I’ve been listening to Slacker the last several days and have been quite impressed. No, I’m not talking about being a slacker. I’m talking about the online music player called Slacker. It uses Flash to stream the music to your computer through a web browser.

The coolest feature that I see right now is the ability to enter an artist’s name and then the player will play that artist’s songs as well as other artists that it thinks are similar. You can skip songs (up to a certain number an hour) if/when you get to ones you don’t like, and the quality seems to be pretty good via my Bose headphones.

Check out the screenshot below to see all the artists and songs that were played for me when I entered in Switchfoot:

It’s definitely worth checking out. Also notable is that they’re apparently going to come out with a portable player with built-in Wi-Fi — something to compete with an Apple iPod or a Microsoft Zune (for those of you what the latter actually is). I’d be curious to see just how well that device will integrate with their streaming music service.

My guess is that while the music is free for right now, they’ll be adding in ads pretty soon. I do know that they will offer a paid, ad-free version, but hopefully the advertisements won’t be too intrusive. Even if you can’t stand the adverts whenever they do show up, another product this new company apparently will offer is a satellite-hookup for your car, so maybe this will be a competitor to XM and SIRIUS satellite radio as well? Sounds pretty ambitious to me.

My advice is to enjoy the service for now whilst you can get it without ads. I wouldn’t hedge any bets with the internet player, simply because their costs are likely going to go way upw soon.

I work with computers daily and last night had to spend several hours working on my home PC only to finally determine that I have a bum hard drive — I gotta get a new one today. The good news, though, is that I had backed up my data.

This morning a coworker pointed me to this article online where a computer tech for the state of Alaska delete a bunch of their data AND then somehow managed to format the backup, and still kept his job.

Nine months worth of applicant information for the yearly payout from the Alaska Permanent Fund was gone: some 800,000 electronic images that had been painstakingly scanned into the system months earlier, the 2006 paper applications that people had either mailed in or filed over the counter, and supporting documentation such as birth certificates and proof of residence.

Wow. If I had done that, and cost my company over $200,000 to fix the problem, I seriously doubt I’d still be sitting at my desk when it was all said and done, and this guy actually kept his job. Of course, he works for the government, so go figure.

So I’ve been furiously uploading pictures to Flickr and have retooled the photos section of this site so that all can see the 700+ photos that I have brought back from Italy. Additionally, I added a couple of random photos to the sidebar at the right that will change each time you load a page on this site (hence the “random” bit).

Click on the link, to the left, called “Photos” to see everything.

And last, but not least, I’ve actually done some reading lately. Then I found this interesting site that lets me keep track of what I’m reading and share it with you too! The latest book(s) that I’ve either acquired or read (how I do wish the one would beget the other!) should now appear in the sidebar to the right, just below those new pictures.

Let me know, please, if you like the way it looks, if you don’t like it and want to complain, or if for some reason something does not work. Thanks!

An “Out of Ur” blog post “Crowded Loneliness & Quiet Contemplation” briefly mentions how fractured our lives are in America today, and suggests “lectio divinia” as one option that can help, on an individual basis. Here’s a quotation:

Americans are knee-deep in the unprecedented phenomenon of grouped isolation—what [Randy] Frazee refers to as “crowded loneliness.” We are in desperate need of meaningful relationships, yet too busy and too pulled to maintain them.

Even worse, our attempts to relieve our sense of isolation often contribute to our fragmentation. We might join a small group, for example. We’ll get in contact with 3 to 11 other dedicated Christians and commit to meet and study the Bible every week.

But what happens? Those 3 to 11 people become another chunk of relationships that we have to manage [. . .]

I appreciate the insight that meditating on scripture can help to “defrag” (as one commenter on the post puts it) our often-hectic lives. I think, though, that we need to find an additional solution to de-fragment community. Part of the solution has to be continued emphasis on the idea that the church is not meant to be just another box for us to tick off our list — the church community (globally and locally) is a body in which all individual believers are an essential part, which also means that believers need to be integrated into the body, otherwise they will wither and dry up.

In the United States especially there is a tendency to consider church just a Sunday activity — one of many different activities in which we participate. We may sign up for a small group, but then that small group’s meetings will be just a Monday night activity (or whenever the group meets). I do think it’s critical that we Christians understand that Christianity is not just another personal belief system — it’s a community-focused way of life.