Avoiding Evil

If you are trying to change the oil in your Chevrolet Cobalt you can see my detailed instructions on my post: “How To Change The Oil On Your Chevrolet Cobalt”

I have recieved several e-mails regarding the Chevy Cobalt and resetting the computer or resetting the Engine Oil LIfe System. If you have lost your book or if you are just too lazy to look it up, here is detailed instructions on how to reset the system:

1. You need to make sure the engine is shut off and turn your key to the RUN possition.

2. Press your info and reset buttons on the computer at the same time and hold it, which will get you into the menue.

3. Press the info button to scroll through the mennu until you see “OIL-LIFE RESET”.

4. Press and hold the reset button until the computer screen says “ACKNOWLEDGED”

5. Turn the key back to lock.

Thats it. You’re done!

The interest in podcasting is growing at an exponential rate on a daily basis and I believe that the potential to use podcasting as a ministry and outreach for our churches is growing with it. Over the last couple of weeks our church has put together two podcasts that we post on our website and link to iTunes. One of the podcasts is our Sunday morning service and the other podcast is our Wednesday evening youth message. This opens the doors for not only an outreach of the church, but for those who miss the message and want to hear it or get a copy of it. Their task is as simple as going on the website, downloading it, and listening to the message or burning it onto a disk to share with others. We’ve had a CD/Tape ministry for a long time and now podcasting simply enhances what we were already capable of doing. With the help of a friend, we were able to get a podcast up and running with relative ease and I’ve decided to share with you how we are doing it in the hopes that other ministries and churches would be able to use this resource to enhance their ministry.

Step 1: The first step in podcasting is acquiring the proper equipment. I won’t lie to you, in my personal opinion I think Apple computers are far superior to PC’s in accomplishing this task and almost any other task involving graphics, video, and music or sound production. If you have any choice in the matter you would do well to look into getting a mac. On the other hand, this is a task that can be accomplished by both Apples and PC’s.

We are recording our podcasts using an Apple Power PC G5 running dual processors, a gig of Ram, and with dual 250 Gig hard drives for storing both video and podcasts. We’ve also been known to record a time or two on our PowerBook G4’s which can accomplish the same task, they are just a little slower at it. For now we are running a cable from the 1/4 inch headphones jack output on our old Allen & Heath soundboard to the 1/8 inch input jack on the computer. This is because we are recording the messages only and have no need for adjusting EQ and other things that can’t be adjusted on the board itself. However, in the near future we plan to upgrade. By using split cables we plan on running individual inputs into a separate sound board which will be utilized for recording purposes only. This will allow us to adjust EQ, input levels, and sound quality for the recording without affecting the main board and what the audience hears in house.

Using the latest version of Garageband, which is available only for the Mac, we are able to record the input that comes into the computer. Garageband has a special section which was designed specifically for podcasting and it includes royalty free sound-clips and sound effects to enhance your podcast and it has multiple features that help you make your podcast sound professional. You can digitally enhance sound and voices, you can adjust volume levels and you can even cut or edit out pieces of the message if needs be. Another cool feature of Garageband is that it allows you to add pictures or in our case sermon notes slides to the message which we plan to begin doing in the near future. Garageband makes our lives easy once we have the input set up and the message recorded. For you PC users, I don’t have the answers for you because I’ve never used a PC to accomplish this task. I imagine you need a program that will do much of the same thing that garageband does for the mac. I should mention at this point that Garageband does come standard with new Mac’s whereas you will most likely have to buy another program for the PC.

You should also keep in mind that your podcast will only sound as good as your in house sound system and microphones. We’re using an older Allen&Heath sound board with a Sure lapel pack that has the Countryman E6i Headworn Mic hooked to it. This is a sweet sounding setup, but it isn’t cheap. You will be able to produce a nice sounding, quality podcast with a lot smaller and cheaper computers, soundboards, and mics. Just take what you have and make it work. The reason we have what we have now is because we have collected and added to our system over a 5 to 6 year period, and did it all with no concept that we would be doing a podcast down the road. If you can produce it on what you have now, then you can slowly add to your system to increase ease and quality in your future.

Step 2: The second step in doing a podcast is getting it on the internet and making it readily available for people. The easier you make it for people to get, the better off you will be. We store our podcast on our own server space and make it available for people to download directly from our website and we also list it on iTunes which allows anyone to look our podcast up and subscribe to it. If they subscribe to it using iTunes, then every time they open iTunes if there is a new podcast it will download automatically to their computer. So how do you do this? Well, it is at this juncture that I have to turn this part of our podcasting guide over to my partner in all of this, Christopher. He will explain how to set up an RSS Feed, how to get it on iTunes, and what you can do to make it easier for people to get your podcast.

Well I can explain how I have set them up. I’m sure that there are many other ways to do. I start with some type of content management system (CMS). In my case I use WordPress. If you want a free WordPress blog check out this.) WordPress will automatically generate a RSS feed with the ability of including enclosures (the audio file). In WordPess create a podcast category. Get the feed address for that category. The feed address is the category address with /feed on the end. For example: http://www.mydomain.com/podcast/feed/ . Remember that address. Next we need to create a free account on FeedBurner. When you log into FeedBurner we are going to create a feed that is ready for iTunes. FeedBurner will ask for your feed address, that address that I told you to remember earlier. Then you will be able to easily add iTunes specific tags like category tags, iTunes image and rating. Follow the simple FeedBurner tutorial and after you complete all the questions you will be given your final feed address. This is the address that you will ask listeners to subscribe to and the one you will give to iTunes. To get into the iTunes podcast store open your iTunes application and click Podcast on the left hand of the window. Then click Podcast Directory near the bottom of the largest frame. On the left side of the largest frame you will see a link that says Submit Podcast. Click it. iTunes will ask for your feed address, type in your feedburner address (something like http://feeds.feedburner.com/sermonpodcast). Within a few hours your podcast will be accessible on iTunes. You might also consider submitting your podcast to Yahoo! Podcasts, Odeo, and Christian Podder. There now that is clear as mud.

Step 3: Promote it. If you do all of this work, get your podcast on the net and then never promote it, you might as well have been doing it all for nothing. You’ll get some people who stumble upon it, but it will never reach the people you have designed it to reach unless you do some promoting. This is our next step in the process. We plan on making a video of how to subscribe or download the podcast and then we are going to play it on Sunday mornings as a commercial to help our congregation understand how they can listen to the messages on the net. If you can figure out some other creative ways to promote your podcast it will be far more effective.

Step 4: Be consistent. If you are going to do this, then you need to go all in and do it every single week without missing a beat. This should be something that your congregation or ministry grows to expect and they should be able to trust in good faith that every week that message will be online and ready for them to download. If you are inconsistent with your podcasting then you can plan on it failing.

These are just some quick steps and tips on doing a podcast to enhance your ministry. We hope that this helps you on your journey in podcasting and if you do create a podcast leave us a comment and let us know where it is so that we can listen. If you have any questions or technical problems you can also drop us a line in the comments below and we will be sure to respond as soon as possible.

Today I’ve been setting up our computer system in the auditorium to prepare for the future podcasting of our Sunday morning services. We have some experience in doing this already since the Cranium Leakage team has started a podcast. Unfortunately we’ve not been able to do a podcast lately and I attribute that mostly to our limited time and space. We have only one place to do a podcast, and I think if we could do it portably instead of being stuck with a fixed location that we would be able to do it more often. That being said, while I was looking for a small sound mixer to use with our computer for Sunday mornings I came across a couple of portable options that would help our Cranium Leakage podcast, if only we had the money… a man can dream I suppose.

The first little techno honey that I came across is one in a lineup of many new portable recorders that actually record on flash memory. These handheld devices allow you to go portable with quality sound. The Sony PCM-D1 is ideal for our podcasting needs. It is equipped with built-in condenser microphones and designed with circuits that process stereo sound and it has a pure titanium body which makes it remarkably rugged. It uses 4MB of flash memory which will allow for about 13 hours of recording time although the rechargeable batteries will only hold out for 4 hours. The only downfall, it is extremely expensive: $1,639

The cheaper option for a flash recorder would be the Tiny 24/96 M-Audio MicroTrack. Click the link to see the picture of it. This is a 2-channel digital recorder that has a 64mb flash card and comes complete with phantom power, and high fidelity microphone pre-amps. This little recorder is only $399, which is also out of the price range of our little blogging community.

An even more intriguing option is the new HHB FlashMic which is a portable microphone with a built-in flash card. You can record everything on the built in 1GB flash chip using just the Sennheiser microphone, but this little device costs $1,299. For the exact same price I could get the Total traveler Laptop Recording Package which has a traveler digital interface, professional Sony MDR 7506 headphones, and two AKG c2000 microphones with wires and boom stands.

The only thing that even comes close to a price range that we could afford is the brand new iKey. This device is the one step solution to convert live audio straight to our iPod’s. It is actually designed to record directly to any external USB storage device and it can record audio from any audio device. It records directly to an MP3 or WAV format in real time. This little piece of work is only $99. The only problem is that you still have to have other equipment in order to run you microphones into this little guy, so it doesn’t really solve our problems. It’s a neat concept though.

I even found that many of the companies that sell music equipment are offering podcasting packages. One of the companies that we have bought equipment from, BSW, has several packages available starting at $169 up to $1700. These packages include microphones, headphones, USB interfaces, software, and the more expensive packages include mixers and effects processors. They even offer Audio interfaces that let you connect to your personal phone line in order answer callers live. Personal and professional Podcasting is the “big thang” right now and if I had any money at all I would have my hands in some of these tasty electro-treats. Too bad for me.

It looks like for now our personal podcast will remain limited. I am buying a separate board and other equipment to enhance our church podcast though.

We want to take God out of the pledge of allegiance and off of our money, we want to remove the ten commandments from the courtrooms, we want to remove the cross from memorial sites, and now we want to go so far as to change our whole dating system to a more secular dating method. Is this real? Can you really be serious?

The Kentucky Board of Education has voted to take the first step in redefining how America dates time. The board voted to include a new secular system of dating the calendar, BCE (Before Common Era) and CE (Common Era), and added it to the BC (Before Christ) and AD (Anno Domini, Latin for “in the year of our Lord”) method.

The new secular system of time dating will appear in the curriculum and other materials used by Kentucky educators. This new system is already being included in textbooks across the nation.

The new method will replace the birth of Christ as the dividing point in history. For example, the new system would change 2006 AD (Anno Domini) to 2006 CE (Common Era).

According to the “religious conservatives”, as the media labels them, this is just another move to take religion out of our heritage and to remove any connection with God, Jesus, Lord, or anything else that might have anything to do with religion. On the other hand, the Kentucky educators simply say that this change would help the state’s students on national standardized tests, which use the new designators.

While my disdain for the media and their childish liberal tactics grows stronger everyday I must stop and ask the question: are the Kentucky educators really just trying to help standardized testing or is there something else going on here?

What do you think? Leave your comment below.

I have accidentally deleted my entire MSN contact list. This is quite unfortunate for me and it is a bit of an inconvenience for all of those that were on my list since I don’t have a back up copy or a list of e-mail addresses that would help me reestablish my messenger.

So, here is a cry for help. If you were on my MSN contact list, I have lost you! Could you please either re-add me or e-mail me your e-mail address so that I can add you back to my MSN. If you were not on there and would like to be, then now is as good a time as any to get yourself your very own link to Pressed {themenofgod (aht) hotmail (doht) com}