Pastorpainter Vlog 1:

Who's that charmer :-)

Audio Sermons

I have been bashing my head against the keyboard to come up with a solution to capture my Sunday sermons again.

Their are simple solutions such as purchasing another iRiveriFP-790. It worked, it's cheap as chips now and did have great sound. But I bought that particular model because it had an audio "in" plug thus making it possible to use a much better mic... the problem is I never used the external mic. You may not know this but I really don't like drawing attention to the fact that I am recording my sermons and having an external mic might just push some parishioners over the edge and I would never wish to offend anyone with the recording.

Another solution is simply to use Andrew's old MP3 player a Sony MPio FY600... meh not the best and it may produce the quality that I had a year back with my Palm T3 PDA, and that just made me sound drunk as the audio slurred my speech. Anyway it's digitizer has gne on the fritz so it's no longer an option.

I could use my current phone, a Motorola Windows Mobile 5 "Q", but again the slurring is distracting and worse I haven't figured out how to get the recordings off my Q and onto my Mac... the USB doesn't work and the Bluetooth connection doesn't seem to want to import my audio notes.

My favorite solution is to go all out and get the R-09 as seen here And oh yes, you read the price correctly! Ouch. There is a great article written last year on podcasting devices for those on the road. along with an update on the Zoom H4. I haven't even tried to google the price: I'm too afraid. Ultimately an MP3 solution will come my way soon enough and I hope to get back to getting you some spiritual lift from my humble sermons.

Diocesan Clergy: Love Divine

Not something I'll do often but it was too beautiful not to celebrate and record... and yes I missed verse one :-)

St. Mary's Band, Saint John NB

My first YouTube entry! I hope the first of many. It is my intention to blog from my office once with my webcam. Let's see what i can come up with to use this great tech.

Clergy Conference 2007

As things wrap up here in Rothsay I thought I'd share some pictures of Fr. Dlugos, our Keynote speaker from the Southdown Institute as well as show our annual basketball game... which resulted in many aging clerics realizing that some muscles did exist and that all they want is tender love. One of our number got a gash as heads came together, but that is another story best left on the court; let's put it this way, blood was spilt at Clergy Conference :-)

St. Mary's Band: Bishop's Award of Merit

Saint Mary's Band of Saint John has served the community both locally and internationally for over a century. In recognition of their years of dedicated service, all stemming from their affiliation with the Anglican church, they received tonight, before the clergy of the diocese as well as some former members of the band (three of which are diocesan clergy, Rev'd Chris Hayes+, Rev'd Chris VanBuskirk and Archdeacon Walter Williams), the Bishop's Award of Merit.

On my Way to Clergy Conference

ditto...

I'll try and post some pictures from Rothsay Netherwood School where we are having our Clergy Conference. Please keep us in your prayers as we discuss events in the Anglican world from this summer as well as our Clergy Handbook and finally have a great workshop with Fr. Dlugos on spiritual matters.

A4 or Letter?

A very interesting and thorough article on European vs US paper size... sounds boring but really it is quite interesting especially if you like math. See it here.


EDIT: well what happened with the above link is that it was so popular in such a short period of time that it exceeded it's bandwidth. Here is a Mirror link.

Pentecost 13

Here is the bulletin for the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost, August 26, 2007: Pr21CAugust262007.pdf

I will try and record my sermon but I will need another solution in the near future.

Intruder!

We'll it's been a busy 30 hours.

Thursday night at around 10pm Sherry and decided to go upstairs to bed, I stopped in the Living Room and basically told Andrew to go to bed. Since we have no curtains or drapes on our window I had a very clear view. What I saw was a man walking across our lawn, right by the side of the house... the dark side of our house. He walked close to the road then turned. He stared right at me and I asked Andrew to take a look at this guy. It was unnerving to see him blatantly stare back at me. He moved on but I felt that I had to lock all doors and double check. I was worried but not to the extent to stay up.

In the morning at 6:15 Sherry came upstairs and said we've had an attempted break in. In fact he did break in, he came into our porch, which was locked, grabbed a chair and placed it in front of one of our windows. He also grabbed a neighbors chair and took the tree-house ladder and placed it in front of my office window. We immediately called 911... about 8hours too late!

What we didn't know was that Andrew came back downstairs, as teens do when their parents send them to bed, and at 10:45 the guy was back... obviously setting up the chairs and the ladder. Andrew saw him right next to the house but did nothing except for turn on his MP3 player to look as if he was making a call.

The RCMP said that this was serious and was a 911 call. We also were told to get motion detectors for the dark side of our rectory. Well after spending a few hours at the RCMP Office giving my statement the day was shot... some day "off".

They did catch the guy, apparently he was exposing himself all Thursday and just out ran the cops. While I was waiting at the RCMP a call came in that confirmed that this guy was doing this peering in all night long at many locations in Florenceville.

What fun. It's never boring.

Forgotten Sermons?

One of the reasons I set up this blog was to post sermons for those who either don't have the ablillity to get to church and wish to hear a message or for those who wish to keep intouch with my ministry and where the Lord is leading me in my messages. So why have we not had one in a while.

As many know back a few months ago the interface between the PC and the USB nic on the device wasn't connecting. I was able to record but not get the sermon off the device. Then I left it in St. James, got it off the pulpit the next week, placed it on some books as I left the church and didn't think of it again for a few days. Meanwhile it was laying on the driveway in front of the church. Though it didn't rain the dew got at it and it's trashed now.

I did record my sermon with my cell phone (a Motorola Q "Windows Mobile") but it has that same slure we experienced with the Palm T3 a few years back. I may place it up later today or tomorrow but I think I need to come up with another solution. Stay tuned and hopefully in a few weeks I'll sort out what I need to better serve you in my internet ministry.

Andrew's Family Birthday Party

Sherry at Kings Landing

I was always intrigued by this first photo, it was in Sherry's photo album and whether it was because it was in church or if it was the mystic of "King's Landing", which I had never been to, I felt some type of affinity with the picture. Well 27 years later Sherry was back in the chapel of St. Mark's.

King's Landing

Last Sunday a number of parishioners joined me at St. Mark's Chapel, King's Landing for a real, yet historical, Anglican Evening Prayer Service.

Catch Up: Cam PC/Drew 16/MacBoy

It's been a while since my last post.

Much has happened in the parish and at home. A beloved parishioner past away, Gerald Tompkins. Some parishioners were quite ill and needed some follow up as did some from neighboring parishes which I was covering. Much was a foot during the last week of Camp Brookwood as they began to wrap up.

At home, three big events occurred.

1) Cameron received his first computer... inheriting my main Asus K8V board/1 Gig Corsair/ Samsung widescreen/ 120 Gig Seagate SATA/ ATI X800Pro ... a very very fine machine. Then it bust! So that had to be taken into the shop in order to get the BIOS working again and reinstall WindowsXP.

2) I got my Mid-Age-Crisis gift! Yes, that's what I call it. It came at a cost, but now that it's been a few days with it I can say I am a fanboy now: iMac 24" 2.4ghz/2Gigs Ram/ 500G HD. I can not tell you how easy it was to set up and use. I have been a computer geek for the past 15 years, building my own machines and fooling around with Windows from the very beginning... Apple blows them away. If you need to buy new computer and desire ease of use, get an iMac. If you're worried about the cost, I'll tell you that when figured with monitor, software and headaches, the mac is the real deal and not a flash in the pan: if they could ever be said to be such. One day I will blog just on the mac experience and my joys and the very few concerns. Let's put it this way, if you want a gaming machine, buy a Dell and live with Vista. If you want a computer that works, doesn't get virus', understands that you take pictures, listen to music and want this to be easy, then buy a mac.

3) Andrew turned sweet 16 on Friday!!! This year, as we have done in the past, Sherry and I took him out for dinner, but this year we took him to his first Haut Cuisine / Fusion experience. The Three of Us went to our favourite restaurant, The Blue Door. It was wonderful! He really enjoyed his Sticklers and fried Leek along with his main, a wonderful Lobster Linguine with Shitake Mushrooms. Sherry had Sushi and a great Burger, fries and shake combo in a real fusion style... the presentation was awesome. I had the Red Curry Mussels and the Sesame Tuna, done to perfection... once again. The wine was a great Californian Petite Syrah (not the same as a Syrah), it had great notes of Blackberry and finished with Honeysuckle! It was a great choice. I began with an Elderberry/Cucumber Gin cocktail, very refreshing!!!!

Computer things to Know

It's not all about your "OS" (operating system) in this web 2.0 world it's now about how well you know how to use the Internet.

Increasingly traditional computer based products, those that sit on your hard drive, are being replaced with very good and even better products that are available on the Internet. The bonus is that you can access them from anywhere without bringing your computer along for the ride. The down side is that everything is in the hands of others so if their site goes down so does your stuff. But realistically if you stick with well known names such as Google, you are bound to be very happy and never have to worry about a web 2.0 app going down. Look at all the possibilities in this absolutely wonderful site!!!!

http://www.tzunami.com/No-More-Harddrive.php

Cameron: Proud Dad!

Cameron has completed Level 10 Swimming, next year his goal is to gain his Bronze Cross and Bronze Medallion leaving him open to becoming a qualified Life Guard.

WWPA Readers

This blog-story is just for those of you who are members, or former members, of the Parish of Wicklow, Wilmot, Peel and Aberdeen.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be asking the congregations for pictures and fun stories of the resent and distant past. Since you have access to the Internet you might be able to get something to me much faster. So any stories that are heart warming or especially those which are harmless and funny are particularly welcome along with any or all pictures of your former priests, events and members of the congregation. The older the stories and images the better. If you have slides or prints I could scan them and get the pictures back to you.

My hope is to include just a few stories and pictures in a quarterly colour news letter that will be made availuable in the back of each church.

Please send any submissions to dpainter@gmail.com

Switcher!

Yup I'm making the switch... no, not Roman Catholicism, PC to Mac!

After a decade of drooling over the elite stylings and the vast praise of it's virus and spyware free OS I'm getting an iMac. I became so disillusioned with Vista and the endless series of niggly issues that I said, "I deserve better." My PC, which I built, is aging and I just want ease of use and something which shall aid me in my administrative parish duties as well as my online hobbies. Cameron will now benifit becaue he will have his own machine, and frankly he deserves it, he's made it to high school and done a fantastic job at the lawn so this is well deserved; I think I've been good too :-p

Why? Really? Because it's sexy and since I have no plans on becoming an adulterer, nor wealthy enough to buy a Ferrari, this is the next best thing for a mid life crisis cure :-)

Read this!!!

Before the Knee

I had a niggling feeling in my knee that week yet still played tennis... well I didn't listen to my body and as a result I had 40cc of fluid taken from my knee and am now on anti-inflamitories. Ah the joys of getting older and being out of shape.

October 1989

the 7th