompressed HD, 2K or even 4K workflows. The HDPro2 can capture and play them back without dropping frames. ASTT was designed by CalDigit and cannot be found anywhere else.

The modular design of the HDPro2 allows for 8 hot swappable drive modules in various capacities. It features an optional hot swappable load bearing power supply, 2 hot swappable ambient temperature controlled, and low noise smart fans. Even the built-in controller is removable/upgradeable. The HDPro2 is made of strong lightweight aluminum and an optional rack mount kit can be purchased.

The HDPro2 is a complete single vendor storage solution. The HDPro2 is ready to use right out of the box, pre-formatted in RAID 5 to save time and money. CalDigit builds all major components of the HDPro2 and uses only high quality certified hard drives to provide users with the best possible experience. This also eliminates additional technical support inquiries that can arise with other multi-vendor products.

The key to the blazing fast speed of the HDPro2 is the direct connect external PCIe connection. The HDPro2 comes with a PCIe bridge card, which takes the PCIe bus directly to the HDPro2’s built-in controller. There is no delay or conversion making extremely fast, the bus is up to 20Gbs, which is 5 times faster than traditional fibre solutions. The other advantage of this technology is that the HDPro2 can be used on laptops with ExpressCard/34 slots.

The HDPro2 comes standard with a one year warranty. The CalDigit Extended Warranty can be purchased to extend the warranty to three years, and provides additional support benefits.

Price and Availability
The HDPro2 is available now through CalDigit Certified Dealers worldwide or on the CalDigit online store. The 8TB HDPro2 starts at only $5,999.00 and is currently available up to 16TB. Visit www.caldigit.com for more information about the HDPro2 and all of CalDigit’s other products.

drool

I am a volunteer Video guy (for want of a better term) at out church; Southpoint Church in Cape Town South Africa. I do video work; content capture, editing and creation. I’m not the only one. However therein lies the problem – we are all volunteers with our own computers, with our own collection of content. So how do we share that content, work, projects and how can we manage versions, drafts and recommendations.

In an article I contributed over at [...]]]>

I am a volunteer Video guy (for want of a better term) at out church; Southpoint Church in Cape Town South Africa. I do video work; content capture, editing and creation. I’m not the only one. However therein lies the problem – we are all volunteers with our own computers, with our own collection of content. So how do we share that content, work, projects and how can we manage versions, drafts and recommendations.

In an article I contributed over at ChurchCreate I brought up a number of desirable features such a tool or solution should have. I feel that Final Cut Server could be such a tool that offers the most. In time – maybe the 2.0 version – Final Cut Server would satisfy all those features an more.
What do you think? Do you have any other ideas or features? Completely disagree?
Let me know what you think at ChruchCreate.