Create The Noise. Change Your World.

If you desire to try and make the world a better place, you will be left heartbroken.

I don’t know why I persistently preach that we can become a world of compassion and selfless sacrifice. It could never be true. It is a fight that one cannot win. There will always be someone taking advantage of us. There will always be someone that is out to hurt us…  There will always be that time when we are in it for ourselves.

Last week, I was traveling in a large 15 passenger van packed with college students. We were driving back home to Orlando from a convention in Atlanta.

It was a long drive.

We talked about everything from the genius in ‘classic’ Will Farrell movies and albums like Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory to the problems with the labels of modern and postmodern culture. They reminded me of how obnoxious naive I was at 19-20. They reminded me of how classic I had gotten as I remember Zoolander being an above average film not a great one.

It was a long drive.

What should we do with our lives?

Welcome to the first edition of tales of everyday inspiration.

I have been inserting my articles into several blog carnivals and thought it would be good for me to add one to Altnoise.

Many of you might want to ask, “What is a blog carnival?” In simple terms, it is a collection of articles from several different blogs that all have the same theme. They are arranged together so that it is easier for a reader to find similar blogs.

an online magazine of sorts.

 This carnival is about personal stories of inspiration - hence the title, “Tales of Everyday Inspiration”. There were dozens of submissions and many of them very excellent articles. A few of them I had a hard time weeding out, but they didn’t fit the theme.

I have recently been accepted by the blog advertising site payperpost.com to work with them and promote certain products and websites. I am excited about it because it can bring in a little income to help support the family and I am able to get paid to blog, but I am also worried about it.

Payperpost works when a company wants their product or service known across the world wide web. The best way to accomplish this is through the viral marketing of bloggers. These companies then promote their services on payperpost to potential bloggers. They will offer the blogger a certain amount of money to review their services and write a post about it (hence the name payperpost).

Albert Foong has replied about our email conversation over at his blog. I am always impressed with his articles and the simple enlightenment that he brings to them. The entire post is an amazing investigation about compassion and selflessness. I became deeply inspired and motivated to seek Christ’s justice by reading it.

The best part might be the end of the article when he asks his readers a question.

I was reading some Christian literature recently, and everywhere I go I find this saying: “God works through me. I am merely His instrument.” Is it possible this is what they are pointing to?

Go check it out.

Popularity: 30% [?]

I suppose I jumped the gun this weekend when I implemented the new design. I was so excited about it that I forgot THE rule when designing sites: Check it out on every possible browser. I didn’t. It looked good on my IE7 so I thought it was cool.

This morning I was having an email conversation with Albert from Urbanmonk.net (an excellent site by the way) and told me that my site was screwing up on IE6 and Firefox. So instead of posting relevant material today, I worked on making my site compatible with these two platforms. I’m glad to say that it is all good with firefox. There shouldn’t be any trouble viewing the site. IE 6 is good.. not finished. The drop down menu isn’t working for the browser. I’m sorry and its my dumb mistake, but you wont be able to use the blog menu if you have IE6 for awhile.

It took me a couple of weeks, but it is something that I am extremely proud of. Altnoise.net is completely redesigned and running on the server. If you are reading it through an rss feed, come check it out.

 I have never seen a blog designed the way altnoise is and that is good. Maybe I can start a design revolution. It is a very minimalistic look, but still has enough elements to please the eyes. I built the design upon the most basic wordpress theme I could find: Barecity.

I’m Not Perfect.. Here Are Some Changes

There are still some things that I need to tweak and work out. The comments section on single posts need something to help it flow. The main menu right above the bottom blue section will probably be moved to the top.

Allright, everyone. I know I mentioned that some changes are starting to go on and I am excited about them. I am redesigning (again) altnoise.net to a much more slick and minimalistic look. The design is almost finished and is looking very good. Right below is a small screenshot of the top half of the site.

 You can actually stay up to date on any upcoming changes of altnoise by going to http://intune.altnoise.net . I have changed the site to a test site for altnoise.

 Also, I really would like your input on the changes. If you have any idea on how to improve altnoise or any comment (good or bad) on anything we decide to implement then let us now. It would be great to see this site built and added to by you all.

It is just around the corner, and I’m excited. The boys are at the age where Christmas can actually start being exciting. We can take them to the plays, drive to see the city lights, and decorate the apartment with a large tree. This Christmas will have a special moment in our family’s memories.

As a Christian, our family does focus on Christs birth. We’ll tell the story and have Jesus is the Reason for the season stuff, but we aren’t kidding anyone. It is about the presents. My wife and I want the best for our kids this Christmas and want to make it special for them. The problem is that we aren’t made of money. My wife is a children’s pastor and I’ve quit teaching to return to school full-time.

This morning I was tempted. I missed the first class of the day because I was trying to finish the homework. It didn’t seem like it would be hard to finish so instead of doing it last night, I put it off until this morning. I had more.. important.. things to do.

 The morning started out great. I got up early, took a shower, got the boys dressed and had plenty of time to do the simple homework. I found it wasn’t so simple. An hour after the class started I was still trying to finish the first part.