Cubs deal Emilio Bonifacio, James Russell to Braves for prospect Victor Caratini. Cubs sell more players to get another prospect but this feels like too high of a price. The Cubs got one prospect, a 20-year old Class A catcher for a left handed reliever and utility player who has been hitting well. #
Physicist concocts ice cream that changes color when you lick it.#
Lengthy affair brings records, rare feats for Rox, Cubs. What I find interesting is that last night's game went 16 innings, but was longer than the previous record that went 21 innings. True, there could have been longer innings, but instant replay has to factor into the length too, yet nobody seems to be saying it.#
Jesus wants you to be doctrinally inconsistent–more from Oswald Chambers.#
ExxonMobil, Chevron Locked In Bidding War To Acquire Lucrative Pennsylvania Senator. I thought The Onion was a parody site.#
Problem bears cause road closure.#
"It expands the right of corporations to be treated like people, part of a trend that may be contributing to the rise of economic inequality." What The Hobby Lobby Ruling Means for America#
Some really great quotes in this New York Time's Article, Why Do Americans Stink at Math? In my opinion, at the heart of the problem are two things. First is American exceptionalism that takes a "not invented here" mentality. We are the best, so other methods created in other countries is clearly not good enough. Second is that I don't think we really want to solve the education problem in the United States because it is in the best interests of those in power to keep the masses uneducated.#
Why Do Americans Stink At Math? "The new math of the ‘60s, the new new math of the ‘80s and today’s Common Core math all stem from the idea that the traditional way of teaching math simply does not work."#
Why Do Americans Stink At Math? "The trouble always starts when teachers are told to put innovative ideas into practice without much guidance on how to do it. In the hands of unprepared teachers, the reforms turn to nonsense, perplexing students more than helping them."#
"No, Jesus says towards the end of that fine and complex book that affected me greatly, you are the body of Christ now. If anything is going to get done, it's going to be up to you." Library as Church, Bookshelf as Altar: Why I Gave Up Praying, and Carried on Reading#
New Wonder Woman revealed - SlashGear. All I see here is Xena, the Warrier Princess. #
There is a new Peteet's Famous Cheesecakes that just opened near us, and this may not be a good thing. #
Your Favorite ’80s Hacking Scenes, Now All in One Place. How many of these movies do you recognize?#
Congratulations to Greg Maddux on your hall of fame induction. They don't make pitchers like you any more.#
A Personal History About Writing On The Internet.#
The first two paragraphs of this Amazon Fire Phone Review by BGR screams, "I have an axe to grind!" so I don't know why anyone would bother reading it. Most importantly, it's not even a review!#
Last night I was featherbowling at the Cadieux Cafe in Detroit.#
Microsoft still doesn't get why the iPhone succeeded. It is pretty simple, really. Microsoft is not a consumer company. Xbox may be the one exception and it only succeeded as a separate skunkworks. The irony is that I think Balmer recognized this deficiency and attempted to change Microsoft towards a consumer orientation, and got skewered because of it. Nadella is returning Microsoft to its knitting, and that will likely mean they will not be a consumer company. The problem is that the time for the enterprise only device has come and gone with Blackberry.#
Happy birthday, Detroit!#
11 Google Now Easter Eggs on Your Android Phone.#
Digital Tattoo can now officially unlock your Moto X - Android Community.#
Engadget review of the LG G3: "As I walked through Times Square on my way to the office one day last week, something odd caught my eye that made me do a double take. A sizable line had formed outside of the AT&T store as it prepared to open."#
I saw the G3 in person at my local Best Buy last night, and it is very attractive, but I am not sold on the large screen devices. I am still loving the 4.7 inch screen on my Moto X.#
Microsoft Debuts Lumia 530 I wonder what size SIM this phone uses? #
Amazon Fire Phone Review: Full of Gimmicks, Lacking Basics - WSJ Based on this review, I think Fire is DOA. I don't think people want gimmicky smartphones, case in point the "Facebook phone." #
Yooper Steez has launched a new t-shirt line, the Hewer Series recognizes the Upper Peninsula's mining heritage.#
How-To: Setting up a River of news.#
How to copy and paste to and from a PuTTY window.#
Kindle Unlimited, Uninterested. I've also not been interested, mostly because I like to annotate books as I read.#
This Kid Made an App That Exposes Sellout Politicians.#
The Millenial Pastor: “Are you ready to let the young people be in charge?”#
AutoVoice Tasker plug-in adds Google Now integration with Tasker, which means that you can create new Google Now commands for anything that Tasker can do on an Android phone.#
Earlier this summer Amazon launched their virtual desktop service, Amazon Workspaces. Unlike other AWS services, you are charged a flat monthly amount for Workspaces as opposed to the consumption billing for EC2 and S3. The cheapest tier costs $35 per month that gives you a Windows 7 desktop with some web browsers, but you can install software. I assume the flat per month billing is due to Windows licensing.#
Amazon does prorate the billing if you start later in the month. Therefore, the cheapest way to try out Workspaces is to wait until the last week of the month and then use it just for that week, you should be only charged the prorated amount for that week.#
The Self-Stirring Mug This is just wrong.#
Sodomites "Throughout the Bible, God’s number 1 concern is how a nation treats the widow, the orphan and the foreigner. God blesses nations that have compassion, and curses those that turn the weak and helpless away."#
Observer and Eccentric: "The expected $10 million windfall state officials expected with the sale of fireworks has really only worked out to about $3 million, Nebus said." One of the more stupid decisions the Michigan state legislature has made was making fireworks legal in Michigan. I expect eventually the legislature will allow cities to make them illegal within their borders, I doubt they will repeal their bad decision. #
Democracy != anarchy#
Google Maps v8.2 for Android update. Google has added voice commands to Maps, what I need to understand is how can you initiate the commands because touching the screen while driving is not convenient. What it really needs is Active Listening. #
The Lord’s Prayer: a Social Justice Theology.#
Today is the first time that the circa app has been really useful for learning about breaking news. It seems they are finally getting the push notifications optimized.#
Today's background image, your's truly on a boat on the St. Mary river near Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.#
An idea just occurred to me, and I wonder whether it would be possible in a script. I use background images in this blog, and during the day, as I add more links and comment on them, the text can end up covering up a big part of the background image. Would it be possible to have an option that when selected hid the text for maybe 20 seconds so that someone could see just the image? Just thinking that if someone was curious about the picture, this would be a useful "feature." #
re/code: "A decade after the idea was first sketched on the proverbial drawing broad, Starbucks is poised to finally let its customers order their coffees from their phones." I hope that this works for Starbucks locations that are not owned by Starbucks, like the one at the GM Renaissance Center.#
Evernote blog: "Once you’ve finished clipping, you will see a panel that allows you to set a reminder on the note you just created." Yes! This is a feature that I have been wanting, I rely heavily on Evernote clipper.#
It’s time to stop treating Android Wear like a phone. Up until now I haven't written anything about Android Wear for two reasons. First, shortly after the announcement I went on a vacation that had me offline, and second, I decided that it might be best to wait until I actually had a device. That being said, this article by Phandroid resonates with me because it aligns to my thoughts during the Android Wear announcement at Google I/O.#
I couldn't help but think during the demonstrations of Android Wear that there was too much complexity being shown. All the swipping around to navigate seemed to me to be too complicated. It felt as though Google was trying to show how smartwatches could replace smartphones. Except that Android Wear devices are really intended to be accessories to smartphones. #
I think that for devices to really succeed in the market, they should adhere to this maxim: the smaller the device, the more specific the function. For Android Wear to succeed, the devices need to look great and what they do needs to work really, really well. Oh, and the price is going to matter, because in the end, despite all the apps that you will find in the Play Store that exist simply because they can, smart watches are going to be useful for only a few things. #
Why are all the activity trackers so successful? Because they do one thing really well, track our activity, and they are reasonably priced.#
Notifications, in Google Now form, and voice interactions with your smartphone, which is really a part of Google Now, are the killer apps for Android Wear. Simple things like displaying the barcode for an airplane ticket is nice, but I don't think anyone is going to enjoy reading an email message on a smart watch. Nor should you.#
My fear is that the demonstrations at Google I/O are setting an expectation that is not realistic. You might be able to create all sorts of complicated apps for the smart watches, but are people going to really use them? And if all the apps make Android Wear watches look like a complicated mess, are people going to really spend $200 for what is basically an accessory for a smartphone? #
Dick Tracy's watch did only a few things, but many of us thought those few things were cool enough for us to wish such a watch was available for real. Just as smartphones can do almost everything that a notebook computer can do, smartwatches will likely be able to do almost everything a smartphone can do, but people don't really use nor think of smartphones as notebook computers. Smartphones are a different type of personal computer, in fact I think it's the first real personal computer. Smartwatches are another type of personal computer, and its path to success lies in staking claim to its unique role in personal computing.#
Holy Sh*t: A Brief History of Swearing In case you ever wondered how it all started. #
Michigan's Best List: A look at our Top 10s for tacos, pizza, burgers, ice cream, breweries and more.#
I have successfully moved my main weblog to my own domain. #
How-To: Fargo Self-Hosted Publishing - VPS Storage.#
rathbike's Blog. Two MTU Alumns are riding a tandem bike across the northern United States.#
25 Things People Mistakenly Say to Yoopers.#
iPad and MacBook Battery Life to improve with help of fuel cells.#
AluPen Digital Review: The only iPad stylus or Android stylus you need.#
German sausage cartel caught bangers to rights. Best title I've seen in a while.#
Commndr for Google Now removes ‘Note to Self’ voice prompt - Android Community.#
Yesterday I built a Debian server to host the Fargo Publisher. Still have some dots to connect.#
Microsoft says super-cheap Windows devices are on the way. The race to the bottom continues. No matter how cheap, if the products are bad people won't buy them. Microsoft seems to be making an assumption that the only reason why people buy Chromebooks is because they are cheap. However, it think you will find some people prefer them because the hardware designs are nice AND they require less maintenance. A $200 Windows notebook that requires vigilance against viruses and malware is more expensive than a $200 Chromebook that does not.#
The work week is almost over. The first week back after a long vacation is the worst.#
Texting Your Way to Healthier Church Communication - churchrelevance.com.#
Notezilla for iPad syncs sheet music to high-quality audio.#
How-To: Fargo Self-Hosted Publishing.#
How-To: Setting up a River of news.#
Meet Tango PC, the desktop computer that can fit in your pocket http://t.co/MdWRyZbQDG by @JacobSiegal #
World Cup finals: It's Pope versus pope. Oy, what a dilemma. How will God decide? #
Gmail for Android adds a faster way to attach Google Drive files.#
Your Lifestyle Has Already Been Designed (The Real Reason For The Forty-Hour Workweek).#
Is it wrong to be satisfied? By being satisfied I mean to not be driven for more, to not constantly push to "be all you can be?" Our culture says it is wrong to be satisfied, we should always be striving to improve, to achieve more, to accomplish more. #
Only working a 40 hour week? You are a slacker. Using all of your vacation time? You are a slacker. Wish you didn't have to work all the time? You are lazy. Not saving the world? Then you are not using the gifts God has given you. #
In my opinion churches ought to counter this cultural belief, but instead we feed it equally well. You've got to participate in more small groups, give more service, and give more money so that either more people can be hired or larger buildings can be built.#
If you don't do these things, you aren't truly part of our community. Instead of offering relief from a world obsessed with more, the church fully participates within and often encourages the cultural norm.#
In Luke 11:1-4, Jesus's disciples ask him to teach them how to pray, and Jesus answers in what we commonly call The Lord's Prayer. In verse 3 it says, "Give us each day our daily bread." In other words, please provide us just what we need for this day. #
You remember the words, don't you?#
The prayer goes on in verse 4, "And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us." In most churches the word sin is used in this verse, I find it interesting that in Matthew's version of the Lord's prayer, this verse says "And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors." (Matthew 6:12). While we seem to want to equate "debt" with the idea of our debt to God, or rather sin, most likely Jesus really meant debt.#
In the time of Jesus debt, most often in the form of having your land foreclosed on in trade for food and other things one needed to live, was a big issue. The authorities, be they Jewish or Roman, in their obsession for more forced those around them into debt. It seems to me that Jesus is encouraging us to forgive debts on others, just as God has forgiven our debt to him. Or may be put another way, stop being obsessed with more, and be satisfied with "enough." #
In Matthew 6:25-34 we see Jesus telling us to not worry. Jesus says, "Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?" In Jesus's day marks of wealth included what you ate and what you wore. If you listen closely enough, I think you hear Jesus saying, "give up your obsession with more and rejoice in having enough. Be satisfied. Peace be with you."#
St. Lydia's: A Dinner Church in Brooklyn, New York. I think this is one of the coolest worship communities that I have come across.#
Every time I see a picture of these hot dog eaters I want to hurl. The whole watering down of the bun thing produces a gag reflex.#
Inbox - The next-generation email platform. I am simply glad to see that someone is doing something to improve e-mail.#
Surface Mini Unlikely to Ship This Summer. Paul Thurrott throws water on the Ev Leaks tweet yesterday that a Surface Mini will appear this summer. My hope remains in the fact that Thurrott and Mary Jo Foley were both wrong about whether the Surface Mini would be announced when the Surface 3 was announced.#
How To Convince Conservative Christians That Global Warming Is Real. I really don't get the conservative Christian resistance to concerns about climate change. If you are going to be literal about the creation story, didn't God give us responsibility for his creation? #
Surface Mini Release Date: Summer launch, according to new report. I want this to be true.#
Djokovic wins, shows you what I know. I am impressed with his ability to overcome losing the fourth set.#
After a week offline, traveling around Michigan's Upper Peninsula, I am home in time to watch the men's Wimbledon final. Djokovic and Federer have gone to a fifth set. Djokovic blew a chance to win the match on his serve, therefore, I think Federer is going to win this match.#
