Broken String

I broke a string while performing this Sunday. Really embarrassing when you're only doing 3 songs.



It was my D string. Broke at the bridge. How do you break a D string? What do you do?

I had been religiously changing my strings before every 'gig.' I really love the sound of new strings, but very few people notice. So, at $4/pack I started making them go longer.

And when the cursed event happens:

• Everything on your guitar is now out-of-tune. It
  is, indeed, the laws of physics.


• What's that? Did you say that you don't keep a spare
  set of strings in your case? For shame!


• Changing a string will take at least 5 minutes because
  you have no roadies, and the case is 30 feet away.


• Tuning quickly and making do could work... but all those
  hours of practicing all those tasty licks are... not much use now.
  Every scale. Every arpeggio. They need that string.


• What's that? You don't know where the octaves on your
  guitar are located? Too bad. It's going to be very
  hard to make-do.

I chose to make do, because I knew I couldn't grab a string fast enough.

The best way is to change your strings is on the D'Addario website: here. They stay in tune, break in very quickly, and makes changing strings super fast. You end up with about 1 wrap (which breaks in quick), but you do a "lock-wrap" so that it stays really secure (which stays in tune). Using this method, I've been able to change strings right before a performance without having to re-tune more than once or twice.

So tell me: What are your broken string war stories? What did you do?

[1] - Image from http://www.verkstad.com/art/stringball/StringBall05.jpg, by John Kieltyka

[2] - @Mike: better? :-P

Jesus is a Friend of Mine

Modern pasters are all the time finding cool videos to use in their sermons. This one was shown recently at University Baptist Church in Waco, TX (home church of the David Crowder*Band):

Sonseed's "Jesus is a Friend of Mine"

Instead of being good boys and girls and listening to the sermon, they went to the office and learned the song. Check out the video on David Crowder's Blog.

Classic.

The Total Quality Management Church

Been to any "modern" churches or church websites, lately? Here's a few examples:

Irving Bible Church (TX)
Prestonwood Baptist Church (TX)
Fellowship Church (TX)
Lakewood Church (TX)

Very slick. Almost as much Flash animation as as a sports-related site (that's not a compliment). Stock photos of beautiful, happy, shiny, well-fed, well-dressed, trendy people. Is this what the church is supposed to look like? Why are we marketing "the church" like we're some cheesy consumer-products business?

It seems like it starts when things in a church get better organized. When churches are smaller, there are fewer rules, things happen without much overhead, and there's a little more freedom to fail. When the church starts to get bigger (called "success"), more people are involved, the relationships are harder, and there's more to "loose" if you fail.

This same pattern happens in businesses. And the larger a business is, the more they try to get a handle on this complexity. The fruits of this labor is called QUALITY. There's quality standards (ISO 9000, for instance), quality methods (Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, etc.), quality competitions (Malcolm Baldridge Award), etc. These implement ways for business to manage the various levels of complexity in their organizations in an efficient way -- for the purpose of meeting customer expectations.

Churches have seen this, and noticed that they struggle with the same things. Little by little churches start adapting the methods, practices, and concepts of quality from the business community.

The problem is that quality does not mean a high standard of excellence. When it comes to businesses, quality means a very repeatable standard of excellence. In other words, McDonalds -- hands down a leader in business quality -- offers up a high-quality product: The Big Mac. I would not say that it's excellent, highly precise, or really even good. However, if you order a Big Mac in New York, and another one in California -- you will get the exact same thing. This is what business calls quality. (It's probably different from what you mean by "quality.")

One great effect this has on businesses is that customers rarely end up with a dud or a lemon or a defective part. The customer knows exactly what he's getting when he pays money to get the product. He knows there's very little risk of being disappointed. However, one minor side effect of this is that exceptionally great products don't get to the customer either. It's not because they're weeded out, but because the processes and procedures tend to prevent them from happening. (For example, you'll never get a Big Mac with ground sirloin for the meat.)

Churches adopt this way of thinking, and they end up with nice, neat, clean, wealthy, beautiful churches. Full of beautiful people serving God. Purpose-filled churches. Very safe. Very marketable.

So, what do you think? Total quality churches: good or bad? Is that what God wants? How have you seen it happen (or not happen)? What does it look like? Let me know. I've got more to say, but this article is already too long.

I hate long blog posts. I've implemented a policy that all blog posts shall be between 300 and 700 words, 2-6 external links, 0-2 photos, and at least 1 lame joke.

Sarah Palin

Could everyone, please, be just a little less shallow about this?

[Photo courtesy of the State of Alaska. Used without permission, but I think it's probably public record. URL of source: http://gov.state.ak.us/large_photo-55800.html]

Hydrogen

Hydrogen is a virtual drum machine that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Whenever I need drums, and have no drummer to borrow (always), this is what I use.Programming drum beats is pattern-based, so it's generally easy to figure it out just by experimenting. But, if you need more direction, it also has a manual in several languages. It also has an easy-to-understand way to create custom drum kits using various recorded samples. For that reason, there's lots of different types of free drum kits available for it (see http://www.hydrogen-music.org/?p=drumkits).

While it's an integrated sequencer/sampler (for those of you who know what that means), it can also be controlled by an external sequencer via MIDI.

Hydrogen is also an excellent example of Free Software. About 2 1/2 years ago, the lead developer Alessandro Cominu (a.k.a. Comix) either got bored or frustrated with it, and stopped working on it. But, because the code is publicly available, other people were able to make their own fixes when needed.

One example, I wanted Hydrogen to have a new feature, support for something called JACK MIDI -- something that didn't exist 2 1/2 years ago. Using the source code, I was able to add the feature myself. Others had other features that they needed/wanted... and so development has started again.

One of the devs released a beta of the next version of Hydrogen, and I expect the new version to be ready in a month or two. It will include a tap tempo feature, lead/lag, advanced humanization, swing, some JACK features (but not MIDI, yet), and some bug fixes. JACK MIDI is slated for the version after this, but if you want to play with it right now, it's available in the jackMidi branch of the Subversion repository (http://www.hydrogen-music.org/svn/branches/jackMidi/).

BTW, I'll explain what JACK is in a future post. It's very similar to ReWire.

My Brudders

I'm proud to have 3 brothers. Two of them are special today. One is just, well, special. ;-)

JOSH

Today, my brother becomes a licensed minister. He's been a youth pastor for about 5 or 8 years (I think), and is currently the youth pastor for the Church of God in Greenville, TN. He's worked long and hard on the process of ordination, and becoming licensed is one of the steps along the way. He's written many papers, done much research and soul searching, and gone through "a lot" to get here.

I'm really proud of my "little" brother. He's in Chattanooga today (where we were born) at the State Minister's Meeting, and that's where they'll do the honors.

Congradulations, Josh!

[Note: Sorry, I don't have pictures handy for the other two....]

GREG

Greg turns 28 today! When I first met Greg, he was a slightly akward 13-year-old. Greg is the exception to the rule. He never learned to read music (not even in band with the French Horn) -- but he's one of the best guitar players I know. When we all said he was making a mistake by going to trade school, he proved that it wasn't a mistake. He's been slowly working his way up at Schneider Electric (Square D), going from the shop floor to a cushy desk job. *snicker* He and Amy recently moved to Nashville, so Wendie and I are excited about getting to see them more. (Columbia SC is a little "farther out.")

Happy Birthday, Greg!

ERIC

Eric is not special today, but he's always special. :-) Eric was imported into our family about 5 years ago through Wendie's sister, Kristina. Eric has a PhD in early christian studies (I think), loves to play and create games, and loves Kristina. Eric is an active lay-minister in the Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod), and currently is head of education for the school of their Church. Kristina made a good choice. :-)

But most importantly, Eric introduced me to Strong Bad.

I Wubb Uu, Eric!

Linux

I'm killing my 'Bible Blog' on wordpress (not because I like Blogger better -- not at all), and I'm opening up the scope of this 'Rock Log' to incorporate more of the things that interest me: Including the Bible and Computers. In the odd event that someone is seriously tracking the blog... I'll try to maintain good tags so that you can filter out the things you do/don't care about.

So in our first, not-quite-rock'n'roll installment....

LINUX

Linux is a computer operating system. It's an alternative to Microsoft Windows and to Mac OS X. It's called a free operating system because (a) you don't have to pay for it, and (b) it gives you rights to the source code so that you can modify it to suit you. Further, most of the software that runs on Linux is free in the same way. Linux is very popular for servers, but it also a good OS for desktop computing (you know, using a mouse and windows and stuff). A good number of web sites that you visit run on Linux. So does your TiVo.

I'm a computer geek, and I love Linux. I came to Linux after the 2nd or 3rd or 4th time I had to re-install Windows ME on our computer (either because an update killed the modem, or a computer virus that the kids found, or whatever). Since I had to reinstall, I figured I would also try something new. I'd heard about Linux and figured I would try it out -- and hopefully I wouldn't have to reinstall because my kids clicked on some adware.

Since then, my house has a server, 2 PC's, and a DAW (digital audio workstation) -- all running Linux. Both of my mother-in-laws now run Linux (administered by me). My mom likes it, my Dad understands (and tolerates it), and the jury is still out for my mother-in-law (I just set her up this weekend -- she was using Win98). The fastest computer in the lot is a PIII 800 MHz with about 512MB of RAM (i.e. all computers are typical of those sold in Y2K). My kids don't like it because they can't run Microsoft games on it.

...but they're free to spend their own money to buy Windows Vista. Or a Mac.

Is Linux for everyone? No. It's best for geeks who like to tinker, and for people who hate computers (but have a Linux zealot who will admin. the computer for them).

Do I have to format my hard drive to try linux? No. There are Live CD's and DVD's that you can download and burn. The best one is Knoppix. You pop it in your CD-ROM drive and reboot. It will boot from the CD-ROM and then run the whole Linux OS from your CD-ROM drive. You'll boot to a windows-like desktop that looks like this:



If you need help, give me a shout. I'll say more later (including how this relates to the Synth thread).

(Props to Larry Ewing for the "official" Linux penguin logos http://www.isc.tamu.edu/~lewing/linux/)

Edit: I added the paragraph that briefly describes what Linux is - 2008-09-04 10:50 PM