June 2018

Bring Back RSS

I’m admittedly from a generation that grew up with a web that didn’t include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or even Google. I look back fondly on the early 2000’s when we all had our own blogs and shared thoughts and pictures and quotes there. I was just reminiscing about blogrolls this week with a client as …

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Welcome back, serifs

I’m a font nerd. I’m constantly working with (and sometimes against) clients who want a particular “look” for their website or app or presentation and trying to push them to look ahead. One of those conversations typically has to do with fonts. One client I didn’t have to fight with was Guy Sayles. His new …

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Overwriting Monuments with AR

I do think augmented reality and voice-first computing (Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant etc) will get us out behind computer screens and keyboards and into the “real” world. What “real” means is subjective, and that will only intensify in the coming decades as computing comes full circle to being something that we naturally do with our …

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Google To Start Marking Sites Without HTTPS as Not Secure in July

If your nonprofit, church, or business website isn’t https:// with a reputable SSL certificate, Google’s Chrome browser update will start showing a warning message when visitors arrive. This will affect your site’s trustworthiness. Get in touch if you need help or what to know more. You can also read a great take (and much needed …

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urgency trumps understanding

There’s some sort of metaphor in the story of these two photos of the Earth from the moon’s surface; one low-resolution and one high-resolution, one broadcast at the moment and the other only decoded by volunteers some forty years after the fact. It’s hard to see and transmit what’s happening right now clearly, no matter …

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melomaniac

I’d be ok with this diagnosis. English melo- (“prefix meaning ‘music’”) (from Ancient Greek μέλος (mélos, “song; melody, tune”)) +‎ -maniac (from French maniaque, from Late Latin maniacus, from Ancient Greek μανιακός (maniakós), an adjectival form of μανία (manía, “madness; mad desire, compulsion”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think”)). Source: melomaniac – Wiktionary

Oxford Classical Dictionary 5

I get it, but I still want a paper copy. Even the concept of a “dictionary” is no longer the same. OCD5 exists solely online. This means that we can do a number of things. — Read on classics.oxfordre.com/page/eicletter/letter-from-the-editor/

Introducing the Assyrians

  Layard’s discoveries caused a media sensation and captured the public imagination. This had a major impact on painting and applied arts, in the UK and beyond, during the second half of the nineteenth century, which led to a brief phase of ‘Assyrian revival’. The Assyrian sculptures at the British Museum largely remain today where …

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“God said to Abraham give me a son…”

In Genesis, God prevented Abraham from carrying out the act. However, the papyrus text tells the story differently, suggesting that Isaac was indeed killed. This echoes the way the story is told in a number of other ancient texts, Zellmann-Rohrer said. — Read on www.newsweek.com/1500-year-old-ancient-egyptian-papyrus-contains-stories-biblical-human-891667

Viking Color Palette

Well now I think this blog needs a visual overhaul (we Harrelson’s do come from the Vikings after all): Archaeologists and chemists have now studied colour use in the Viking Age based on the chemical analyses of pigments from a number of objects and a review of existing information on the topic. These colours are …

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Churches and Social Media

Some good points in this post regarding churches using social media as outreach, particularly for youth. It’s important to keep in mind the “how’s” and “why’s” and “where’s” of different age groups and social media use as well. I tell my clients all the time that just like we don’t all listen to music or …

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George Lucas’ Plan for Star Wars Episodes 7-9 (Meet The Midichlorians!)

I take back every negative thing I’ve said about The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi and the treatment of cherished characters. Yikes… midichlorians “[The next three ‘Star Wars’ films] were going to get into a microbiotic world,” he told Cameron. “There’s this world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them …

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Twitter Media Launch

I’m a little confused by this… Today, we’re excited to announce the launch of Twitter Media, a new website for publishers to learn how to get the most out of Twitter. Twitter Media allows us to scale our team’s work by giving content publishers a resource that’s both inspirational and practical… — Read on blog.twitter.com/marketing/en_us/topics/product-news/2018/twitter-media-a-new-home-for-publishers-on-twitter.html

Romans 13 and American Appeals to Authority of the Government

Good read on the historical uses of Romans 13 in American history to justify obedience to the government in light of our Attorney General’s use of that text today to defend the deplorable and immoral and utterly un-Christian internment camps we’re setting up along the Mexican border for children that we’re forcibly separating children from …

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7 Reasons Why LGBTQ+ People Don’t Want to Go to Your LGBTQ+ Inclusive Church

Important read: But more profoundly, the very structure of society is changing before our eyes. Churches used to anchor communities, and were a space where people met outside of the routine of daily, commercial life. Parishes were determined by geography; Protestant churches were determined by denominational affiliation. Nowadays, people form their communities through other means. …

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A brief history of the internet

The existing national defense network relied on telephone lines and wires that were susceptible to damage. In 1962, J.C.R. Licklider, a scientist from ARPA and MIT, suggested connecting computers to keep a communications network active in the US in the event of a nuclear attack. — Read on sciencenode.org/feature/a-brief-history-of-the-internet-2018.php

“Where did Angels come from?”

I got asked that question during a Sunday School class on Old Testament conceptions of the divine a few years back. I struggled to gather my thoughts quickly and do that Middle School Teacher “Well, actually… it’s very interesting you see…” thing. But it is a long and interesting history to process how we went …

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Facebook ads prices are too high and companies are shifting to Instagram

The impression-based market on Facebook ads haven’t resulted in a solid and stable pricing model for most direct-to-consumer companies (or nonprofits, churches, community groups etc). The targeting capabilities are exciting, but the pricing costs for ads have to match up with the returns. So now we’re all flocking to Instagram Stories… Digiday spoke with 10 …

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