JellyTelly, from the mind of Phil Vischer of VeggieTales, is a network for children to follow along the lines of Christian videos from the 90s/00s. The idea is to get children to visit the site daily to view wholesome Christian-based cartoons and shows. With hopes to bring this to the television, but it will launch online first due to the amount of money it takes to launch a television network. This is definitely exciting and I pray he does very well.
The revenue model will be subscriptions (like Disney Online, PBS Kids Zone) instead of ads. The model is unique however as you pick your own price. The first month is free, but after that you pay what you feel the value is and what you can afford. Much like Christian radio shows, you just give what you can and what you feel it is worth. I absolutely love this model. Phil, plan on us as subscribers!
Phil has a wonderful book out called Me, Myself, and Bob that covers his life and experiences creating VeggieTales.
"A connection was successfully established with the server, but then an error occurred during the login process.
(provider: TCP Provider, error: 0 - The specified network name is no longer available.) "
This is what has been causing issues with the site this weekend. Thankfully the hospital has good WiFi and my cell's bluetooth connection to the HSDPA network from AT&T makes being able to debug the servers ok. However, we will be in the hospital the rest of the day and going home tomorrow so I do have my machine on at all times to see if it is happening. Please bare with me in this case.
The weird thing is I can communicate with both servers via RDP during the time the web server thinks it can't see the database server. If anyone has seen this issue and can do some come up with some solutions besides rebooting or debugging techniques, please contact or comment.
[Update: Applying a hotfix may have solved the issue, only time will tell. Please continue to alert me if you see issues]
Addison is finally here! I can honestly say, that is the first time I have Tweeted from the hospital in an operating room. Looks like we will be here for a few days, but our room has an awesome view so we might see some fireworks tomorrow.
Geekswithblogs.net was completely down this morning with random, never seen TCP communication errors between the web box and the database. I like to call it the jealous sibling that didn't want us to leave for the hospital. I got her squared away at 5:30 and we took off.
Got to love all the bloggers we have on this site. Today we had some database issues and I started to receive emails, blog comments, text messages, IM messages, and trouble tickets about the timeout issues we were having. Thankfully it happened today, because Addison will be joining the family tomorrow morning and I will be out of pocket.
The problems should be fixed, but if they aren't ping me via one of the methods above.
Well I am back to spending the last day with Brandon as the only child, later!
My church, the Berean Bible Church, is one of the over 200 churches that are participating in an awesome event in September. We will be broadcasting the Focus on the Family's Truth Project training live on September 27th. The Truth Project is a small group program for Christians that goes over the biblical worldview for comparison to your worldview. I have been through the program and lead a group and I really enjoy the content.
My role, along with some other guys at the church is technical maintenance and audio production. Hard to believe eh? During services I run the audio equipment and ensure the sound levels are good and also work with the house lights. Since we haven't podcasted much lately, it is good to get back in audio production.
Here is a shot of my station during services and events.
Last night, in preparation for the September event, we ran a live test run with a one hour session with the Truth Project's leader, Del Tackett. The event was broadcasts over the CCN satellite network so every church involved in this event has a satellite on their building. The participants could ask questions via email or fax and Del would respond to those questions during the Q&A portion.
They are looking to do more events like this through Focus on the Family which will really help bring relevant content to these churches along with the ability to interact with the presenters.
For more information about the September event, click here or if you are in the KC metro area, click here.
Look what I get to prepare this week! I am so excited. We are building some new internal environments and decided to spring for some new servers. Aren't they pretty. I can't wait to smell the Quad-Core 2.0ghz Xeons cooking with 8GB of RAM each machine.
I will post more about what we are doing and hopefully some more pictures, wish me luck!
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Oh the joys of Fatherhood. One day a year, we get put on a pedestal that we don't deserve and get shouts of praise and love from those around us. This year I wanted to spend my day doing an activity my family could do together and it just so happened that my son's favorite toy was in town (Baldwin City is close enough to Olathe to be considered in town). Not only was Thomas the Train here, but he was live sized and you could actually take a 25 minute ride along with him.
Needless to say, my son was freaking out. First he got to ride a School Bus which he had never done before, but when we entered the town square and there was Thomas, he was amazed. The whole day was full of "I can't believe this is happening" expressions. One of those unforgettable days for me as well. Here are some photos from the trip.
One of the greatest pieces of third-party software was updated today and I must say, this app is sexy! At least that is the first comment that came out of my mouth when the SnagIt Editor started up.
(Oh what irony when I have to use Paint and Windows Print Screen to take a screenshot of SnagIt because it auto-hides the application to take a shot of something else. They must be bashful :D)
Some of the new features you can expect are:
- Sequential Captures
- Multi-image capabilities
- Quick Styles
- Keyboard Shortcuts
- Ribbon-based Menus
- Auto-store Images
- Image Tray
- Quick Access Toolbar
- Automatic tagging
- Custom tagging as one image or batch
- Quick Flags
- Visual Search Pane
- Visual Bookmarking
But like I said earlier, the new UI is awesome. If you already own a copy of SnagIt, check this link to see how much the upgrade is. The core product is only $49.95 and the upgrade from 8.x looks like it is $19.95. This tool is essential for writing blogs, articles, or books.
[Update: I originally had the pricing at $24.95, it is actually $49.95]
We are making a large effort to get rid of the SPAM coming through the comments on this site. To help me out (for now) can you forward your SPAM comments to support@geekswithblogs.com. This will then let me see the spammer's style and create a blocking technique.
D'Arcy is definitely killing the Speaker Idol presentation. Start booking your tickets for #teched09 to hear D'Arcy keynote the event.
