Home of DJ and technophile Jonathan Puddle (aka J Puddy)
Posts by Jonathan Puddle
Speaking at Catch The Fire’s Pastors & Leaders conference
03 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Work
In January 2012 I’ll be in Toronto again, speaking at Catch The Fire’s Pastors & Leaders conference. I’ll be leading 2 sessions, one on choosing a ChMS vendor (really about picking wise ministry partners), and another on leveraging technology in your church. Here’s a promo video:
I’m pretty excited, it’ll be my first major speaking opportunity, and it’s on a topic that I’m truly passionate about. These Leaders conferences are fantastic, and this year’s event is really open to everyone involved in church ministry, leadership or otherwise. I highly recommend you consider coming up to Toronto in January!
Choosing a ChMS Vendor
154 months ago
Earlier in the year we began the search for a church management software vendor. I’ve been meaning to share the process we went through, as well as our results, but haven’t had the chance to till now. We’re in the midst of a large software project, replacing all our core business software with more suitable applications. One of the needs we recognised early on was for our pastors and ministry staff to have a tool that was truly well suited to their particular needs. The process we went through is equally applicable to most kinds of software, not just ChMS.
All the wisdom in the world
25 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Personal
Late last year, I stumbled upon the blog posts by Julien Smith and Dave Fleet, preaching the benefits of a regular reading plan. Julien had taken on the challenge of reading a new book each weak, for all the weeks in 2009. Dave felt that 26 would be as much as he could practically manage, and so he forwarded the challenge on. Twenty-six books a year equates to roughly 20 pages a day on average, and I decided that I’d take up the challenge. (more…)
Amazon, give us the “Ignite”
15 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Tech
I’ve been meaning to write this post for about 4 months, and as is inevitably the case when you delay, someone else writes it for you. Today that was Ars Technica, so at least I’m in good company :)
I’ve started traveling more regularly for work, and at the start of this year I set myself a goal of reaching 26 books. That works out to roughly 20 pages a day, so I tend to need multiple books on a 2 week work trip. That’s a nonstarter for me, so I asked (begged) my wife for an Amazon Kindle for my birthday. She arranged it, a few friends chipped in, and I happily read books now in predominantly digital form. This week I read Call of Cthulhu, by HP Lovecraft. It was deranged and brilliant!
But this post isn’t about the Kindle, it’s what Amazon needs to follow up the Kindle with… and I can’t think of a better name for it, than the Ignite. (more…)
New MIDI mappings for Traktor Pro and Numark Stealth Control
26 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Personal
The Load Track button for Deck B broke on my MIDI controller about 8 months ago. After a whole lot of hassle, I’ve finally got the controller back, fully repaired. This week I’ve remapped the layout to better reflect what I’m using Traktor for at present. It’s fairly simple, but quite a bit more effective than my last one. The Pitch Bend buttons have been re-purposed to jump to cue points, or to change the loop length when a loop is active. Cue Play resets the loop length to 4 beats. Download the TSI here (may need to right click and Save As).
King David – Streaker, rapist, hero
29 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Personal
King David enjoys status higher than a lot of Christendom and Judaism’s other heroes and figureheads. Even Jesus is called the Son of David. I’ve been thinking recently how much this exposes flaws in modern Western Christianity. Somehow, King David managed to be the only person in the Scriptures that God said was a man after his own heart. Countless books have been written about David, or following the model of David, or otherwise encouraging a Davidian element in our lives. Obviously he is venerated and held in hugely high regard. And yet, we know that in a moment of passionate love for his God, he ran naked and nude down the main street of town. We also know that in a moment of passionate lust, he raped a man’s wife and then murdered her husband. Rock on! (more…)
Adding more links to the Google Apps global navigation bar
09 months ago
At Catch the Fire we use Google Apps for all our email and collaboration. We recently wanted to include some more links on the Apps global navigation bar, but were at a loss as to how to do so.
One of my team members managed to find a confusing sounding, but actually excellent solution, to this problem. Jesse Middleton posted this last year, and while some minor things have changed, it still works very well. Thanks Jesse! The basic steps are as follows:
- Register yourself with the Google Apps marketplace as a vendor.
- Create an application (with the sole purpose being to put a link on the menu bar).
- Add the application to your domain.
Because you’re not actually publishing your app to the Google Apps Marketplace, it doesn’t cost anything to do this, and won’t get in anyone’s way. You can create as many apps as you might want, for links to various things. Some enterprising individual should take this method and expand on it to allow people to rename and customise these menu items at will.
Facebook brings chat everywhere
110 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Tech
I just had a rousing conversation on Facebook about penises, and that’s not even the good part. The good… even great part, is that this conversation took place in real-time, in relation to a status update. We didn’t use Facebook Chat, to talk about a status update; we talked via comments in the comments area… live. With the addition of in-line updates (new notifications/comments/etc. loading without the page having to reload) and the recent oft-maligned change to the Enter key behaviour, Facebook has turned everything into a chat area.
I’ll let that digest for a second, if you haven’t already realised this. The thing that I’m most impressed by with this, is that neither of these techniques are new. In-line updates via AJAX or other JavaScript methods have been popular for a few years, it’s the sauce that powers Gmail amongst almost all other popular web tools. As for the Enter key, when building websites you can choose to “trap” the enter key on whatever you want; that’s why sometimes you visit a site, input your login credentials/search terms/whatever and hit enter, only to find that nothing happens. This is due to the site having trapped the Enter key elsewhere, or having not trapped it at all.
So these are old techniques, but by combining them in just this way, Facebook has turned any place where you make a comment (status update, photo, product, ANYTHING) into a live chat area. And that is genius… because while we were having an amusing conversation about penis waving, there was any number of other people on Facebook having a real-time conversation about a company’s product. And that conversation is what drives commerce in the new digital economy. Google is to search, as Facebook is to online conversations: not only have they won top spot, but they’re successfully defending it with continued innovation.
Kik Messenger
210 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Tech
In my post the other day about business cards, I mentioned Kik Messenger as being an awesome replacement for SMS. It really is, and I want to take a minute to tell you why. In the interest in disclosure, I will tell you that the founder and CEO of Kik is a personal friend of mine. You might think that makes me biased… but remaining in the interest of disclosure I will also tell you that I’m a technology professional, who evaluates a lot of software and services and then has to stick with those decisions for the long-haul. So… whatever man.
Ted showed me Kik back before it was called Kik and it was intended to perform an entirely different function. A function that was pretty sweet, in it’s own right. (more…)
Business Cards, Job Titles, and the Cult of Self
210 months ago
by Jonathan Puddle
in Tech
Catch the Fire, my employer, was getting set to print some new business cards for us. I’ve recently changed jobs, and so was asked what I’d like to include on my business card. In time this led to a conversation at a one of our weekly meetings about business cards, and the idea was presented to drop job titles from our business cards. I’d not heard that idea before, but I liked it. It’s been in the back of my mind until today, when Slashdot had an article discussing the future of the business card. (more…)
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