Category Archives: Weblogs

Talking about what others have posted about on the net.

Bookmarks, Journeying Back Through Time

So bookmarks are nothing new. We as readers have been using them for quite some time in physical, tangible books to hold the place of where we stopped reading so that we can easily resume where we left off in the book. Maybe we had several bookmarks laid out in a book to keep the place of a specific story or passage of our favorite book.

Technology has worked along side of this notion with Web Browsers for years. You could bookmark a specific webpage that you liked, so that you didn’t have to remember a long URL to get back to it. Over the years of the World Wide Web, whole sites and communities have come up like delicious.com (formerly del.icio.us which was a way cooler URL). They allow users to share their bookmarks in the cloud and even for others around the world to see what they’re bookmarking.

I typically think of myself as a pretty highly organized person (or at least if there is some clutter, it’s an organized clutter). This organization has all fallen apart in terms of my web browser. For typical work things, I have setup folders to access the sites I need to function, but for the most general websites of my personal life, the list just grows and grows. While I could have organized these into specific categories (much like my blog categories), I’ve found that it gives a sneak peek into what life circumstances I was going through.

Here’s my (somewhat long) list of bookmarks. I believe these were only saved from March 2011 onward. I really wish I had a list of all my old bookmarks from past computers, as that would have been a real trip going back and seeing what sites I saved.

Continue reading Bookmarks, Journeying Back Through Time

Coming Soon: Double Trouble // When is Sharing on the Internet Too Much?

// Coming Soon: Double Trouble

A little over a month ago, I made a fun announcement for my 5,000 tweet on Twitter. I had been holding off on the information for quite a while, as often times I ride the line between sharing too much personal information on the internet.

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But yes, my wife and I are expecting twins. At the time of this blog, my wife is currently in her 27th week, so we have about 10 more weeks to go! It seems to be a more common thing these days, as there are currently two other couples that are in our small group that are pregnant with twins, and a pastor his wife in Oakland with twins (who just recently turned 6). We’re expecting two fraternal girls, and are almost done picking out names. What’s funny is that between the 3 of us couples having twins, there’s two boys, two girls, and one boy, one girl, so we seem to have all the bases covered in our little group.

It’s kind of amazing to think that in just a few short months, I’ll be a dad. I happened to have a dream about it about a week ago where I was holding them and kissing them as they were just little infants. We also signed up for a couple registries for the Showers being thrown for my wife. Surprisingly, she’s actually having three showers (and almost had a fourth, hah). We’re having one where we live in the Bay Area, one in Los Angeles because my wife grew up there and still has a lot of close girlfriends in that area, and the school she teaches at insisted on throwing her a baby shower (since according to them, “It has been so long since anyone in the English Department has had kids!”). Her former boss at the after school teaching academy also wanted to throw a shower for her, since she couldn’t make our Bay Area one. It’s nice to know she’s loved.

One idea that I’ve been debating is starting up a blog or putting in my review section baby gear. As I did some research on gear, so much of the reviews online are catered to, and written by Moms, but there’s only a few sites that focus on the Dad’s point of view or are written by actual Dads. I’m sure there’s other tech-savy Dads who would glean from the same information (For example, I already purchased and setup a FOSCAM IP Camera for the nursery, that I can access from online via a web browser, or my iPhone to check the baby room). Society typically says it’s the woman’s job to take care of the kids, and that Dads are more hands off, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t know baby products as well.

// When is Sharing on the Internet Too Much?

Working previously in PR/Communications for the largest provider of Mental Health services for youth & children in California, I had to learn a lot about HIPAA. We couldn’t talk about youth by name outside of the office, and in written reports, we actually had to use just the initials of clients we served.

I’ve also read some articles that talk out against posting the full names of your children as well as posting photos of your child on your Facebook (I guess with an open network).

So will I be one of those sharing every intimate detail of my children’s birth, their full names, weights, time of day they were born and more? Probably not, as my wife and I tend to be a bit more on the private side of things regarding home life. I would say to other parents, why risk it? What benefit are you getting out of letting everyone else out there know details that they don’t need to know?

243 posts in…

So I’m currently in the process of trying to restart my blog. Of course it takes compiling all of my old blog entries from…3 different sites, all of which don’t have an easy way to import into WordPress (I guess MoveableType would, but that site isn’t hosted anywhere anymore, and I don’t have the archive of it either). So I’m going through and manually cut and pasting 7 years of postings. It’s tedious, but kind of entertaining as I’m passing by some good memories of college life. I’m currently at around March 2002, so that’s only about 8 months into my blogging life and I’m already at 243 posts… yikes.

Gear I Use and Abuse

Well here goes the 2nd time trying to post this. Let’s see if I can.

Since I don’t have an entry in this catagory yet, or have not really talked about this at all, I’ll share about what guitars and gear I use.

// Guitars //

1999 Takamine EG-334 – This is my first guitar. Ovankol backs and sides, spruce top, all laminated. It doesn’t sound that great unplugged, but plugged in it sounds pretty good (with good highs). It’s something about that takamine pickup. I’m actually surprised I still have this guitar after this long. I hardly use it anymore, other than when my Taylor may be at church or in San Francisco, and I may be selling it to my roommate soon (at the end of the summer).

2000 Taylor 810BCE – Ahhh, my bread and butter. Mmm, mmm, I love this guitar. It’s my workhorse, and I use it so often now. It has braziillian rosewood back and sides, and an englemann spruce top. It was a limited edition Taylor for that year, and only 100 were made. =) It sounds amazing both plugged-in and unplugged, but the intonation high on the neck needs some work. I may bring it in for a setup soon. In all the time that I’ve had it, it just has one ding that I didn’t even put in there. =(

2001 Baby Taylor 301 – This is my little travel guitar. It’s laminated of course, but it’s a fun little guitar that I take wherever I don’t want to take my nice guitars (beaches, campfires, stuff like that). I would like to eventually put a pickup in there, just for the ability to bring it places and still be able to plug it in and do worship with it (since the volume isn’t very loud).

1997 Chet Atkins SST – This is a solid bodied acoustic-electric guitar by Gibson. It’s a great guitar, and handles volume extremely well. I can crank it very, very loud with no feedback problems whatsoever. It has a nice cherry sunburst finish, though has quite a few dings since I bought it used. The tone is great, and for my style of playing, it fits nicely, though I haven’t been using it at all lately for worship. It’s being neglected as I’ve been using the Taylor more recently (which I’ll explain upon later).

Yahama SG Copy – This is a guitar I’m borrowing from my old youth leader Darrell Wong. It’s been around so much in the youth group already, but now I’m holding on to it till I have to teach Darrell’s son, Joshua, guitar (in about 6 years, he’ll be 10). It’s a basic SG, but probably not as good, which is ok, since I can’t really play electric guitar, atlest not proficiently). =)

// Strings //

I exclusively use Elixir Polyweb strings on my acoustic guitars. I love these for the feel and tone, and the longevity of the strings. I used to use Martin SP’s, but they killed my fingers, and sounded dull after a week (hence the Studio Performance name I guess). I have also tried the Nanowebs by Elixir, but didn’t like them as well.

For the SG, I’m using DG strings, either Light or Extra-Light depending on how I feel. I still have no idea why people woule use Heavy gauge strings on an electric, and it shall continue to be one of life’s mysteries…

// Cables //

Monster Cable – This is where it’s act. Monster Cable with the lifetime guarantee. If it breaks, I can just bring it back into Guitar Center and they’ll replace it for me free. Monster Cable Rocks! (oh, and now even better is that Kelvin works there, so I can get a discount! hehe, ROCK!)

// Tuners //

I just have some Korg tuner that’s black and has lights. I don’t know the technical name for it. I don’t think I’ll get one of those Boss tuners, since they’re about $100, and IMO, not worth the money. The Korg works well enough for me.

// Pedals | Stomp Boxes | Effects //

Ernie Ball Volume Pedal – I love this pedal, just because of the solid metal housing. It has two settings to control the swell of the pedal for volume. It also has one input, and one output, and a tuner output for silent tuning (still goes through the tuner output when the pedal is down). I mainly use this for when I can’t use my hand to change the volume, or when I’m playing electric and the volume varies a lot. I’ve also used it once or twice to switch guitars while on stage without having to ask the sound person to cut the volume upstiars in the soundroom.

Dan Electro Compressor – This is a little cheapy unit I bought one day after I heard about compressors and what they do (and that Shane Barnard uses one, haha). It’s not as good as the Boss ones at all, and I would recommend spending more money than I did, and getting a better one. This basically makes the sound uniform. Meaning that if a sound was too soft, it’ll bring the volume up to your setting. If the sound was too loud, it’ll bring it down to your setting. It’s really good for going from finger-picking to loud strumming, as you won’t have to adjust the volume at all going from one to the other. The finger-picking can get a little loud that way though.

Behringer V-Amp 2.0 – This is the unit for my electric guitar. I bought this after I borrowed that SG Copy. This basically acts as a big effects processor. It has 16 main affects, 24 effects all together, and 32 Amp settings. The Amp settings work as it’ll simulate how the particular amp sounds. The effects range from flanger to chorus, to just general reverb. I only mainly use about 15 patches total on this machine, though 125 can be programmed. (I need to use this unit more and find some better patches, heh. I use weird airy ones most of the time).

// Direct Input (D.I.) Boxes //

Whirlwind Director Deluxe – This is a DI box that basically converts a line level signal (from a guitar or an amp) to a low impedence mic level signal. How it does that, I have no idea. I just plug in my guitar and plug an XLR in to the other end. The neat thing about this DI is that I can plug in a seperate amp as it has another 1/4″ output, so I use this for my electric guitar into an amp for a personal monitor (without having my electric in the main monitor mix and driving the singers crazy).

Avalon U5 – Ahhh, the cream of the crop DI. This one not only converts the line level signal to a mic level, but it also shapes the tone some. It cleans the sound of the line level and gives it a distinct tone that sounds amazing. I usually use settings 1 or 3. Shane Barnard and many studios use this DI for recordings and live use because of the great tone is produces. =)

// Mics //

Shure SM-58 – The industry standard. I use this mic as a backup mic, or at a plac e where they don’t have phantom power. It’s a good mic, has an okay pickup range, but the frequency response is pretty low. It can sure take a beating though.

Shure Beta 87a – This is one spectacular mic. The frequency response that it picks up is great for my range, and since it’s a condesor mic (requiring 48V of phantom power) the sound quality out of it is excellent.

// Amps //

Marshall ASR 50 – This is my 400 watt acoustic amp. It’s a pretty basical amp, with a good clean sound (I like most of my mix clean and clear, I hate chorus). It has two inputs, one that takes just a 1/4″ input, and one that takes either 1/4″, XLR, or RCA inputs. The amp also has reverb and chorus settings, as well as a notch filter and phase. I picked this amp over a few others because of the good, clean tone it provided. I really, really disliked the effects on that Fender SFX Acoustisonic series, they sounded so fake and airy. Marshall can make some good amps.

Fender 15w – Heh, I bought this one as just an amp to play through in my freshman year of college. It’s a little electric amp that’s been through a lot, and may be on it’s last legs (though I still use it with my electric now). It doesn’t sound great, and doesn’t have a lot of volume, but it gets it’s job done.

That’s about it. If you’ve read this far, you must really be interested in all this weird stuff I use. For odd lil tidbits, I’ll post those below…

– I use Clayton Teardrop Picks, .38 mm thickness (really small picks, and really, really thin. Elisa Yi uses .50 and got me hooked on them)

– I use Levi’s guitar straps on all my guitars (well 3 mainly, I just switch them around). It’s a certain strap where it’s a nice black leather on both sides.

– I use Kyser capos. Love them to death. They’re easy to grip and move and use with one hand and you can turn them backwards on the neck to do the Foote tuning. Great stuff. I have 4 total, haha. (3 gold, one black that’s cut)

– My Taylor case has a hydrometer in it (which measures the humidity) along with a thermometer with highs and lows.

– The Taylor case is also the last year to have the nice crush velvet interior. The year after, Taylor got cheap and started to make cashes in mexico and used “monkey-butt hair” for the inside. Yeck.

– My Chet Atkins has a grey sticker on the side of it that says “Jedidiah”. Find out what it means and get a prize. Find out why I did it, and get a better prize. =)

– My guitars have no “names” as many guitars do. I just chose not to name them.

Posts not showing up…

blah, for some reason, my posts don’t always show up. I knew I posted those last two entries, but they never came up…weird…

Anyways, just posting about Steve Fee’s CD again. He rocked the house at OneDay. On his CD he does a Jason Wade cover (If you don’t know who Jason Wade is, he’s the lead singer of Lifehouse =) ). The song is called Revolution Cry.

When passion takes on a purpose
And searching ones embrace the light
When skeptics find themselves down on their knees
You’ll know it’s here

When you hear a sound as loud as thunder
When you hear a cry that shakes the ground beneath you
When you hear a shout that shatters the darkness
You’ll know it’s here

When the lost find a name worth believing in
And the fallen get back on to their feet
When the broken start to dream again
And the sound of praise fills these streets
You’ll know it’s here

It’s the revolution
Can You feel it
Revolution cry
And I believe it

How long will we have to wait
How long will we stay silent
When will this weeping generation dance again
Oh God when will your truth be restored

When the lost find a name worth believing in
And the fallen get back on to their feet
When the broken start to dream again
And the sound of praise fills these streets
You’ll know it’s here

It’s the revolution
Can You feel it
Revolution cry
And I believe it
And I believe it…

Copyright Jason Wade, 1999