I cannot believe that it has been exactly a year. It still seems unreal. It is almost impossible to escape the constant repetition of the events that occured that day and the phone call I received while I was helping move my brother in at Lipscomb. My life and my perspective on life was changed forever with that one phone call. Thoughts of doubt and confusion flooded my head then and they return again because of the significance and the tone of today. The somber mood is revived today.

It is the type of situation that you hope you never have to go through but still are thankful because of the perspective that you gained. God uses every situation to magnify his glory and that is true even in this. Looking back, that fact has been evident. Even so, I think the pain and confusion will always remain on some level.

It is one of the most gut-wrenching feelings: to feel imeanse pain but still know that you have to be strong for others. I did not really know how to handle the situation other than to withstand it. It was almost like knowing that you are about to walking through almost blizard-like winds to get to your car across the parking lot... you just hold your breath and face it. As you start to walk, your nose starts to go numb and your lips go dry. You can almost feel the redness of your eyelids getting brighter. The snow is blowing in front of your face and you cannot see but six inches in front of you, but you know that at the end, you will reach shelter from the storm and you just have to keep pressing on.

It was tough to see people that I love go through this. It was tough to see a youth ministry deal with a tragedy of this magnitude for the second time in less than a year. Yes, there was growth in both of those situations, but you never wish for these events to come. However, it is these events that shape and mold us as people. It shapes who we are and what we believe. It prepares us for the hardships of life while still reminding us of life's blissful moments. It is what defines us as humans. It is times like these that we have to take it in and move forward, never forgeting, but also never allowing it to hinder us from what God wants to do with it. It is times like these.

We miss you, Bruce.

David Hyde Pierce (from Fraiser) was at the City Grill today in NYC... that is the best photo we could get of him.

I guess Apple was in too much of a hurry to push out the podcast-equipped iTunes 4.9 that they overlooked adding smart playlist functionality for the newly mainstreamed audio. This morning, I tried to add a smart playlist to issolate the podcasts episodes that my computer has downloaded within the last 24 hours.

Surprisingly, when I went to create a new smart playlist, the option for podcasts was not there. Thinking that I could just deal with a playlist with the new podcasts AND songs in the last 24 hours, I decided to do that. Nothing. Sure, the playlist holds the songs downloaded in the last 24 hours, but not podcasts.

It turns out that the directory that contains the podcast episodes is not included in the music library in iTunes. Ergo, there is a wall between the music and the podcast files. I understand the reason for this, but it would be nice to create a smart playlist for the podcasts I have in my episode list.

The only way around this problem that I have found is adding the directory that contains the podcast episodes to the iTunes music library. It will then index all of the podcasts into the music section and become sortable with smart playlists, but this also leads to the problem of having to sort through not only thousands of songs in your iTunes library, but also every podcast episode you have.

I think Apple may have just been too hungry to break into the podcasting market that they overlooked small featured such as smart playlist functionality. While they have made podcasting mainstream almost overnight, they have butchered the construct of the podcasting community. That is another story for another day.

For the longest time, one of the only complaints that I have had about FireFox (on the Mac) is that when I fill out any forms, I cannot hit TAB to select a pulldown menu or a checkbox. It would just skip right over these. This resulted in every time I would fill out my address on a website or wanted to check the "remember info" box when logging in somewhere, I would have to manually do it.

For example, type NATHAN (TAB), type MOORE (TAB), type ADDRESS (TAB), type NEW YORK CITY (TAB), errr... skips to zip code rather than going to the pull down menu for all the states (which normally I would simply select and hit "N" until NEW YORK was selected)...

Anyways, I have found a fix to this annoyance. If you type "about:config" into the address bar in FireFox, it will pull up the configurations for the app. Use the search on that page to search for "tab." Find the setting that has the Preference Name of "ACCESSIBILITY.TABFOCUS" and double click the value field (default set to "1"). Change that "1" to a "7"

That's it. Now I am able to TAB freely between fields even pulldown menus and checkboxes. Ah. That's nice.

Here is PhuseBox badge to stick on your other sites (like xanga, myspace, livejournal, etc.):

It looks like this:


here is the HTML code to put on your site (make sure you change the USERNAME in the code to YOUR username):

<a href='http://phusebox.net/user/USERNAME'><img src='http://phusebox.net/myphusebox.png' border='0'></a>
For example, Mine would come out like this:

To clear up any confusion, "Greenbox" is just the codename for the new site version. When this version goes live, you will not have to update anything or transfer your account... it will all be automatic.

One day, you will get on the site and notice that everything is completely different (but better) and that is when you will know that the new version (Greenbox) has gone live.

The new version of PhuseBox is moving right along. I had originally planned to have it ready by the time school started for most of you, however, with all the additional new features and stuff, it is still not ready to go live.

I can tell you that the new site ("greenbox") will be awesome and definitely will run circles around the current version. Everything in Greenbox is more integrated... The Blog Manager is much easier to use and is loaded with features (I am currently writing the post from the new blog manager). There going to also be a new way to browse photos and link between photos that are in the same topic.

I, along with several others, are really excited to go live with greenbox. I am working on it almost non-stop every weekend when I have free time.

We are also planning to move to larger servers soon to accommodate all the new users, space, and bandwidth. Along with the new site design and switching servers, PhuseBox is about to become incorporated. This will allow for greater growth of PhuseBox in the future.

As always, let me know if there are any features that you would like to see in the new version of the site or let me know of any bugs that you run into. Though, I am programming the new version from scratch and so many of the current bugs will be taken care of, still let me know of them.

Continue to spread the word and get more users on PhuseBox!

-Nathan

This is my brother. He tends to fly sometimes. This is really just a test post.

For those that design websites with CSS, here is a site full of examples of excellent CSS designed sites. A must see for web designers.

CSS

Internet Explorer Play CatchUp

Seriously, Microsoft has absolute zero innovation. Their new version of Internet Explorer (IE) copies most of FireFox's advanced features such as tabbed browsing and RSS feed reading capibility. Come on, Microsoft... Spend some money on your research and development.

For those of you that are still using Internet Explorer (the big blue E) for a browser, you should seriously consider switching to FireFox.

FireFox
Internet Explorer
IE7

Here are the cafe lalo photos from last night:


poor maria...


Cafe Lalo


Ellie drinking from the creamer


meridith


some weird scary clown doll


maria




last night was really fun, however, my first encounter at cafe lalo was definitely the best...

Yeserday, when I checked RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM, which has come to be a daily read of mine, I was surprised to see their red flame logo in the center of the page with the text AUGUST 12, 2005 underneath.

Was the site redesign finally here? Was Relevant finally going to unveil what was suppose to origianlly go live at the beginning of April? After the Relevant community waited for the new version of the site to arrive at each of the miscalculated launch dates, was it finally time.

I looked forward to this ever since the beggining of the year when RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM placed a countdown at the top of the page, counting the seconds until the new site launch, which was originally going to be sometime at the beginning of April. Relevant has always impressed me with their sleek, clean, non-cluttered web design. In fact, when we redesigned belleaire.org, we looked at RELEVANTMAGAZINE.COM as an example of what we wanted.

Last night, I checked the site again before I went to bed at around 1:00 AM. The logo was still there... disappointment. And the date had been taken off. The text simply read, "TONIGHT." Uh oh. Was Relevant pulling another one of their now-famous miscalculated launches?



photo from nathan

I woke up this morning to a complete redesign of the Relevant site. Mmmmmm... Disappointment. The site looks like any other flashy website out in cyberspace. They might as well have tapped into an artist section and create another PureVolume site. Seriously.

The top menu on the newly released site is created in Flash and is surprisingly easy to navigate, and it does not go overboard on the flash. However, the rest of the main page is cluttered, trying to fit everything into a space constrained by about 900 pixels. It reminds me of the collage of colorful ads posted on New York City's sidewalk billboards. Where do you begin to find content? I get lost in the search fields and newletter sign-up boxes and the large flashy ads and the text sqeezed into some small box at the corner of the page.

Relevant, you have disappointed me. The only thing that I am excited about in the new launch is the Relevant Podcast. This is a great addition to the content in the bi-monthly Relevant print magazine.

All in all, the site is nice, do not get me wrong! It just is not set apart from any other site that has a flashy interface. Also, the site is designed for widescreen monitors, so, if you have a regular monitor, expect to see that annoying horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of your browser.

I am already awaiting the next facelift for the site, but that will probably not show itself until 2012 (and Relevant will claim to be ready for launch in 2008).

Keep up the good work, Relevant. You provide a great print magazine and I am excited about the new podcast, but go back to the simple, easy-to-use, design, please.

Relevant Magazine

Check out this story. A man dies after playing 50 hours of non-stop video games. This is exactly why I am not much of a gamer... I really do not want to go that way.

More PhuseBox updates coming soon...

[nt]

Sorry to anyone that got locked out of their PhuseBox accounts last night/ this morning. It was a bug that has now been taken care of.

(And I wondered why my traffic was down this morning)...

[nt]

More testing. I like Apple products, like the iPod or the powerbook. they are both my favorite.

I live in NYC... otherwise known as New York City

that is it

this completes my test.

[nt]

More testing. I like interesting article about why Apple is on the verge of releasing a stand-alone version of it's OS X operationg system as a plot to overthrow windows vista. Yeah, I think Apple is about to take over the home PC market. Too bad for Moneybags Gates .

[nt]

This is an interesting article about why Apple is on the verge of releasing a stand-alone version of it's OS X operationg system as a plot to overthrow windows vista. Yeah, I think Apple is about to take over the home PC market. Too bad for Moneybags Gates .

[nt]

iPod
Apple
PhuseBox
retrospection[dot]net

This is a test for PhuseBox.

So, everyone should check out Matt Beard's PhuseBox. I think it is really cool that PhuseBox has a user that is blogging all the way from Kuwait. Truly amazing.



Keep up the good work, Matt.

[nt]

If you have a PhuseBox, you can now access your page by an easier URL address...

simply goto phusebox.net/user/yourusername

for example, mine would be http://phusebox.net/user/nathan

so instead of posting your link or going to http://phusebox.net/user/nathan you can goto http://phusebox.net/user/nathan.

So there you go, I am trying to make PhuseBox easier... I am still working on the new version. It is going to be awesome!

later.

[nt]