To Own a Dragon

With the impending release of To Own a Dragon, the new book by Donald Miller (author of Blue Like Jazz), his website has a new entry page.

The same thing was done just prior to the release of Through Painted Deserts, and just like then, the first chapter of the book is available for download. You can also listen to an audio clip of Donald reading from the new book.

Something that took me by surprise is the endorsement of the book by comedian Jeff Foxworthy:

It seems we humans carry the weight of our dad’s shortcomings. I know – mine left when I was nine. Don writes with candid humor and unembarassed honesty. He rips himself open. This book sings to those who have felt responsible for their father’s demons. The truth is, our real Father is perfect in every way, especially in our love for us.

I guess I didn’t know that Jeff Foxworthy was a Christian (although I never really had any reason to assume otherwise) or that he was reading Donald Miller’s books.

Anyway, the book is released on Sunday, February 5, and if I have any money left over after I buy my second semester books, I’ll be sure to get a hold of it.

Friday linkfest

This week’s links:

• Sun Pillars: I don’t think I ever knew that these existed until I was driving home a month ago and I saw a ridiculous one. If I owned a camera other than my cameraphone (which is too sensitive for sunlight) I would have taken a picture. I figured the phenemenon had a name, and I saw this picture on flickr, which led me to Google “sun pillar,” which gives us the aforementioned link. Edit: I think what I witnessed was actually a “lower pillar“.
• Data mining using Google: How to do a ton of cool things with Google search, such as looking up phone numbers.
• Pandora: A really cool music website that looks for and plays music that is very similar to your particular taste. I typed in “Matt Wertz” and listened to a couple of tracks that I would have otherwise never heard. As someone who gets an adrenaline rush every time I discover a new artist, this website is invaluable. You should probably check this one out.
• Slanket: Touts itself as being the “best blanket ever.” It’s an oversized fleece blanket with huge, baggy arms so that you are free to do things like hold a remote, use a laptop, and eat popcorn without having to take your arms out from under the blanket. It sells for a hefty $65, but it could be very worth it.
• The Da Vinci Code: An early trailer for the big-screen adaptation of the controversial novel by Dan Brown. I really hope this means that they make “Angels and Demons” into a film.

Books for sale

I’ve listed a bunch of books on Half.com and a couple of CDs, too.

I am scrambling to pay for books for second semester.

A weekend to remember

I took a creative writing class in high school, and for one of the projects we had to write a short story. Regarding this project, the only advice I remember my teacher offering the class was something like, “Make sure that the title is interesting and not something cliché, like ‘A [blank] to Remember’.” So, Mrs. High-School-Creative-Writing-Teacher, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I don’t remember your name, and I’m sorry that I titled this post the way I did. If clichés weren’t so good at explaining things, people wouldn’t use them so often. But as they say, hindsight is always twenty/twenty.

Friday night, five friends and I headed to La Crosse, Wisconsin on a road trip. We all just wanted to get off of campus, swim in a pool, and relax in a hot tub together. On the way there, Tom and I recorded a to-be-released podcast segment in the back of a minivan. I think it will be one of the funniest segments yet, and if not, the most disgusting. We stayed in a hotel and – as planned – had a great time. You can see some pictures from Friday evening, as well as others from this weekend on my Flickr account. The new pictures continue onto the second page.

Saturday night, I played in an “open mic” competition on campus. I entered twice, once as myself (accompanied by hand drums and keys) and once with Dr. Thunder & the Generic Sodas. This contest was a pretty sweet deal, with 1st place receiving $300, 2nd $200, and 3rd $100. Out of more than twenty acts, Dr. Thunder and the Generic Sodas (DT&GS) took first prize. We actually ended up tieing with another group, so we won $150 and split it three ways. Not bad for just having a good time. In our first show in over a year and a half we played the wildly popular tribute to a required class for all freshmen called “Paideia (2 Many Dealines)“, and the competition-clincher/brand new “Facebook (I Poke and I Poke)”. We hope to record the new song this week – it’s a good one.

This was definately a weekend to remember (it does kind of make me cringe to say that).

What’s your theological worldview?

Here’s mine:

“You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don’t think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.”

Emergent/Postmodern		93%
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan		75%
Neo orthodox		54%
Charismatic/Pentecostal		54%
Classical Liberal		50%
Roman Catholic		36%
Modern Liberal		36%
Reformed Evangelical		25%
Fundamentalist		0%

What's your theological worldview? (created with QuizFarm.com)

I wish I would have taken this three and/or four years ago to compare results.

JakeBouma.com 2.75 goes live

Although I still have a few things left to work on, the new site is up and running.

JakeBouma.com 2.75 (named so because of Shawn’s comment) is a three column masterpiece. The thinner middle column – which contains all the posts – is easier to read, and the two outer columns are capable of holding more information that most people probably don’t even care about (ex: what books I am reading).

My personal favorite new feature is the new image header. I will be able to change it per mood or season or whatever. I chose to inagurate the new design with a header that features a Chi Rho symbol from Varlaam monastery in Meteora, Greece. I took that picture just over one year ago, on January 11, 2005.

I won’t go in to detail about how picky I can be with the design, but just know that it is pretty ridiculous. Take a look around and let me know what you think. At least this time I didn’t delete the whole thing.

JakeBouma.com 3.0 is so close

Just a few more minor tweaks before JakeBouma.com 3.0¹ is ready to see the light of day. I’ve worked all night for two nights on it and it’s looking good. Expect a launch before Friday.

Recording is also going very well.

1. 1.0: The original website created in March, 2005. 2.0: The new website after I deleted everything in June 2005. ↩

New layout coming soon…

I am working on a new layout/theme for jakebouma.com. Just as designing the current layout was painstaking, so is this one.

Right now I have a two-column theme. The posts are on the left, in a big column, and the other info is located in a skinnier column on the right. For a long time, though, I have wanted to have a three-column theme (like Pomomusings or TallSkinnyKiwi) for a couple of reasons. First, I can display more information on the main page without using a single, ridiculously long column and second, I think it looks more professional.

The theme I am currently using originally looked like this, and I spent quite a long time tweaking it to my liking. It was pretty difficult and a little frustrating at times, because Wordpress themes are written in CSS, a web design language I know almost nothing about (although I am getting better). I still don’t have enough CSS and code knowledge to design a theme from scratch, so I am using another “template” theme, tweaking the crap out of it. The final product will look nothing like the original template theme.

The new theme will retain many visual aspects of the current one, such as the lime-green color theme, but it will be nearly a billion times better.

Look for it in the next few days.

(The return of) Friday linkfest

Here are this week’s links:

Optimus keyboard: A sweet new keyboard that changes depending on what you need it to do. Make sure to look at all of the pictures.

Good and Bad Procrastination: An interesting article about procrastination. “There are three variants of procrastination, depending on what you do instead of working on something: you could work on (a) nothing, (b) something less important, or (c) something more important. That last type, I’d argue, is good procrastination.”

Two-headed snake for sale: For a mere $150,000 you can get your hands on the world’s only two-headed snake owned by the World Aquarium in St. Louis. Picture included.

The Rio-Antirio Bridge: Innagurated in August 2004, the Rio-Antirio is the world’s largest, cable-stayed suspension deck bridge, which connects Rion and Antirion on the western mainland of Greece, thus connecting it with the rest of Europe. It is really quite beautiful at night.

iTunes Signature Maker: From the website: “People often ask me what music I listen to, and I find it difficult to describe my enormous music collection in just a few sentences. So I created iTSM.. iTSM selects a small number of your “favorite” tracks based on some simple selection criteria… Then it analyzes the audio content of these files, combining a small bit of each of them to create the signature.” I made a few of them the other day, and they’re pretty sweet.

geez: A new magazine that “that serves a politically-charged readership at the fringes of faith.” I don’t have a subscription, but I’d sure love to. Maclean’s recently ran an article about the magazine that gives a pretty good overview.

Triskaidekaphobia: And the origins of a fear of the number 13 and Friday the 13th.

Early “Dying Stars” Preview

Work on the album continues.

We have most of the hand drum tracks laid, and Zach Booz has done a wonderful job rocking said drums. And now the reason for the title of this post:

If you head over to my Myspace music page, you can listen to two sample tracks. The two songs are “Leave the Light On,” a brand new song, and the title track, “Dying Stars”. The only thing that will be kept from these recordings is the hand drums; everything else will be deleted, re-recorded, and mastered into the mix. I also decided to leave a little bit of an intro to the songs to give it an “in-the-studio” feel. Again, these tracks are nowhere near complete… they are very rough recordings that I just wanted to share.

I would directly link to the mp3s, but if i did, people would get them in their podcast feeds. Let me know what you think.

Album Progress

I am on an emotional high right now. I spent most of the day and night working with a couple of musicians who will be playing on my album; working out arrangements, jamming, and polishing several songs. The entire album is going to have such a groove to it – I imagine people putting it in and tapping their feet, bobbing their heads. Maybe I am getting ahead of myself.

Also, there is a good chance that the album will have a brand new song on it. I literally just finished it today. It’s called “Leave the Light On”, and sounds a bit different than any of my other music. A little bit reminiscent of Ryan Cabrera’s “On the Way Down”. This week I am hitting the studio hard and like I said, I am really excited about the music.

Oh yeah, this is my class for the month. Cool, huh?

The Year of the Book

2005, according to Chinese Horoscopes, was the Year of the Rooster. While I appreciate Chinese astrology, I would say that 2005 was instead the Year of the Book. I read more books for personal pleasure in 2005 than any previous year. Here’s a list of what I read in 2005, in somewhat chronological order (I may be missing a couple):

Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (purchased in Amsterdam Schiphol, Holland as a paperback)

Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller

Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology by Eugene Peterson

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell

Praise Habit by David Crowder

One of a Kind: The Rise and Fall of Stuey “The Kid” Ungar, The World’s Greatest Poker Player by Nolan Dalla

Through Painted Deserts by Donald Miller

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren

A Generous Orthodoxy by Brian McLaren

The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy by T.R. Reid

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (currently reading, but started in 2005)

Best fiction book of 2005: Angels and Demons by Dan Brown

Best non-fiction book of 2005: A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren

I will probably read just as many books, if not more, in 2006. A few that I’d like to read:

The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle

Leonardo da Vinci : Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl

The Story We Find Ourselves In and The Last Word and the Word After That by Brian McLaren

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

To Own a Dragon: Rewriting the Legacy of an Invisible Father by Donald Miller (to be released February 5, 2006)

The Secret Message of Jesus : Uncovering the Truth that Could Change Everything by Brian McLaren (to be released April 4, 2006)

Studio Day One

I spent my first hours in the studio today, working on my upcoming album. I am working with an excellent sound engineer and good friend of mine, Eric Thorsen. We got a lot accomplished in the time that we worked today, which makes me very optimistic about the rest of the month.

My original idea was to have 5-6 songs and release an EP, but I have enough material and time to possibly release a full length album. It’s way to early to make a decision at this point, but just know that there may be a longer album in the works.

The next few days I will be working on the arrangements of some of the songs and practicing with other musicians to make the recording process run more smoothly.

If you’d like to pre-order a CD/donate to the cause, visit this page.

JakeBouma.com 2005 Review

Now that we’ve entered into a new year, I thought I’d look back on the first year of JakeBouma.com. In 2005, this website saw:

The creation of JakeBouma.com.

The deletion and subsequent recreation of JakeBouma.com.

107 posts (although I cheated a little bit, importing posts about Greece & Turkey from my old blog).

214 comments (exactly 2 per post).

9,300 unique visitors (A count using the visitor’s IP address, domain name, or cookie. A unique visitor may visit a site serveral times a week; however, because it is the same person, it can only count as one unique visitor). The spike in the image is the debut of the podcast.

The creation of an official podcast.

21 incoming links from 10 different websites.

The creation of a life-changing, month long journey which never reached fruition.

I have lots of new ideas for 2006… be on the lookout. Last year was only the beginning. Do you have any memorable JakeBouma.com moments? A favorite post? A favorite feature of the site? Leave a comment and let me know!

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