Okay, I’ve finished my plugin 
and the options page is about 90% done. I know, I know, you can’t wait for it to be done. Neither can I . I’m making the options page extremely low tech friendly to allow even the less techno-savy to configure everything. You will not need to know Cascading Style Sheets or any other type of mumbo-jumbo to setup this plugin exactly the way you want it (including colors). I’ve bult in a color chooser to help you select your colors, have boxes to click to make items bold, italic, or underline, and even allow you to determine what is shown when you mouse over the verse. Just to make sure you have everything perfect before you save the new options, there is an example verse in the options page that updates on the fly to show the verse exactly the way your settings state. That way you can configure everything perfectly, then click save to make it live .
popVerse – Wordpress plugin
September 30th, 2006MYSQL Dump of KJV – Wordpress Plugin Started
September 27th, 2006I personally would love the ability to quote the bible on my website automatically without running into all types of restrictions on number of queries per day, etc; simply by referencing the passage. While I found a great plug-in for Wordpress that does much of what I wanted it relies on ESV’s website which has a number of restrictions on the use of passages. While my website meets the license restrictions for use, I’m not sure if I always will. As a result I wanted a more robust solution that I could always use. Since I couldn’t find one, I figured I’d make one myself .
Since the KJV is in the public domain and freely available on the net (and it happens to be one of my favorite versions), I figured I’d start with that. While I was prepared to convert the KJV from text to a format my MYSQL database could play with, I fortunately found someone who had already done that. As a result he saved me a ton of time . Look here in the coming days for a cool new Wordpress plug-in. It shouldn’t take me TOO long to get a simple version running. (I suppose those are probably famous last words).
Webpage Stats – DLOGAN Design
September 26th, 2006I am quite intrigued. One of the top search terms finding my website is DLOGAN Design. Since I have been doing quite a bit of webdesign on the side recently (and playing with XML requests, AJAX and other cool things), I am amazed that searches are now pulling my website up just based on these two terms. As you can tell from touring my site, I have little mention of the fact I do webdesign. In fact the only way anyone knows I do webdesign is by word of mouth (As you can tell by the simple nature of my site… I spend much more time working on other people’s sites). What I find even more interesting is that Googling “DLOGAN Design” doesn’t pull any other good matches besides my site. As a result people are finding my website with these terms, and probably aren’t looking for someone else. I guess its time to add some of the cool things I’ve learned to my website and have a proper demonstration . In the meantime if you’ve stumbled on this website looking for webdesign, let me know. I’ll see what I can do to put a porfolio together . You can also view my resume here. At this time its not really updated with all my webdesign stuff (of course), but I’ll try to get that added in the coming days as well. If DLOGAN Design is the top search term for finding my website its about time I actually get a business site up. I’ve debated about having a seperate business and personal site, but I think I’m going to keep them interlinked. I know I like to do business with people who I know what they believe in, and hopefully there are more people like me out there. God has really put it on my heart that if I’m going to spend money I should be seeking to spend in places where tithing Christians are going to benifit. The way I view it, its sort of like an automatic 10% discount .
Warp 10 on my Mark
September 22nd, 2006Originally I had planned on blogging at least once a week. Recently however things seem to have hit warp speed again. Presently I’m building a MythTV box, writing some software for keeping track of time off, doing web design for a small company, and keeping all nine domains I have hosted up and running.
You might wonder, “What else do you host?”. Well, I have my wife’s blog, my father-in-law’s family site, my father-in-law’s business site, my-mother-in-law’s site, a co-workers DJ site, another friend’s site, and his business coupon site. As you can tell by clicking on the links, each one of the sites is on various levels of development. None of these sites tend to typically take up that much time… unless I have to move them all to a new server.
When backups decide not to play nice its rather annoying to move a handful of galleries and about 6 blogs to a new server. All in all I think I invested a good 30 hrs over the last week or so getting everything up and running. That’s in addition to my other projects . At least, my father-in-laws site appears to be up and running well now and he is off on his adventure blogging and such. You should check out his photography, its pretty neat stuff. He has a pretty spiffy contact form too, if I do say so myself… then again maybe that’s because I created it. I also wrote his random image generator on his home page, in addition to the simple site design. One of these days I’ll have enough time to write a really spiffy site for him
Well it SOUNDED easy! – Nightmares Soldering
September 6th, 2005Ok, the concept sounds simple. Solder four little wires to the bottom of my motherboard. Heat motherboard, heat solder, wallah, its attached! Did I mention four LITTLE wires, with four VERY LITTLE points of contact, that are dangerously close to other little circuits that I don’t want to touch 
. Okay, maybe its been a little while since my radio shack days and this isn’t as easy as expected. Imagine that, one of my projects has become more difficult than originally anticipated , just don’t ask my wife about the “surprise” vinyl removal project
When I originally found out that I would need to solder an extra molex connector to my motherboard to help avoid the amp problem inherent in the Tiger MP’s design, I thought it was no big deal. Back in the day, I was a Radio Shack kid. While other kids where busy tying fireworks to the tails of cats, I was playing with circuitry with my cousin (and blowing up frogs, but that’s another story).
Soldering really small transistors, resistors, onto very small circuit boards was just another fun summer day. We had all sorts of hair brained ideas, like “shock tennis balls”, that delivered upwards of 100v on contact (low amps of course), and “spy” equipment that would make James Bond jealous. We made just about any crazy vehicle you can create out of Legos, toothpicks, and circuitry that you can imagine . (I’ll tell you, kids these days just have no imagination!) Soldering really small objects was part of all of it.
Why I can’t seem to these four freaking wires to connect to my motherboard, I can’t tell you! I’ve probably spent a good 4-5 hrs soldering iron in hand, with my 150w bulb in the 60w rated lamp focused on four square inches of my motherboard, intensely trying to get the solder to take to the board AND the wire at the same time without connecting to the other circuitry on the board. I got one wire to stick once, only to have it disconnected as I tried to make it more perfect. Its enough to drive a man insane!
Truth be told, I’m sort of the techie that does not do well with really small things. I hate those really small screws for the PCI slots in many of today’s cases. When I used to install cable, and would encounter one of these cases, it would not be uncommon for me to drop those little screws 3, 4, 10 times before I finally got it to stick in place. Let me tell you, it instills true confidence in your abilities when you sit there for 10 minutes trying to get a screw in place, meanwhile the customer is sitting over your shoulder watching you drop the screw time and time again (occasionally loosing the screw somewhere in the vastness of the case, only to be left shaking the case back and forth like you’re panning for gold, to no avail. It seems always having to resort to completely turning the case upside down, having the screw fall out, and scurrying across the room taking a place under the most immovable object in the room).
Anyway, that being said. My computer still is not built. While I have managed to avoid those annoying screws by my cool Super Lanboy case, I am stuck with this silly soldering project. Should I not make more progress in my next computer building session, I will need to call in a professional
My buddy Andrew is an Uber techie, hardware being his specialty. While to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never known him to solder anything, I willing to bet he could finish this project in under 15 minutes. The precision and accuracy I’ve seen him able to accomplish in the most difficult situations leads me to believe this would be his cup of tea. I once saw him put a wall box into plaster inbetween a desk, and an armoire with less than 6″ of clearance in any direction, without a level, and operating on less than 6 hrs sleep. The final outcome was PERFECTLY level, and exactly the size of the box. For any of you that have ever tried to put a wall box into plaster with tons of clearance, you know how difficult this is.
Anyway, I’ll let you know how this goes.
Return To Geekness…
August 11th, 2005Thats right, I’m back . Whaaa haaa haaa *snort* *snort* . After installing cable for a year and a half working 75-95 hr weeks, its taken me 7 months to recover, but I’m now back to my geeky self. I’ve certainly got some time to make up! This brings my project list!
* Build A Dual Processor AMD Server
* Power Mod to fix 5v Limitations
* Overclock to 2.5 Ghz
* Install Linux (With NO GUI!! WHAA HAAA HAA)
* Setup Asterisk (Open Source PBX)
* Setup TMDA Spam Filter
* Divert mail from all domains to Server
* Return mail to said server upon completion
As a computer geek whose never delved much into Linux, this is going to be fun. I’ve finalley gotten myself over that basic level of understanding to be able to dive right in. Now I can’t believe the possibilities. My capital expenditures for computer projects are still limited, but the great thing about Open Source is this is not a problem. Monitary costs can be substituted for time, which is something I’ve had enough of as of late. Family always comes first, so I’m sure that these projects will be delayed more than anticipated, but in the meantime its full speed ahead!
First project, get this computer built and my server running. A long, long time ago, in a land far far away, I bought a Tyan S2460 dual-proccessor motherboard. This was in the days before I was married when I had great anticipation of putting it into a brand new system. That was well over 4 years ago, and fortunately this board is still of use. While technically the max processor it can handle is a 1900+, there have been quite a few documented cases of people running much, much more. My plan is to throw in two mobile 2600+ AMD’s, and overclock them to 2.5ghz. Unfortunately, if I’m going to pull all this power, I’m going to have to fix the 5v issue on this board. Apparently the brilliant people at Tyan decided to power all the PCI sockets, in addition to the AGP slot, and two proccessors from the same 5v lines. While the board will pull the juice it needs, it pulls a decent amount of amps over what the wires are rated for, causing meltdown.
To solve this, I’ll be following a fix I ran across online, soldering a few extra molexs to the back of the board. This will increase the number of possible paths to draw power from as a resultreducing the strain on any one given wire. While I’ve got the soldering iron out, I figured I mine as well do a regular power mod, increasing the power to my CPU’s and upping the mhz.
I’ll post more as this project progresses (and probably dig out the digital camera, posting a picture or two). As of now this is the plan.
Antec Super Lanboy Case, Antec 480 Watt TruePowerII Blue PSU, 2 2600+ Mobile AMD’s, four 4GB drives I have lying around (Unless fatwallet finds something cheap), and 2-3 Intel 587 Modems (for Asterisk). I’ll probably throw in a CD-Rom or two, and may pick up a DVD-RW if the price is right. I guess it all depends on what Fatwallet has running over the next few weeks!
The Significance of a Sacrifice
June 5th, 2005For the longest time I did not understand Christianity. How could someone who died two thousand years ago pay the price for my sins? Why did my sins even need to be paid for in the first place, and who was being paid? Couldn’t an all loving, all powerful God just get rid of my sins? Why bother with the whole sending-the-Son bit at all?
Even after I became a Christian, these questions still bothered me. I accepted that Jesus was God’s son that he had been sent to die on the cross to pay for my sins, and that on the third day he had been resurrected. However, the only basis I had for this belief was faith. No one could adequately answer my questions.
The biggest question I had was “Who is being paid”?, and why do they need to be paid? The answer I got from Christians was that “God was being paid for his own glory”. That seemed like a nonsensical response if I ever heard one. I mine as well have been told “Because I said so”. In my mind I imagined this picture of a guy holding a dollar bill. I imagined him picking up that dollar from one hand, punching three holes in it, giving it to his other hand, and jumping up and down with excitement. Originally he had a dollar, now he had a dollar with holes in it, and he was suppose to be glorified? Come on! Our God is an awesome God, not a crazy God.
It took me awhile but I eventually got my answer. The answer lies in covenant. While sacrificing something to make things right might be a foreign concept to us, it was the basis of Hebrew law. For every transgression against God, a man had to sacrifice something to make things right. The more perfect the sacrifice the more it could atone. However, there was nothing perfect enough to cover all sin. As a result with each transgression, a man had to make a new sacrifice. He was always in a state of moving in and out of grace.
Enter the new covenant. The Old Testament states that there would be a savior who would come to establish a new covenant. This savior will fulfill the old law and establish a new law that is written on a man’s heart. As Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them”. For God to abolish the law would be impossible, and would deny his very nature. One can not be perfect and deny promises that you made. This answers the question, “Why can’t God just get rid of my sin if He’s all loving and all powerful?” To do so would go against his promise. Because God is all knowing, all powerful, and perfect He himself is holding Himself to that promise.
Then comes in the questions, since so many are falling short, how can God replace His old promise with a new one? The only way to replace the old promise is to fulfill it. It is only through completing the old covenant that a new one can be established.
The old covenant was made between God and Abraham. In exchange for a son, Abraham swore his family and his descendents to the law of God, through the act of circumcision. In order to fulfill this agreement there had to be a sacrifice that was perfect enough to pay for all the sins of all the people for the rest of time. Since the agreement was made over the promise of a son, it seems fitting that the only thing perfect enough would be God’s only begotten son. Living perfect and blameless, Jesus was God’s firstborn and only heir. Through his death he paid the price to God to fulfill His covenant with Abraham, to allow us to escape from the old law so we man not perish.
How do we get under the new law? We must proclaim that Christ was a perfect sacrifice (The son of God, perfect and blameless), and sacrificed on our behalf. This frees us from the old law, and we are able to enter into a new law through Christ. Through his sacrifice we are released of the old law, through his resurrection the new covenant is established. As heir to all that God has, a new covenant with Jesus allows us all things that were granted to his son.
The Mediocrity of Democracy
May 29th, 2005I have come to the conclusion that the ideal form of government is a monarchy. This is not to say that I don’t love the United States, I love my country. I would not want to live anywhere else. However if you are going to look at things on a purely potential basis a monarchy has the greatest potential for the most perfect good. The only drawback with this is it also has the greatest potential for the most perfect evil. As a result in order to balance the corrupting powers of human nature, we have to settle for something that is neither fully good, nor fully evil. Walla, democracy is born. Everyone has a say and since we can never agree nothing too terribly good or bad can be accomplished.
Would I rather live in a country were I was persecuted everyday for what I believe? I struggle with this concept. While I personally am not too fond of my life being jeopardized, I’ve certainly seen the disillusionment that can be caused by living in the luke warm. How do you boil a living frog? Increase the temperature one degree at a time. He’ll never know the difference until its too late.
All around me, I see the effects of this diluted truth. We have a real and legitimate problem, racism. Solution: create a requirement that states that you have to hire x number of this minority and y of that. The end result: Many deserving people are given an opportunity that would have otherwise escaped them, and many people are given a job they are not qualified for. As a result we don’t have an absolute evil where people are allowed to be judged by their race. At the same time we don’t have the most perfect situation where the most qualified person is always hired.
This concept is proliferating throughout our society and is found at the basis of most legislative policy that has been created in the last decade. We do not want any child left behind, so students are held back from their potential. We don’t want people to be forced to believe anything, so the concept of God is virtually disallowed from school (Feeding a more anti-God sentiment, but thats another topic). In fear of evil, we have trapped ourselves in mediocrity.
I am not fond of the absolute evils. I understand to prevent the negative we sometimes need to dilute the good. However it seems we are often too quick to take the easy answer that inhibits both good and evil equally, instead of striving for the more perfect solution that might promote a little lighter shade of grey. The end result is a color palette that is looking greyer everyday, and loosing all contrasting nature. It is the dichotomies that keep us balanced and forever looking for pure white.