cale livingston

Random: Honestly, this is going to be random

I’m having such a hard time getting started with blogging so I decided to lower the bar as much as possible, which led me to create this great new category: random. And what could random possible entail? Oh, I don’t know, maybe the following will paint a clearer picture for you:

• I’ve finally fallen in love with one of those special program specific keys on my keyboard. This one happens to be the music player button. For some reason I’ve never used any of them before, aside from my occasional fling with the volume and mute keys. I guess they never held much significance until now.

  Which leads me to my next bullet…

• I’m obsessed with Relient K. I have their three latest cds and they’re simply amazing in every way. Their lead singer and song writer, Matt Thiessen, has a great deal of both lyrical and instrumental maturity. In the endless flood 0f generic, uninspired Christian bands, Relient K remains a shining star. (Before I throw every other band under the bus I also want to save: Needtobreathe, Anberlin, recent Jars of Clay, and some Newsboys, oh… and Coldplay!… wait a minute, huh?)

  Which, incidentally, also segways into my next bullet…

• The Christian music industry needs to either: A) wake up from their coma, or B) switch off life support and just die. What? Too much? Seriously though, even in the simple things they seem to be trailing the world. All the popular secular artists have their entire album collections online for people to stream for free, whether it be on MyPlay or Myspace. Now switch gears and check the artists on Christians music labels,”Umm, why are there only four songs? Are we still living in 2004?”

  Ok, originally I was intending to segue nicely into a new topic but this has just been so much fun and I’m recalling tons of things I want to mention annd/or rant about…

• In technology terms, 2004 roughly translates to the early 1800’s. With that said, I’m so glad I live in 2009. “What’s one of the benefits of 2009?” you may ask. Well, in a word: cloud. The quickest definition of cloud is that all your  information is stored online, probably on some server farm in Arizon, and you can access it via any device with an internet connection. Examples: box.net, my.yahoo.com, google mail/documents/calendar, facebook.com, etc. Because of cloud I know longer need a laptop, a jumpdrive, a day planner or even Microsoft Office. I can access my information from any computer I use, not to mention I can receive updates and reminders as text messages on my phone. Did I mention every single one of these sites and features is free? (Standard texting rates apply) lol. But the key difference with cloud based information and systems is that they only get better. You don’t have to purchase new software every year and upgrade. The internet is becoming more powerful as a tool (yay for firefox and add-ons!).