Category Archives: Tech

It’s Good To Be Back

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What have I been doing, lo, these many months to keep me away from the blog?  Two new redesigned websites.  Allow me to elaborate.

Pepper Road Church of Christ

I worship with the Pepper Road church of Christ in Athens, AL, and for years now, I’ve been responsible for the church website.  I have fulfilled that responsibility with varying degrees of effort, attention, and responsiveness—lacking in all more often than not.  I finally have gotten around to building the site within a content management system, namely Joomla!.  Now, instead of my being the sole soul who can edit the website, our elders, deacons, and minister can author content themselves, and I have a couple of backup administrators, too. 

A screenshot thumbnail of the Pepper Road church of Christ website

Pepper Road Church of Christ Website

We have information about the church and articles on Bible topics.  Soon we should have sermon audio back online, and after that, we hope to have an introductory Bible correspondence course online.

I’m pleased but not content with look.  In the interest of getting the new site out the door quickly, I have used a free template from Joomla Shack.  It’s fine; it’s just not custom.  I hope to get around to designing something that says “church” a little more than this borrowed template.  When I do, this space will certainly reflect it.  

Of course, at the time of this writing, I’m still using the default WordPress theme on this site.  One of these days …

Conney Safety Products

Not quite a year ago, I took a job with USinternetworking (to which a friend had sold his small business specializing in e-commerce website development in IBM’s WebSphere Commerce).  The first site to go live that I’ve had a hand in is Conney Safety Products.

A screenshot of the Conney Safety Products website

Conney Safety Products Website

Conney is a safety product wholesaler.  The website offers a quick order feature, shopping lists that can be shared among all of the buyers in your company, and a live chat with Conney support personnel.  There are a few post-go-live features that we are finishing up, such as an improved search utility.  Look for that in the next few days.

If you sell safety supplies, drop by conney.com.

Evolution Vacillation

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I have to thank my buddy Kevan Moore for sparking this thought.  We were at the Atlanta Zoo.   (By the way, seeing a real, live panda in person is even cooler than you think it would be.  But I digress.)

While we were looking at one of the endangered species exhibits (I forget now which), Kevan piped up, asking why, if we subscribe to the theory of evolution, are we concerned when any animal becomes “endangered?”  Isn’t that just evolution at work, weeding out the inferior species?

I responded sarcastically, “Oh no!  You must understand that these species are only endangered because we—mankind—have hunted them down in our arrogance to make them trophies, or we have disturbed their habitats in our recklessness so that they can no longer flourish.  For nature to kill off her own species is fine, but for us to do it is abomination!”

Then it occurred to me.  Evolution theory says that mankind—uh, humankind (sorry) is simply nature’s most evolved species.  In other words, we’re not outside of nature; we’re very much a part of it.  So what’s the harm if our behavior causes other species to fall out of existence—species less capable, less fit, less able to adapt?  Such is the binding arbitration of evolution.

So is mankind—uh, humankind part of nature or not?  Can we just make up our minds already?

ColorBurn’s Back

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Web designers will be glad to know that ColorBurn is back!

ColorBurn screenshot

Shortly after the first of the year, ColorBurn just stopped working.  I looked around on the Net for an explanation, but all I could find were others also wondering what had happened.  I had given up hope, assuming that the guys at Firewheel just got tired of maintaining it. But here they are with entries for today and the last week as if they never skipped a beat.

And there was much rejoicing.